Original subtitles

-[man] Finish it! Finish it! -[man grunting]

[man] Close it.

Whoo!

You're the ball bell. Yes!

Let's go, more!

No mercy.

It's a good weight for a small woman.

Hoo!

Show them, teacho!

Oh, yeah.

Oh!

Hi, I'm Dorian Yates, four times Mr. Olympia

and this is Blood and Guts, the video.

I'm gonna take you in my gym

and show you how I've trained to be the world's number one.

I hope you are ready because this is gonna be rough.

Like I said, it's Blood and Guts.

[narrator] In 13 years of bodybuilding, Dorian Yates has gained 70 pounds of muscle

and made the journey from the backstreets of Birmingham, England,

to body building's Hall of Fame.

[Dorian] Good, let's go.

[woman] It's hitting your shirt a bit.

Hello, one, two, three. My name is Dorian.

[man] Okay.

I want to start off by asking you, do you think the title of Mr. Olympia

is as prestigious today as it was when you were competing?

No.

No need to expand on that.

[man] It seems like you are slightly bitter about the bodybuilding industry today.

-Is that true and is that... -Whose take is that?

Whose take is that?

It's not the bodybuilding industry that I was involved in.

So, maybe sometimes I'm making a comparison but it's not being bitter.

I'm just like this is how it was in our day and I miss that.

I've evolved and I'm no longer very interested in bodybuilding as I used to be.

It used to be my life. I had every single magazine.

I wrote every workout down.

That was my life. And it's not my life now.

So maybe that's reflected in when I talk about it. It's not--

no longer my passion or my interest.

That's-- I'm not bitter about it at all, Mr. Vlad.

[soft calm music]

[muffled screaming]

Let's go, let's keep!

[grunting]

Bring it! That's it!

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ I don't give a fuck

♪ I'm from the slum Slim to none is the salary ♪

♪ Fussing from someone To make you a casualty ♪

♪ And saw the dream And the nightmares reality ♪

♪ Watching my family And friends become fatalities ♪

♪ I lost my father Then I lost myself ♪

♪ Lost my freedom And found a purpose ♪

♪ Then I freed myself

♪ So it's safe to say I climbed up out of the grave ♪

♪ Almost to never ever ever See free light in the day ♪

♪ So if you wonder why act This way and so focused ♪

♪ 'Cause I'm right around The corner from hell ♪

♪ If you haven't noticed

♪ I really came to win We ain't gotta pretend ♪

♪ There can only be one and we Ain't come to make friends ♪

♪ You got options

♪ But my only options Is I have nothing ♪

♪ So for it all I give it all Until I have something ♪

♪ I ain't here for Your accolades ♪

♪ I ain't here for your Fame and your praise ♪

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ Man, I don't give a fuck

♪ Not the pretty Got it gritty over here ♪

♪ This is war over your city

♪ No room for pity over here

♪ You don't know my struggles

♪ You don't know my pain

♪ Just know it's nothing to lose And everything to gain ♪

♪ There's no days off

♪ See I can sleep in the dark

♪ They can wine and dine Not just hustling grine ♪

♪ Deep down into trenches

♪ Grippin' liftin' this time

♪ Rep set, set rep, them all in Every time, I told you ♪

♪ Give them all or give Them nothing at all ♪

♪ And that means crown me king Or crown me nothing at all ♪

♪ And that means full throttle Right foot on the gas ♪

♪ With my left only next We show respect when I pass ♪

♪ And no uh on your ass

♪ Rain, hail, sleet is no

♪ No stop signs or red lights

♪ I'm just gonna go With time and champagne ♪

♪ Rookies, I'm just all-pro

♪ I'm over time every Time you know ♪

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

It's almost surreal, like a little bit unreal that I'm going back.

It's so long ago since-- where I went back where I was brought up as a kid.

It does seem like almost like a separate lifetime.

But I feel immense pride in what I was able to achieve.

[Dino] Anyway, he was supposed to be in here in about 20 minutes ago.

Here we are, late as ever.

-How are we doing you old bastard? Nice to see you. -All right.

-Show us in here, mate. -Never mind. Look at that guy there.

That's a face only his momma could love.

Come on, mate.

My name is Dean Mark Iles.

I've run Dino's Gym, but, basically, I pump iron.

And I've pumped irons for nearly 50 years.

Look at this, baby.

Look at that.

-I know this girl. -Such classic piece.

To the untrained eye, this might look hideous.

This is probably when the lights go out in a nightclub and you look at the girl

and you're just about to dance and you think, "Oh my God!"

But when you touch her, she's beautiful.

And that's what this thing is.

Absolutely beautiful.

I don't know which kind of women you've been talking to, Dino, but--

Get out.

We used to share-- whoops!

In the UK, the bodybuilding community back in the '80s

was very, very small, very, very small.

So, you get to hear whispering.

So when you were training in the gym, you'd hear this and you'd hear that.

But then this one day in particular I kept hearing the same story,

"Who's this big mother who's training down at the Weider Gym in Birmingham?"

So the stories got bigger and badder about this guy.

So anyway, so we forgot about him for a while

and then I worked at a gym called Muscle Machine.

The owner, Ron Davis was saying, "We gotta get this guy to Muscle Machine somehow."

And he got him over.

So we was all looking out the window and in he comes and I've never seen nothing like it.

Even to this day, you know, my hair stand up on my arm now,

it was hard, it was grainy, it was humongous in every department.

It was like just a caveman.

There was no finesse to his physique.

He was a beast.

And I thought, "My God, this is from our hometown."

He created the heavy-duty image of a bodybuilder, which all other bodybuilders

tried to emulate the density, the size, the thickness that turned

bodybuilding into a narcissistic vain sport into barbarian brutal sport.

Let's get nasty, Yates!

Yeah!

That's it!

[Radosav] Right, you get this, so, like the Greek statue looking like Frank Zane and-

and then Dorian comes along and he just turns it into a barbarian sport.

Let's do one more.

Wherever you are, a little boy would see, "I want to be like that. I want to look.

I want to scare when I walk into a room," and that's what he created.

[Peter] The guys of the '90, all of them,

you know, Levrone, Flex, Shawn, they always show up.

You know, they all had that condition.

He knew they had better genetics.

That's why he never missed a rep, never missed a meal.

He knew he had to do it. He couldn't slip.

So he had to get that condition and that proportion and that hardness, you know,

that was his signature.

Nobody had ever seen anything like it.

If Dorian competed in this era, that would be a cakewalk.

That would be a cakewalk.

No one's duplicated that type of intensity, that density, that look that-

that dedication towards going for a title.

He set a standard.

I mean he pushed the bodies to the next level.

He was the next level guy.

Blood and guts training.

Focused on one goal to win and not caring about any glitz and glamour,

anything that went with it.

Just came and collected his trophy and went home.

[Martin] He came from an area that was a bit rough

and he didn't really go for the glamorous life, he went for the working life, you know.

He did the Olympias, he did the hard work, he got the trophies.

[Peter] He's idolized in England because he put us on the map.

But he's like the working-class hero to bodybuilders.

You guys can see what he's achieved, but nobody really knows the person.

Still nobody knows that person.

I think Dorian's still trying to find himself.

[Dorian] My mom was an equestrian.

She was a riding teacher.

And we had a few horses on the little small holding.

People call it a farm, but it wasn't really a farm because we didn't have like

cows and things like that. Had a few fields.

We had, I think, like three horses.

So when we go over to my sister's, she lives quite nearby and she's carried on my mom's

things, she's working with horses and competing and teaching with horses.

So, a little bit of parallel with what I did.

Kiss and hug then.

-[sister speaks] -I know.

It's been too long, isn't it?

So Lisa Garland now, Dorian's sister.

I am very competitive.

And what I do, you compete against yourself

as well as competing against others. So

you have to say that was really good for us, we couldn't do any better, so I'm happy.

And to keep looking at the big picture because it's always progressing forwards.

[Dorian] This one likes me, the second one.

This one's not sure.

[Lisa] No, she is a bit nervous.

You all right now. Eh?

I grew up in Britain in the '60s and '70s, that's a workingman's environment

and people took pride in being working and how hard they can work.

It wasn't even a town where I lived.

There was literally like 50 other houses and one shop and one pub.

So it's very small.

And then a mile up one way, you had Wooden, which is where I went to school, first school.

And then a mile the other way had Hurley, which was a mining village.

Other kids I went to school with, their parents were coal miners.

So, pretty tough working environment.

My dad was very working-class, came from working-class background.

My mom was a more middle-class and she had what's in England called nanny.

So, kind of like a helper to look after the kids.

So I don't think she had really that much maternal contact with her parents.

So that was the background that she came from.

I was 13 when my dad passed away.

I was pretty upset about the whole thing and I felt like I didn't really-

nobody was really taking care of me.

My mom was not like the maternal mom that I guess that we all want really.

She was not the mom that would cook and clean and this kind of thing.

She was pretty much doing her own thing with the horse riding.

That was her main priority, I think.

So there probably was some disconnect there.

And then when my father passed away, I guess it just got worse.

I think mum was a very loving mum,

but not in the sense like mums are now where they're more kissy cuddly now.

So I think we didn't really get kiss and cuddle, but I think mom would have done anything for us.

[Dorian] What stuck in my mind was me and my mom walking across the fields

and my mom would kind of say to me,

"Do you know what happened with your father?" And I simply said, "Yeah, I know."

And that was kind of the conversation that we had.

It was not really going in much more depth than that.

I'm a boy who's just hit puberty, I'm 13,

and my male role model now is gone.

So, I didn't realize at the time, but looking back now I was upset,

I was angry and nobody was taking care of me.

That's how at least the way I felt.

That's when I learned to really contain and hide my emotions

because I remember I didn't want to go to my father's funeral,

you know, I had this big thing where it came from I don't know, but

I don't want anyone to see me crying.

So I told my mom I don't want to come to the funeral, I don't want to go.

And I didn't go.

And people used to ask when I won the Mr. Olympia,

"Why are you not jumping up and down and screaming and crying

and like wow, so happy? This lifetime goal, you've achieved it."

I think inside I was doing that,

but outside I was not doing that because I learned to-

to hide this emotions.

If you look very carefully, I think when I won the first one I'm actually biting my lip,

which is kind of to suppress these emotions which are coming out,

which I learned this so it's like default mode to go into.

Quite shortly after that my mom met somebody else and we moved to Birmingham.

It was definitely less than a year that we moved and, you know,

the whole upheaval after my father's death.

Now I'm leaving what I'm familiar with and going to the city

to live with a--

a new stepfather.

But, unfortunately, for my mom, he also passed away.

My dad died from a heart attack and the new partner of my mom also died from a heart attack

right a year after we moved.

When I was 16, my mom decided that she wanted to move from Birmingham

because she didn't have the partner there that brought her there

and she wanted to move back to the countryside.

And I'd moved to the city and I'd adapted to it now, so I couldn't really-

I couldn't go back.

I didn't feel there's anything there for me in that rural environment

and I said, no, I'm not-- no thanks, I'm staying here. So,

yeah, I had to look after myself, stay with some friends.

But I moved to this new school when I was 14 and that didn't really feel like I

was fitting in with the kids there, wasn't gelling that well.

It was different from my other school.

As we say in England, a bit posher, a bit more middle-class than what I was used to.

But next to the school was the council of the state, Chelmsley Wood

so there was kids started coming from there.

So my friend Gary, he moved from a different school.

My friend Adrian, he moved from a different school.

So I had some friends now, we're on the same vibe.

So the last couple of years at school were a bit better, I had some friends there.

What's up, guys? I guess you all right?

-All right, yeah. -Cool.

-All right, how you doing, mate? -Cool.

So these are my mates.

This is Ad. These guys, we went to school together.

And then when my mom left here, Adrian and his mom were kind enough,

I was living at his house for like a year or two years, wasn't it?

I'm gonna have crispy okra and gonna have some chicken stew today.

I'm kind of almost vegetarian but occasionally I'll have chicken or fish

maybe once a week or something.

Yeah, Birmingham was industrial town, wasn't it? So it's a tough place.

But it's totally different now.

Looks quite nice now.

Nice buildings, nice shops and train stations, all super refurbed.

You feel quite safe around here now when you come around in the night time.

I mean, how many fights did we get into them years? There's always fighting.

Every one-- every one of us had a fight with somebody at that place.

You're not gonna be a skinhead if you come from a middle-class family or a well-to-do family.

It's a very British working-class street

and we wanted to look smart with the short hair and the clothes.

And I think the fact there was very working-class and kind of tough, you know.

That's why we had to a fight.

It was kind of-- it was kind of part of the thing.

If you're skinhead, you're gonna fight.

English culture in the '70s and '80s, you go out, you-- you drink

and you get drunk and then if you're young,

probably at the end of the night you have a fight.

That's-- that's the way I grew up.

If you wanted to be on the scene as a, you know, as a teenager then,

then you were a rude boy, a skinhead, punk or a mod.

Otherwise you're not, like, you know, you weren't on the scene, all right.

So, skinhead was one of those.

It's a working-class look, very short hair and boots and jeans and smart shirts and so on.

Back in our day in the '70s and '80s, it was hard living in Birmingham, it was hard.

You never knew when he's going in the corner but he's gonna get beat up, attacked.

So what you did, you-- you'd affiliate yourself not with a gang but with a group of people.

You felt safe within that group.

And you had to in the '70s and '80s.

And then that's how I was with a punk rockers, going with the skinheads.

If you're in a gang, it's kind of normal. And I think in U.K.

there is a culture or there was a culture of fighting

and that's just how people used to work things out.

It's not like the States where people, you know, as they say, they have guns and so on.

Just usually fistfights and maybe some bats or something like that.

So, we got hurt a few times but nothing-- nothing serious.

And when you were a kid, whether you are a punk or a skinhead or whatever it is,

you're bucking the system.

You're rebelling against the system that-- everything that's around you

'cause you just know it's wrong.

Hey.

Here's the old original one.

[man] See, I love this.

Do you still like it?

[Dorian] Yeah, I've had a lot of tattooists offer to, like, redo it and fill it in

but I don't want to, I want to keep it original 'cause it's all faded.

Well, you see the difference in the tattoos those days and now is very unsophisticated

and cartoony like almost.

When I won the Olympia, the bulldog was like-- it was wider.

Now it's shrunk down a little bit.

So that's the bulldog. That's the original one. And this is-

that's the Maori design.

-And as a whole-- -[man] You got another one on the arm, didn't you?

Yeah, it was a Dr. Martens boot.

Yeah, that's the story I was telling earlier on.

Had that removed by laser and then many years later we put this on top.

Dr. Martens boot, which is the boots that skinheads wore.

So, I had this one here.

And that was not understood or when I went to the States

people thought it was something else.

They thought that I was part of some white supremacist movement

or something like that because that's what a skinhead represented in America.

He became a skinhead, had the tattoos, but it was more

a culture thing for him than a political stance.

You know, there were black guys in the skinhead movement that he hung out with, you know.

It usually represented being anti-immigrant, you know, racist.

It was more against Pakistanis and Indians for some reason rather than blacks, you know.

But it was-- it was violent in some factions.

But I'm not sort of gilding the lily with Dorian.

To him, it was just a, you know, a fashion thing.

But it would be a difficult for a 16-year-old

coming to terms with those really rough streets of Birmingham where he lived.

It's actually not a joke because some of the letters that I used to read from the fan-

fans in prison, there was like horrible.

They were like, "Oh yeah, you want to stand on stage and say, you know, Hitler rules,"

and all this crap and he'd be like, "No."

So-- so he did write a piece in a magazine

and then he said I'm-- I'm just getting it removed.

Lee Labrada questioned whether a Mr. Olympia should have tattoos.

Of course, I could have replied, "How could you have a Mr. Olympia

that's 5-foot tall?" But I didn't.

I just did.

He always had a certain swag about him that's not generated from a white racist background.

♪♪♪

Bob Marley--me and my friends were big into Bob Marley. I still-- I still am.

And it's the music is great, the beat, the rhythm.

But the lyrics, very conscious lyrics in-- in Marley.

And a lot of reggae music is very spiritual, very conscious.

If you listen to the lyrics, it's about living the right way.

I've been listening to reggae since I was a kid.

So, still listening to it.

Drives my wife crazy because she don't like it.

Every day my house is full of reggae just to put up with it.

I never listen to it in the gym because I don't need to be relaxed in the gym.

That was rock music.

We had Nirvana and Soundgarden and Guns N' Roses, all that stuff.

So training music is different from being at home relaxing music.

I don't listen to Guns N' Roses at home. But

if I do, I feel like I want to train legs or something.

I had this album, this was like a famous album for the skinheads, like,

kind of punk music.

Angelic Upstarts.

So, I'm An Upstart.

That was our anthem, like, you know, upstart rebel, whatever, fighting the system.

'79, they produced this album.

So I was listening to this '80, '81 where we'd go and watch them.

England was going through a lot of troubles.

There was this labor dispute, strikes, unemployment was high.

Birmingham was suffering.

Dorian was trying to find,

as all young men do, he was trying to find a clique where you belong.

And so sometimes you try various things not because they represent you

but because you're curious to see will I get any feedback from that.

And sometimes it might not be representative of you.

But by the time you find out at an older age,

it might be a little bit too late or you just move on.

So at that age before he found bodybuilding and the skinhead scene,

I think Dorian was just looking to find belonging somewhere.

A lot of kids that grow up without a father, I mean it happened to me to a degree

that I got in trouble and I was in a gang.

And because a gang is just a surrogate family,

which everybody needs a family, everyone needs a tribe.

So if you don't have it immediately with your blood family,

you'll try to find it somewhere else.

And, of course, that can be much worse and you can take out their anger in a negative way

with drugs, with violence.

And that happens to a lot of kids.

So it's on this street further along somewhere.

Let's see if it's still there or-- anyway, the location is still there.

So Martin Square is in the center of Birmingham and

the day that we got arrested was the day of civil unrest.

All around the country there were riots.

All the major cities around the country and places are on fire.

This was the summer of 1981.

I think I was 19 years old.

It was a lot of riots going on.

On this day that me and my friend, we caught the bus to the other side of the city

where there was a party going on and we didn't even really think about this whole

riot thing going on.

We were-- you know, we're unconscious of it.

And we're walking through here,

there's a passageway here and there's a closed door with all the windows smashed in,

and my friend that was with me, it was nothing in there we would want

but it was like old man's clothing.

So he said, "Oh, that would be funny if I take this old man's stuff

to the party and I'll wear it." And he grabbed the mannequin

and pulled it and the whole window came out.

And then within about five seconds there was like 20 police here arresting us.

[siren wailing]

Actually I was the kind of like in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But with your friend and it happened, so you take the medicine together,

don't say anything.

Feeling a little-- you know, 'cause I'm going back and I'm thinking

how I was feeling at the time.

And it's very foreboding in there.

It's Victorian.

They got tons of courts in there and stuff.

I mean a young kid to go in here, this is a scary place.

And you're going to jail, you don't know what you're gonna expect when you get there.

So it's a whole unknown as well.

And, yeah, I only did three months in the detention center.

But when you are 19 years old, three months feels like three years.

So, yeah, this is-- this is a place that sentenced me.

It was easier for me than most people because I was a strong guy and pretty confident.

But your freedom is taken away.

That's the biggest thing.

You don't realize what your freedom is until it's taken away and you have no say

on where you go and what you do and when you do it and you become a number.

For somebody that grew up like on a farm who is used to like running, walking,

riding bike and being free, that was a big shock

and not something I wanted to experience again.

He got arrested, sent to six months, and started training with weights

and responded very quickly. And this guard

said you've got a gift for this.

And the last day he left, he said to Dorian, "You don't belong in here, Son.

Don't ever come back."

And that's when he discovered bodybuilding.

It was showing me what I didn't want and that had an opportunity

for something positive. It was simple as that.

Number 67 bus from Castle Vale, spent a lot of time on that fucking thing, I tell you.

As soon as I got out, I had nowhere to live.

So, you get the city to come and visit you

and see if you are eligible to get some housing.

So, yeah, it was a good at least a year before I was

getting my own apartment and I got a job with regular income coming in.

Castle Vale is a city housing estate in-- in Birmingham.

I think they gave me a place there because there was small apartments for single people

and was not a place that many people would want to go.

So a lot of people would turn down that opportunity and wait for something better.

So there's a lot of tower blocks.

I lived in a tower block which was, I don't know, 15, 16 stories high.

There's a lot of those there.

A lot of unemployment.

A lot of crime and a lot of violence.

It was quite a notorious area.

It's basically council housing they call it here, which is like city housing

or public projects in America.

All along here was not housing, it was like rows of big tower blocks.

It looks totally different but that was-- when I was here was early '80s,

from about '81 to '85, '86, I think I was living here.

Lots of silly rumors about places like that are always put about.

But I think in the whole, you really needed to be on your toes

to look after yourself and beat down the door a few places.

And when I started training, I got some security work with some of the guys

at the gym that were doing that kind of work.

I met him when he was coming out of the skinhead phase,

but he still used to where the skinhead clothes and he had

the tattoos and everything.

I fell in love with Dorian the first time I actually spoke to him.

I liked his kind of like-

it can be a bit arrogant sometimes, but I kind of liked that challenge.

Debbie is my ex-wife and

mother of both my kids, Lewis and Tani.

And Lewis came on the scene very-- very quickly and unplanned,

I think is the best way to say that.

My name's Lewis Dorian Yates. So I'm Dorian's son.

I remember going down the gym when I was like probably four or five.

For me that was just like going to a family home or something.

I didn't really realize until I was a bit older that that wasn't what everybody did,

you know.

In the bodybuilding fraternity everybody knew everybody, not just from Birmingham, you can go

to Manchester, you can go to London, it was like your next-door neighbor.

Everybody knew everybody else in the-- in that iron industry at the time, you see.

There were four weight classes in the British Championships.

So you had to win your weight class and then there would be a competition

between the four weight classes to see who was the overall winner.

So, one person per year would get the pro card.

So, highly competitive.

I started to hear about him in late '84, early '85.

People saying that there's a kid down here who might be

something a bit different, you know.

But I'd heard all this so many times before and it never worked out.

And he was-- he was doing the West Coast Championships in Morecambe,

which is in Lancashire, and I was going to that qualifier.

I went to the hall and they were getting ready backstage to pose.

On the other side of the hall I saw Frank Richards.

He was a famous British bodybuilder, who had been out for 14 years.

He was nearly killed in an industrial accident.

He's facing the stage standing at the side.

I face him and congratulate him.

He says, "I'll only do another couple of years."

I says, "Why is that?" And he said that, I heard this music,

the Eurythmics [imitating music] you know, "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This,"

and Frank said, "'Cause of fuckers like that."

And I look around.

The quality just stirred out at you.

You know, the balance, the hardness, the granite hardness was still there.

I just knew straightaway the star is born.

I was still living here when I was-- when I won the British Championship.

I remember winning the British Championship in 1986

and there's 2,000 people there screaming and blowing air horns

and cheering and getting my picture taken.

I'm gonna be in the magazines.

But I came home and there's no TV crew waiting here for me, there's no fanfare.

I'm back to my same block that I was living in.

I had no car, no proper furniture.

Shortly after that, I was fortunate to get the backer and opened the gym.

So then I got the gym and started to make a decent-

decent income and I was able to move out of here.

And I think that's when I moved in together with-- with Debbie.

'87, I didn't compete because we're opening the gym and it was, you know,

taking a lot of time with that.

'88, I won the British Championship heavyweight overall and that's when people,

you know, recognized, well, this guy has a potential to be a good pro.

How can a guy from a healthy sport, bodybuilding, well, that's questionable anyway,

why would an athlete smoke weed? Well, let me tell you.

A lot of guys don't say it because they have pressures from sponsors

or whatever, they don't say it.

Most athletes, sports people I know, use cannabis.

All the fighters I know use cannabis because it helps them to relax,

helps them to recover, it reduces inflammation.

Usain Bolt uses cannabis.

Michael Phelps uses cannabis.

More than half the Olympia line up regularly use cannabis.

[giggling]

I'm a blunt guy.

Weed smoke and bodybuilding went hand in hand, you know,

because myself I wasn't a huge eater,

but it helped me with my appetite, to help me sleep at night.

We don't talk often these days, maybe two or three times a year.

But when I got ill, he was very supportive, he wanted to fly across.

And he's the one that got me onto medicinal cannabis.

I grew up around weed, you know.

Probably one of my earliest memories is my uncles all smoking weed together.

Weed does-- I don't know if we can say this, but yeah, the whole family was always

around it, you know. Always, you know.

Back in the day they always just to grow it, it's just there.

[Debbie] It's like a release.

I actually get more spiritual when I have lick spliff.

But I can't take it anymore, I'm too old.

So I'll have one drag and my son will go, "Go to bed."

And when Dorian was competing, then, no, you wouldn't use it.

Back then the knowledge and the information about, you know, its effects.

One, as obvious as they are now, I mean it was-- it was bad for you.

That's what, you know, the official statement back then.

And if you knew what you knew now,

back then he wouldn't have stopped doing it, just carried it on.

All right.

Time to go.

♪♪♪

How did I evolve out of being Mr. Olympia and being at the peak of the sport

and being the representative for this and this almost becomes entwined with your identity.

So I realize like, man, you've been living like a monk,

there's so many things that you didn't do.

So I had all this freedom that I didn't have before, which was great.

If I'm here in Spain, then my time is for me, keeping fit, cycling in the mountains,

doing yoga, swimming, walking the dog, just relaxing.

I think I've earned it.

Would have helped if I had a fucking lighter that worked.

[Lewis] Birmingham has always been full of loads of little small council estates.

Everyone knows everyone and, you know, 'cause of the shitty weather

everyone's always a bit angry. So it's always been a bit tense, you know.

But I personally love it.

The old gym was in the heart of it.

[Dorian] Here is the passageway that leads to the location of Temple Gym.

It is actually emotional coming here because this is like

a huge part of my life that place.

You know, it's really like my heart and soul.

I didn't like to train anywhere else.

And the rest of the street has changed and it's very upmarket.

But this has not changed.

This is full of fucking dumpsters and everything.

And this door right here used to be a red door

with Temple Gym on.

And then the stairs going steeply down.

And if you're at the top here, you can't really see what's at the bottom of the stairs.

You can only hear music and smell sweat and hear grunting and fucking plates banging.

And a lot of people would be-- I used to come and see people all the time

standing at the top and they're just too nervous to go down.

Some experienced partygoers didn't want to go there, and a lot of that was because

they wanted to be the big fish and then you come to Temple,

you're not gonna be the big fish because I'm the big fish.

His gym was just a dungeon from what I understand.

I'd never been there, but I mean everyone that says it's-- it's a shithole.

It's a shithole underground, infested with rats half the time.

That's intense stuff, you know.

Well, let's put it this way.

The walls are white, but actually no, they weren't, they were more like yellow

because body fat would literally be all over the walls.

It was literally you walk down into a dungeon.

Zero windows.

So there's no natural light.

The only form of incoming or outgoing air was a small fan

that was drilled through the wall.

But you can see the air out here is not great.

It's stale beer, it's garbage, and usually it's people out here smoking cigarettes as well.

And that's the fresh air you've got to breathe.

So it's almost like altitude training.

And he'd be training in there and I'm not kidding you, people's elbows

and knocking but like-- and they'll be staring at you, you know, it was simmering.

You never knew when it's gonna kick off in there.

But the moment Dorian turned up, it lit up, you know.

It was a little dungeon but it was the brightest place on the planet.

[man] Leg day, the best day.

Ten reps. Come on.

Okay.

Tight.

One, two--

If I'm at home, it's fairly quiet.

I'm in the gym every day.

I've got few regular clients like Dan and Ben.

Ben wants to compete because he hasn't done that.

He hasn't achieved that goal.

So now he's taking time out of his life to-- to pursue that goal.

That's what's important to him now and he has the freedom and time to do that.

Here we go.

One, two. And again.

Push.

And one more.

-[pushing] -One more for 15, mate. Old record. Let's go.

Let's go.

It's okay, rack.

Oh my God.

Are we doing this for fun?

[Dorian] Yeah.

Oh God.

[Dorian] Right. Eight. Drive. Nine. And again.

Ten. Let's start now. Come on!

Push!

And again.

Push. Three more!

-What? -Come on, three more.

One.

Again.

Push, push. Breathe.

Breathe. And one rep.

Push!

And breathe. One more!

Last one. Go.

[Ben] Come on, Dan. Easy.

It's okay, rack.

Come with me Mr. Cameraman, follow me. Follow me.

Okay, so he didn't use the toilet 'cause he found the bathroom.

I allowed him to leave after the quad workout.

Just come back for a hamstring, Dan, okay?

Dan is vomiting in the bathroom.

Nothing to be alarmed about, this is normal.

We had to book it there on the leg area for him, but I told him after he finished quads

he can actually leave and use the bathroom. So that's what he's doing.

He held it to the end, so it's an improvement on the previous weeks.

Good though, man. He went up on everything. So, it's great.

Easy stuff now, Dan. Squeeze it up.

Pretty much from day one, my training principles were based around high-intensity training,

which originally came from Arthur Jones who invented the Nautilus machines

and then was popularized by my mentor.

I got a lot of useful information from them.

And then little bits from here, little bits from there and, most importantly, my own feedback,

which is something you have to be able to do in bodybuilding because we all

recover a little bit differently and react a little bit differently.

So you got to learn to listen to your body.

Another one in the books.

[Peter] I don't know whether this is the case today,

but when you visit his house in-- in-- in Birmingham,

he'd have these big bookcases in his study

and it was every book on physiology science,

the- -the things to do with bodybuilding, and he voraciously read these things

and work out how that worked, how-- how can you stimulate this,

how can you do that, you know.

See, in the '70s and going into the '80s, you know, all that sort of champion,

they're training twice a day, two hours in the morning, an hour in the evening.

He did that 45 minutes four times a week, rotated the body parts.

So very intense, very focused.

Mentally, I would be prepared before I got there.

Every workout I've got logged down.

So I would read-- before I left the house, I would-- this is what I did last week,

this is what I got to beat this week.

And I have all the numbers, all the weights in my mind,

feeling, visualizing, everything.

The most important thing I'm doing is that workout.

Everything revolves around that: the eating, the rest, everything.

It was almost like a Special Forces soldier.

He's focused everything every ounce of himself into a mission.

It was all building up to one all-out set.

He would do a warm-up set, very light, just to get the groove.

Maybe a second set. But nowhere near failure or anything like that.

And then the last and third set, everything would be given all out.

Bang.

Let's go. Let's keep!

[Peter] Full strength. You know, complete exhaustion.

You know, the muscle had been fried.

Finish it.

Yeah.

[Dorian] I got every workout from 1983 until 1997,

every single workout, every rep, every set,

preparation notes for Mr. Olympia and all these things, this work, this didn't work.

So, very analytical, writing everything, analyzing, studying.

His training diary was his life and that was him.

And he knew if he followed X, it would equal Y.

And that's what's been proven.

He totally believed what he was doing was right.

He had no doubts.

That's half the battle.

If you believe in something, you-- you can make it happen.

Blood and Guts is just to a level where no one's willing to go.

I mean that's-- that's what it's about.

Turn the body inside out, no matter what it takes.

He wasn't gonna stop. He was a train.

[man] Come on, Yates get in there, nice and fight!

Yeah!

[Chris] It's like this is the thing, when people train, everyone thinks they train hard.

You're doing it top notch.

They are intense.

They have no idea what intensity is about.

Let's go! [screaming]

On the knees!

Let's get nasty! Breathe in!

That's it.

Now bring it!

That's it. Let's do it again!

Very good.

Driving on!

Close. Squeeze it in!

Keep it coming!

Squeeze in!

Yes!

Whoo!

When he went for the 1990 Night of the Champions,

his pro debut, they all have just been drug tested.

He was under the impression quite a way into his preparation the Night of Champions

would be drug tested. And, even though, it was drug tested,

it didn't hold any threats for him.

I had PED, performance-enhancing drugs.

We just call it juice or gear, where I'm from.

My thing was I always want to get the maximum benefit out of this with the least negatives.

When I first started, it was like very, very small and then a little bit more as an amateur

and then as a professional a little bit more.

Obviously, everything he did, I knew about.

I was just concerned about him harming himself.

And I don't remember how the conversation went,

but I'm like these people taking them all the time for bodybuilding contests

they're not dying, they're still cool.

Schwarzenegger and all those guys are still good.

I think she said something, "Yeah, but how about when you get older and you're 45 or 50,

maybe you get heart attack?"

Well, I was like, "I am not concerned about when I'm 45 or 50,

I am concerned about now and changing my life."

So, I'd rather be somebody and, you know, pass away earlier

than live the life of the people that around me which is like

just a dead end, they're not going anywhere.

But it was always controlled. I always wrote everything down and planned it out

and there was breaks in between.

And I didn't have anyone helping me or advising me with that, I did it myself.

But I had a doctor who was just doing my blood tests.

[Dino] The main thing with Dorian Yates, what separated him from everybody else,

a lot of guys in the gyms would just listen to a doorman

or listen to a gym owner and would take their advice.

Dorian Yates didn't do that.

He read through books, and read through books and books and books and books and books

and he tried and speculated different things for his physique

and he tried different things and he made notes about them.

And they would never believe what Dorian took.

I know, I've seen his books, you know, stopping at his house and me being me,

I'll look-- I'll sit in his bedroom, I was like, "Oh fuck, he's going to bed."

So start to look through the drawers.

He knows now. So I was looking through the drawers.

So, anyway, so I found his books, his training manuals.

So I started looking through and he had some steroid circles and his training circles in it

and you wouldn't believe how little he took.

To win a Mr. Olympia or to win the Mr. Britain, very, very little.

But what he did though, he studied the half-life so he knew exactly the least amount

he could take to get the maximum results.

I am 57 next month.

So, happy to report that I'm very healthy and cool.

Night of Champions was recognized as at one point the leading pro contest.

Beacon Theatre right here in New York City.

I mean I had a bucket list when I turned professional. That was top of my list

doing the Night of the Champions.

Dorian got second at his first Night of the Champions.

He lost to Mohammed Benaziza.

Controversial decision. I mean Dorian looked amazing.

Benaziza was amazing, too, but Dorian lost to him

and he came back the next year and he won.

[man] Why was his nickname "The Shadow?"

I called him The Shadow.

-So you gave him the nickname? -Yeah, I-- I called-- I gave him the name.

I gave him the name Shadow because I immediately saw it,

connected the shadow hanging over British heavyweights, you know.

But the other thing, you know, you never saw him when he's not competing

and he never hung out with anybody.

So that's why I said he's in the shadows, you know, just-- just waiting to pounce.

I got second on my first try in 1990.

So I went back the following year to the same contest, Night of Champions in New York,

and this time won this outright.

Then people started to say to me, "You could be the guy that could beat Haney."

Lee Haney was the man.

I mean Lee Haney was-- was the guy, he was the best in the world at the time.

And that was the ultimate goal, Lee Haney.

When I first met Dorian, he's about 12 and 1/2 stone, really pale, no body fat,

well-shaped muscles, but not massively big.

From then to 10 years later, the transformation is amazing.

It was just literally like something out of Marvel Comics.

It's like the Hulk.

When I first saw him compete against Lee Haney, Dorian got second to him

but he just stood out with just his aura,

something about him that surpassed everybody else.

[Steve] He brought a much bigger, thicker physique, much more heavily dense muscle.

It was very close, though, a very close decision.

You saw right then and then he had all the potential to be literally the best in the world.

He just was so massive and so big, he blew everybody away.

His back, and that's where he got the name The Shadow from 'cause he-

he put shadows on everybody.

I was walking behind him. We were both getting on stage.

You know, I just remember going up the stairs and all of a sudden all the lights went out,

covered the whole frame of the damn lights in front of me.

I like, "Okay, not that guy.

Okay, let's see who else I could beat here."

He was like a-

like a caged animal.

He stayed in his cage, he trained, he ate, he slept.

When it was time to come out and do his business, he came out, did his business

and went back to his cage.

He was an animal.

Like a demon from the depths of the Earth, The Shadow.

[man] Why did Lee Haney retire after his win in 1991?

Well, he'd he's it won it, he'd opened a gym in Atlanta.

You know, after a while it becomes a bit like a job.

And, of course, it's remarkable, he was 31 when he retired.

Guys aren't winning pro cards now at 31.

[Dorian] Now the title is open.

So I guess I was going in the favorite, which was just very strange

because my whole life I'd been an underdog,

and I used that-- that aggression of the underdog to, like,

you know, to push myself through.

So we went to compete in Helsinki, a building that's sitting on this-- on top

of an ice rink, which was freezing cold, so it's hard to pump up backstage.

And I could go backstage with him and just make sure the oil was put on properly

and then I'd run back the stage and then sit down in the audience.

I've been to a few Olympias recently and didn't seem to have the same ambience

that it used to. I mean there was a lot of noise,

there was a lot more fans in the crowd.

[audience cheering and clapping]

[horn honking]

I'm worried about this little light here, but when Dorian got on stage,

the lights are like that of a football pitch, they're so intense.

[Lewis] When everybody stepped on stage,

the one that first came out that looked amazing and they thought,

"Oh my God, he might win this" was Kevin Levrone.

Kevin looked amazing. He really did.

[Dorian] Kevin was good, but his back and his upper body were not as good as mine.

Balance wasn't as good.

And Shawn and Lee, they're just too small.

I actually it was purposely sacrificed the muscle size to come in like super shredded.

So I wanted to be the biggest guy and the most shredded as well at the same time.

And he came down in size some but you could tell he was just in a relentless attack

to try to win that title.

There'd be a group of us from England, and I'll be blowing the blow horns.

His training partner stayed there every time he competed, arms crossed,

sitting there, screaming, "Educate them, Dorian! Educate them."

He brought out a new word in this industry, it was grainy,

which looks like little grains of sand on your skin.

It's very hard to get that look.

You have to have death face. That's what they call it.

When your face is so sucked in and you have absolutely no more fat left

even on the bottom of your feet, he had a hard time walking.

There's no pads left under your feet.

Gone. That's that grainy look.

His condition is what was key because he came so hard and so crisp,

no one could topple that condition.

And then as the show went on, Dorian got even better and Kevin just sort of faded away

and Dorian beat him and Dorian became Mr. Olympia.

[audience screaming]

[man] Dorian Yates.

[Dorian] That was my first win, which was incredible.

But still I didn't show any emotion.

You'll never seem Dorian Yates cry.

He won't cry.

You know I know the Dorian Yates. So we talk on the phone.

I know the real Dorian Yates. It meant everything to him.

I remember when he won, oh, it was just fantastic.

[audience cheering]

[Dorian] This one, your mom with the trophies.

Mum, your face, you look so grumpy.

-[Debbie speaking] -Mum's saying, "Yeah, told you."

Tahnee's definitely a chip off the old block.

But she's got her mom's mouth.

This is very much me, but softer and probably smarter already.

And there's me and your mom.

[Debbie] Oh gosh, Lewis was about one.

It's weird for me because, for me, you know, at the time we lived in a little bubble.

We weren't the perfect family, definitely not,

because, you know, got this oddball 20-star dad

and this very aggressive people of a mother.

She-- she wasn't there like on point with everything.

[Dorian] So Debbie knew the sports, she knew what I was involved;

she knew all the people and we also worked together as a team.

Debbie was very supportive doing the food and

understanding what I was doing and why I was doing it.

He was the roper, I was the second in command.

He went to the gym, he ate, he trained, I did the rest.

She used to help me with the posing.

Being as I'm not a natural mover, it was like my least favorite thing to do.

So, Debbie was in control of that when I get ready for a contest

to, like, tie me at hold poses for certain times.

Like, front relaxed, I'll hold it for a few minutes and control the breathing.

So we did a lot of work on-- on the presentation, which I think also people don't do these days.

And there's me and Lewis in the pool, impressively around pectorals and deltoids.

[Lewis] Yeah, yeah.

If we're on holiday somewhere having fun, it's shortly after the Olympia.

It was this only time I would allow that to happen.

I have a laugh now and then but, like, to go somewhere in holiday and just-

-but even on holiday I'll be looking for the gym. -[Debbie] Never a holiday.

I'll be looking for the gym, where's the gym?

There's a lot of sacrifice.

I was not leading a normal life.

I had no social life. No-- I was putting everything into this.

And also the people around you, they-- they're making sacrifices.

Family is losing time and probably more important than time is focus.

So you could be somewhere with your family but it's like your mind is somewhere else

if you're competing. And it's constant, you're thinking. It's like constantly with you.

Lewis had to fit in with Dorian's life, to be fair.

People over here, they were very particular.

So, like, if there was anything out of the ordinary, it was-- it was freak.

And my dad was out of the ordinary, so

it was-- it was tough over here when I was younger.

I almost got terror--terrorized for it, almost got bullied by-- "Oh, your dad's a..."

The classic one was, "You do know when he stops training

it's all gonna turn to fat, right?"

I am the more mothering type of person.

Dorian's like, okay, we have a son now.

But Dorian still did what he had to do.

To be honest with you, he was there but he was focused on what he was doing.

So he was there but he kind of wasn't there, you know.

He's there in form and person but I could always tell he was somewhere else in his mind.

So, I mean, you know, he's better than most dads.

A lot of dads could be coming home drunk every night.

[Lisa] Doing that with that intensity,

it's totally consuming and I think he at that time

probably didn't have time to think about anybody but himself

because you're not gonna be successful, are you? Unless you do that.

He had a controlled obsession and intensity about what he wanted to do.

I've seen many bodybuilders with similar intensities and it's destroyed them

because they've gone over the top and they've-- it's become a raging furnace inside them.

Do it! Yeah!

Drive! Let's go, man! Let's go!

Drive!

Yeah! You're the one, you're the one!

Drive that!

[man] Are you familiar with the change Dorian made between '91 and '93?

Yeah, the black and white pictures.

That changed bodybuilding.

He went from eight to ten in the mass departments.

[Steve] He was the first of the mass monsters.

And many came after him.

That was the phrase that came out before big guys,

but it was other people that used the phrase "mass monster." So maybe I am to them.

But it wasn't just about the mass.

The mass was one of the factors that I was concerned with,

but also conditioning and also keeping balance.

He took his body to where his body could have went

where some people just take their body

and throw on all kinds of muscle just to have big muscle.

Dorian put that muscle on to fit his frame.

Here's a guy that out-massed everyone.

Mass monsters are always great for the crowds.

You know, mass monsters just rule those shows.

[Peter] When he walked out in '93, it was like, my god, you know,

nobody ever seen anything like it.

I mean somebody said Dorian was 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

[King] I mean he grew so much in a year coming from '92 to '93, he improved so much.

[Chris] He was hard, dry, full, everything. He looked unbeatable.

I remember I was sitting in the audience and it was like,

"You might as well quit the sport now."

The only one he ever had to worry about was Flex Wheeler.

Flex, genetically, he is the most gifted of all bodybuilders.

Dorian was not the most gifted.

He didn't have the best shape.

But he was the hardest-working, no messing around, all work no play.

He was a-- he really was a robot. He was an animal.

Dorian said Flex was the only one he really worried about.

Flex gives a different story. He said he used to walk out and I was just intimidated.

[King] If Flex had the-- the-- the determination of Dorian,

I don't know if Dorian would have 6 Mr. Olympias, to tell you the truth.

He knew they had better genetics.

That's why he never missed a rep, never missed a meal.

He knew he had to do it.

He couldn't slip. He knew the genetics outpaced his.

Come on! Yes!

Hold it down!

I think Shawn's best shot was '94, you know, when he was second.

He looked really good, but he shouldn't have won.

The right guy won.

[Peter] Shawn Ray was the California boy with a Ferrari

and the girls and the Sunshine and-

and he prided himself on being the opposite.

Shawn wanted to tailor too. Shawn was an extraordinary bodybuilder in his own right.

But he also had a long torso and short legs.

He wasn't that symmetrical as he'd like to think he was.

Shawn was always questioning something why I should be Mr. Olympia and he shouldn't.

I think one of Shawn's things one time was Dorian's physique is too extreme,

it's too far out for the average person to reach.

That just sounded like fucking nonsense to me.

"Mr. Bolt, can you slow down a bit please

while we put somebody else in the first place

because you're running too fast for the average guy?"

I can't relate to that.

I'll be honest with, you, like, I wasn't super impressed with his whole aesthetics

or his physique until I went to that '95 Olympia in Atlanta.

And when he came out, the show was over.

[Steve] '95 is when he made the big turnaround where he turned into a complete monster.

I would say personally my best year on the Mr. Olympia

was in between '93 and '95. Both of-- I was very happy with both years.

[Jay] His back was his strong point. Anyone would agree with that.

[King] It was just layers and layers of muscle.

[Chris] He'd do like this fast last, boo, like boom, he'd bring it up like that.

I don't know if there's ever been a Mr. Olympia like that that size back.

I mean Dorian Yates had it all.

He had the condition, the size, the balance. He had-

he had everything that was in the winner's circle.

[Emanuel] That's right.

Okay there, keep on doing.

My full name is Emanuel Poggio.

And I knew Dorian through his wife

because he was having pain on the left shoulder.

[Dorian] Basically, I got a torn supraspinatus.

A damaged AC joint on this shoulder, a torn bicep,

and a torn tricep all on the same side. So,

it's very, very weak on this side and through the joint.

So anything I was doing is just was referring to the other side

and I started getting pain on the other side.

So that's when I started working with Manu.

Okay, stop. Great.

Hold the extension all the time.

What we're doing basically work to make him more functional to try to make him work

not just in one plane of movement, make him work in three dimensions.

So rotate and stuff like that.

[Dorian] We can't fix the fact that I've got a torn rotator cuff

and a torn bicep and tricep muscles.

They are going to be permanently weak and a little bit of atrophy

to the other side.

We can't do anything about that, but just trying to get things working together

better than they were and not able to do very heavy training for upper body.

So I enjoy this.

This is a different-- different kind of a challenge and more practical

for what I need now, I think.

You know everyone's got an ego and he couldn't hold back, so that's-

that's why he got the injuries.

He could have avoided them and still won the Olympia.

But for him it was-- it was a war in the gym and he wasn't gonna lose that war.

[man] Get it up!

Do it again!

Great!

Come on. Let's go strong!

Get it up. Rack it. You can get it up!

Steve Weinberger from the States,

he said maybe stop with this crazy fucking heavy training all the time

and just ease back and maintain this thing and earn your money,

that's what you should do. But I wanted to push a little more.

Who knows, I'm in uncharted territory, nobody had been there.

At that point you couldn't talk to Dorian.

I think he was a very successful bodybuilder

that-- that knew it brought him to the dance and he wasn't gonna change.

I don't think anyone could have stopped him.

But you know what, it's-- it's also a Monday morning quarterback, you know,

should have you passed to-- your tight end or your wide receiver,

you know, it's-- it's so much easier after the fact.

Just think about that. I mean this is-- this is what brought you to six Mr. Olympias,

why would you change it? You've got to work what takes you to the ball.

Little injuries he's had which he knew he could cope with.

And we had a good team of friends who was like physios and a good team around us.

I remember standing behind the bar at the old Temple Gym.

I heard this massive tear and it was his tricep coming off.

And it was two weeks out from the Olympia and he said," I'll give up."

It was so bad, he said there's no way I can get through this one.

Next morning he changed his mind.

He was gonna do everything to get him the Olympia.

The contest that year '97 was in Long Beach.

The swelling had all gone down but his tricep was the color of the rainbow.

Every color you could think was in there.

He says, "But we can fix that with a tan."

The '97 Mr. Olympia, all these circumstances going in there were less than ideal.

And I presented a physique that could have been better if I hadn't had all these problems.

Of course, the great conjecture there was, everybody saw Nasser was the winner.

A lot of people saw Nasser was the winner.

[Chris] You know, he gave-- he gave him a strong run for the money.

But Nasser didn't have anything and when he turned around to the back,

he was this all front thickness.

[Peter] So Nasser wins the first two poses.

But then Dorian turns the side and the back and it's all over.

I still think before that he still was a clear-cut winner and he was still a clear-cut winner

with Nasser, but they were getting closer.

[man] Six-time Mr. Olympia, Dorian Yates!

[audience cheering]

And the minute he got offstage, he collapsed.

We came back home and then we booked a surgeon in New York,

went over there, had the operation.

But there was also a small tear in the muscle,

which was changing the shape and the mechanics.

So after about five or six months, I was getting back into some serious training

and there was a huge difference in the inner strength from left to right

and there was just so much imbalance that I knew that I couldn't train properly

and I couldn't-- it wouldn't be possible for me to compete

and even to achieve what I had before, let alone trying to improve on it.

So it was the logical decision at that point to retire at the top and be the champion.

He knew that he wanted to leave a legacy and leaving a legacy

sometimes is knowing when to withdraw from the field of battle.

He was searching different avenues then in life and--

and I thought, "Oh great, we can get to do things we couldn't do

'cause he was always competing or traveling,"

and just didn't quite pan out.

It was hard on both of us.

Why does anyone get a divorce?

That's a huge complex question that's not really easy to answer.

The-- the best way I can answer is that we got together when we were very young

and we grew up and we-- we grew apart.

Quite a lot.

Because he wanted to do things but not with his wife.

And then when little Lee died, that just totally shook our world apart.

We was in London at the time, it was the day before Dorian's birthday.

My mum phoned me and said Lee's dead.

Majorly affected him, the family, me and everything and that's--

that's when the divorce started and, you know, I think it just shook things up.

A retirement can lead to depression because you've lost your focus, your vocation.

A divorce can lead to depression.

A death of somebody close to you can lead to depression.

And also it's a fact that if you'd stopped taking steroids, it can lead to depression.

So like a perfect storm of depression.

All the things that can cause depression, let's just tell them all at the same time.

He doesn't like to admit any kind of weakness ever, you know.

But he had a hard time because he'd spent his whole life, yeah? Doing this one thing.

And suddenly there was no reason for it.

And he told me afterwards, these few years later, you know, he says,

"I just stopped the drug straightaway and that was a mistake."

Steroids are a tool that I'm using for my professional sport and it's a necessary.

So, when I'm not competing anymore, I won't take the steroids anymore

and I just stopped.

I just stopped.

A couple of years later I realized I need, my testosterone

was low and that was affecting me.

First of all, the circumstances.

So then I went on to testosterone replacement

and that's probably what I should have done from day one

if I'd been on steroids for that long.

But I thought, you know, not that old, I'm 34, 35,

probably maybe it can bounce back but it didn't.

So that wasn't a good-- a good idea.

It was just horrible.

But then I found out I was pregnant with our daughter.

We're sharing the same house and filing our separation and our divorce,

but things kind of happened in the night.

But now I feel so blessed

that both of those kids came in.

The partying, wow.

I don't think I want to get into too much of that.

Take that discipline and that insanity for bodybuilding and put it into partying.

He went from being a monk to playboy of the Western world, you know.

It's the best way to describe it.

A lot of fun, lot of parties, dated a lot of different women.

Was a lot of parties around the bodybuilding scene, which I didn't even know.

Also I was good friends with Chris Cormier and he was the party king of bodybuilding.

He didn't do anything but give it for that title when he was competing.

And, you know, myself, I was like I'm young, I'm gonna do this stuff right now.

There were some crazy parties in New York and Vegas.

[Peter] I still remember him being an Olympia

and they're coming through the Mandalay Bay, him and Chris Cormier and a few others.

They're all doing this, dancing, ah, there he goes.

Hi-de-hi.

He went off the deep edge, in my opinion.

Ecstasy was the thing and everyone took ecstasy.

So, I'll tell you, it's not a bad drug, you have a great time;

you don't really get hung over.

And later on, there's alcohol and cocaine.

I mean I remember me and my dad going and-- and we're partying together and at some point,

at 3:00 in the morning, we're looking at each other thinking, "This is right?"

[laughing]

That's a laugh. That is insane.

We've had an interesting run.

Cheers!

Kind of retired from the drinking games.

I'm going soft, you know.

Please don't poke me.

It's a Wednesday.

Eight years ago I'd beat anybody at drinking, including my son,

although he has a great capacity.

Respect to that.

But I will beat him.

Just because I'm a local like that.

But, yeah, that was strange because then dad had to go find himself.

Obviously, there was other women and whatnot.

And, you know, you have to chop through the weeds to find a flower.

So he went-- he went gardening.

I was the one who brought him a wakeup call, you know, for some things.

Was doing party sometimes and women and all this stuff.

And the more-- I mean, kind of like quiet.

I like parties and all these things sometimes, but

sometimes you have to have some priorities in life.

You know, him and Gal seemed to be a really good match for each other.

And the funny thing is he went back to Brazil for Christmas or something

and he sent a photograph, you know, of the family.

And, of course, they're all typical Brazilians with dark hair and everything.

I said, "Look at that, you're the whitest guy in the room."

And he says, "I'm always the whitest guy in the room, unless Dennis Wolf is there."

[laughing] 'Cause he's really white.

[Dorian] When Gal came into my life,

I was in a wild phase of kind of running away from everything

because I didn't know who I was. So I became this guy

that just wanted to have a good time, right?

And, you know, drug use and

multiple girlfriends and all this ego shit.

And Gal is the one that was there when I accidentally overdosed on GHB

and I was passed out choking on my own vomit and I was dying, man.

And she-- she woke me up and she'd just been in England, she barely spoke English,

there's no one else there to help.

Fortunately, she managed to call one friend of mine that she knew.

And if she wasn't there, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now.

So I'm really grateful that she came along.

[Peter] He never spoke to me about his father for a long, long time.

He didn't discuss much about the first years living in the country.

It's something, obviously, when think about it, you-- you're right, he's trying to get away

from that, it wasn't something he wanted to spend too much time reflecting on.

In fact, I don't think his mother and him ever made it up.

I think they did meet a couple of times, but it was never warm.

I started really training for contests when I was 21

and I wasn't living with my mom and actually we didn't see each other that much.

So, we didn't talk about it really.

I even think Lewis was about six months old before I told my mom,

"Hey, by the way, mom, you've got a grandchild."

This is where my mom's grave is, if you want to take a little walk here.

So, she was 57, like my age.

So my dad passed away at 42, my mom was 57.

Pretty young really.

My mom passed away from complications from multiple sclerosis.

But it's degenerative, you know, you slowly get worse and worse

and she was losing more function.

An active woman who'd ride horses all her life and walk all day,

and so it must have been tough to lose your physical capabilities.

I don't know, I kind of feel that she would be happy to-- to leave

at that point because her body was not functioning very well.

So, maybe it was time for her to-- to pass over, you know.

My dad died from a heart attack, so it was very sudden.

And he went to work and he died at work and that was it.

There's no good time to lose a parent but to lose your father at 13 is a pivotal.

And you'd just becoming into puberty, just becoming a man and you need your father for,

you know, to be there for all that stuff.

And if my father had been there, maybe my whole life trajectory

would have been different than it is now and

maybe I would never would have been a bodybuilder and been a Mr. Olympia and so on.

And I think a lot of that drive came from not having that comfort,

you know, the family security and that a lot of people have.

You have to have an unusual drive to want to become the best in the world

of a sport or probably anything, I guess.

I think you know what, when Dorian competed,

his mind frame was so different.

I could relate to him.

I understood where he was going and what he was doing and what his goals were.

This was a guy that would, you know,

would go into a gym and tear it apart, he'd be eating dumbbells for breakfast.

And Dorian today, I mean I talk to him on the phone,

I mean he wants me to try some of his Costa Rica stuff

which I just maybe-- maybe it would help me.

Like, he tries to get me to go there and I'm just like, "Nah, I think I'll pass,"

or "I have a show that day." I just-- I don't know if that's me.

I mean, I think he's evolved and I see-- I still think maybe I didn't evolve.

Maybe he's, you know, once again, he sees something that I don't see

like he saw it back then. But

I think it just shows you he has balls.

He doesn't care what-- you know, most people would be like, "Dorian, what are you doing?"

He doesn't care.

Dorian does what Dorian wants to do and that's a great way to lead your life.

[birds chirping]

[Dorian] It's a spiritual journey I am on.

And, you know, the big questions that we all ask or we should all ask,

why are we here? What are we doing?

Where did I come from? Where am I going? What's it all about?

And psychedelics are a tool that you can use

to open the door to this world and to be able to learn more.

I've done DMT, LSD, mushrooms, I've tried them all at-- at some point.

And then ayahuasca, it's two plants mixed together,

and it's been used in South American cultures for hundreds, maybe thousands of years

as a tool to communicate with the spiritual world, if you like,

and as a tool for healing as well.

Let's say that we are in a room and that's all we know.

That's all of reality we know that all that exists is this room.

But now we've got a trampoline

and you go on the trampoline and you jump

and you manage to see over the wall

and over the wall is a whole world out there that you didn't even know about.

In fact, it didn't even exist in your mind because all you know is this.

That's psychedelics.

It will take you out of this reality and show you much more

and then you know without a doubt there is much more.

[faint whistling]

[chanting]

[faint whistling echoing]

[various noises]

Yeah, this is the corner here.

Hello.

How are you?

-How are you? -[woman] How are you?

-I'm here. -Mr. Yates.

I am, yeah. How'd you know that?

We bought it off from your mom.

Ah! Yeah, I'm Dorian Yates.

-I used to live here. -Yes.

What's all this?

They are making a documentary about my life.

So we're going to all, you know, this is where I grew up and everything like that.

Are you famous now?

A little bit, yeah. I was a world champion bodybuilder.

-Yeah? -Yeah. So...

When you first met him, you thought his mind is somewhere else and now he's here

present and joking and laughing and witty and he's quite a funny guy.

[Peter] I think he's been away long enough now that his legacy is established,

he's still revered by people who never saw him compete, who see him like I said before as this-

in the trenches, working-class hero, did it his way,

never came to America.

He was never driven by the money.

He never mentioned money winning for anything.

I don't think he even knew what the prize money was for the Olympia

the first time he won it.

It's remarkable to think that it is 22 years this year since he last competed.

He set the standard of what Mr. Olympia should do in the gym.

Dorian Yates is the true training champion.

Those guys out there with better genetics, definitely, 100 percent, you know.

But not with the mental power, not with the application,

not with the-- the religious monk-style behavior.

You mix that all in a pot and it's gonna be serious.

Dorian is everything to do with intensity and passion,

hard work and focus,

all these things, you know, that we need to having life to be-- to be a winner.

And then he was able to walk away from it with no regrets.

He did it his way in that-- that aspect.

No Benny's beach in Birmingham. It's a shithole.

But he went over there and kicked their ass.

That takes some doing.

And still remain the man he is, Dorian Yates, king of kings.

Fantastic.

[Dorian] In regards to bodybuilding, well, I am six times the Mr. Olympia

and I'll always be part of bodybuilding and it'll always be part of me.

But the differences between me and a lot of people is it isn't my life.

But I feel immense, immense pride in what I was able to achieve.

It was like almost unbelievable, even still now.

If I go back and say I came from here in an apartment, I had no car,

I had no furniture and just through my will and through my effort

I was able to change that and to the life that I have now

and, you know, travel all around the world and being known by millions of people

all around the world, it's a-- it's a great story and I lived it.

-Good? -[man] Yeah, you like it?

Nice.

There you go.

Cheers!

♪ I'm the definition

♪ Of nothing is something

♪ Blood and Guts

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ All blood and all guts

♪ All Blood and all guts

♪ I don't give a fuck

♪ I'm from the slum Slim to none is the salary ♪

♪ Fussing from someone To make you a casualty ♪

♪ And saw the dream And the nightmares reality ♪

♪ Watching my family and friends Become fatalities ♪

♪ I lost my father Then I lost myself ♪

♪ Lost my freedom And found a purpose ♪

♪ Then I freed myself

♪ So it's safe to say I climbed up out of the grave ♪

♪ Almost to never ever ever See free light in the day ♪

♪ So if you wonder why I act This way and so focused ♪

♪ 'Cause I'm right around The corner from hell ♪

♪ If you haven't noticed

-♪ I really came to win -Yeah, wasn't too bad.

♪ There can only be one and We ain't come to make friends ♪

♪ You got options

♪ But my only options Is I have nothing ♪

♪ So for it all I give it all Until I have something ♪

♪ I ain't here For your accolades ♪

♪ I ain't here for your Fame and your praise ♪

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really came from the dirt

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really got it From the road ♪

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ I really put it in that work

♪ All blood and all guts

It's getting cold now.

♪ All blood and all guts I don't give a fuck ♪

♪ Really came from nothing

♪ And turn a thing Into something ♪

♪ Said you got to keep moving

♪ All right

[man screaming]

Finish up!

Yeah, turn the air back on.

♪ No matter what Keep pushing ♪