Death of a strongman

[POWERJIM]

Death of a strongman

By Allen G. Breed
Associated Press

LIZARD LICK, N.C. - Johnny Perry’s favorite T-shirt declared to the world what few would dare say to his face: "Freak."

At 6-foot-5 and 375 pounds, Perry towered like a colossus over most of the folks who worked out with him. His tattooed biceps were 25 inches, bigger around than the waists of some of the girls who swooned over him.

Perry knew he was a genetic anomaly and he reveled in it.

At 27, the Carolina farm boy entered the semi-sideshow world of professional strongmen - towing trucks, flipping tractor tires and shouldering boulders. There wasn’t much money in it, but he got to travel the world and be seen by millions on cable sports channels.

A mere three years after turning pro, Perry was ranked second in the United States and fourth in the world. But his goal was to be crowned world’s strongest man, the first American to hold the title in 20 years. And, if genetics alone couldn’t get him there, he would use steroids to help nature along.

Perry was in a hurry. Despite his Olympian aura, he knew all too well the limits of his mortality.

"I’ll never make it past 40, 45," he would tell Ronnie Shirley, his boss, weight trainer and boyhood best friend. "That’s my cutoff. ... Man, when you’re my size, you don’t make it to be 50."

But even Johnny Perry couldn’t have predicted how soon death would find him.

The morning of Nov. 21, Lori Butler went to wake her boyfriend so he could pack for a flight to Sweden and his first event in the World Strongman Super Series. She found him curled up in the fetal position.

Johnny Perry had died of a heart attack at age 30.

He didn’t live to make it to the top. But, in death, he is having perhaps a more profound effect on his sport than if he had.

Big boy finds his niche

Johnny Perry was born big - 10 pounds, 9 ounces.

Growing up in tobacco country east of Raleigh, Perry was always aware he was different - sometimes painfully aware. Other kids would call him "fat boy;" for years, he wouldn’t go swimming without a shirt on.

But as he neared high school, his body began converting that fat into height and muscle. His mother, Gail Perry, says Johnny’s size made him a magnet for trouble.

In high school, he played football, but quit suddenly.

"I’ll hurt somebody. I’m too big," he told Shirley.

Instead, he got into bodybuilding, Shirley says, a sport where "the only person he could hurt was hisself."

Perry loved his physique - especially his arms.

"He would just sit in the mirror and flex and look at himself," says Taylor Land, his 13-year-old stepdaughter.

Perry dabbled in semiprofessional wrestling, appearing under the stage name "Steel." But he told his mother that was too "fakey" and that he wanted "to show my own strength."

That’s when he found Strongman.

You can catch them as filler between basketball or football games on ESPN: Massive men tossing kegs over a high bar or running down a track with a concrete boulder perched on one shoulder, Atlas-like.

The World’s Strongest Man competition was created in 1977 by CBS and is now owned by Trans World International. The contests are organized by the International Federation of Strength Athletes. (IFSA President Douglas Edmunds is Scottish, so it’s more than coincidence that many events have a Highland games flavor.)

Like American stock-car racing, the pro ranks are fed by amateurs who compete at county fairs and festivals. And, like NASCAR, competitors go from event to event, stacking up points in search of that coveted title.

The last American to own the trophy was Wisconsin native Bill Kazmaier - a 6-foot-3, 320-pound titan. Kazmaier was the world’s strongest man three years running, from 1980 to 1982.

Perry idolized Kazmaier and was determined to reclaim the crown for the United States.

Making ‘sacrifices’ for No. 1

Perry’s first competition was in 1999, the East Coast Strongman Challenge. Promoter Gayle Schroeder immediately recognized the marketability of his good looks and imposing presence.

"He was just a monstrous man," she says.

Though corporate sponsorships allow some Europeans to do strongman full time, the top U.S. competitors don’t make enough money to call it a career. All but the elite have to hold down regular jobs to pay their travel expenses.

Perry worked full-time as a repo. man for Shirley’s Lizard Lick Towing and Recovery. He improvised his own equipment, using old oxygen cylinders to practice an event called Farmer’s Walk, in which the athlete runs down a track with a 245-pound weight in each hand.

Schroeder watched as Perry blazed through the ranks. She felt that 2003 was Perry’s year. "He was America’s hope to win world’s strongest man," she says.

But Perry was convinced he couldn’t do it without some help.

Gail Perry once asked her son if he took steroids.

"Momma, you know I wouldn’t do that," he replied. Then he smiled at her.

Shirley says Perry complained that he would never win the world title as long as there were competitors from countries where steroid use was legal.

According to Shirley, Perry had been taking steroids for about 5½ years.

Even his idol, Kazmaier, has acknowledged using steroids early in his career - though he now warns young people to stay away from them.

Steroid use has been linked to a range of health problems, from liver damage and prostate cancer to increased risk of strokes and heart attacks.

Shirley says Perry had studied the substances and was willing to take the risk.

"To be No. 1," Shirley says, "this is what you have to sacrifice."

Gentle giant had a dark side

Though Perry was known for raising money for disabled children, sharing advice with budding strength athletes and being what Shirley called "the most docile human being," he had a volatile side that some blamed on steroids.

Less than a month before he died, his estranged wife, Mary Cabell Perry, sought a domestic-violence protective order against him.

"He’s large, full of drugs (and) steroids...," she wrote in a request, complaining that two years earlier, Perry grabbed her so hard during an argument that he broke her neck.

In fact, Perry had a history of convictions for assault, destruction of property and other lesser crimes dating back to 1991.

Use of anabolic steroids has been linked to increased aggressiveness, a phenomenon known as "‘roid rage."

Quick fix, quick death

Results of Perry’s autopsy have yet to be released.

Dr. Harrison Pope, a steroid specialist at Harvard Medical School, found that steroid use can increase the levels of bad cholesterol. Given Perry’s prolonged use of the drugs, he says, "it would be very tempting to say that steroids hastened the onset of the heart disease."

But Perry’s supporters seem almost desperate to point to any other cause for his death.

Shirley says Perry was a big fan of ephedra, sometimes popping six at once to "get wired" before a competition. The nonprescription, fat-burning supplement has been targeted in the recent death of 23-year-old Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler.

Shirley says steroids were just "two grains of sand" on the beach of Perry’s life, and that opponents of their use have made a scapegoat of his friend.

But they have not gone unheard.

Starting with the nationals in August, strongman competitors will have to undergo testing for steroids and amphetamines. Competitors will also be required to submit proof they are not suffering from any kind of heart or other ailment that could lead to death or serious injury in the arena.

"None of us want to profit off athletes that are killing themselves," says Jim Reese, vice president of IFSA/USA.

Phil Pfister, a Charleston, W.Va., strongman who has reached a Top 5 world ranking without steroids, says he feels that Perry was a victim of a society that "focuses on the quick fix and the magic wand for everything."

"What we lost was finding out what man’s real ability is," he laments. "We don’t know how fast a man can really run. We don’t know how far or fast a person can cycle or swim, or how much a man can lift. It’s all clouded."

Perry died with no insurance and many debts. He is buried in a field beside his parents’ home, with only a tin, funeral home plaque to mark his grave.

Five days before his death, Schroeder gave Perry a gift for judging one of her contests - a smooth, 240-pound concrete "light stone." It was the first piece of professional strongman equipment he’d ever owned.

His mother is thinking of using it for his gravestone.