Petition Created to Stop Shawn Ray From Commentating Bodybuilding Shows
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Shawn Ray has come under attack these past few days, after the creation of a petition calling for Shawn Ray to no longer be hired to commentate on the live streams of bodybuilding shows! This resulted from an interview IFBB Pro Fouad Abiad conducted with Iian Valliere. It’s seems that Fouad and Iain are not fans of Shawn when it comes to his commentating on bodybuilding shows. Where this latest controversy got started, was from comments discussing a reference that Shawn Ray made regarding a bodybuilder’s hairstyle and ended up mistakenly confused the name of a Canadian bodybuilder. Now may not be perfect, but we at Muscle Insider have made more than our share of mistakes with people’s names. It’s sad to see how fast the comments on this topic got worse towards Shawn as time went on. The conversation even led to Fouad saying that he should take over the job of commentator in Shawn Ray’s place.
In the comments section, Iain stated, “Shawn Ray is a out of touch, sexist, dickhead and knows nothing about the current climate of bodybuilding. Get his ass outttta here.”
David Bourlet added his comment, “Wow! Glad to know that it’s not just me who feels this way about Shawn. So Sad to be such a fan of someone for the athlete that they are, yet totally dislike them as a person. I guess Shawn burned a lot of bridges over the years. I hope nobody will ever feel this way about me.”
Aaron Singerman also said that he did sign the petition. For the most part, comments seem to target Shawn Ray for bringing negative commentary to bodybuilding shows. This is a fine line to walk for a commentator, as you should strive to be able to provide real-time objective opinions, without sugar-coating things when bodybuilders don’t bring their best to the stage. Sometime's it's a no-win situation for even the best commentators.
While Fouad has previously reached out to Dan Solomon to express his interest in commenting for the IFBB shows, he has made it clear that he has nothing to do with the petition that is in discussion. Fouad has gone so far as to post a video, distancing himself from the petition. See video below:
One of the comments Abiad made in his video states, “I’d just like to say thank you for anyone out there who thinks I would be good enough to commentate at the Olympia. That being said, I don’t think attacking Shawn Ray with a petition is the way to go about it. It seems a little too much for me, we can disagree about styles but to actively petition/tag someone hundreds of times a day seems too negative for me.”
When you look at commentators like Shawn Ray, Bob Cicherillo, Dan Solomon, Dave Palumbo, Chris Aceto, and Milos Sarcev, these guys are full of knowledge when it comes to the sport and all the athletes that step on stage. And when you look at Shawn himself, you cannot take away from the fact he competed in one of the toughest times in Professional Bodybuilding. While he never did win the Mr. Olympia title, he did place in the top 5 every year from 1990 through 2001, including his runner up Mr. Olympia finish in 1996.
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