Cedric 'Schwarzenegger' McMillan

Looking Toward the 2018 Arnold Classic, MD Asks: Is Cedric McMillan the Second Coming of Arnold?

Certainly, you have heard the various and often-repetitive laments and complaints about modern-day bodybuilding and the physiques that represent the top echelon of the sport now. Both older fans as well as younger ones who know their bodybuilding history feel that the beauty and aesthetics that once made the sport great have given way to bulky, distorted caricatures. Today’s champions are cookie-cutter, overblown grotesqueries with bloated bellies and lumpy body parts, with one nearly indistinguishable from the next. Maybe this is true in many cases. But then there is Cedric McMillan. Cedric doesn’t look like anyone else competing today. With his classic shape, marked by sweeping, round muscle bellies, a perfect structure and a stunning V-taper, McMillan’s physique is far more reminiscent of the greats of a bygone era. To be more specific, it’s eerily similar in many ways to that of the great seven-time Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger, who not coincidentally, is a fan of Cedric’s and sees him as the ideal body to represent the sport he still loves passionately and promotes on six continents. We approached a group of experts and living legends of the sport to see if they happen to agree with Arnold’s assessment.

Do you feel that Cedric McMillan is the closest thing we have to a modern-day version of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1970’s physique?

Jay Cutler

No. For one thing, Cedric is much bigger than Arnold was. He’s about 270 pounds, where Arnold was in the 230-240 range. Mainly because he’s the only one who doesn’t have a gut up there right now, people say he has the “classic look” and compare him to Arnold. I never like to make comparisons between athletes of different eras. I know Arnold likes Cedric’s look a lot, and again, it’s because he’s the only one without a gut and Arnold really doesn’t like guts on bodybuilders. Arnold thinks Cedric should win all the top titles, but I don’t agree. That’s just my opinion.

Peter McGough

Yes, he is the 21st century version of an Arnold. He has similarities in bone structure, with those sloping shoulders. Plus, he brings to mind Arnold in certain poses: three-quarter rear biceps shot, for instance. And his posing routine evokes Arnold in that he uses classical, powerful music and holds his shots for a couple of seconds and becomes a moving statue, instead of a cupping hand-to-ear whirling dervish. Arnold’s public support of Cedric’s physique enhances the Arnold/Cedric connection.

Shawn Ray

I was there to interview Cedric following his NPC overall Nationals victory in 2009. While in the throes of the interview, I thought to myself, “Could I be interviewing the next Mr. Olympia winner?” Arguably Cedric had the prettiest structure and most potential of all the Olympians, including future hopefuls. That said, fast-forward nearly nine years, and we “the bodybuilding community” are still waiting for that diamond in the rough to shine and Sparkle on the Mr. Olympia stage. Therein lies the rub. It has yet to happen. Eight-time Mr. Olympia Lee Haney, also originally from South Carolina like Cedric, proclaimed at the time that Cedric may have even better potential than he had, since the sport had yet to see the likes of Cedric since Lee Haney’s retirement in 1991. That statement would include Arnold’s body type as well. The verdict is still out as for me to even justify the conversation, or draw comparisons. Arnold’s claim to fame came from Olympia battles on the world’s biggest stage against the sport’s best athletes, not simply winning Grand Prix shows against non-Olympia competition. 

Flex Wheeler

Cedric has a lot of height and width on his competition, just like Arnold did. They are both big men among smaller guys. That always offers a certain advantage.

Lee Labrada

I think that Cedric has some poses, especially the three-quarter twisting back shots, which are reminiscent of Arnold’s same poses. But I could say the same about Lee Haney. I like Cedric’s physique, but he does not dominate the rest of his competition in the manner in which Arnold did in his heyday, nor in the manner Ronnie Coleman did years later. Cedric has a very pleasing, aesthetic physique. 

Lee Haney

Cedric is classic bodybuilding. Arnold was classic bodybuilding. So was I, so was Serge Nubret and Lee Labrada. Lee could have taken me out if I wasn’t on my toes, no matter what his size or weight was. I wish there were a category called Classic Bodybuilding, because Classic Physique isn’t the same thing. Cedric is the most classic bodybuilding physique we have today, and the one that is closest aesthetically to Arnold and other greats in that mold. The problem is, how do you compare that to other guys who are Herculean mass monsters? We can’t X out the accomplishments of those men either. But Cedric is so different from everyone else competing today that I do feel he needs his own category.

Ronnie Coleman

Cedric is a lot like Arnold. He’s the same height as him, 6’2”. Cedric has a lot of the same great body parts, like chest and arms. And he has a small waist along with the wide shoulders, just like Arnold did. Cedric has bigger thighs and a thicker back, because the standard for those has changed since the ‘70s. His calves aren’t as big as Arnold’s were, but that’s usually just a genetic thing anyway. I trained my calves real hard, but they never blew up the way everything else did. But Cedric definitely reminds you of Arnold and the other old-school guys.

Kevin Levrone

I do see similarities, mainly with the height and the taper. There’s no one at the top level today with this look except Cedric.

Ron Harris

Fans sometimes like to speculate as to what Arnold would look like if he were competing today, compared to his Olympia-winning physique in the ‘70s. Some point out areas he would be lacking in, without recognizing that Schwarzenegger was developed to the ideal standards of his own era. Since then, standards for both overall mass as well as for certain areas such as the legs and back have shifted. Arnold was about 235-240 pounds at his best. At the same height of 6’2”, Cedric competes at 270 pounds, with the requisite leg and back development of today’s champions. Yet he does display the same classic lines and structure that Arnold did over 40 years ago. A very strong argument could be made that Cedric is in fact the closest thing we are likely to see as a modern incarnation of Arnold.

Arnold on Cedric

“I happen to be a fan of Cedric, because he has such a great combination of muscular development, definition and muscle separation, but most importantly, the posing.”

“With Cedric coming fourth [at the 2015 Arnold Classic], I was pissed off, to tell you the truth. I thought it was between him and Dexter, the winner. I felt both of them had the kind of body that I wanted. So if I would be like a judge, I ask myself always the same question: whose body do I want to have? That’s what it comes down to. Cedric has such a beautiful body. It was so well proportioned that I felt he should have placed higher than he did. And unless we change the judging procedure, and unless we do something about how we just choose the guys with the biggest legs. And the biggest muscles, but not looking as pleasing.”

“I think when it comes down to the physical development, I think that Cedric was ahead. But then you pulled it off with the posing.” –On stage at the 2016 Arnold Classic, to Kai Greene

Cedric on What Drives Him

“I don’t go to a competition to win first place. I don’t go to a competition to win money. I don’t go to a competition to beat anybody. I go to a competition to try to display an era of bodybuilding that I fell in love with. When I first started competing, I wanted my body to look a certain way, like the guys I fell in love with. As bodybuilding changed around me, before I even got a chance to do the sport, I saw it changing, and it became something different. But my vision never changed. So here I am now, still holding true to what my vision was. Sometimes I feel like I’m the Last of the Mohicans, right? I remember when I turned pro, no one was ever talking about Golden Era physiques, or old-school physiques, or aesthetics. As I came along, that stuff is coming to the forefront. A movement is taking place. If I can, I want to take bodybuilding back to the era when it was so loved, and it inspired people that never lifted a weight before to want to improve their bodies, looking at those guys from back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. So when I come to a show, I look at it as my chance to display my artwork, my chance to display my vision of what bodybuilding is.”

“I don’t need any popularity. I don’t need social media superstar status. If I can just get up there and pose, and people enjoy what I’m doing, and it can inspire some people to lift some weights and stuff, then that’s it for me.”

Source: “Cedric McMillan Wants to Be the NEW People’s Champ, Arnold Classic 2016.” –Interview for Generation Iron Fitness Network

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