Photo of Tony Pearson by Cashman Photo

Driven to Perfection

Professional Bodybuilder Tony Pearson

BY STACEY GUALANDI

Professional bodybuilding champion Tony Pearson’s life reads like a Hollywood script.

An abused child from Memphis, Tennessee, meets his hero Muhammad Ali; buys a one-way bus ticket to Muscle Beach; gets discovered by seven-time Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger; perfects the famous stomach vacuum pose; earns multiple bodybuilding titles, including Mr. America in 1978 and the Pro Mr. Universe; adopts the nickname “Michael Jackson of Bodybuilding;” retires for the second time at 63; becomes a Las Vegas-based personal trainer—and remains a bodybuilding legend.

“God was with me the whole time, and I really believe that now because of everything that happened and is still happening,” Pearson says. “I say Hollywood couldn’t script this.”

Pearson, now 68, affirms bodybuilding saved his life. But he says this is not a bodybuilding story.

“Everyone makes that mistake, and some are turned off by it, but it’s more of a life story,” he says. “It’s a real story that people can relate to.”

Well, let me tell you, it is a real page-turner.

Pearson waited decades to reveal in the book “Driven: My Secret Untold Story,” the hidden emotional turmoil that has weighed on him since childhood. Now, he says that weight has been lifted.

“Bodybuilding gave me hope to believe in myself because there was a lot of negativity around me that made me think, ‘You’re never gonna be anything,'” he admits.

Pearson grew up in the Deep South during the 1960s, the second youngest of four children. “My dad was an alcoholic; he was evil and treated my mom so badly,” Pearson says.

He was just a toddler when his mother ran away and divorced her husband. His dad, incapable of raising him, forced Pearson’s great aunt to take him in.

“Auntie Bettie was mean, and everyone was afraid of her,” he says.

Pearson describes in “Driven” one particularly harrowing story about his auntie holding him above the stove while flames burned beneath him. He was just 3 years old.

“I was this close to being a statistic,” Pearson says. “I was never a child again.”

For years, he and Auntie Bettie lived in abject poverty, in a shack with no indoor plumbing or electricity. At age 8, he was taken out of school and forced to do hard labor picking cotton. Beatings and torture became a way of life for Pearson.

“I just thought that everyone was being beaten every day or picking cotton daily or had no food,” he says. “Oh man, I used to starve. It was so painful. She was extremely poor, and I get that, but she was able to buy alcohol, so I’m sure she could have fed me. Knowing her, it was another form of torture.”

Auntie Bettie abruptly moved them to St. Louis, Missouri, where Pearson’s world began to open up after a chance encounter with Muhammad Ali, the then-world heavyweight champion.

“I’m looking up at him like, ‘Oh my God!’ The champ is standing in front of me. He was the man. He was like the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen,” Pearson says. “What an inspiration for me because I had never heard the word ‘sports’ with the childhood I had. But when I saw him, I wanted to do sports. I didn’t know what sport … but my friend said to me, ‘Man, you’re really strong.'”

A knee injury cut short his spot on the high school wrestling team, but that led to meeting another influential figure during his formative years: (in)famous St. Louis gym owner and old-school bodybuilder George Turner.

“He called me into his office, and he says, ‘I’m going to train you,’ and that was like heaven to my ears,” Pearson says. “Training was really hard … but I loved every second of it because it was like an escape from my miserable existence. Then you watch your body change. It was unbelievable.”

Pearson wanted to leave and go far away, so he decided to move to California—the only place he could pursue his dream of being a professional bodybuilder.
“There was an urgency to get to L.A. I don’t know what it was, but I knew I had to go,” Pearson says.

At 19, with only $75 in his pocket, he bought a one-way bus ticket to California, vowing never to return.

“The last thing [George Turner] said to me: ‘If you don’t commit a crime, you’ll make it. In other words, keep your nose clean,'” Pearson says. “So, that stuck in my head.”

Pearson could easily have gone down a dark path after surviving such a painful adolescence, but he chose not to follow in his family’s footsteps.

“That’s not who I am,” he says. “My great auntie put fear in your soul. ‘You better not do anything wrong; you don’t lie; you don’t steal; you earn it! You do the work, ’cause no one gonna give you nothing!'”

After months in Los Angeles, Pearson struggled to earn a living.

He was homeless, but the Venice Beach “weight pen” became his home.

Little did he know that Arnold Schwarzenegger—his idol and retired seven-time Mr. Olympia—had been watching his disciplined and dedicated daily workouts for months.

“When I got to Los Angeles, I said, ‘I want to be a bodybuilding champion,’ but I had no clue where to start. ‘How am I going to do this?’ But [Arnold] gave me the light.”

One fateful day, Schwarzenegger offered to take Pearson through a personal workout, gave him the number for Joe Weider—the co-founder of the International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness—and told Pearson he had the potential to be a champion.

“If any other bodybuilder had told me that I would be a champion, I wouldn’t believe them. But when Arnold said it, I believed it and I took it to heart,” Pearson says. “Without him, I don’t think I would’ve made it.”

In no time, Pearson won his first contest, the 1976 Mr. Venice Beach. He told the crowd he would win Mr. America in two years.

“Everyone laughed, of course. But I did! That’s when I knew I was hooked,” says Pearson, after he beat the 1978 favorite, Ron Teufel. “At 19, I wasn’t cocky, I was just trying to motivate myself.”

Years later, Schwarzenegger would feature Pearson in the first edition of his book “The Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.” Of the young Pearson, Schwarzenegger wrote: “I remember a few years ago seeing a skinny Black kid training at the weight pen on Venice Beach. I watched him doing endless sets of squats, with very heavy weight, torturing himself with rep after rep. After a while, his thighs began to grow, and soon they were huge, separated and beautifully defined, and only a year and a half later he entered and won the 1978 Mr. America contest.”

Hard work and intense focus paid off.

“I lost Mr. Universe in ’79. I had one year to think about it. I had a whole year to say I lost. It tore me up inside, but I went back to London the following year and won.”

Pearson went on to win world singles and doubles titles and perform at exhibitions and seminars all over the world.

Early on, he was dubbed the “Rocky of Bodybuilding,” and because he resembled the King of Pop, he adopted the moniker “Michael Jackson with Muscles.”

Pearson’s dream had come true: Bodybuilding was now his full-time job—and a gift.

“God gave me the gift to have the structure, the height, small waist, small hips, small bones, all those things together,” he says. “To me, bodybuilding is like art. It inspired me because I don’t know where I would be without it. It just changed my whole outlook on life, and it was mentally and physically healing in a way.”

Pearson continued to compete for 20 years, until his retirement in 1994. In 2007, he was inducted into the Muscle Beach Bodybuilding Hall of Fame, where his career began.

During his career, he was on the cover of bodybuilding magazines worldwide. But despite all the titles and success, it seems he didn’t receive all the recognition he deserves.

Perhaps it’s because no one really understood the tremendous odds he overcame to reach the potential Schwarzenegger once predicted.

“I’ve known people for 30, 40 years, and they never knew any of [my story],” he admits. “I was with friends and said, ‘I used to pick cotton,’ and they started laughing. I thought, ‘I’ll never tell this story. No way. I would take it to my grave.'”

But in 2017, Pearson had a change of heart.

“I was depressed, more than usual, and feeling like my career was over because you live for bodybuilding, it’s everything, and when the phone stopped ringing, it was brutal,” he says.

“I was used to traveling, appearing at events and always being on the move. Then all of a sudden, there’s nothing, complete silence. I gained weight and trained less, but then I had lunch with a client and started telling her a little bit about my life—don’t ask me why. That’s when she looked at me and said, ‘You need to write a book!'”

He was pumped up and spent the next two years writing “Driven,” his untold story.

“I said, ‘I’m going to do this myself.’ I was in bodybuilding mode again. I will not quit. I’m gonna tell this story if it kills me. Which it almost did.”

Pearson says he ended up in the emergency room at 3 a.m. from exhaustion and reliving painful memories from his past. But ultimately, telling his truth was cathartic.

He then wrote a children’s book, “The Story of Baby Herc,” also based on his life, for kids who like to read and look at drawings.

“That’s an inspiration for kids. They might look at my book and want to be like that guy,” Pearson says.

In 2020, he came out of retirement one last time to win the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Masters Mr. Universe in Las Vegas, where he now lives.

“I was 63. That was my last competition because my body was telling me to quit.”

Now, he trains himself—and a long list of clients—to stay in shape and healthy.

“Everything is about form,” Pearson says. “You’re in your 60s and have all these aches and pains, and I say, ‘Don’t worry. We’ll fix it.'”

After working out with Pearson, many clients have successfully overcome injuries and gained strength in their later years, like Karen, 75, and Monty, 68, who made a choice last year to improve their fitness, balance, strength and quality of life.
Pearson says Monty was severely overweight.

“… and [Karen] couldn’t get through an airport without a wheelchair because she couldn’t walk to the plane and couldn’t put the bag in the overhead compartment.”

Their “couples’ goal” was to travel to Antarctica, ride in Zodiac boats, hike and kayak. Pearson designed special programs to improve their balance and build strength for these activities.

They worked out with Pearson three times a week, and one year later, Monty lost more than 100 pounds, and Karen can now travel easily, has no need for wheelchairs, and can carry her own bags. The freedom and sense of accomplishment, they say, is amazing. Now, he’s keeping them active and able to enjoy life.

“It’s hard work and it takes time,” Pearson says.

Pearson knows that journey all too well.

But to fully accept his remarkable past, he did something he once vowed never to do. He returned to St. Louis 10 years after leaving to make an appearance as a favor to his original bodybuilding mentor, George Turner.
But one morning, he woke up and knew he had to come face to face one last time with his former abuser, Auntie Bettie.

“Glancing around [her] room, I saw this picture on the wall. [Auntie] says, ‘That’s you on the wall. You’ve done so much,’ and she’s giving me all this praise,” Pearson says. “That’s when I said, ‘OK. She didn’t know any better.’ I forgave her, but I had to do it for myself too. I know this sounds weird—it was a hell of a childhood—but it taught me a lot about work discipline. I’m a perfectionist. It taught me that, because with [Auntie Bettie], you better be perfection.”

Pearson returned home again three years ago to film a documentary called “Driven: The Tony Pearson Story.”

“I had to go back to the places where it all happened. You’re really reliving it, and I got physically sick for months after,” Pearson admits. “My stomach was a mess standing on that Memphis bridge where the shack used to stand.”

Now, Pearson says he’s at peace and hopes to turn his life story into a Hollywood movie, starring Samuel L. Jackson as his dad, Halle Berry as his mom and perhaps Oprah Winfrey as Auntie Bettie.

If anyone can do it, Tony Pearson can. All you have to do, he says, is “believe in yourself.”

“So many people are always telling you that you’re never going to be anything, but I always took that negative energy and converted it into my training regimen. In my mind, I thought, ‘I’ll show you,'” he says.

“I did what I wanted to do, and I have no regrets.”

[Additional reporting by Debbie Hall in Chic Compass – Issue 20]

For more information, check out tonypearsonpersonaltrainer.com.