"I always thought conditioning wins" - Nick Walker weighs in on his recent loss at the 2023 Arnold Classic

Earlier this month, Nick 'The Mutant' Walker finished second in the 2023 Arnold Classic, losing to Nigerian-Englishman Samson Dauda. Although Walker was the favorite to win the show the month prior, judges saw the two athletes very differently on stage. Dauda scored perfectly on the scorecards, whereas 'The Mutant' was scored down by quite a few of them.

After the results were announced, fans and critics alike took to various platforms to voice their disagreement with the judges' decisions. One of the most vocal ones was Nick Trigili, who clearly had Walker winning the Classic. Walker joined Trigili on a recent episode of Mutant and The Mouth where he said that he always thought conditioning was top priority for the judges.

"I always thought conditioning wins. That’s why I usually pride myself on being one of the most conditioned guys in the show. I know you need to be obviously full, you can’t be flat, you know. Even the Arnold for me, I really thought I had the combination of everything except for shape, whatever. I don’t have the best shape in the world. You talk fullness, you talk hardness, you talk dryness."

Walker added that he thought he had cracked the code, but he is still puzzled as to what the judges are really looking for.

"I wasn’t as full as I was at the Olympia but I also wasn’t as conditioned as I was at the Arnold at the Olympia neither ... But I was still full. So, I just really thought overall I had everything they wanted, in my opinion."

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Nick Trigili wants the judges to be more transparent with the criteria after Nick Walker's loss

In the older days of the sport, the names of the judges and the criteria they were looking for were clearly laid out for the fans and the athletes. Noting this, Trigili asked for a return to the old ways of judging the sport.

"It used to have all the judges’ names there and everyone of their scores for every single athlete for every single round, and there were three points and you also got points in the posedown. So, if they felt like you won the posedown, you got extra points there. And you could see exactly where someone won or lost a show; it was clear as day and what judge put you where."

Trigili believes that transparency has decreased over the years. He added that this comes with serious ambiguity on how the highest and lowest scores are cut out.

"So you’ll know going show to show, ‘Oh, this show is just looking for that, that judge is looking for this, my odds of winning this show is this and the high and low b*lls**t matters but now we can actually see where it matters. They tell us they drop the highs and lows, we don’t know what they drop, we have no idea, we just have the final number."

Trigili closed off by stating that it was high time the judges increased transparency in their scoring.

"The judges need to be on these scorecards dude. Enough hiding. We need to know what judges are scoring."