Bodybuilding guru Chad Nicholls has guided the careers of many top contenders in the sport. In a Desktop Bodybuilding interview, Nicholls revealed the origins of his beef with retired bodybuilder Shawn Ray and laid out what happened between his son Dominic and Ray at the 2023 Arnold Classic Expo.
Chad Nicholls gained attention for his expertise as a mentor to bodybuilding legend Ronnie Coleman, who racked up eight Sandow trophies during his reign of dominance between 1998 and 2005. Nicholls is credited for guiding Coleman to his first Olympia title.
Nicholls has been at odds with former IFBB Pro Shawn Ray for the last few years. Ray took issue with Nicholls’ training techniques in Feb. 2020. He criticized Nicholls for promoting dangerous training with the use of performance-enhancing drugs. The tensions between Nicholls and Ray heated up again when Shawn expressed disapproval of the protocols used by Nicholls.
Meanwhile, Nicholls remained focused on supporting former two-time Mr. Olympia Mamdouh ‘Big Ramy’ Elssbiay on the way to his next appearance. He lauded the Egyptian mass monster for making strides in the off-season and backed him to return with an even bigger package at the 2022 Mr. Olympia. However, he was cautious of the threat presented by rising sensation Nick Walker and William Bonac, both of whom display freakish muscle mass.
In the end, Ramy missed the mark on stage in Las Vegas four months ago and dropped the title to Hadi Choopan. Nicholls highlighted the need to fix some issues Ramy faced at the Olympia before his return to action for the 2023 Arnold Classic last month. He thought Ramy made the necessary adjustments and would be a problem for many at 310 pounds.
During the 2023 Arnold Classic Expo, the troubles between Nicholls and Ray reached a boiling point. Nicholls’ son Dominic confronted Ray at the expo and called him out for trashing his father’s name. While the altercation didn’t come to blows, the video of the heated verbal exchange made headlines online.
Prolific bodybuilding coach Milos Sarcev weighed in on the scuffle a week later. Sarcev stated Ray allegedly got jumped by Nicholls but didn’t provide any evidence of the incident. IFBB Hall of Famer Chris Cormier theorized Dom was particularly upset at Ray for blaming his father for the deaths of some bodybuilders.
Chad Nicholls reveals the origins of his beef with Shawn Ray
In a recent YouTube video, Chad Nicholls revealed how his feud with Shawn Ray started.
“Boyer Coe called me on the phone and asked me, now I can’t swear to god that Shawn knew that Boyer was going to call me or not but Boyer Coe definitely called me and asked me if I’d be interested in working with Shawn,” said Nicholls. “Of course, they both deny that now but they’ve been friends for years. That’s 100 percent what happened. I think he’s pissed at me though when I started working with Flex, like he was beating a lot of these guys, and then next thing you know he never beat one of my guys ever again. Then, he retired two or three years.”
Nicholls details what happened between Dom and Ray at the 2023 Arnold Classic Expo
Chad Nicholls says the beef with Ray has been going on for 20 years and touched on the viral incident with his son, Dom.
“Here’s kind of what happened. Obviously, everybody knows the beef between me and Shawn, it’s going on for 20 years ever since I started training athletes and they all started placing ahead of him so that was kind of no-brainer and it kind of back and forth. When I saw Shawn, I had nothing but positive thoughts. I was going to be like, ‘hey man we need to talk. Let’s go and talk.’ My thinking was let’s just squash this sh*t. It’s all petty nonsense. He kinda made a smart-ass thing, got my number and we’re both there, let’s go talk. I said let’s go talk and my thinking was we’ll exit the ballroom because I didn’t want to do in front of everybody.
We’re already at the back and so I was going to walk out the back doors. Basically what happened was when Sean realized we were getting ready to exit, he stopped and kind of backtracked. Dom was behind him but Dom kinda was like get moving boy and then Sean does Sean and starts screaming, you’re going to go to jail, you want to be arrested, I’m going to end your career, blah blah. That was really the end of it. I literally would’ve not thought another thing about it.
“But I guess after that, Ron Harris had sent Dom a message and it’s like hey why is Shawn saying you hit him and Dom’s like what the hell are you talking about because Ron was right there. I didn’t hit him and he’s like no that’s what I’m saying why is Shawn saying that he’s completely lying about it so that kind of pissed off. Then, somebody else came and was like hey I heard Shawn was ready to go outside with you. He’s telling everybody he was ready to go outside so at this point, you’re talking about a 19 year old kid and now all these guys are saying this happened and that happened.
So, now Dom loses his cool a little bit the next day, goes up and decides to confront him. The reason he recorded it was basically so they couldn’t say something happened that didn’t happen so that was really all that was basically being recorded. He went up basically, said what he said, they recorded it again, only reason they record it so Shawn couldn’t come back and say oh well he was aggressive, put his hands on me, done this, done that and that was basically it. It was done and over with at that point basically.”
“It was basically he had already started saying stuff that was not true. So, Dom didn’t want to do something and all of a sudden, Sean calls up somebody and said he assaulted me at the booth. They recorded it to make sure everybody knew.”
Bodybuilding veteran Jose Raymond chimed in with his take on the rivalry between Shawn Ray and Chad Nicholls two weeks ago. Raymond sided with team Nicholls while bashing Ray for his behavior. He believes Ray is walking on thin ice and doesn’t serve the bodybuilding community as a legend should.
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Based on Nicholls’ latest comments, it appears the troubles with Ray are far from over and could escalate on the horizon.