MUSCLE CHURCH: Our Father, the Iron

--> “Now that’s what I call posing!” Most people have heard Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic line from the 1977 film Pumping Iron when a thick and mustachioed Ed Corney is posing while the Oak looks on, whispering to the camera. Corney’s pro bodybuilding career wouldn’t reach the heights of either Schwarzenegger or Lou Ferigno, the film’s primaries, but his role in the film would put his classic image in the public consciousness and his physique and posing would place him in the upper echelon of bodybuilding elite. Corney passed away on New Year’s Day 2019 and with him we lost one of the rarest of all relics in the annals of competitive bodybuilding, a man whose career spanned three decades. He first competed in 1968 in the Mr. California and last took the stage in 1998 at the Arnold Classic in the Master’s Division. Though not a frequent winner or even a perennial favorite, Corney was revered for being one of, if not the, best poser of all time, on any level. The...