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by
Les Honig
Many who have come to know him best call him Big Mo and that’s no wonder…This masterful 29 year-old behemoth stands 6’3” and weighs 310 pounds (with only 7% bodyfat), but more than that; Mo Anouti comes to Ultimate University with some stupefying credentials; being both a bodybuilding as well as powerlifting champ in both of his native homelands.
The son of a Russian mom and Lebanese dad whose mechanical engineering job brought them to many different areas of the oil-rich Middle East, Anouti grew up with the earliest sports achievements as a stand-out martial artist in karate, tae kwan do and kickboxing.
“I stopped it temporarily when I got to high school,” Anouti explains, “and played a little soccer instead. I wasn’t really that much into team sports but I did get heavily into bodybuilding at that time.”
With lean but muscular heroes Bruce Lee and later Jean-Claude Van Damme as inspirations, Mo hit the gym with a vengeance in his later teen years and when a relative who was the president of the Lebanese Bodybuilding Federation saw him a short while later and was impressed by his progress, he suggested that the then 230-pounder try his luck at competing in some amateur events.
Coming in second in his first major bodybuilding show, Anouti continued to excel in various contests and even entered the pro ranks winning a gold medal at the 2002 Asian Games. In addition he began competing in powerlifting and currently can boast of an awe-inspiring 630-pound bench press, 850-pound squat and 820-pound deadlift.
Yet, paralleling his fanatic drive to perfect his extremely buff body came a nearly equally driven desire to become a professional wrestler. Starting as a fan at a very young age when Hulk Hogan and the Von Erichs were his idols, his interest really peaked as he reached his teen years. In the back of his mind was always the dream of becoming a star himself someday but he suppressed it, “until I could come to America where the main pro action was happening.”
Competing in local teen wrestling sports clubs, (the secondary schools in Lebanon did not have their own teams), Anouti recalls how much he dug that amateur form of the sport too, “since I always was the strongest so I could slam my opponents to the mat easily and throw them around at will.”
He recalls too, having the briefest of tastes of the pro side of the sport when after being introduced at a local Lebanese federation show, as the “nation’s bodybuilding and powerlifting champ”, he had the pleasure of smashingly choke-slamming a wrestler who tried to attack him during his promo.
Being, however, a man with both muscle and brain power, Anouti also was to graduate with a business degree from an outstanding overseas university, but still was driven to pursue a career as a sports entertainer, where his charisma and power-packed athletic ability would dominate.
With a firm goal then in mind to penetrate the highly competitive world of American pro-wrestling, Mo made the commitment and arrived here last year hungry to find his niche in the business.
Researching what schools were available, it was actually a friend at his L.A.-based gym who knew veteran trainer Ric Drasin and recommended he seek him out for a mat education. Actually arriving on the same day as fellow super-trainee Mark Wertzberger, Mo discovered that the actual process was a lot more telling on the body than one can ever imagine
. “The first thing that Ric told me was to go ahead and take a bump so I stood in the middle of the ring and did it and I swear that my brain was rattling in my skull. I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ My neck was sore for a week.”
Still, with an impressive athletic resume to back him up, Anouti continued to persevere and as time passed he grew more and more confident and capable. Before long he was ready to move on to even more difficult challenges so Drasin suggested that both he and Wertzberger check out Ultimate University as a natural next step.
“I had been doing construction at the time,” Mo remembers, “and was so tired that I had started to work out less and as a result I was a little out of shape when we first arrived and met Rick Bassman.” So to keep the promise to himself to be in the most superb of possible conditions for a future in the pro mat world, he quit his job and became instead a personal trainer, a choice that allows him to build back to his previously fantastic physical condition while he earns a living by teaching others.
And with his work at Ultimate U it has been a similar non-stop effort as Anouti attends the Ballards’ classes without fail along with others taught by Aaron Aguilera.
Echoing the same sentiments as last month’s Student of the Month, friend and fellow trainee, Mark Wertzberger, Anouti has nothing but praise for the Canadian duo who have inspired many since taking on UU teaching duties.
“Any progress I have made in becoming a total wrestler I owe to them. They are such a class act. Even though they’re so nice and supportive you can’t help but respect them. You never take them for granted.”
Having mastered a basic repertoire with former teacher Drasin, Mo is now concentrating on learning how to sell his moves to the audience, putting a match together and making sure it tells a story. He also is learning more complex moves and keeping sharp with those he already has acquired. At the same time he is beginning his early development of an appropriate ring persona.
And Mo Anouti, whose ultimate goal is to become “a superstar someday in WWE”, has one more thing going for him lately. He has gone from interested learner to one now consumed with passionate intensity.
“When I first started out I wasn’t sure I would actually be able to do this. Being such a big guy, a lot of people thought that I would never execute the tough moves. Actually though I am so happy with how I have progressed. Like anybody starting out new I have had my problems at the beginning but eventually working out here began feeling really great and now I have totally fallen in love with it.”
He adds a word of gratitude, once again, for his Ultimate instructors: “I am so glad that Shane and Shannon never gave up on me. They kept pushing me and pushing me and correcting my mistakes. It’s largely because of that continuing support that I am now becoming a much better performer.”
With past Ultimate Pro European sensations like Stephan Gamlin and Staz Bobin to inspire him, (he once met Staz at a Russian bodybuilding competition), the path for this super mat apprentice to even more perfect his training and appear soon at our major venues seems completely unobstructed…and we can only expect the best from this giant of a talent in every sense of the word, Big Mo Anouti!
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