Muscle Sport Magazine

MD’s Peter McGough Spinning NPC Global Fairy Tales

Peter McGough has been one of the most well-respected journalists in the bodybuilding industry for decades and has certainly earned that distinction. But his latest foray into the agenda-driven abyss that has become akin to a brown nosing of epic proportions has finally reached the desk of even the one who made Joe Weider himself give in.

An online feature article on Muscular Development.com fittingly entitled, “Follow the Yellow Brick Road?? New Federation: A Personal View” includes a number of inaccuracies that are inexcusable. And this has nothing to do with what side of the fence MuscleSport Magazine is on; we have made it abundantly clear that we have no horse in this race (IFBB/NPC versus NPC Global), but rather are taking the proper approach as journalists and calling it right down the middle.

The part that we are taking main exception to is bullet point number three when McGough recounts an incident that occurred in Las Vegas during Olympia Weekend. McGough’s alleged source for this information was the catch-all, “according to witnesses,” but why would that be necessary when the “altercation” (or lack thereof, which we will explain in detail) took place between Lee Thompson and George Farah, who is a fellow MD employee?

Hypothetically speaking, that would be like us reporting on something involving our managing editor Gregg Valentino and getting the “facts” from a third party instead of directly from the horse’s mouth.

Well, here’s another reason why MuscleSport Magazine is head and shoulders above companies like Muscular Development…who admittedly practice one-way journalism that favors the IFBB/NPC because they would not obtain press passes otherwise. We would never kiss someone’s ass just because they wanted it that way. And it’s surprising that MD head honcho Steve Blechman (the king of ass kissing) has been able to coax a legend like McGough into writing scripted pieces like this.

One of McGough’s famous stories was when he was still residing in his native England and publishing his own bodybuilding magazine and was taking a few shots at Weider. The Master Blaster threw his hands up and hired McGough, moving him to the United States and the rest is history. The man’s words were so powerful and irrefutable that the Father of Bodybuilding waved the white flag. So it pains us to go against him in this manner.

Let’s get to the main agenda here: McGough wrote that Thompson attended a ‘Meet and Greet’ with Kai Greene along with “a couple of attorneys and a heavy or two.” To get to the bottom of this, we spoke to someone who was in Thompson’s party that evening and he just happens to be Charles Johnson, lead counsel and one of the partners in NPC Global. And Johnson is also a retired NFL player, so we suppose that he qualifies for an “attorney” and a “heavy.” But reading McGough’s description, one would be under the impression that Thompson arrived with a bevy of muscle up front and legal advisors in the rear, which was simply not the case.

“We were all there waiting on a long line in the parking lot, myself, Lee and his wife Jen and another one of our partners” explains Johnson. “We wanted to see Kai and at one point, George Farah came over – leaving the Olympia and about 15 of his clients in the process – to speak to Lee and try and tell him to leave. They went off alone to an area in the lot while we remained on the line. They sat down on a curb, I believe, and were talking for a while nearby. There was no shouting, pointing, yelling, pushing, shoving…nothing like that at all. The two of them have a long history and when it was over, they shook hands and Farah left.”

As to McGough saying that Thompson called the police, Johnson replied, “Not at all. There was no need to do. The only police that were there were actually giving some driver a ticket on the street near the parking lot we were in. It had nothing to do with us and the cops never came anywhere near us.”

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Johnson further stated that he has reached out to McGough and left him two messages to speak and get the story correct. As of this writing, those messages have not been returned.

“If he wanted the truth, all he had to do was reach out to one of us,” commented Johnson.

But the agenda of late has not been to report the truth, but rather what some folks want to hear and pretend is the truth.

Photo: AJ JAWA Photo

3 Comments

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