by Christian Duque
Who knows you better than your mother? Who knows you better than your significant other? Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows you better than the person who taught you?
This is how I wanted to start my article on “Get Big Or Die Trying,” the Bostin Loyd documentary because all of these amazing people are involved.
This is without a doubt – a must watch. It’s a must-watch if you were a Bostin fan, if you were/are a hater, but also if you know annything about him. Because in a very real way, for better or for worse, Bostin was a catalyst for much of what you see in bodybuilding social media today!
Before Ronnie Coleman openly talked about steroids on Joe Rogan, he was denying it to crowds full of people. Remember when ProphetMuscle ambushed Phil Heath at some gym somewhere and couldn’t get him to admit taking gear? Remember how furious Kali Muscle got when Rich Piana halfheartedly implied that the ex-con turned bodybuilding star dabbled with exogenous hormones?
No one wanted to admit using roids, much less talk about current cycles or pinning themselves on camera.
Sure, Dan Duchaine wrote about it and was for sure a pioneer in his day, but Bostin took it to another level. He was almost ASKING TO GET ARRESTED, ASKING TO GET RAIDED, GET BANNED, GET CANCELED, but he just didn’t give a FUCK!
Love him or hate him, he lived life on his own terms. But very few knew Bostin like the amazing people involved in this documentary.
I’ll tell you something – there was a point in time when I could have worked with Bostin. Let me take you back to 2017 and 2018 and the various attempts I made to work with him. Let me tell you why it never panned out but let me also tell you why it gave me a tremendous amount of respect for him. I’m also going to tell you about an interview I did with Jerry Ward. I’m going to talk to you about that and I’m also going to talk to you about the Impressions that I had as just another YouTube viewer watching Bostin. I never in a million years thought that I would have an opportunity to speak to him one-on-one.
Now I don’t think he liked me very much but I also don’t think he hated me. I think I was in a sort of middle ground. There were times that I spoke to him when I was just being myself. it was during his break-up I recall. I wasn’t trying to interview him, I wasn’t trying to get a quote from him for an article. I just happened to be talking to him. and that was a good memory because it was a regular chat I’d have just being casual. Anyways let me get started with this article because there’s a lot to unpack here.
Before diving into this article, if you take anything away from this piece, it should be that you MUST watch this documentary. It is a MUST WATCH.
Now let’s get to my story.
So back in 2017 I took over as marketing director for IronMag Labs. The truth of the matter is I wasn’t really ever the marketing director. I was the social media manager, I was the content creation overseer if you will, I was working with an amazing graphic designer and I was given free rein by my boss. I could do whatever I wanted, more or less. and honestly putting a bodybuilding fan and an aspiring writer in that position with a pretty much limitless budget (within reason of course) was something I just cannot describe in words. Think of being a kid at a candy shop but multiply that by 5. I was able to put together a network essentially. and everybody that had a show was somebody that I greatly respected and wanted as many people to hear as possible.
Now maybe I didn’t think about the whole ROI thing as much as I put out what I thought would be right by a bodybuilding fan’s interest level, but it’s that very ROI that would have made Bostin run in the opposite direction. Because while Bostin was very successful in business, he never wanted to sell out. And he even said that in interviews discussing the potential of us working together. He didn’t want to promote pills or powders or clothing companies. He didn’t want to use his name to promote businesses. At least not businesses that he didn’t run from a to z. That, unfortunately, is not how the business of bodybuilding works. I could not bring him on to our metwork without having him promote our brand. In any event let me delve deeper into why we never worked together and why he earned my respect even though we never joined forces.
So I had tried working with Bostin for StrengthAddicts as far back as 2014 or 2015. But I don’t really consider that when I think of trying to recruit him for IronMag TV because that was a major venture and I was able to offer him a lot more. In any event there were two serious attempts on my part to get Bostin to work with us. The first was to be a full-fledged member of Iron Mag TV. When that didn’t really pan out I tried to figure out a way for IML to sponsor his show on Muscular Development. Neither worked. He had a short-lived show with Ron Harris that lasted one episode. I won’t get into that, but the episode couldn’t stay up. And that was that. But the bottom line is Bostin just would not budge.
He didn’t want to work with me because he saw it as selling out to a supplement company. But that’s not the part that earned my respect so much as the part of him more or less wanting Joe Pietaro’s blessing before even talking to me. Now that is where he earned my respect. Let me tell you more about that.
So at the time Joe and I were at war. It was stupid, I deeply regret it, I should not have let it get out of control like that. Thankfully, we are good thanks to the beautiful and amazing Kim “Fit Ass” Haynes, but at the time we were not getting along and I was actually a little scared of Joe as my housemates in Columbus will attest (Gregg, Rob, and Preston 😂). I thought that Joe was going to make me disappear LOL or bum rush me at the booth.
In any event, Bostin was extremely loyal to Joe because he wrote for Joe and because he was part of the Muscle Sport Mag community. I thought that it was incredibly stand-up of him not only to privately ask Joe but to publicly ask Joe on an Instagram Live no less if he could work with me – or – which is even crazier, with Muscular Development. He was willing to forgo not one, but two or maybe three big opportunities because he wanted to make sure that he was not betraying a good friend, someone that had extended his hand out to him and vice versa. That’s not something that you run into in the sport of bodybuilding very often. And even though we were not able to work together and even though Joe gave him the green light, which speaks volumes about him, we still didn’t get to work together. That really doesn’t matter, in hindsight, because even though it wasn’t the ending I wanted, I respected him so much more after that.
And that’s the thing with Bostin as well. Even though I had a few kind of cool chats with him and maybe a series of business-related ones, I didn’t know him. I didn’t know anything about him. I only knew what he presented on his videos or on his media appearances.
The one thing that I learned from Jerry Ward about Bostin is that Bostin was an incredibly private individual. Sometimes he would not leave his house for extended periods of time. I didn’t know that about him. I also didn’t know just how almost secretive he was about pretty much everything outside of what he presented to the world on social media.
And I have to tell you that that is why this documentary is so powerful because the you get an idea of what made him tick, what inspired him, what he was all about. I mean to be told that your kidneys are practically about to fall off but that you will not take a backward step, that you just cannot walk away from the gym, that’s just on another level. To hear Dave Palumbo speak candidly of Bostin, to hear from his parents, his significant other, his best friend, that’s just not what you normally get on a documentary. It’s so honest you almost have to tell yourself that you’re watching a film. It really is that eye-opening and I think it deserves a tremendous amount of support from the bodybuilding community.
Like I said, whether you were a fan of his, maybe you didn’t like him, maybe you just didn’t understand where he was coming from, this documentary will definitely enhance your perspective. I also think this documentary would be very eye opening for fans that maybe didn’t know of him or came after him because pretty much everything you see right now on social media – he started. All of the shock value today wasn’t but a drop in the bucket to what Bostin was doing a decade ago. He never won a national title, never earned a pro card, never competed at the Mr Olympia. but he made his mark on the sport of bodybuilding in such a way that only a very small group of individuals could ever dream of. It just goes to show you that there is more to this than Coke-can trophies, ribbons, and gold-plated medals.
I could go on and on about this, but I’m going to stop. I’m going to stop because I want you to go and watch this documentary. I’m going to stop because nothing that I could possibly say will come even close to this production. I don’t know what kind of budget they were working with and I honestly don’t care. They absolutely nailed it. And I would hope that we would see this on Netflix, or Hulu, or Amazon Prime. It is that good. And it is that good – because it is that honest!!
As always I hope you enjoyed reading my article, here, at Iron Magazine. Even before you leave your feedback in the comments make sure you watch this documentary from beginning to end. And then, absolutely, I would love to hear your feedback wherever you may post it. Because if it’s on social media, I’ll be there!
