I must admit that I, personally, have never been a huge wrestling fan – but who could forget former wrestling star Nicole Bass?
As one of the top female bodybuilders in the U.S., Nicole made a massive impression all those who laid eyes on her thanks to the 240 pounds of muscle on her frame and her 17-inch biceps.
Then, suddenly, she left WWE, and her absence was never truly explained.
Years later, though, the truth finally came out…
To understand how Nicole could go from an anonymous girl in New York to competing in Ms. Olympia and appearing in several soap operas, we must go back in time.
Born in Middle Village in Queens, New York, Nicole grew to be 6’2 and 240 pounds of pure muscle. As a young woman, however, she was far from an athlete.
She graduated from Coral Gables High in Florida, and her obsession with bodybuilding began when she entered a gym in South Miami as a teenager. According to Nicole, she was overweight and weighed 165 pounds at the time.
One of the reasons she wanted to start exercising was to ”meet some of the cute guys I always saw going there.” Fortunately, Nicole had a will of steel – which was good because she had a lot to work on. Her waist was close to 33 inches and increasing every year. Nicole herself has admitted that she was a big consumer of ice cream.
It didn’t take long before she realized that building muscles was her greatest passion in life. She began competing as a teenager and would win several prestigious competitions in the 1980s and 1990s.
She was dubbed the overall winner of the 1997 NPC National Bodybuilding Championships, and placed 14th in the 1997 Ms.Olympia contest.
Of course, this giant lady stood out wherever she went. At one point, she even dubbed herself the “biggest, heaviest, tallest and strongest” woman in the world – but all that came at a price.