We have previously spoken about our admiration for the Big Boys Of Sport, but what is even more impressive is when these big boys are able to get their weight down.
The Big Show – pound-for-pound the World’s Largest Athlete – showed off his impressive new physique over the weekend and he is far from the first hefty sportsperson to strip off the weight.
The Big Show
The Big Show (not Glenn Maxwell) is a very big boy – it is right there in the name – but he is now arguably in the best shape of his wrestling career.
The former WWE Champion is set to face Shaquille O’Neal at Wrestlemania 33 in April and he has clearly been training extremely hard for his showdown with the former NBA star.
The Big Show has previously admitted that he once weighed as much as 537 pounds and these days he is weighing in at a gaunt 420 pounds.
Matt Dunning
Matt Dunning was a cult-hero throughout his rugby career mainly due to his heft, but he has undergone an incredible transformation since his playing days ended.
Dunning lost an impressive 40 kilograms in nine months on a diet of two shakes a day as well as a 600-calorie meal and he is now unrecognizable from his time in the Wallabies front-row.
Kyle Lowry
Kyle Lowry has always been a star in the NBA, but in the past 12 months he has taken his game to a new level thanks to his off-the-court weight-loss.
Lowry was never what you would call fat, but until recently he didn’t have the absolutely chiselled physique of the majority of players in the NBA.
The Toronto Raptors franchise player cut his body fat percentage down to just 4.3 percent during the summer of 2015 and the results on the court have been most impressive.
Rex Ryan
It is not just players that are capable of losing plenty of weight.
NFL coach Rex Ryan underwent lap-band surgery in 2012 and he managed to lose over 100 pounds, while looking a decade younger.
Ryan has now had his Lap Band removed in a show of solidarity with brother Rob Ryan and he has already put back on 30 pounds.
Mark Cosgrove
Mark Cosgrove has always been like a cricketer from a bygone era, but in recent years he has finally started to take control of his weight.
Cosgrove easily tipped three bills for the majority of his playing career and was once kicked out of the Australian Cricket Academy for having a messy room filled with junk food, but he has now cut his weight to under 100 kilograms and has played some excellent cricket on the County Circuit in England.
Sam Kasiano
Sam Kasiano is an incredibly large human being and few years ago his weight ballooned out to over 130 kilograms.
That was never going to cut it with Des Hasler as his coach and over the past two seasons the Canterbury Bulldogs forward has been able to drop over 20 kilograms.
He is still an incredibly large human being, but a much more agile one.
Marcus Willis
Marcus Willis was one of the best stories to come out of Wimbledon last year.
Willis was a promising junior tennis player that never lived up to his potential due to his big weight – his nickname used to be Cartman – but he lost plenty of weight before he won six matches to qualify for the Wimbledon Main Draw.
He beat Ricardas Berankis – who was ranked more than 700 places above him – in the first round and was not disgraced in the second round against the great Roger Federer.
Peter Fitzsimons
Former Wallaby Peter Fitzsimons always had the body of a Rugby Union forward and slowly continued to gain weight as he got further away from his playing days.
At the start of 2016 he decided to make a change and he has now lost a third of his body weight to get his weight down to as low as it has been in over three decades.
If only he would lose the red bandana as well…
Shane Warne
Shane Warne’s weight has been as up and down as his relationship with the Australian public.
His started his career as a fairly portly chap and was criticised in the late 1990s for packing on the kilos.
It was after his career that Warne really cut down his weight and in 2011 he lost over 20 kilograms, which he credits for his dramatic appearance change that has led the media to question whether the greatest bowler of all-time went under the knife!
We still aren’t sure if we are buying that one.
Patty Mills
Patty Mills has made the lead from colourful bench presence to a key contributor for the San Antonio Spurs and the change in his physique has been under-reported in the Australian media.
Mills – whose coach Gregg Popovich used to call Fatty Patty – only lost a couple of kilograms, but was incredibly able to alter his body fat percentage from over 13 percent to less than six percent.
