Mr. Big Evolution PRO 2023: Ticket to Mr. Olympia won by the gigantic Andrea Presti | Full results and reportage

After several overseas competitions, Jim Manion's IFBB professional league has returned to the old continent. In Cascais, Portugal, the Casino Estoril hosted a competition for qualification tickets for Mr. Olympia in 9 categories and there was certainly no shortage of entertainment. Both the open and 212 divisions brought a lot of well prepared competitors. You can read more about the competition and the results in this report.

Open categories

According to the pre-competition predictions in the open category, Andrea Presti and Vladislav Sukhoruchko, two experienced athletes who have already stood on the boards of the prestigious Olympia and who normally have great musculature and good preparation, were supposed to fight for the qualification ticket. However, it was clear during the preliminaries that the expected duel would not take place. Sukhoruchko looked underdone, his form lacked the expected readiness and he looked largely caked in some of his poses and the overall look was certainly not pretty. However, the fact that he didn't even make the first call-up (and thus was not among the top five competitors) in the subsequent final was probably not expected by anyone. Unfortunately no one could replace him, although the pair of Omeragic and Fritz in particular tried to do so. Presti, however, showed brutal form, perhaps one of the best of his career.

And considering that massive volumes are already a kind of classic for him, there was no doubt - in the first invocation he was surrounded by the aforementioned duo all the time in the middle of the line, and then in the last invocation the judges invited him together with Fritz, who was probably on his way to the silver medal. Thus, there were no major surprises in the subsequent announcement of the results, with Omeragic taking third place, Fritz taking second, the best finish of his career so far, and Andrea Presti earning the qualifying ticket for Mr. Olympia.

Under 212 pounds

The 212lb category, which is normally one of the most popular categories for spectators besides the Open, brought an extra three fighters to the field, including a number of big names with Mr. Olympia experience. Pre-contest predictions slightly favored Kuwait's Nasser Sayed and local competitor Lucas Coelho. However, the latter athlete, as well as in the open category Sukhoruchko, was unfortunately out of form, so he also did not make the first call-up. In this category, however, there were several fighters who were full replacements and the first callout consisted of Roman Iushchenko, Miguel Fontenla, Marco Sarcone and the aforementioned favourite Nasser Sayed.

However, during the race the judges kept changing the athletes and their line-ups in the individual callouts were combined quite a lot, which was definitely right considering the balanced forms the athletes presented. But until the last moment it was not clear exactly what the final list would look like - and not even the aforementioned Nasser Sayed was sure, who started to be threatened by the famously prepared Iushchenko during the competition. It was he who eventually dominated the competition and qualified for the November Mr. Olympia event. Marco Sarcone also achieved a sensational result, for whom it was the first professional competition in his career, but he deserved the second place. The surprise was that Nasser Sayed finished only third, while the fourth place was taken by the aforementioned Lucas Coelho, who, although not in the first call-up, managed to improve his failed form with a great podium presentation and brutal volumes. Daniel Sticco rounded out the top five with an impressive upper body and another professional newcomer Miguel Fontenla finished sixth.

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