Shaun Davis, the British bodybuilder who won Mr. Universe in 1996, died at 57.
A explanation for death was not announced.
“I’m absolutely devastated,” his friend Kuldeep Bhardwaj posted on Facebook last Friday. “Rest in Peace my friend you was a real inspiration right from the day I met you in school, through your amazing bodybuilding years and after. Your smile and laughter will likely be missed.”
He signed with a professional soccer team when he was younger, but a broken leg cut his profession short.
“A few of my friends were going to the gym and figuring out and friends locally were looking good so I assumed I’d get into bodybuilding,” Davis recalled in a 2018 interview.
His “Dinosaur” nickname got here from a friend on the gym who said Davis “had a terrific big body and a bit brain.”
“It stuck so everybody began calling me the Dinosaur,” Davis recalled.
Davis also earned the title of Mr. Britain and Mr. Europe before kidney issues forced him to retire,” Metro reported.
“I have a look at people’s routines today, I have a look at people say, ‘We train hard.’ They don’t know, truthfully. These people, I can tell, of their eyes, they haven’t got the need, the need, the wanting to win,” he said in 2018.
He received dialysis for 3 years before undergoing a transplant in 2009.
“The ups and downs were unbelievable,” he said. “You get a phone call at some point they usually say, ‘Shaun do you wish a kidney … it’s like winning the lottery.”
Davis admitted it took getting used to life after competitive bodybuilding.
“I’d gone from being a professional bodybuilder, traveling the world every week, going to seminars, guests spots … to being no one,” he said. “If you lose your identity the phone stops. Everybody desired to see me because the 300 and odd pound freak bouncing up and down the stage and throwing his arms up and frightening people.”
Davis added, “It took me time to return to take care of that. I didn’t need to go anywhere once I began shedding weight. I just felt that it was all gone. It wasn’t me.”
He’s survived by his partner Helen Burrows and their daughter Harley.
