Prince
Board Sponsor
- Awards
- 1
This article was inspired by a great video from Ivan Bodybuilding comparing Samson Dauda to Andrew Jacked, but it’s also inspired by the fact that Samson was unable to successfully defend his Arnold Classic title. Now, it’s noteworthy that he didn’t lose it to someone outside the Olympia Top 3, losing the title to Hadi Choopan, but it’s videos like that of IB that raise questions. Other commentators have raised the point that Quinton Eriya is considered a younger version of Dauda. That’s quite a statement considering that Dauda is 31 years of age according to various bodybuilding websites. He’s very young all things considered; however, what happens in the next 5-6 years is key.
On the one hand, he’s got a very impressive resume in winning the Arnold and placing Top 3 in the Mr. Olympia, but on the other he may also have gone as far as he’s going to go. There’s a lot of competition coming up and the sport may go in a different direction. If we look at the 2023 Arnold Classic, Ivan is 100% right that many people had Jacked beating Samson, even though Nick Walker was wedged between the two. When you look at the 2023 Arnold Classic, very few people had Samson winning the sport’s second biggest title over The Persian Wolf. Whereas 2023 was a close one, 2024 seems to have been pretty cut and dry. And while we can all agree that Dauda has a more aesthetically-pleasing physique than either Hadi Choopan or Derek Lunsford, there’s other guys in the conversation that have equally impressive physiques without pushing close to 300lbs on stage.
