Three days after Pittsburgh's curtain call, the Open class is once again the topic that won't go away — and this time the loudest voices are the judges themselves.
An anonymous letter circulated to BTS TV this week, signed by four current IFBB Pro League officials, calls for an internal review of how conditioning is being weighted against structure in head-to-head callouts. The letter, which we have verified through three independent sources, lands at the worst possible moment for a federation already fielding questions about Tampa's scorecards.
“We are scoring two different sports on the same stage and pretending it is one.”
What the letter actually says
The four-page document, addressed to head judge Steve Weinberger, argues that the rubric used to break ties between mass-monster archetypes and aesthetics-first competitors has not been formally updated since 2017. The judges propose three concrete changes — a published callout rationale, a mid-show conditioning re-check, and the elimination of the so-called muscularity tiebreaker.
Reached for comment, the league declined to confirm receipt of the letter but pointed to a previously scheduled judges' summit set for next month in Las Vegas. Whether the four signatories will be in the room remains to be seen.
For now, athletes preparing for the next qualifier are being told the rubric remains unchanged. Coaches we spoke to are not waiting for the league to move first.