With a body fat of around 7%, Cristiano Ronaldo puts 20-year-old footballers to shame but Shaquille O’Neal believes he measured even lesser than that in 1995
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When an NBA fan looks at an old Shaquille O’Neal footage running towards a basket, they don’t think about body fat, they just see a 7-foot mountain running with full force to take everything along with him on the way.
While entertainment and production on the field carry much more weight than the fitness of an athlete, fitness is what determines how productive and long their career will be.
And one thing that stopped the 4x NBA champ from achieving even more accolades in the NBA and probably becoming a GOAT contender was him losing his desire to be as physically well-built as he was during his early years in the league.
Towering at 7’1, 305 pounds, the 15x All-Star once reportedly even had a body fat percentage of around 7.5% while he was chugging 10 meals at a time according to Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Shaquille O’Neal claims to have 6-8% body fat during his Orlando Magic tenure
On his podcast, The Big Podcast with Shaq the Lakers’ legend was discussing about shredding some weight and getting in shape, later he claimed to have a lesser fat percentage than 7% back in 1995 which, if true, would make him fitter than Cristiano Ronaldo.
The current Manchester United star shocked the world along with medical experts 4 years back when he joined Juventus from Real Madrid and measured 7% body fat during the medical.
That’s just a 0.5% differential from what Shaq officially measured back in the day. But going below seven would still make The Big Aristotle have less fat than most footballers in their 20s.
Also read: How Shaquille O’Neal changed the life of a family of 12 with $1000 and some serious generosity
So, we can go with the usual “Shaq getting carried away with his hot takes” notion here because having 7.5% body fat is already way too less than what a man at that height should carry. If Giannis Antetokounmpo had claimed this we could believe it.
Keep in mind that The Big Diesel later gained 50-pounds between his championships from 2000 to 2002 and was never able to keep the fat percentage under 12% after leaving the Lakers.
