Meet Joe Wheatley: the man behind the Muscle Beach Championship

As the Muscle Beach Championship returns to the Venice Boardwalk on Monday, promoter Joe Wheatley reflects 26 years of biceps, celebrities, and keeping the legend alive.

 

Joe Wheatley knelt beside his bed and prayed for a miracle.

It was the spring of 2000. The legendary Muscle Beach Championship in Venice had flatlined, collapsing to just eight competitors the year before. Wheatley was taking over as promoter and needed a miracle to keep the event from going belly up.

“What are you doing?” his wife, Christine, asked.

“I’m praying for 60 competitors,” Wheatley replied.

Christine looked at him. “Honey, they’ve never had more than eight.”

The next morning on the boardwalk, Wheatley walked up to the registration desk with his heart in his throat. Christine looked up at him and whispered, “63!”

“I started crying right there,” Wheatley remembers. “By the time I walked into the weight pen to address the athletes, I was still crying. I shared the story with them, they started crying, and the rest is history.”

LIL JON & LIFTING WEIGHTS

A quarter century later, the tears are gone and Wheatley is the proud ringleader of a southern California institution.

Muscle Beach isn’t just a traditional men’s weight pen anymore—it’s an international pop-culture phenomenon. During his tenure, Wheatley has expanded the stage beyond traditional bodybuilding, introducing popular modern divisions like Figure, Bikini, Men’s Physique, and Vintage Swimsuit.

That expanded appeal is why last Labor Day, 53-year-old hip-hop icon Lil Jon hit the stage in a posing suit, taking third place in the Men’s Physique Master’s category and triggering a whirlwind of national press.

“Sometimes I know when celebrities are coming, sometimes I don’t,” Wheatley tells The Sun. “Having Lil Jon on stage was unique, but we get people flying in from Germany, France, and Brazil now.”

SANTA MONICA ROOTS

The event’s DNA traces straight back to Santa Monica. Muscle Beach was originally born as a children’s playground in the early 1930s just south of the pier. In the decades that followed, it became an international hub for fitness culture.

But by 1959, community concerns over crowd sizes, unconventional lifestyles, and a criminal investigation involving several regulars led the city to bring in the bulldozers. Displaced bodybuilders and weightlifters quickly migrated two miles south.

Years ago, a friend suggested Wheatley move the show back up the coast. He offered a simple response: “Where are the bleachers? Where’s the stage?”

“I got crickets,” Wheatley recalls. “He suddenly realized there was no infrastructure.  No place to do the competition.”

PROTECTING INTEGRITY

Still, even in wild, anything-goes Venice Beach, Wheatley protects his stage fiercely. While anyone can cough up the $150 cash entry fee on show morning, Wheatley makes it clear that not just anybody gets to stick around.

“We don’t have people who don’t belong on stage,” he insists. “I reserve the right to turn money away. I need to protect the integrity of my show.”

Occasionally, Venice’s signature eccentricities manage to slip past even the tightest security.

“We had a guy walk out on stage in a white bikini once,” Wheatley laughs. “I heard this buzz from the audience…and immediately told the expeditor to get him off. My shows aren’t a laughingstock.”

That standard is why the Labor Day Championship, set for Monday, Sept. 7, remains a serious draw. This year’s lineup bridges classic bodybuilding royalty with modern boardwalk culture.

The show will feature a special honor for 94-year-old Chuck Mahoney—Arnold Schwarzenegger’s very first U.S. training partner when the future California governor first arrived from Austria.  Sarah Clark, Miss Muscle Beach 1948, will also be in attendance.

“We’ll have well over 100 competitors on stage,” Wheatley says.

MORE THAN MUSCLES

While the bodybuilding shows built his public legacy, Wheatley’s personal passion project takes over the boardwalk every winter: the Annual Muscle Beach Toy Drive. Marking its 19th year this December 6, the drive partners with the LAPD Pacific Division to raise thousands of dollars and toys for local children.

“Putting in the Muscle Beach Walk of Fame and building the toy drive for the Pacific Area Boosters—those are two of the things I am proudest of,” Wheatley says. “We’ve helped thousands and thousands of kids over the last 19 years.”

Now 72, Wheatley is still the undisputed king of the boardwalk—even if he avoids hanging around Venice on non-show days just to dodge the eccentric locals swarming him with wild pitches.

“Word spreads when I’m down there,” Wheatley says. “People come out of the woodwork with all these crazy ideas. My wife finally told me, ‘Maybe you should stop going down there unless it’s showtime.'”

‘UNTIL THE WHEELS COME OFF’

Sadly, the show almost came to a permanent halt –– at least for Wheatley –– when Christine passed away in April, 2025.  Devastated, he briefly considered walking away from the boardwalk for good.

“I sat next to the nightstand where her urn is and spoke to her,” he recalls. “I asked her what I should do.”

Her answer was immediate.

“She absolutely told me, ‘Don’t give this up. We worked too hard,'” he says.

“So I’m just going to keep doing it until the wheels come off.”

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