Donald Trump’s recent arrest in Atlanta has led to an interesting revelation about the former president: He’s built like a world-class athlete.
The 77-year-old Trump self-reported to be six feet tall and 215 pounds before being admitted to Georgia’s Fulton County Jail on Thursday. That’s a dramatic improvement from the six-foot-tall 240 pounds he claimed in April when he was indicted in New York on charges of falsifying company records.
By gaining an inch and losing 25 pounds, Trump practically shares the same dimensions with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, current heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk, and none other than Muhammad Ali.
Ali often weighed around 215 throughout his career. “The Greatest” was 213 when he scored a technical knockout against Cleveland Williams at Houston’s Astrodome in 1966 and a pound lighter in his next fight when he won a unanimous decision over Ernie Terrell.
By the time his rivalry with Joe Frazier began in 1971, Ali was fighting at exactly 215. But as he got older and started focusing on absorbing body punches, Ali’s weight quietly crept above 225. In his last fight, a unanimous decision from 1981 After the defeat by Trevor Berbick, Ali tipped the scales at 236 – almost as much as Trump claimed to weigh five months ago.
According to the BMI, Trump is actually the ideal weight for a six-foot senior
At six feet tall, Lamar Jackson weighs about the same as Donald Trump, the ex-president claims
Oleksandr Usyk, who faces Daniel Dubois on Saturday, is also 6 feet 8 inches tall and 215 pounds
Trump is actually the ideal weight for a six-foot senior, according to the body-mass index published by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
And that should come as no surprise. Trump was a former high school football and baseball player at the New York Military Academy in the early 1960s and regularly boasted about his athletic prowess.
“When I was 17, I loved sports,” Trump told MTV in 2010. “I was always a good athlete and I played football, baseball, soccer and I wrestled. I think I liked baseball the most.’
Trump was so good, he claims, he could have played professionally.
“I was captain of the baseball team,” Trump said. “I was meant to be a professional baseball player. Fortunately, I decided to go into real estate instead. I played first base and I also played catcher. I was a good hitter and I was just having a good time. Now I play golf.’
Shohei Ohtani (left) and Luguentz Dort (right) are about the same height and weight as Trump
Three years later, Trump boasted on Twitter about his playing days: “I played football and baseball, sorry, but I said I was the best baseball player in New York State.”
Slate’s Leander Schaerlaeckens then discovered nine box scores from Trump’s high school games, in which he went 4 for 29 at the plate.
Trump said his baseball career was derailed when he attended a tryout with “another young boy named Willie McCovey.” McCovey, the late Hall of Famer and legendary Giants slugger, was born in Alabama in 1938 — eight years before Trump was born in Queens.
Other athletes who share roughly the same body measurements as Trump include Los Angeles Angels star Shohei Ohtani, St. Louis Cardinals slugger, Paul Goldschmidt, Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer, Oklahoma City Thunder forward Luguentz Dort, and rookie Houston Texans quarterback CJ Stroud .
Today, Trump limits his physical gifts to the golf course, where he is known for his powerful urges.
“He can really hit the ball,” said PGA legend Ernie after watching Trump hit a hole-in-one in 2022. “He makes good contact. He has a good swing. Like any amateur, you must do the short game practice. I keep talking to him about his chipping. He’s a pretty good putter. He used to have to have a handicap of 4 or 5. Today he’s probably a 10, 12.’
Trump has also played with the likes of Jack Nicklaus and Brooks Koepka, both of whom have complimented his playing.
His skill as a golfer led caddies at a Westchester, New York club to compare him to one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.
“…the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway that they came up with a nickname for him: “Pele,” wrote Rick Reilly in his 2019 book, “Commander in Cheat.”