The Big Enchilada

He also wants to be multifaceted and famous. "Why can't I do what Arnold did?" he asks. "Bodybuilding. Movies. All of it. I want to be Cyborg III."

Doesn't all that suggest Steroids I?

"No, I've never used them, and let's eave it at that," he says. But it's not a subject that can be dismissed so quickly.

"There's nothing I can do," Mandarich says in frustration, "except to ask how many people work like I do? How many people have the frame I have? How many people have parents like mine? How many people weighed 13 pounds when they were born?"

Thirteen pounds?

"You gotta see his parents before you make any decisions about him," says Mandarich's agent, Vern Sharbaugh, of Cleveland.

Here are Vic and Donna Mandarich now, standing in the foyer of their house in Oakville, Ont., just southwest of Toronto. Vic, 59, a laborer at a Mack Truck assembly plant, is good-sized, 6'1", 210 pounds. But Donna, a gentle and smiling housewife, is a woman on a grand scale. According to Tony, his mother goes 5'11", 240 pounds. But more impressive than Mrs. Mandarich's height and weight is her regal bone structure, the impressive shoulders and limbs clearly passed along to her younger son.

"Tony's built just like Mom," says 27-year-old John, who is 6'4", 270 pounds. "Tony would wrestle her at 13, and she would pick him up and just slam him. It amazed him."

Donna Mandarich brings out photos of relatives on both sides of the family, proving that size comes with the tribe. Here are two nieces, each 6'2". There is barechested Uncle Dinko, 6'4", 300-plus pounds, watching a sheep being barbecued at a family picnic.

The Mandariches are tough as well as big. Vic and Donna escaped the Communist regime of Yugoslavia in 1957, stealing barefoot through the woods at midnight in pouring rain before fording a stream and entering Austria. They made their way to Canada, where they were eventually granted citizenship.