Babe Ruth - Maybe the greatest player in the history of baseball, but had a huge gut and chubby face.
Diego Maradona - Soccer great who looked like a bum. He also played in world class form for years while being addicted to drugs.
Larry Bird - No muscle definition to speak of.
Larry Allen - Considered by many to be the best OL in football history.
Who else?
I was thinking Bird too…
Damn fine basketball player…
George. Fucking. Foreman. Too much time with the grill and not enough time jumpin’ rope, methinks.
Gilbert Brown- Nose Tackle Green Bay Packers. One of the best ever against the run. Biggest belly I ever saw on an athlete but surprisingly quick.
David Wells- Notorious drunk and fat slob but the man can pitch.
Oooh almost forgot the “round mound of rebound” Charles Barkley
When he won the title back in 1994, he was 45 years old. He beat Michael Moorer by knocking him out in the 10th round of a scheduled 12 round fight. Not too bad for a fat guy (who could easily knock your head completely off your shoulders if he had the mind to).
Fernando Valenzuela pitcher , Dodgers
David Wells pitcher, various
John Daily golfer
Foreman is proof that a person can carry a lot of bodyfat, but be in extremely good aerobic shape.
Shortly after Foreman won the title in 1994, an NPR reporter described following him around for a day. The reporter remarked on how long Foreman could chop wood non-stop, which is quite a demanding activity. He also noted that during the title fight, Foreman stayed on his feet between rounds.
You don’t do that if you’re out of shape.
I never though Muhammed Ali looked all that imposing, certainly not to the degree that some boxers reached like Norton and Hagler.
John Daly, one of the longest drivers on the PGA, looks like the antithesis of somebody about to have a heart attack on the golf course.
Going way out on this one, but for anyone who watches MMA (Mixed Martial Arts), you’d have to go with Kazushi Sakuraba. Arguably, the greatest fighter of all-time and he doesn’t even look it.
Wayne Gretzky - Not really out shape as in fat, but had the physique of a 14 year old. Was almost always the smallest and weakest guy on his team. The greatest hockey player ever though, and a draft choice of the Toronto Blue Jays as a SS, IIRC.
John Kruk - Famously “a baseball player, not an athlete”. Career 300 hitter who looked like a truck driver and smoked in the dugout.
Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati. They both look like they spend all their time on the couch eating Ding-Dongs. Seles packed more poundage than was good for her game, especially post-stabbing, but Capriati seems to be at a good weight for hers.
Except possibly because you’re afraid you won’t be able to stand up again 
Antonio Alfonseca, pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. I’m not saying this guy is a good athlete, because he oftentimes appears less skilled at handling balls than a convent full of nuns. But, this guy has to have the biggest gut in professional sports ever. This is a man who likely can’t see his own penis without the aid of an elaborate system of mirrors.
Like Babe Ruth, this isn’t exactly true. Foreman is fat now but in his prime, when he was beating the crap out of Joe Frazier, the man was a tremendous looking athlete.
Most pictures of Babe Ruth come from when he was older. In his prime he was in good shape and didn’t look like that.
jk1245, Gretzky could not have been drafted as a baseball player, as Canadians were not subject to the amateur draft at the time. He was never signed in any other way, either. He IS a very talented baseball player and might have made the major leagues if he’d tried, but he stopped playing organized ball by the time he was 16. He is in fact exceptionally good at every sport he’s ever tried - he’s a scratch golfer, was a terrific tennis player, you name it.
BTW, Alfonseca has 6 fingers on both hands.
Sherman Plunkett. A all-pro tackle for the NY Jets. For most of his career he was over 300 pounds – at a time when that was a very high playing weight – and very slow. He held on because he was blocking for Joe Namath, and since it took defenders several extra seconds to get around him (it was like trying to rush with the Empire State Building in your way), it worked out pretty well for the Jets.
He also is credited with dubbing Namath “Broadway Joe.”
Mickey Lolich. Great pitcher for the Detroit Tigers best known for winning three games (and defeating Bob Gibson in Game 7 on two days’ rest) of the 1968 WS. Lolich had a beer gut and joked he was the beer drinker’s idol.
I saw this show about a woman (and I don’t remember here name, dammit) who is apparently the world’s greatest coldwater swimmer. And who is frankly…fat.
Which makes sense, given her sport of choice, she’s insulated. Like a seal. But I wanted to bring her up somewhere in opposition to the idea that extra weight necessarily equals being unhealthy or out of shape. 'Cause you don’t get across the English Channel or the Bering Strait if you’re out of shape.
Anymore, all NFL offensive lineman appear to be terribly fat physical specimins, not just Allen. Sure, any of them are strong enough to beat the tar out of me with one of their pinky fingers, but they sure all have fat guts that hang out over their football pants.
