I HAD been warned about the seismic change before I met him, but even so it came as a shock. Because 'Jonny the Body' just got bigger - a lot bigger.

The chap who looked like a lamp-post with arms the last time our paths crossed, now has the profile of a ten-ton truck. He puts it down to good eating and plenty of pasta and an all-consuming desire to be a successful wrestler.

The good news is that it's paying off. For Jonny the Body, aka John Stallard, aged 23, from Vincent Road, Worcester, is now a top grappler. The former pupil of the city's Nunnery Wood High has won a succession of titles and can currently lay claim to being American Tag Champ.

It's a long way from the day three years ago when a bespectacled lad, only just on the lumpy side of thin, arrived in our office and announced he was going to carve a career as a pro wrestler and asked if we could write a story about him.

He cavorted on his back lawn for our photographer in a blue lycra jumpsuit that revealed every sticky-out bone and a Frank Spencer back-to-front beret, looking every inch the bloke who gets sand kicked in his face on the beach.

No more. Jonny the Body has exploded from under 11 stone to very nearly 18. The legs that would have once passed for spaghetti strands now look more like tree trunks, his arms are as thick as his legs once were and the waistline has blossomed to say the least.

In Australian terms he's built like a backyard dunny. So when he walked through the foliage-laden portals of Berrows House for a return bout with the notebook and pen you could excuse my double take.

This time Jonny brought with him a raft of photographs that charted his successful career. I particularly liked the one of him wearing a very fancy championship belt and a rather sinister expression.

The quantum change in his appearance he puts down to his other half, Dionne Francis.

SINCE the pair have been together, she has pumped three good meals a day into Jonny with all the right body-building ingredients.

"It's made me bigger and stronger and more able to compete," he explained. "I've needed a new lycra suit."

The first result of this "new body" came when he beat an opponent called Ice to take the Real American Wresting Championship at middleweight in a contest at Worcester's Perdiswell Sports Centre.

After studying a video of his style, which he describes as "old school" with more grappling techniques than the currently fashionable "chair swinging" antics, the Americans asked Jonny and his tag-team partner Gareth Humphries over to wrestle in a tournament in Philadelphia.

In a four-cornered contest, they took the title.

The success of this venture means he may be invited back again to fight in Tampa Bay, Florida. The Americans love a battler and Jonny is certainly that, having defeated the 24-stone Rampage to win the European Championship one night in Trowbridge.

"However, I did get a bit of help. His ex-wife jumped into the ring and hit him over the head with a chair."

All this would have been the stuff of dreams for young Jonny, who first fell in love with wrestling at the age of six after watching it on television. But when his mum took him to see his first live show, he cried his eyes out

"I think it all frightened me a bit. Anyway my mother made me stay on the basis she'd paid £5 for me and I wasn't leaving. By the end of the night I was really enjoying it."

SEVERAL years later, working in the staff canteen at Butlins in Minehead, he met some of the pro wrestlers appearing on the camp's show and it all went from there.

In his early career, he lost more bouts than he won, but then came the body change.

While Jonny once used to confuse his opponents by "speed and stealth and talking a lot", he can now match many of them for muscle. Which is perhaps a good job, because you don't get many 11 stone wrestlers.

If you're a fan of the grappling game, you can see the new style Jonny the Body, along with cohorts including Shox, The Bull, Shockwave, MTX and The Outcast on a bill at The Green Centre, Dines Green, Worcester, on Saturday, March 1. Doors open at 7pm and tickets cost £5 adults and £3.50 children available in advance from the Centre.

Star bout will be a "no holds barred" chain match - the contestants linked together by a chain which they can use as a weapon - between Jonny and Chris Cage.

There was a time when a decent St Christopher chain would have held John Stallard down. Now you'd need something that's fixed to a ship's anchor.