EDGE
IN MEMORIAM
MATT KLUTKA,
1979–2015
Matt died on Dec.
11, 2015, sur-
rounded by
his loved ones.
Klutka’s
Legacy
In December 2015 we told you the story of
Matt Klutka and his battle for survival against
an aggressive form of cancer. Here, we
memorialize his life. BY MATT TUTHILL
THE PITCH CAME THROUGH
in a text message. A friend of a friend
telling me about “the most jacked
cancer patient ever.” The wording
made me snort, but of course I had
to see. He told me to look up Matt
Klutka. A quick glance at Twitter and
Facebook and I could tell he was
active, loved the outdoors, and
lifted—and I couldn’t really tell how
sick he was. How bad was the
cancer? This guy had abs and pecs,
60
MUSCLE & FITNESS
and…Matt only had weeks, my friend
said. And it had already been a month
and a half. He was only 36 years old.
Our photo director immediately
hired a photographer to go to Matt’s
house. I scheduled a phone interview
for the day after the shoot. A few
hours before we were supposed to
talk, the shots came through. We
looked at the training shots first. He
was jacked. Yes, the disease had
taken a toll, but the muscle definition
FEBRUARY 2016
was, amazingly, still there. It was
unbelievable. Then the photo director
showed me the portraits. He was
smiling in all of them.
When I called him, he talked about
how great the shoot was and how
excited he was to be in the magazine.
It had been a lifelong goal. Then I
started with the obvious question:
How did he get here?
He spared no detail as he ran
through the past two years of his life
in matter-of-fact terms. How the
shortness of breath and swelling in
his legs led him to the doctor and a
diagnosis of a rare and aggressive
cancer. He told me about the multiple
surgeries that followed; how training
his ass off had been his self-
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN