by Moe Zilla

Created on: May 25, 2010

On May 12, 2010, Michael Lynche was voted off of American Idol. But 16 weeks earlier, his wife gave birth to their first daughter. That news came during Michael's first week in Hollywood, and it was the beginning of one of the season's wildest rides. From the Queens borough of New York, 26-year-old Michael travelled all the way to California, and delivered 17 strong performances before he was finally eliminated.

Callers actually voted Michael voted off the show twice - though the first time, the judges unanimously agreed to use their once-per-season "save" to return him to the competition. Michael squeaked out of the Top Nine, but his unpopularity lingered, since just three weeks later Ryan Seacrest revealed that Michael's vote total had still dropped him into the bottom three. The next week Michael dropped even lower, into the bottom two, and this downward trend continued. By the next week he'd been eliminated after only reaching the Top Four. But he was a contestant they'd never forget.

"Big Mike" was 6' 1", and weighed 300 pounds. (When they'd asked how he planned to differentiate himself from the other contestants, Lynche replied "Beating everyone on the set in arm wrestling.") Mike can actually bench press 505 pounds, according to his official biography on the American Idol site, and in memorable segments Michael proved it by lifting 17-year-old Idol contestant Aaron Kelly - and host Ryan Seacrest. In Hollywood, Lynche first wowed the judges by singing John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change" and "Get Ready" by the Temptations. But before even reaching California, he'd  impressed Florida with his physical strength, playing football for the University of Central Florida on a full athletic scholarship.

Though Michael now lives Astoria, New York, he was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, and it was at the University of Central Florida where he met his wife Christa. “Everybody should go to college,” he told the Orlando Sentinel. “It really matured me in that time, being from high school, and focused me.”  The team's defense coordinator remembered him as "a big, strong wide-body guy" (and "a heck of a nose guard"). But before his junior year of college, Michael's mother died suddenly of pancreatic cancer. He'd left the football program to be closer to her during her illness, but now the 20-year-old's life was at a new crossroads.

"My heart aches for my mom who died," Lynche revealed on his American Idol questionnaire six years

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