ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Art Flanagan just wishes it would have been a fair fight.

"Stitches all over up here," says the 78-year-old St. Paul man as he runs his hand across his forehead. "Half my eyebrow is gone."

In a fair fight the former bodybuilder might have had a chance. But not when he was blindsided at the start of his daily 3:00 a.m. bicycle ride by a man swinging a blunt object. Flanagan thinks it was a baseball bat or a lead pipe.

"When he hit me on the side of the head, it was such a powerful blow, that I just fell. The bike and everything went right over."

As Flanagan hit the pavement at Hamline and Minnehaha, the attacker started kicking him. A witness walking his dog told St. Paul police investigators the man then jumped in the passenger seat of a dark SUV and drove off.

Neither victim nor witness was able to give a good description of the assailant.

Police say there's no apparent motive for the attack. Robbery does not appear to be a motivating factor since nothing was taken from Flanagan.

"I don't have any enemies or anything like that," said Flanagan. "I don't know who would do this."

Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Schnell says investigators hope somebody knows. Friday he made a public plea for somebody with information to say "what happened to this man was simply not right and come forward and let us know so we can hold him responsible for this random unprovoked attack."

Schnell said Flanagan is well known by the police officers in his neighborhood for his morning bike rides. They often see him on his route or as he stops for coffee at a gas station.

Flanagan suggests the man who attacked him might be better off in the hands of police. "78 years old don't mean nothing. I've been working out."

Flanagan was a champion bodybuilder in the late 1950s. "I was Mr. Twin Cities," he says as pulls out his black and white publicity stills of a sculpted young man. "I was Mr. Saint Paul. I was Mr. Hercules."

At the time of his attack, the retired church janitor was still taking his daily 3:00 a.m. bike ride for exercise just as he did 50 years ago.

"I would give a thousand dollars see the guy face-to-face right now. I'd take a couple punches at him. I'd fix his face just like he did mine."

No doubt plenty of people who wish Art Flanagan would get the chance.