The Hulk is absolutely iconic.
You just say his name and the image of his huge green muscles and towering form pops
up in your head instantly, there’s just no escaping it.
But what happens when you take the green out of that fearsome green monster?
Well today I’m going to show you.
These are a couple of real-life hulks that prove you don’t have to be green to get
the same terrifying effect.
You really don’t wanna mess with these guys.
Don’t believe me?
I’ll prove it.
Let’s get it on!
LESLIE KAI GREENE This absolute monster of a man is known as
Kai Greene but you might know him by a different name: The Predator.
The name alone should strike fear into your heart, but definitely not more than simply
looking at him will.
He rose to fame in 2009 when he won the Arnold Classic but really, that’s surprisingly
late because he’d been a huge tough guy for long before that.
In fact, he’d been showing off his insane bodybuilding muscles since middle school!
That’s right, he could’ve pummelled you into the ground if you picked on him even
at that tender age!
He wasn’t pro back then though, but it really didn’t take him long - he had the distinction
of becoming the youngest natural bodybuilder in the world when he went professional on
his 19th birthday!
That’s an amazing achievement considering how little most teens are.
I mean, what were you doing on your 19th birthday… actually, don’t answer that.
It’s safe to say that this is one person who wasn’t bullied in high school, because
even the most stupid bullies couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to pick on someone his size.
HWANG CHUL SOON At only 5 foot 10, Korean Hwang Chul Soon
might not be as towering a figure as the Hulk from the Marvel movies, but I dare you to
tell that to his face.
I definitely wouldn’t.
His shoulders are probably wider than he is tall!
It won’t surprise you to learn that he’s won loads of bodybuilding and weightlifting
competitions in his time, but hearing it said out loud like that is quite scary: he could
probably throw you across a room like a rag doll if he wanted.
It’s not surprising that he’s quite keen to show off - when you work as hard as he
does to get such a huge physique, you’re going to be inclined to use the little bit
of time you have left in the day after your workouts to show everyone your body.
So, if you decide you’re crazy enough to start a fight with this guy, you’ll probably
find him in the middle of the flashing cameras and crowds of women - but good luck, because
you’re gonna need it.
ROELLY WINKLAAR It must take some serious training to become
known as The Beast when your profession requires you to be surrounded by the most beast-like
physiques in the world, but Roelly Winklaar has done just that.
And really, it’s not that hard to see why people call him that - just look at the size
of him!
You know you’re an imposing figure when a picture of your back gets tens of thousands
of likes on Instagram!
And he almost didn’t become this way at all: he actually only started bodybuilding
after a car accident that nearly killed him, so if that hadn’t happened, we would have
one fewer impossibly huge men on the planet.
Those kinds of muscles definitely don’t build themselves and just watching him train
makes me feel like I’ve exercised too much today.
How he can do that every day is beyond me, but the work sure does show.
Did I mention the size of his back?
Well really, something that big needs to be mentioned at least twice.
DENIS CYPLENKOV It doesn’t matter what profession you’re
in, you’re going to find people with a speciality.
Denis Cyplenkov is one of those people.
He’s a Ukranian strongman, but ask someone what he’s famous for and they probably won’t
offer that up as an answer.
Instead, you’re likely to get some story about the size of his hands that you’ll
think is hugely exaggerated.
But it’s not.
Denis is in fact, one of the world’s best arm wrestlers, and he holds several championship
titles to prove it.
Sure he might have the biggest biceps in Russia, but unfortunately for him and all his training
to get those biceps, nobody really cares about that when you have an asset as unique and
impressive as his hands.
Seriously, his pinky is about twice the size of a normal man’s thumb, his hands could
honestly belong to a cartoon character.
And by the way, his wrist has a circumference of over 9 inches!
Can you imagine the grip strength this man has in his hulk hands!
Well, you don’t have to imagine, because here he is crushing walnuts with only two
fingers - and if that doesn’t prove something, I don’t know what will.
SERGEI TSYRULNIKOV Every so often, a true showman comes along.
Sergei Tsyrulnikov is one of those performers - he’s managed to use his incredible body
to put on some truly captivating shows.
He just has a mind for spectacle I guess.
It won’t surprise you that his videos go viral and that he has several world record
titles when you see the stunts he pulls off.
He’s pulled a 180 ton train down the tracks with just his body!
He can stop planes taking off using only his arms - yes, I said planes, two at the same
time, one arm for each.
He can even break metal chains just by flexing his muscles, like it’s no big deal.
And it seems like it actually isn’t a big deal to him - while we sit in awe and marvel
at what appears to be a genuine superhuman performing seemingly impossible feats of strength,
he claims to be doing it for a laugh.
He claims it's all in the name of irony - he just finds it funny to take the titles away
from people who trained hard for them.
Does that imply he doesn’t even train to be able to do this stuff?
Who knows, maybe he really is a superhero of some kind.
Whatever the case may be, I hope I never meet him in a dark alley.
BIG RAMY There are more than enough people in the world
who know how it feels when your parents want you to go into a job but you want to be something
totally different.
Like maybe they want you to become a doctor but your dream is to be a journalist, or maybe
they want you to carry on the family business as a fisherman but you want to become a hulk?
You’ve not heard that last one.
Well Big Ramy has.
He was just an Egyptian fisherman, like his father and his brothers, but he used to hit
the gym in his spare time.
But he was destined for fame - how can you not be when you’re that size?
He’s 310 pounds now, he’s bound to turn heads, which is probably why he was spotted
by that bodybuilding promoter that made him famous.
And now he carries the nickname Big in front of his name, which is quite the achievement
when all your competitors are also notably big.
And he’ll probably go on to do big things and win big titles and all that.
So there you have it: the Egyptian hulk fisherman.
Someone should write that comic.
KIRILL SARYCHEV Here’s someone with a few records that haven’t
been stolen by a laughing Tsyrulnikov: this man’s name is Kirill Sarychev, and he’s
famous in Russia for his incredible strength.
No, seriously, he might actually be the strongest man on earth.
At 6 foot 5 and 350 pounds, he’s a pretty imposing figure, so you wouldn’t think he’d
need to break weightlifting records to get people’s attention, but he’s sure good
at it.
He not only holds the world bench press record for lifting 739 pounds, which is genuinely
unbelievable, but he also set a new, seemingly unbeatable world record total at the World
Raw Powerlifting Federation Championships in 2018.
How much did he lift?
You won’t believe it, but I’ll tell you anyway: he came away with a total of 2386.5
pounds!
And it wasn’t easily earned, he recorded some truly incredible lifts to get that total,
including a 887.4 pound deadlift!
How is that humanly possible, you ask?
I don’t know either.
Maybe he’s actually the Hulk from the comics in disguise, that’s about as good an explanation
as any for someone being able to do something so impossible.
BLESSING AWODIBU So bodybuilding as we’ve clearly demonstrated,
is a calling for scary people.
That’s why they all have names like The Beast and The Predator - they want to be intimidating.
Unless you’re Blessing Awodibu.
He seems to think his incredible size makes him into a cartoon character: and he’s not
totally wrong!
As it turns out, he makes a great comedian and he spends loads of time playing up to
a camera, exploiting his Hulk-like size to get big laughs out of his Instagram followers.
And he’s become famous for his little comedy sketches.
Sure, he takes his bodybuilding super seriously too, and his workout routine is crazy, but
he doesn’t seem to think that all that hard work means that he should be taken too seriously.
He just goes for the biggest laughs, often playing dumb to make his intimidating size
as funny as possible: like a giant man-baby doing stupid stuff.
Or he just laughs at how huge he is, I guess it’s his famous Irish wit.
It seems a pretty good way to go, he’s definitely more likable than the other scary ones.
MARTYN FORD Nightmares are generally something you try
to avoid, especially if they appear in real life.
This man is The Nightmare, and you should probably take that as a warning, but if you’re
still not getting it, he’s also known as the Scariest Man on the Planet.
His real name is Martyn Ford, and his real height is an unbelievable 6 foot 8, so even
before his huge muscles, he was a huge hulk of a man… well, kind of, he was a skinny
cricketer, but he was still impressively tall.
But now he does have huge muscles and he’s putting them to good use: he’s become an
MMA fighter and he’s putting his Hulk-like figure to good use by putting himself on the
silver screen where an imposing figure like that belongs.
Maybe acting is the way to go, especially since he’s British and comes with the accent,
as if he wasn’t intimidating enough already.
ROMARIO DOS SANTOS ALVES You think being the Hulk doesn’t come with
risks?
Think again.
Romario Dos Santos Alves is a Brazilian amateur bodybuilder who wanted to become huge so bad
he made a terrible mistake.
That mistake is called Synthol.
It’s a mixture of oil, lidocaine and alcohol.
Yep sounds pretty bad already, but it’s even worse when you find out that it’s injected
to puff up the skin and make muscles look bigger.
Exactly how bad is it?
Well, Romario injected it into his biceps, triceps, back and legs every day, until he
overloaded his body with it.
His arms were in pain constantly and his muscles turned to rocks, so the only way he could
inject it was with a needle normally used on bulls, but he kept going, even when people
started getting scared of him because of his unnatural arms.
Finally, a doctor told him he’d destroyed his muscles and he would have to amputate
his arm.
Luckily that didn’t happen, but at least he learnt a valuable lesson about taking care
of his body.
Now he’s trying to become the Hulk through more natural techniques, and it’s really
working out for him: instead of children hiding from him, they now get excited to see what
they think is the real Hulk.
So it all worked out in the end!