Bill Kazmaier

William Kazmaier (born December 30, 1953) is an American former powerlifter, strongman and professional wrestler. During his career, he set 40 world records across both powerlifting and strongman, and won two International Powerlifting Federation (IPF) World Championships and three World's Strongest Man titles.

In the 1980s, Kazmaier became famous for his claim to be "the strongest man who ever lived" by equaling and surpassing feats of strength of famous strongmen of the 20th century. He won the World Muscle Power Classic, Le Defi Mark Ten International and World Strongbow championships which were all revered for testing static strength and also became notorious for not being invited to the World's Strongest Man competition for four consecutive years.

Widely considered to be one of the greatest strength athletes of all-time, he was inducted into the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2017.

Kazmaier is of German ancestry. A star athlete in high school, he played football for two years at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before dropping out in 1974 to concentrate on lifting weights at the Madison YMCA. There he learned the fundamentals of powerlifting. Kazmaier then struggled to earn a living as an oil rigger, a bouncer, and a lumberjack.

At the 1978 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) National Championships in Los Angeles, California, Kazmaier squatted 782 lb (354.7 kg), bench pressed 534 lb (242.2 kg), and deadlifted 804 lb (364.7 kg) in the 275-pound weight class, which immediately placed him in the top rank in his first national powerlifting appearance. In 1979 at age 25, he set a world record with a bench press of 622 lb (282.1 kg) on the way to winning his first IPF World Powerlifting Championship in Dayton, Ohio. His winning lifts included an 865 lb (392.4 kg) squat, the 622 lb (282.1 kg) bench press and an 804 lb (364.7 kg) deadlift for a 2,291 lb (1,039.2 kg) total. He repeated the success in 1983 by first winning the United States Powerlifting Federation (USPF) National Powerlifting Championships in July and later the IPF World Championship in November for a second time. He won this IPF World Championship despite two major injuries. He had a severe pectoral injury, from which he never recovered completely, and shortly before the IPF Championships, had torn his hip flexors in the squat.

The world record bench press by June 1979 was 612 lb (277.6 kg), held by Sweden's Lars Hedlund. Kazmaier moved the world record stepwise up from 617.3 lb (280.0 kg) in July, 1979 to 622.8 lb (282.5 kg) in November 1979 to 633.8 lb (287.5 kg) in May, 1980 and finally to 661.4 lb (300.0 kg) at the USPF West Georgia Open Powerlifting Championships, held in Columbus, Georgia on January 31, 1981. In this competition, Kazmaier officially became the first human to bench press 300 kg (661.4 lb) (raw) in an IPF-sanctioned meet and recorded his lifetime best three-lift-total of 2,425 lb (1,100.0 kg), a powerlifting world record that remained unsurpassed for more than a decade. His winning lifts were: a 925.9 lb (420.0 kg) squat, the 661.4 lb (300.0 kg) bench press and an 837.7 lb (380.0 kg) deadlift. The bench press and deadlift were done raw (unequipped), while the squat was performed with wraps and a marathon squat suit. This powerlifting performance is regarded as one of the best of all time.

In November 1981, Kazmaier became one of the few lifters in history to hold world records in three of the four powerlifting events at the same time by setting a new deadlift world record at 886 lb (401.9 kg) in competition. From 1981 onwards Kazmaier's career was affected by multiple muscle tears and injuries, preventing him from setting the bar even higher. He sustained chest, shoulder and triceps injuries, ruling out further records in the bench press.

Kazmaier competed in six World's Strongest Man contests. In 1979 World's Strongest Man, he came in third after leading throughout much of the competition and beating powerlifting icon Don Reinhoudt in the car lift by deadlifting a 2,555 lb (1,159 kg) car. In the following years, he dominated the competitions in 1980, 1981, and 1982, winning all by significant margins. He was the first man to win the WSM title three times and to this day, remains one of only two men ever to win it three times in a row.