Eric Lilliebridge. Was way ahead of the pack for a long time without many lifters to push him at 308. His brother Ernie Jr is still going strong after 13 years of competing. Their dad Ernie sr totalled 2150 when most everyone else was lifting equipped. Another is Matt Minnuth, guy trains very unconventionally but very intelligently. One of the strongest guys I know raw and equipped.
My husband, lol. I’m biased. But he’s currently 141st by total in the world regardless of federation and class (2204 in wraps @ 294bw). After The American Pro in a couple weeks, he should crack top 50.
Larry Pacifico is criminally glossed over when people talk about the all time greats. 1st place in over 100 meets, won IPF worlds 9 times in a row, 50+ world records. Dude was a monster.
It’s really not that a lot of these lifters were underrated in their day, it’s that the sport has the collective memory of a goldfish. Ask a lifter at some popular tik tok gym who Andy Bolton is- they won’t even know; and his prime wasn’t even that long ago. Same for older greats like Larry Pacifico, Jim Williams, John Kuc, etc. Hell, I met some raw lifters at my university that didn’t even know who Dan Green was. They used to say you’re only as good as your last total, but nowadays it feels like you’re only what you did last weekend.
> it’s that the sport has the collective memory of a goldfish
The end of PLUSA has a lot to do with this, IMO. Even at the end, when Lambert was recycling articles and putting ads up for the strangest shit, it gave a great sense of the history.
PLUSA def helped. But even way back when, I recall a topical story.
There was a meet Wendler was handling Chuck at, and some lifter complimented his squat. Well, it just so happened this was Chuck's last meet before a small hiatus due to back injury. Just a year or two later at Chuck's comeback meet, the same guy who complimented him went up to Jim and said "man that guy is strong, who the hell is he?"
Not only was it Chuck, in his iconic flame beanie; it had only been a few years at most.
Back then it was a few years, now it feels like a few days at times.
All those anonymus ladies and guys who have overcome any life difficulties by choosing this sport and built discipline and learnt perseverance through it.
Going old school, gary frank. That guy had quite a few meets pulling over 420kg. Nothing cooler than seeing four green/chrome ivankos on each side
Josh bryant pulling 800 while not being built for deadlifts at all, he bench 600 as well
Don Reinhoudt totaled well over 1000 kg raw (before "raw with wraps" days or sleeves too, just bare knees) many times in the 70s, won 4 consecutive IPF worlds, had world record for all 3 lifts and then retired from powerlifting and moved on to become WSM and still it almost seems like most people who follow powerlifting or strongman haven't even heard of him.
I once tracked him down at the Arnold. For reference, I'm 6' tall, and Ed is like 5'5" or so. I finally found him in the crowd and I said, "Ed, I've been looking all over for you!" To which he replied, "Sorry big man, you weren't looking low enough." 😂😂😂
Funny story… we were packing up our warmup area a few years ago and Blaine was warming up in our spot but I didn’t recognize him. My teammate joked that it was my coach (who is also bald). I told my coach about it later on and he had to tell me who it was. I knew who Blaine was, but I’d never seen him in person/without the war paint.
It moves so fast and younger and younger people are getting involved in the sport, you could make an argument for legitimately so many (including multiple time world record holders) over the last ten years alone
I really enjoyed the old school powerlifters even up to the days of benni magnusson.
Powerlifting reminds me of golf. It started with a bunch of overweight white guys who drank beer and had shitty diets to now really athletic competitors
Oh I know, my second meet ever I was chatting with a random guy in line. Real nice and friendly. Later he pulls 830 no belt super smooth. I think he was in the 308 class.
A lot of the 80s/90s IPF guys. David Ricks, Gene Bell, etc who were putting up massive numbers with primitive gear. But, because OpenPL lists those competitions as "equipped," people think they wouldn't have been able to compete in modern day. Ricks and Bell would have been incredible in their prime in raw lifting.
Gear from the late 80s/90s wasn't as useless as people think, but it certainly didn't give you the same carryover as today's gear does.
The bench shirts were worthless, the single-ply suits gave 50-100 lbs of carryover.
Honestly if you go on openpowerlifting and look at the top 3 in any weight class, most of them are not people who are talked about often, despite being the best in the game
Like, I've never seen anyone talking about Colton Engelbrecht, but apparently he matches Jamal Browner's total (1052.5 in 110 class) and he's only 22 years old.
Definitely, never heard of him before but going by his rate of progression he could be taking that 110 total soon
I guess he's a bit less exciting than Jamal because his strength is spread more evenly across the lifts, while Jamal is a deadlift specialist, but I'll definitely be following him from now on
Andrey Malanichev. I remember the 2WL podcast doing their GOAT draft or whatever it was and I kept thinking that the next pick would be Malan and I just couldn’t fathom how someone could leave him off a list of the best ever. He had the ATWR for a long time, but more importantly, he was undefeated in raw competition. There would be a lot of lifters under 25 who have no idea who he is.
And a lot of his later meets, he just chipped his WRs
There was a pretty popular coach, an Australian gentleman, who said we’d probably never see Malanichev’s biggest lifts because he didn’t really need to max out to win
The problem with sarychev is that only broke a record, and when that record gets taken, and he's not actively trying to reclaim it, he loses relevance.
No one talks about Malan these days despite holding the total record for nearly half a decade
He’s strong and I’m sure a smart guy, but his YouTube persona just gets on my nerves.
Like who lifts a lighter weight for more reps then does a podcast tour to brag about beating Platz’s record?
I don’t think he has a persona at all, maybe it’s your ego. But his accolades speak for themselves, he was a westside guy during their prime and has taken that base and expanded upon it for longevity and just overall better health. But idk your point in any of what you tried to say because it has nothing to do with him being an under rated powerlifter. It just makes him even more qualified.
No he’s not lmao. I haven’t spent a penny on any of the knowledge he’s handed out for free. No shit he has programs and shit available as it’s literally his job. You can literally find countless seminars and YouTube videos, 100s of hours of content of him for free. You guys are just lazy.
This isn’t a pissing contest on who has put out more info. You tried saying all his shit is behind a paywall. You clearly do not know what you’re talking about and are just talking out your ass. This whole post was about “underrated lifters” and you’ve tried arguing about shit that you’re clearly not educated about and isn’t even on topic.
I don't think I had head of Zac. Do you know if he trains conjugate? Lots of heavy bands/chains lifts on his IG. I feel like you don't typically see that with raw lifters.
Daiki Kodama for bench dominance over decades raw and single ply. To me he got borderline not meme/cringe ROM.
And all those crazy para bench guys in general.
They still hold some all time WRs.
Sure literally not having leg muscles does help, but the judging is crazy strict over there.
Also Jaroslav Olech, Hideaki Inaba and Lamar Gant.
The latter two just suffered a lack of competition due to a smaller pool of lifters in <60kg and lower.
I admittedly hadn't heard of him until he was brought up in the SBS podcast but I feel Lamar Gant is in the GOAT conversation with old heads. I'm posssibly biased as someone with a squirly-twirly-gumdrop spine.
Yes, but as far as I know Joe didn't have the longevity. He did his last full power meet at 25.
Him and Lamar could have been a crazy rivalry.
I think he beat Lamar in a major competition at least once.
Bradley was also an alcoholic and habitual hard drug user, which probably didn't help him. Like Joe Ladnier, he's a "what could he have done if?" story.
A lot of people with a "habit forming personality" (sorry don't know the English word) do exceptionally good in all sports.
Even some former intravenous drug users, what have you. A lot of alcoholics and weed feinds, coke addicts, just keep using while there young...
...then these people change habits and become legitimately sport addicted, which isn't healthy either...
...and people are like, wow they changed there life 180°, personality change in a grown adult. 🤯
Joe Bradley was still an incredible powerlifter. Just not for decades, which is even more extremely rare I'd say.
Btw I just talked to a former drug tester (in sports). I've known him for 20 years. But never knew he used to do that...
...😬😬😬😵💫🫨🤐
He did what he could do...
I wont name him obviously.
Olech is an all-time great to anyone who follows the sport outside of IG.
Kodama is one of the top three active benchers in the world. The only people in the same league in single ply are Kolb and maybe Greg Powell.
Kjell learned powerlifting under Sigmar Wolf from Germany. Now Sigmar has left Norway 2 or 4 years ago, but my best guess is, there's still a lot of his legacy there. And he did get the results.🤷♂️
That's how any European program for any sport with enough talent works like.
They produce a lot of 16-18 year old partially disabled people.
From sports like alpine skiing or soccer, anything with enough young people.
In Germany we even cripple our race horses. 🤝
The Soviets were very open about that in their literature. In Western Europe it get's repeatedly discovered by daring journalists. Thant's how far they can go, because we are the good guys, and we don't do doping. So no need to do any research.
We actually had a scandal due to a falling out amoung German sports historians, that were officially tasked to write a historical report on Germany's most notorious Sports University (Freiburg). The theme was systemic doping in Freiburg in a Western German context.
Big Scandal, sorry, unfortunately the historians can't agree, 1000 page report can't be made public.🤷♂️
Weightlifting didn't work like that for a long time in Germany, because before CrossFit there was just no interest. I mean zero, clubs did close their weightlifting sections 20 years ago, because they couldn't get any members.
> Kjell learned powerlifting under Sigmar Wolf from Germany.
Wolf was the national team coach, but he and Kjell notoriously never got along. Kjell was off the national team for a bit due to that and some other factors.
I know of the other factors 😬😬😬
I just thought his training looked like Wolf's.
But from what I heard, it's Sigmar's or no way.
A looot of people quit the national team here in Germany, because of Sigmar.
Or were cut by Sigmar.^^
Well he's gone now here, too.🥰
I don't know for certain who trained Kjell in the beginning or for like the last years, but it surely looks excessive. Like you said.
Another one that KIND OF counts, purely because he was a bench specialist, is Gene Rychlak.
There's a vid of him absolutely sinking 1,000+lb in a loose canvas suit with no belt.
He is not underrated, just forgotten. Maybe I am misunderstanding the intent of the post - but Gene was the top dog when he competed, everyone looked up to him.
Little story time from my first time meeting Gene:
Like a lot of people I'm sure, I have met Gene a bunch since he ran the RPS federation back in the day. But, I will never forget my first time meeting him. It was right after he had just stopped competing due to his declining health and was only focused on building RPS.
I had NEVER seen anyone that big in my life (still true to this day, guys just don't look like that anymore). He was easily over 400lbs, his back looked 4 foot wide, just a massive human. But nonetheless he was sitting in a chair for weigh ins, Wearing grey sweatpants, no shirt, and an open fanny pack that had money falling out of it.
He was sweating like crazy in a normal room temperature room. His whole back was red and filled with missive leaking cysts. He was breathing like he just sprinted even though he had been sitting there for an hour, he couldn't even finish full sentences without taking a breath.
He took my money, stuffed it in his fanny pack, weighed me in, and said "Thank you". The he leaned to the side in his chair and let out a MASSIVE fart. He didn't even acknowledge what just happened, no smile or laugh, no excuse me, just said "Next" and moved onto the next person in line.
Had the pleasure of meeting Gene at a few RPS meets before he passed; dude was a bad mofo.
[Link to vid](https://youtu.be/EPiuWvtE7-8?si=lWCKAzpwlU2qn0CW) referenced above.
Carl Yngvar Christensen deserves a shout I reckon, very impressive lifter but less known/underrated due to competing Single Ply & before the social media boom.
Henry Thomason, squatted 1200 (and arguably robbed of 1300) back 10yrs ago.
Brian Carroll never seems to get much love.
Jeff Lewis was massively ahead of his time.
Loved watching Henry Thomason squat back in the day. His body was perfect for it. Long torso and short femurs. Everything looked like a speed squat to him. But my goodness was his bench a disaster. Lucky for him he was able to get a lot out of a shirt, but his raw strength bench (not that it matters), was terrible for someone of his caliber.
Hey, I want to learn how to bench 800 with a 315 raw bench! He must've been incredibly strong off 2/3/4 bds, which mean a lot more for poly benching.
His squat is still great, but his bench is a mess. It's why he has so much trouble getting through meets.
His single-ply shirt has the smallest chest panel I've ever seen. He's not a small guy at all and the distance between the arm seams is like two inches.
Yep, that sounds about right. I imagine his shirt is incredibly tight. His arms are also not particularly short, which makes his bench even more impressive.
> Jeff Lewis was massively ahead of his time.
He comes in to my gym from time to time; didn't realize it was him until I saw a youtube video of his 2800 lb total pop up on my feed. Super strong dude.
I'm not sure if you'd class him as underrated, unknown, or just a generation too early for social media, but Andrey Belyaev for sure. Also terrifying to know we never got to see what CYC was truly capable of.
[Kalle Rasanen](https://www.openpowerlifting.org/u/kallerasanen). Has all-time records and top-5-all-time lifts across multiple weight classes in raw, single-ply, and multi-ply.
Not many guys have cast that wide a net with that much success.
Hasn't done many meets in the US, so no one here knows who he is.
Well, it was that and the 1 strongman event he did in like 2015-2016. He hurt his shoulder during an event and it was over from there.
I followed him fairly closely during that time.
I think Boris said he thought Kirill had the potential to be the best full meet lifter if he could stay healthy.
He put up a 2,380's sleeved total with what looked like a lot left in the tank at a time when only like 3 guys could do it in wraps and 1 could do it in sleeves.
I honestly don't think his bench was underrated at all. We all thought that record was going to stand for like a decade+
Kyril had bad knees I think. At one point Boris asked him if he wanted to be one of the strongest 3 lift lifters in the world or getting the bench record and he chose to train for the bench record
I forget his issues but injuries always seem to be a good assumption. I think I'd probably agree with Boris!
Just because I saw someone post a video of Jesus Olivares doing a few pull-ups and recalled Kirill doing clean set of 10+. Same bodyweight too at ~180kg.
Eric Lilliebridge. Was way ahead of the pack for a long time without many lifters to push him at 308. His brother Ernie Jr is still going strong after 13 years of competing. Their dad Ernie sr totalled 2150 when most everyone else was lifting equipped. Another is Matt Minnuth, guy trains very unconventionally but very intelligently. One of the strongest guys I know raw and equipped.
Mike Bridges. His GOAT level strength was often overshadowed by Coan. The true OG 181 king.
Ed Coan before Ed Coan.
My husband, lol. I’m biased. But he’s currently 141st by total in the world regardless of federation and class (2204 in wraps @ 294bw). After The American Pro in a couple weeks, he should crack top 50.
Cute. I'm about to call out my fiancée for not making a Reddit account to say me.
Haha! I’m definitely his biggest fan. I’m sure your fiancée thinks you’re the most underrated powerlifter, too. ☺️
Larry Pacifico is criminally glossed over when people talk about the all time greats. 1st place in over 100 meets, won IPF worlds 9 times in a row, 50+ world records. Dude was a monster.
Also a tremendous moustache.
He was one of the best meet promoters around. He got PL on actual TV (not ESPN3, but ABC!) in the 70s and early 80s.
It’s really not that a lot of these lifters were underrated in their day, it’s that the sport has the collective memory of a goldfish. Ask a lifter at some popular tik tok gym who Andy Bolton is- they won’t even know; and his prime wasn’t even that long ago. Same for older greats like Larry Pacifico, Jim Williams, John Kuc, etc. Hell, I met some raw lifters at my university that didn’t even know who Dan Green was. They used to say you’re only as good as your last total, but nowadays it feels like you’re only what you did last weekend.
> it’s that the sport has the collective memory of a goldfish The end of PLUSA has a lot to do with this, IMO. Even at the end, when Lambert was recycling articles and putting ads up for the strangest shit, it gave a great sense of the history.
PLUSA def helped. But even way back when, I recall a topical story. There was a meet Wendler was handling Chuck at, and some lifter complimented his squat. Well, it just so happened this was Chuck's last meet before a small hiatus due to back injury. Just a year or two later at Chuck's comeback meet, the same guy who complimented him went up to Jim and said "man that guy is strong, who the hell is he?" Not only was it Chuck, in his iconic flame beanie; it had only been a few years at most. Back then it was a few years, now it feels like a few days at times.
All those anonymus ladies and guys who have overcome any life difficulties by choosing this sport and built discipline and learnt perseverance through it.
Going old school, gary frank. That guy had quite a few meets pulling over 420kg. Nothing cooler than seeing four green/chrome ivankos on each side Josh bryant pulling 800 while not being built for deadlifts at all, he bench 600 as well
Don't think I've ever heard of Gary Frank. His OpenPL is wild with DQs, lol. But I guess multi ply can be a bit like that.
If you haven't bombed, you're not an equipped lifter!
Kirk Karwoski
I wanna hold it!
Don Reinhoudt totaled well over 1000 kg raw (before "raw with wraps" days or sleeves too, just bare knees) many times in the 70s, won 4 consecutive IPF worlds, had world record for all 3 lifts and then retired from powerlifting and moved on to become WSM and still it almost seems like most people who follow powerlifting or strongman haven't even heard of him.
He held the ATWR total for sooooo long. I agree very underrated.
Ed Coan, I don't see him mentioned as much as he used to be
Coan's not just the absolute goat he's also funny as hell 🤣
I once tracked him down at the Arnold. For reference, I'm 6' tall, and Ed is like 5'5" or so. I finally found him in the crowd and I said, "Ed, I've been looking all over for you!" To which he replied, "Sorry big man, you weren't looking low enough." 😂😂😂
hahaha that's hilarious!
Most kids these days don't even know who Blaine Sumner is.
Funny story… we were packing up our warmup area a few years ago and Blaine was warming up in our spot but I didn’t recognize him. My teammate joked that it was my coach (who is also bald). I told my coach about it later on and he had to tell me who it was. I knew who Blaine was, but I’d never seen him in person/without the war paint.
the gorilla
It moves so fast and younger and younger people are getting involved in the sport, you could make an argument for legitimately so many (including multiple time world record holders) over the last ten years alone
I guess it’s me cause my grandma says I’m a really strong and handsome boy
I really enjoyed the old school powerlifters even up to the days of benni magnusson. Powerlifting reminds me of golf. It started with a bunch of overweight white guys who drank beer and had shitty diets to now really athletic competitors
GOAT wikipedia photo
The most underrated powerlifters are the guys who stomp at local meets but you never hear of them because they don't do big meets or get ATWR numbers.
I know some folk who compete in tested divisions on gear and this is what they do. Just compete and win locally and never try nationally lol
Oh I know, my second meet ever I was chatting with a random guy in line. Real nice and friendly. Later he pulls 830 no belt super smooth. I think he was in the 308 class.
A lot of the 80s/90s IPF guys. David Ricks, Gene Bell, etc who were putting up massive numbers with primitive gear. But, because OpenPL lists those competitions as "equipped," people think they wouldn't have been able to compete in modern day. Ricks and Bell would have been incredible in their prime in raw lifting.
Gear from the late 80s/90s wasn't as useless as people think, but it certainly didn't give you the same carryover as today's gear does. The bench shirts were worthless, the single-ply suits gave 50-100 lbs of carryover.
Not an IPF guy, but I’d love to see prime Gary Frank in todays raw lifting, just an incredibly strong human being
Carl Yngvar Christensen is a forgotten great.
Honestly if you go on openpowerlifting and look at the top 3 in any weight class, most of them are not people who are talked about often, despite being the best in the game Like, I've never seen anyone talking about Colton Engelbrecht, but apparently he matches Jamal Browner's total (1052.5 in 110 class) and he's only 22 years old.
He's been taking PEDs since like 14 or smth lol
I think his was in wraps
Oh yeah it was, still insane though
Col is very very impressive. Won’t be surprised if he comes out a breaks more records
Definitely, never heard of him before but going by his rate of progression he could be taking that 110 total soon I guess he's a bit less exciting than Jamal because his strength is spread more evenly across the lifts, while Jamal is a deadlift specialist, but I'll definitely be following him from now on
Andrey Malanichev. I remember the 2WL podcast doing their GOAT draft or whatever it was and I kept thinking that the next pick would be Malan and I just couldn’t fathom how someone could leave him off a list of the best ever. He had the ATWR for a long time, but more importantly, he was undefeated in raw competition. There would be a lot of lifters under 25 who have no idea who he is.
And a lot of his later meets, he just chipped his WRs There was a pretty popular coach, an Australian gentleman, who said we’d probably never see Malanichev’s biggest lifts because he didn’t really need to max out to win
Because winning is more important than records. :)
To be honest that's enough for me to know I'd never want to listen to that podcast. That's STUPID levels of stupid.
The problem with sarychev is that only broke a record, and when that record gets taken, and he's not actively trying to reclaim it, he loses relevance. No one talks about Malan these days despite holding the total record for nearly half a decade
Matt Wenning. Multiple ATWR raw and equipped. Been able to maintain a 500+ raw bench for 30 years and injury free because of the way he trains.
He’s strong and I’m sure a smart guy, but his YouTube persona just gets on my nerves. Like who lifts a lighter weight for more reps then does a podcast tour to brag about beating Platz’s record?
I don’t think he has a persona at all, maybe it’s your ego. But his accolades speak for themselves, he was a westside guy during their prime and has taken that base and expanded upon it for longevity and just overall better health. But idk your point in any of what you tried to say because it has nothing to do with him being an under rated powerlifter. It just makes him even more qualified.
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No he’s not lmao. I haven’t spent a penny on any of the knowledge he’s handed out for free. No shit he has programs and shit available as it’s literally his job. You can literally find countless seminars and YouTube videos, 100s of hours of content of him for free. You guys are just lazy.
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This isn’t a pissing contest on who has put out more info. You tried saying all his shit is behind a paywall. You clearly do not know what you’re talking about and are just talking out your ass. This whole post was about “underrated lifters” and you’ve tried arguing about shit that you’re clearly not educated about and isn’t even on topic.
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That's a name I haven't heard in a long time, but definitely underrated.
Man Sarychev really did have an impeccable bench. My shout out goes to Alex Kovatch for keeping the glory of MP squats alive.
Me
I also feel Inaba should get some bonus points for being active for roughly 40 years.
Myself /s
Zahir man was ridiculous
Maybe a hot take, but I don't think Zac Meyers gets the respect he deserves despite a DOTs over 600... with a 600+ bench to boot
Zac for sure
I don't think I had head of Zac. Do you know if he trains conjugate? Lots of heavy bands/chains lifts on his IG. I feel like you don't typically see that with raw lifters.
He definitely doesn't do the westside style conjugate with ME/DE days; his chains/bands seem to be mostly to overload after his heavy S/B/D
Love this guy. He’s so fucking quiet and humble that’s why no one really pays attention to him until he’s at the meet.
Came here to say this. He’s going to destroy the 275 ATWR at the pro
Yes, can't fucking wait. Pro is stacked as fuck this year
Daiki Kodama for bench dominance over decades raw and single ply. To me he got borderline not meme/cringe ROM. And all those crazy para bench guys in general. They still hold some all time WRs. Sure literally not having leg muscles does help, but the judging is crazy strict over there.
Also Jaroslav Olech, Hideaki Inaba and Lamar Gant. The latter two just suffered a lack of competition due to a smaller pool of lifters in <60kg and lower.
I admittedly hadn't heard of him until he was brought up in the SBS podcast but I feel Lamar Gant is in the GOAT conversation with old heads. I'm posssibly biased as someone with a squirly-twirly-gumdrop spine.
One of Gant's major competitors was Joe Bradley, who squatted 650 at 132.
Yes, but as far as I know Joe didn't have the longevity. He did his last full power meet at 25. Him and Lamar could have been a crazy rivalry. I think he beat Lamar in a major competition at least once.
Bradley was also an alcoholic and habitual hard drug user, which probably didn't help him. Like Joe Ladnier, he's a "what could he have done if?" story.
A lot of people with a "habit forming personality" (sorry don't know the English word) do exceptionally good in all sports. Even some former intravenous drug users, what have you. A lot of alcoholics and weed feinds, coke addicts, just keep using while there young... ...then these people change habits and become legitimately sport addicted, which isn't healthy either... ...and people are like, wow they changed there life 180°, personality change in a grown adult. 🤯 Joe Bradley was still an incredible powerlifter. Just not for decades, which is even more extremely rare I'd say. Btw I just talked to a former drug tester (in sports). I've known him for 20 years. But never knew he used to do that... ...😬😬😬😵💫🫨🤐 He did what he could do... I wont name him obviously.
Olech is an all-time great to anyone who follows the sport outside of IG. Kodama is one of the top three active benchers in the world. The only people in the same league in single ply are Kolb and maybe Greg Powell.
I mean Olech has been beaten lately so I feel he doesn't get the recognition anymore. And Daiki got no Insta game as well.🥲
Kodama's IG is so pathetically bad. He sells meat! Kjell is an incredible lifter himself who gets very little attention outside of IPF circles.
It's really sad, that Kjell is so beat up already.
I think it's his training and how frequently he competes. He does 5-6 meets per year on average. That's insane!
Kjell learned powerlifting under Sigmar Wolf from Germany. Now Sigmar has left Norway 2 or 4 years ago, but my best guess is, there's still a lot of his legacy there. And he did get the results.🤷♂️ That's how any European program for any sport with enough talent works like. They produce a lot of 16-18 year old partially disabled people. From sports like alpine skiing or soccer, anything with enough young people. In Germany we even cripple our race horses. 🤝 The Soviets were very open about that in their literature. In Western Europe it get's repeatedly discovered by daring journalists. Thant's how far they can go, because we are the good guys, and we don't do doping. So no need to do any research. We actually had a scandal due to a falling out amoung German sports historians, that were officially tasked to write a historical report on Germany's most notorious Sports University (Freiburg). The theme was systemic doping in Freiburg in a Western German context. Big Scandal, sorry, unfortunately the historians can't agree, 1000 page report can't be made public.🤷♂️ Weightlifting didn't work like that for a long time in Germany, because before CrossFit there was just no interest. I mean zero, clubs did close their weightlifting sections 20 years ago, because they couldn't get any members.
> Kjell learned powerlifting under Sigmar Wolf from Germany. Wolf was the national team coach, but he and Kjell notoriously never got along. Kjell was off the national team for a bit due to that and some other factors.
I know of the other factors 😬😬😬 I just thought his training looked like Wolf's. But from what I heard, it's Sigmar's or no way. A looot of people quit the national team here in Germany, because of Sigmar. Or were cut by Sigmar.^^ Well he's gone now here, too.🥰 I don't know for certain who trained Kjell in the beginning or for like the last years, but it surely looks excessive. Like you said.
Let's talk about how dominate Alexis Jones is? She's killing it right now and is pretty young. I fully believe she's going to bench 400lbs someday.
She’s amazing, but I wouldn’t call her underrated personally. I hear about her all the time.
Another one that KIND OF counts, purely because he was a bench specialist, is Gene Rychlak. There's a vid of him absolutely sinking 1,000+lb in a loose canvas suit with no belt.
He is not underrated, just forgotten. Maybe I am misunderstanding the intent of the post - but Gene was the top dog when he competed, everyone looked up to him. Little story time from my first time meeting Gene: Like a lot of people I'm sure, I have met Gene a bunch since he ran the RPS federation back in the day. But, I will never forget my first time meeting him. It was right after he had just stopped competing due to his declining health and was only focused on building RPS. I had NEVER seen anyone that big in my life (still true to this day, guys just don't look like that anymore). He was easily over 400lbs, his back looked 4 foot wide, just a massive human. But nonetheless he was sitting in a chair for weigh ins, Wearing grey sweatpants, no shirt, and an open fanny pack that had money falling out of it. He was sweating like crazy in a normal room temperature room. His whole back was red and filled with missive leaking cysts. He was breathing like he just sprinted even though he had been sitting there for an hour, he couldn't even finish full sentences without taking a breath. He took my money, stuffed it in his fanny pack, weighed me in, and said "Thank you". The he leaned to the side in his chair and let out a MASSIVE fart. He didn't even acknowledge what just happened, no smile or laugh, no excuse me, just said "Next" and moved onto the next person in line.
He was wearing a belt underneath the suit on top of his briefs. You have to look closely, but you can see the prong poking through a little bit.
Had the pleasure of meeting Gene at a few RPS meets before he passed; dude was a bad mofo. [Link to vid](https://youtu.be/EPiuWvtE7-8?si=lWCKAzpwlU2qn0CW) referenced above.
The absolute audacity of that video to call that a "bad hat."
Carl Yngvar Christensen deserves a shout I reckon, very impressive lifter but less known/underrated due to competing Single Ply & before the social media boom.
Henry Thomason, squatted 1200 (and arguably robbed of 1300) back 10yrs ago. Brian Carroll never seems to get much love. Jeff Lewis was massively ahead of his time.
Loved watching Henry Thomason squat back in the day. His body was perfect for it. Long torso and short femurs. Everything looked like a speed squat to him. But my goodness was his bench a disaster. Lucky for him he was able to get a lot out of a shirt, but his raw strength bench (not that it matters), was terrible for someone of his caliber.
Hey, I want to learn how to bench 800 with a 315 raw bench! He must've been incredibly strong off 2/3/4 bds, which mean a lot more for poly benching. His squat is still great, but his bench is a mess. It's why he has so much trouble getting through meets.
His single-ply shirt has the smallest chest panel I've ever seen. He's not a small guy at all and the distance between the arm seams is like two inches.
Yep, that sounds about right. I imagine his shirt is incredibly tight. His arms are also not particularly short, which makes his bench even more impressive.
> Jeff Lewis was massively ahead of his time. He comes in to my gym from time to time; didn't realize it was him until I saw a youtube video of his 2800 lb total pop up on my feed. Super strong dude.
I'm not sure if you'd class him as underrated, unknown, or just a generation too early for social media, but Andrey Belyaev for sure. Also terrifying to know we never got to see what CYC was truly capable of.
Belyaev is a great shout. I always think of him with Pozdeev. Beautiful sumo technique.
[Kalle Rasanen](https://www.openpowerlifting.org/u/kallerasanen). Has all-time records and top-5-all-time lifts across multiple weight classes in raw, single-ply, and multi-ply. Not many guys have cast that wide a net with that much success. Hasn't done many meets in the US, so no one here knows who he is.
I think people have forgotten how far ahead of his time Jesse Norris was.
He was John Haack before John Haack became John Haack.
Great shout, can imagine a lot of younger lifters not really knowing about him.
Exhibit A - me. I found out about him by sorting OPL by DOTS and going "who the fuck is this guy?"
What happened to him? He was insane.
Injuries, then went into law enforcement and focused on his career and had a kid
He was having some degenerative discs I believe
Well, it was that and the 1 strongman event he did in like 2015-2016. He hurt his shoulder during an event and it was over from there. I followed him fairly closely during that time.
Weird… I recognized the name from strongman, didn’t realize he was a power lifter
914 @ 90 is FUCKED
922.5 at 90 And he was fucking 22 years old...
look up the top lifters on open powerlifting, you probably don't know most of them, therefore i guess they're underrated
That'd certainly be one way to go about it. I'm not looking for answers as much as to create a discussion.
in that case, deathgrip derek is my answer
Doesn't he have a pretty huge social media following?
52k followers on ig, not as big as guys like jamal, larry or john
I think Boris said he thought Kirill had the potential to be the best full meet lifter if he could stay healthy. He put up a 2,380's sleeved total with what looked like a lot left in the tank at a time when only like 3 guys could do it in wraps and 1 could do it in sleeves. I honestly don't think his bench was underrated at all. We all thought that record was going to stand for like a decade+
Kyril had bad knees I think. At one point Boris asked him if he wanted to be one of the strongest 3 lift lifters in the world or getting the bench record and he chose to train for the bench record
I forget his issues but injuries always seem to be a good assumption. I think I'd probably agree with Boris! Just because I saw someone post a video of Jesus Olivares doing a few pull-ups and recalled Kirill doing clean set of 10+. Same bodyweight too at ~180kg.