Alexander Karelin: The Meanest Man in the World

That's a picture of him up above.

I'm sure many of you already know him, but for those that don't, his name is Alexander Karelin and he is the most feared athlete ever.  Others have called him the toughest man alive.

He's a Russian super heavy weight Greco-Roman wrestler and he's universally known as the greatest heavyweight wrestler to ever live. 

He was so dominant that it led to his competition and the world's media nicknaming him "The Experiment," implying that someone like him couldn't have come about naturally, and that he was some sort of Russian science experiment.

He was in the Olympics four separate times and won gold medals three of those times and silver once.  He is the only three-time gold medal winner in his sport.  He was undefeated for 13 years straight and went 10 years in a row without allowing even a single point to be scored against him.

He's 6'4 and wrestled at 289 lbs.  It's been noted that he could clean AND PRESS over 420 lbs.  He had a move he would do called the "Karelin slam". In this move he'd pick up his 300 lb squirming opponent while they were laying face down on the mat, trying to be dead weight so he wouldn't pick them up.  

He'd do it anyway, throwing them completely over his shoulder slamming them on their own heads.  

Now you see crap like that in the WWE all the time, but in real life it's an incredible feat of strength that only the rarest of men can accomplish.

Do you remember the 6'4" 300 lb Olympic wrestler turned UFC commentator named Jeff Blatnik?  Karelin threw him around like a rag doll. 

Growing up I thought of Karelin as the real life Ivan Drago.  I hear Randy Couture and him are friends.  Fedor looks up to him; I read a quote by Fedor saying if Alexander had decided to get into MMA he'd have ruled above all others.  I've seen videos of him running through thigh deep snow carrying logs on his shoulders.

He fought in one and only one MMA/Pro wrestling match against Akira Maeda, the founder of the fighting network "Rings".  Maeda was a huge star in Japan and a very accomplished athlete, even defeating Andre the Giant once.  

Karelin threw him around for the duration of the match until the Ref stopped it.  This was just as a wrestler, no MMA skills.  Imagine the potential.

Someone asked him once who his toughest opponent was and he responded "my refrigerator."  Apparently, the story goes, he was moving and decided to carry his huge, extra large fridge up six flights of stairs BY HIMSELF.

The History Channel did a documentary on him titled "The Meanest Man in the World." Here's a short highlight clip of him. It's the clip at the top of the page.

Now I'm interested in who else you think would have made an awesome MMA fighter, had they gone that route.  Mike Tyson?  Holyfield?  Shaq?  Hulk Hogan?  George Washington? Kind of like the question from "Fight Club".  Who would you have liked to see train and fight as an MMA fighter?

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