William Kazmaier (born December 30, 1953) is an American former world champion powerlifter, world champion strongman and professional wrestler. During the 1970s and 1980s, he set numerous powerlifting and strongman world records, 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 spectacular and versatile feats of strength of famous strongmen of the 20th century. He is widely considered to be one of the all-time greatest competitors in strength competitions. Early career Kazmaier is of German ancestry. A star athlete in high school, Kazmaier 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. Powerlifting career At the 1978 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) National Championships in Los Angeles, California, Kazmaier squatted 782 lbs, bench pressed 534 lbs, and deadlifted 804 lbs 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 lbs on the way to winning his first IPF World Powerlifting Championship in Dayton, Ohio. His winning lifts included an 865 lbs squat, the 622 lbs bench press and an 804 lbs deadlift for a 2291 lbs 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 in early 1979 was 612 lbs, held by Lars Hedlund. Kazmaier moved the world record stepwise up from 617.3 lbs in July, 1979 to 622.8 lbs in November 1979 to 633.8 lbs in May, 1980 and finally to 661.4 lbs 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