It isn’t typical WWE hyperbole to call Mark Henry the strongest man on the planet. As recounted by Iron Game History, in 2002, Henry became the first person on Earth to successfully execute a clean lift of the Thomas Inch dumbbell. Named for strongman Thomas Inch, this 172-pound dumbbell was long considered “unliftable” because of the 2.5-inch diameter of its handle. Few men had ever even hoisted the dumbbell off the ground during its roughly century-long existence, and nobody before Henry — including Thomas Inch — had ever demonstrated the wrist and grip strength required to turn the dumbbell upward into the air and catch it at the shoulder, let alone press that weight into the air. (In 2019 the WWE posted footage  of the feat).

Thomas Inch is just the tip of the iceberg. A former Olympic powerlifter, the World’s Strongest Man crushed multiple world records. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes that Henry set a raw deadlift record of nearly 904 pounds, squatted a record 948 pounds without a suit and as of 2014 held the “all-time, drug-tested raw total” lifting record of 2,314.8 pounds. In 2002, Henry also hoisted the 365-pound Apollon’s Axle overhead three times. Before that, no human had done it more than once. But as Henry famously said in the ring, “That’s what I do.”