Strongman Eddie Hall and powerlifter Julius Maddox have a lot in common. For example, they both hold incredible records, Hall with his 500kg deadlift world record, and Maddox with his all-time bench press world record.
Hall shared a YouTube video on Monday of himself and Maddox training together, and as you can probably guess, it involved some heavy pressing. Before the two starting pressing some serious weight, Hall prefaced the video with some news that Maddox is interested in getting into strongman. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise, especially considering Maddox has the size and static strength for moving big weight, and can be trained to be more proficient in strongman events.
Potentially the best part of the video below is when Hall and Maddox face off on a head-to-head incline bench press AMRAP with 315 lbs. Honestly, we weren’t sure who would take the win here. We’ve seen Hall bench press insane amounts of weight, however, Maddox is a bench specialist and recently pressed 700 lbs for three reps — so who should take the win here?
Skip to about 15:30 in the video to watch Hall and Maddox face off in the AMRAP competition.
Spoiler Alert
- Maddox: 22 reps
- Hall: 19 reps
Back in September, Maddox broke the all-time bench press world record at the Boss of Bosses 6 powerlifting meet in Mountain View, California. His 335.5kg/739.5 lbs bench press broke powerlifting legend Kirill Sarychev’s 335kg/738.5 lb previous all-time bench press world record.
Then, rewind to February 2017 and we wrote an article asking the question, could Hall ever top Sarychev’s world record if he trained for it? This article created a lot of conversation, and what’s most interesting is that Hall is now training with Maddox who is the current all-time world record holder — talk about full circle.
There’s no doubt in our minds that if Hall trained for the record, then he would come close to breaking it, but could he ever take it down? With multiple TV shows debuting, we’re not sure we’ll have our answer anytime soon, but it’s fun to wonder.
Maddox is eventually trying to reach an unfathomable 800 lb bench press milestone. Hall on the other hand, may not be chasing the same bench press goals at the moment, but is no doubt one of the best athletes for expressing static strength in the world.
Feature image from @eddiehallwsm Instagram page.
