“Well, there was this one night I was heading to the ring to wrestle Bruno Sammartino at the Garden...” — Ken Patera
“And there I was trying to convince Jon Cole that I didn’t want him to inject me with a syringe full of straight adrenaline on the day before the national championships...” — Bruce Wilhelm
“I was standing right there as John Grimek told me that he had taken Dianabol on numerous occasions...” — Marvin Eder
Where have you ever heard stories that start like that? There's only one place—the Association of Oldetime Barbell and Strongman (AOBS) annual dinner in Newark, New Jersey. This is the only place where lifting history comes alive like that.
Being a huge fan of all things strength, I've been attending the AOBS annual dinner for six or seven years. Every year, I always walk away with new friends and a ton of stories from old time legends. The club was formed back in the early 1980s by Vic Boff. Boff was best known for being one of the original ‘polar bears’ who used to go swimming at Cony Island beach on New Year's Day every year. He and a few of his contemporaries started the club to preserve the art of the performing Strongman, and as a tribute to this and Boff’s legacy, the dinner always features staggering displays of Strongman performances. I’m not talking about the modern day competitive Strongman. I’m talking about a Strongman like you would see in a circus sideshow.
The afternoon show featured a few newer guys on the Strongman scene. One guy bent a couple steel bars and some short thick bolts just with the power of his hands. Dave Whitley came on and did a great display that ended with a Turkish get-up with a very heavy kettlebell. In the middle of the get-up, he leveraged a hammer from the floor and stood with both items. Chris “Wonder” Sheck then came on and took a thick piece of flat steel and scrolled it with his bare hands until it looked like a slinky. The most amazing part of that was that Chris only weighs 150 pounds!
Next up, 68-year-old Sonny Barry broke the world record for taking bottle caps between his index finger and middle finger, pressing his meaty thumb into the middle of the top of the cap, and bending it half backward. Try this and I guarantee that you can't do it once. Sonny bent nine caps in one minute to beat his old record of seven. He then took a hefty pair of wire cutters out of the package and bent both handles backward until the tool looked like an “M.” For any age, he is incredibly strong. To see what he can do at nearly seventy is truly amazing.
It was then time for the dinner. I had a great time eating and laughing with my old pals Steve Weiner, Pat “the Human Vise” Povilaitis, Slim the Hammerman, Dennis Rogers, Kirk Nowack, Dave Whiltley, Steve Abromowitz, Mike Barcelone, and my wife Jalaine Ulsh. This year the AOBS honored two athletes by inducting them into the Hall of Fame.
The first inductee was bodybuilding great and star of Pumping Iron Mike Katz. Mike still looked stout in the chest, but from the neck up, he looked like Burl Ives. The second inductee was legendary professional wrestler and the strongest American lifter who ever lived Ken Patera. For those of you who don’t know, Patera was the first and only American to clean and press over 500 pounds. He was also a world class shot-putter before entering the WWF. Ken came in second place in the first World's Strongest Man contest in 1977 to Bruce Wilhelm, the man who inducted him that night.
There were also a few strength demonstrations during the dinner. The evening was capped off by a rather bizarre posing demonstration by master poser Russ Testo, who posed to a Christian bible song as he mouthed the words and acted it out.
After dinner I got the chance to sit at the bar with my two childhood heroes Bruce Wilhelm and Ken Patera. Talk about two guys who have a lot of great old stories to share! It was a blast just sitting there soaking it all in. If any of you are interested in attending future events, visit www.weightlifting.org/aobs.htm.
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