Strongmen Brian Shaw and Eddie Hall have been competing on the same strength sports circuits for years, but they may be entering a new era of their storied rivalry.
Brian Shaw and Eddie Hall have, over the years, competed for multiple of the same titles as strongmen, including World’s Strongest Man. They also both recently starred on History Channel’s docuseries The Strongest Man in History. So, what’s next for these two legends of the sport? Both have indicated through various forms of social media that they would be interested in competing against each other in an entirely new way: as bodybuilders. Take a look at some of the Instagram posts from each of them below.
What do you think of the comparison between these two physiques? Eddie Hall — who is famously vocal about his 8,000-calorie per day diet, including the fact that he eats two full breakfasts every morning — has lost sixty pounds in the past three years. Although they have similar muscle mass, strongmen tend to look dramatically different than bodybuilders because of how much weight they pack on during the course of their training. However, if Shaw and Hall were able to make those extra pounds disappear, they would definitely have physique that lined up with some of the Olympia pros.
In a Q&A that Brian Shaw recently shared on his YouTube channel, he entertained the idea of himself and Eddie Hall entering that arena. You can watch the video in full down below.
“I will say along these lines Eddie Hall and I have had some conversations about doing a competition against one another in bodybuilding, which I think I would absolutely annihilate him in. But it was an interesting conversation and it was very interesting. I wish we’d got that on video because we went back and forth and it got kind of competitive,” he shared in his vlog.
Shaw is 6’8, putting him well above most professional bodybuilders in terms of height. However, because he’s always competed as a strongman, it’s tough to make predictions about what type of physique might come out of bodybuilder’s routine. A lot of your build comes from genetics, so Shaw’s height really doesn’t play that much of a role. It would be impressive to see two legends from this sport transition to bodybuilding if only for the experience of seeing what the shift between the two types of workout would look like. Could Eddie Hall and Brian Shaw emerge with Olympia-level physiques? Or are they too acclimated to the calorie-heavy diet of strongmen that requires them to bulk up and gain 60, 70 pounds to compete?
The two of them definitely seem interested in the match up and it’s likely to come to pass. Though they’ve always been pretty much neck-and-neck as strongmen, we have know way of knowing what they will be like judged from a bodybuilding perspective. When it does finally happen, it’s certain to be a great show for fans of both of these talented athletes.
*All images and media courtesy of Instagram and YouTube.
