Chapter 2: Two Apex Predators

We need someone super tall and super strong. A well proportioned, muscle-bound, athletic GIANT.

Shorter giants like NFL guard Larry Allen or strongman Eddie Hall (both 6’2”–6’3”) would have the necessary strength and athleticism, but their limited reach would be a disadvantage, and their stockiness would impact their fluidity and endurance.

Lankier giants like Victor Wembanyama and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (7’5” and 7’2”) have/had unbelievable coordination for their height, but their thinner frames wouldn’t give us the raw strength we’re looking for.

We need giants who had it all. Tall. Well built. Highly athletic.

If Shaq just popped into your head, you’re getting the idea.

But what if I told you there was once a stronger, more explosive, more coordinated version of Shaq?

This genetic accident I’m describing?

His name was Wilt Chamberlain.

Many will try to dismiss this man’s athletic gifts because of the era in which he lived. They believe, at least subconsciously, that genetic super freaks just started popping up in the 80s, and have continued to improve in quality right along with the quality of the footage we watch them in.

Training and diet have improved dramatically, and yes, that has enhanced athletic performance. But the genetic makeup of a mega-freak is just as rare now as it always has been.

These guys can pop up anywhere, at any point in history, and if you really think human genetics have changed that much in just the last couple of generations, then you, my friend, are a chronological elitist.

Moving on…

I’m not going to get into Wilt the basketball player. I’m going to get into Wilt the athlete.

I claimed earlier that Wilt was stronger than Shaq.

“Stronger” isn’t easy to quantify, but the weight room gives us somewhere to start.

Shaq’s reported Max Bench: 475 lbs.
Wilt’s reported Max Bench: 500 lbs.

It’s close, but the jury was unanimous. 500 > 475.

Arnold Schwarzenegger on working out with Wilt:

“Wilt Chamberlain was another one that I met and trained with… he came to the gym, and he would do a tricep extension… the big guys, the strongest guys, would do like, 120 pounds, let’s say… He would come, and he would do like 150, 170 pounds, Wilt Chamberlain. That’s how strong he was.”

And his athleticism may have been even weirder than his strength. An article on Wilt in the November 8th, 1962 edition of “Miami News” writes…

Scan of a 1962 Miami News column, reading verbatim: 'Wilton N. Chamberlain is a creature who looks as if he came from the pages of Edgar Allan Poe instead of the streets of Philadelphia. A hundred years ago, he would have traveled with a circus instead of a basketball team. Even P. T. Barnum wouldn't have believed him. But what sets Wilt Chamberlain apart from the giants of the past is the fact he has the co-ordination and reflexes of a man three-quarters his size and the strength of a man half again his weight. He can clean and jerk a 375-lb. weight, run the quarter mile in 47s, and high-jump over 6-11. He probably could win the Olympic decathlon, but he gets a quarter mil—' (the clipping ends mid-sentence).

(Keep in mind that Wilt’s high jump number would’ve been achieved with the old-school straddle style high jump technique, not the modern technique of jumping over the bar backward. The winning high jump mark that year at the European Championship was 7’3”.)

As for Wilt’s coordination…

Tom Meschery, Wilt’s teammate in Philadelphia, once said in an interview:

“Wilt had the softest touch you ever saw for a man that big. He could make shots from half court, underhand, overhand — it didn’t matter.”

As for endurance, he also has the record for most minutes played in an NBA season, averaging 48.5 minutes per game (only possible with overtime games).

Basically, Wilt was a demigod — an extreme outlier in just about every genetic marker that relates to being good at sports.

At this point, “Who wins the Alpha Sapien fight” barely seems like a question, doesn’t it?

Make no mistake… Wilt would be the underdog.

Buckle up…

What if I were to tell you that the strongest man of the 1850s was stronger than the strongest man today?

What if I were to tell you he was a lot stronger?

I’m talking about a man that wasn’t just “ahead of his time,” strength-wise. He’s still ahead of our time.

This unholy offspring of Angel and Neanderthal that I speak of?

His name was Angus MacAskill.

Let’s Take a Trip Back in Time…

Indulge me for a minute. You’re no longer you. Your name is PT Barnum; it’s 1851, and you’re the most famous circus ringmaster in the world.

You really want to sell more tickets, and putting people with disabilities in cages is starting to feel hack.

Imagine your relief when you hear the Cape Breton Giant is in town.

Sailors in London had already been talking about this guy for years. They all claimed that they saw him carry barrels of pork that weighed 350 pounds, one under each arm, for a quarter mile, and that he tossed a 300-pound man over a 10-foot woodpile, and that he carried a 40-foot wooden mast on his shoulder.

Sailors talk. And as the world’s preeminent bullshitter, you’re naturally skeptical — but there’s a look in those sailors’ eyes when they talk about this guy that you still can’t place.

And now he’s here, in London, performing at Buckingham Palace for Queen Victoria. One of your associates sets out to arrange a meeting.

The next day, you see him. You stand in his presence and feel his mitt around your tiny hand. His body just keeps going and going in every direction.

It’s hard to fully describe just what kinda dude you’re looking at here, but let’s start with the numbers:

Angus MacAskill was 7’9”.

That’s the tallest height ever recorded for a man without gigantism.

Andre the Giant (7’1”) and Robert Wadlow (8’11”) are what’s known as “Pathological giants,” meaning they suffered from a tumor in their pituitary gland, causing excessive growth hormone production — otherwise known as “Gigantism.”

But Shaq, Wilt, Yao, and Angus? Those are what you call “True giants” — guys that were just naturally super-sized.

And Angus wasn’t just tall. His shoulders measured 44 inches across (a world record, even including the people with gigantism).

Angus’s chest measured 80 inches around — still the record chest circumference for a non-obese person. (Andre the Giant had a chest that was 60 inches around.) His wrists and ankles were 13.5 inches and 19.5 inches around, respectively. (Both world records.)

He was also often described as being shockingly well-proportioned.

An advertisement described him as “A perfect Hercules! Stately and of noble look, good proportions.”

An 1851 showbill in ornate circus type, reading verbatim: 'ALSO IN CONNECTION FOR A SHORT TIME — THE NOVA SCOTIA GIANT! But little short of 8 feet in height — a perfect HERCULES! Stately and of noble look, good proportions, and the largest Man in America. Who will appear at every exhibition in a splendid suit of HIGHLAND CHIEFTAIN'S COSTUME.'

There are no confirmed photos of Angus. (The disputed photo attributed to him on his Wikipedia page is likely of another circus giant named Captain George Auger.)

However, Peter MacAskill, a modern-day member of the MacAskill family, still located in Isle of Skye, Scotland, commissioned a wax sculpture to be built to Angus’s exact, verified measurements, (recorded by a doctor when Angus was 24) and put Angus’s actual clothes (retained by the MacAskill family for over 160 years) on the statue.

Behold!

Museum photograph: the life-size Angus MacAskill statue in a gray period suit towers at center, holding his hat, while a smiling woman in a cap sits in a wooden chair beside him, her head reaching about his waist. A small figure of General Tom Thumb in a red uniform stands at the statue's knee beside a barrel and kettle display. — Look at that fucker.

Museum photograph: a man stands beside the Angus MacAskill statue with an annotation reading 'This guy is 6\'3"' and an arrow pointing to him. The top of his head reaches roughly the statue's chest; the statue, in period suit with a bow tie, holds its hat at hip height.

(The statue next to him is of his frequent stage partner, Charles Stratton, aka “Tom Thumb,” who would dance on Angus’s outstretched palm.)

Here’s a life-size comparison of Angus next to 6’8”, 420-pound Brian Shaw, a four-time World’s Strongest Man winner:

Side-by-side scale comparison in a gym: the Angus MacAskill statue looms beside strongman Brian Shaw, labeled by name, whose shaved head reaches around the statue's shoulder despite Shaw being six-foot-eight and four hundred twenty pounds.

The Anchor…

In 1893, Donald MacLeod, a man who said his father had known and fished with Angus, wrote…

Scan of an 1893 Gaelic newspaper paragraph in aged type. The Gaelic text reads: 'An deigh so bha e am baile New Orleans, far an deachaidh geall a chuir ris nach togadh e acaire soithich 'san robh tunna chudthrom. Thog e 'n t-acaire gun strith 's chuir e air a ghuallinn e, ach nuair a bha e 'ga leigeil air an lar rug e air ghualla air 's cha deachaidh e na aite fhein riamh tuilleadh. Tha moran de'n bharail gu robh rud-eigin aige so ri dheanamh ri bhas.' (In translation: afterward, in New Orleans, a wager was made that he could not lift a ship's anchor weighing a ton; he lifted it without struggle and put it on his shoulder, but in setting it down it caught his shoulder, which never went back to its proper place, and many believe this had something to do with his death.)

This roughly translates to:

“After this he was in the town of New Orleans, where a wager was made with him that he could not lift a ship’s anchor which weighed a ton. He lifted the anchor without difficulty and put it on his shoulder, but when he was letting it down to the ground, it caught him on the shoulder, and he was never himself again afterward. Many are of the opinion that this had something to do with his death.”

Six years later, journalist/biographer James D. Gillis described what appears to be the same feat — placing it in New York rather than New Orleans — and gave the anchor’s weight as 2,700 pounds.

Scanned passage from an 1899 book in old type, reading verbatim: 'To begin, the famous anchor weighed two thousand seven hundred. It was lying on a New York pier. Why it was disused at the time is not now known.'

Arthur Young’s 1863 Nautical Dictionary provides anchor weights for that period. A 400-ton merchant vessel — a perfectly ordinary class of ocean-going ship at New York or New Orleans in the 1850s — carried a bower anchor of roughly one “long ton,” or 2,240 pounds.

But an anchor of that era is not just iron. It has a wooden stock — a huge oak beam mounted perpendicular to the flukes. The 1794 Royal Navy plan provides the dimensions of a stock for an anchor of this size. Estimate the volume, use oak, and you land around 440 pounds.

2,240 + 440 = 2,680 pounds. Gillis said 2,700.

So both accounts might be describing the same anchor.

Deadlifting 2,680 pounds would’ve required Angus to be more than twice as strong as the next strongest person ever. That feels unlikely.

I think I can guess what actually happened.

Museum photograph of a large nineteenth-century ship's anchor standing upright on a wooden floor, an antique cannon and a ship diagram behind it. Two hand-added labels with arrows read: 'This is a stock' (pointing to the long wooden crossbar) and 'this is a fluke.' (pointing to one of the broad iron blades at the base). — (An anchor of the same general type — not Angus’s anchor.)

A plausible interpretation of the lift: Angus gets low, clasps his hands beneath the fluke, and drives upward, potentially resting the fluke on his thigh, then chest, then shoulder.

So he isn’t lifting the whole anchor. He’s rotating it.

Using the anchor’s dimensions and estimating its center of mass, the initial upward force required at the fluke to start the anchor’s rotation is roughly 870 pounds.

The fairest event comparison to this movement in modern strongman sports is the tire flip (though the anchor would have been a more awkward object). The current tire flip world record is 1,384 pounds. The initial upward force needed to begin rotating a tire that’s lying flat is approximately half its weight, or, in this case, 692 pounds.

Our estimated force requirement for Angus — roughly 870 pounds — is about 26 percent higher than that benchmark. Make of that what you will.

Math/Sources

A Concluding Theory…

If he had been born earlier, Angus would’ve been a legendary warrior, like Achilles or Goliath. If he’d been born later, he would’ve been the Usain Bolt/Michael Phelps of Strongman sports. But in the time he was given, Angus’s best option was the circus.

Physical Attributes Comparison:

Trait	Angus MacAskill	Wilt Chamberlain
Height	7’9”	7’1”
Weight	~510 lbs. at maturity	~275–310 lbs. (NBA career)
Strength	Potentially an extreme historical outlier; reported feats exceed modern strongman benchmarks.	Extremely elite for an athlete, but not Angus-level.
Explosiveness	Potentially impressive. Reportedly once threw a 300-pound man over a 10-foot woodpile.	One of a kind for a man his size.
Endurance	Unknown. Probably not great.	Exceptional — played full 48 min NBA games regularly.

The Claim…

The claim of this piece is that an MMA fight between the clones of these two men, specifically, both MMA-trained from birth and optimized in every way, approaches the theoretical limit of sport itself.

So, who would win?

It doesn’t matter. The idea of the fight would matter more than the outcome.

But since we’ve already come this far, and my social calendar has, to put it conservatively, petered out in my thirties, let’s get into it…