Marijan Matijevic
Posted on Tuesday, December 30th, 2014 by John Wood
Marijan Matijevic was a great Croatian strongman and Greco-Roman wrestler who was popular during the turn of the century. Nicknamed the ‘Lika Samson’ after the town where he was born Matijevic won his first medals for strength feats and wrestling when he was only 21 years old and collected many more as the years passed. He had a standing offer that anyone who could defeat him in feats of strength could have the entire collection of medals that he had accumulated. He was adept at bending steel bars, barrel lifting, teeth lifting, stone breaking and lifting thick-handled globe barbells. Interestingly, in 1912 he was examined by doctors in Chicago while traveling and performing in America and it was found that he had double the amount of bone tissue as a normal human being. The doctors believed this was one of the sources for his great strength.