Eddie Hall has always been larger than life — a man who could pull planes, lift half a tonne, and push his body further than most could even imagine.
And ever since stepping away from the world of competitive strongman, ‘The Beast’ has redefined himself as a social media star, TV personality, and even a combat sport headliner.
However, how has Hall found life without the strongman titles, without the crowds, and without the superhuman strength that once defined him?
Well, during a recent Q&A for his The Good, The Bad, and The Beast podcast, Hall was asked what the hardest part of life after strongman has been. And he didn’t hesitate to open up.
Hall explained that the toughest thing has been “letting go of the ego.”
The Beast said that after years of walking around as this “humongous alpha male” who could pull planes, lift 200 kilos at the stones, and run with 500 kilos on his back, it was incredibly difficult to let go of that level of strength. “Once you’ve been up there at the top of the world, it’s hard to come back down,” he admitted, adding: “And I think just letting go of that strength has been the hardest thing for me.”
It’s a rare moment of vulnerability from a man who’s spent his life defying limits. Hall built his reputation as a powerhouse, culminating in his crowning moment as the 2017 World’s Strongest Man and the first human ever to deadlift 500kg back in 2016. But the very thing that made him a legend nearly broke him.
Speaking to Men’s Health UK, Hall revealed that he walked away from strongman because his health was on the edge. “Nothing was particularly wrong with me,” he said, “but everything was on the limit.” He explained that every time he visited the doctor, his kidney and liver markers were through the roof, his haemoglobin was high, and his blood was “super thick.” His body weight was so extreme, he joked, that there was “no recording” for his BMI.
The real wake-up call came when his doctor told him: “If you lined the whole of the UK up, all 70 million people in a row, I would pick you out as the most likely person to have a heart attack and a stroke.” That was the tipping point for Hall.
“That’s what did it for me,” Hall said. “It’s doomed. It’s inevitable doing strongman. I didn’t want to get to that point where I have a heart attack or stroke and then be like, ‘Damn! Why didn’t I walk away?’”
At the time, Hall weighed around 430lbs — nearly 200kg — and was consuming up to 12,000 calories a day just to maintain it. “That was a serious concern, being 430lbs,” he admitted. “Every night was a lottery.”
Since retiring from competition after his 2017 title win, Hall has undergone a remarkable transformation. He’s lost over eight stone (112lbs), stepped into boxing, even made his MMA debut — but his passion for strongman hasn’t faded. Instead, he’s finding new ways to bring it to the world.
At the end of 2025, Hall was in Malta filming Battle of the Beasts – a high-budget sports-entertainment series that he says will reinvent the strongman format for a new audience. “It’s going to be on a big streaming platform very soon,” he teased in a recent YouTube video. “We’ve got 12 athletes — mainly from strongman — and we’ve got a surprise contestant.”
He went on to explain that the show mixes traditional strongman events like log lifts, stone carries, and vehicle pulls with more chaotic, crowd-friendly challenges such as sumo wrestling, belly flop showdowns, and food contests. “I’m really happy,” Hall said. “The production is massive — we’re talking over seven figures for production. This could be the next big thing for strongman. It could really transform it. Take it to the masses.”
For a man who once lived off 15,000 calories a day, it seems Hall’s hunger for competition hasn’t gone anywhere — it’s just evolved. And while he’s no longer chasing world records, his new mission is just as ambitious: to redefine what strongman means, not only for himself, but for the next generation.
After all, when Eddie Hall sets his mind to something, history tends to follow.
Featured image credit: Instagram/goodbadbeast/eddiehallwsm
