Wrestler Poddubny Ivan Maksimovich: a brief biography of a real Russian hero. "A man of great strength and stupidity." The true story of Ivan Poddubny

Height - 184 cm; Weight - 139 kg; Neck - 50 cm; Biceps - 46 cm; Chest - 138 cm; Waist - 104 cm; Hip - 70 cm; Lower leg - 47 cm.

Ivan Poddubny went to his father - a huge Zaporozhye Cossack. Their ancestors fought in the troops of Ivan the Terrible, defending Russia from the Tatars, and under Peter I they fought with the Swedes near Poltava. Born in the Poltava province in 1871. There were four brothers and three sisters in the family - naturally, as the eldest, Ivan had to work physically from childhood. Being of heroic stature and Herculean strength, he threw sacks of grain onto the cart as if they were stuffed with hay. With their huge father - Maxim Ivanovich, who became the first coach of his son, to the delight of the villagers, they fought right on the street. Both strong men, surrounded on all sides by a close wall of fellow villagers, took each other by the belts and did not let go until someone was lying on the shoulder blades.

Poddubny left his native place because of a love drama - his beloved girl was not given away for him, for a poor man. He went to work in Sevastopol. He worked as a loader in the Greek company Livas, then transferred to the port of Feodosia and settled with two students of seafaring classes. His neighbors turned out to be inveterate athletes, from them Poddubny learned what a training system is.

Soon he already went to the circus of Ivan Beskorovayny to measure strength with famous athletes and wrestlers - anyone from among the spectators could do this. The first match ended in defeat. This forced Poddubny to start training. He set himself a tough sports regimen: exercises with 32-kilogram weights, a 112-kilogram barbell, dousing with cold water, dieting, giving up tobacco and drinking. So, with the defeat, the sports career of Ivan Poddubny began.

He went to work in the Italian circus Enrico Truzzi, who was based in Sevastopol. Here performances have already become a triumph. Poddubny had phenomenal strength, an excellent athletic figure and clear, masculine features. In the arena, he shocked. They put a telegraph pole on his shoulders and ten people hung on both sides until the pole broke. But it was just a warm-up! Then began what Poddubny entered the arena for - the original Russian wrestling on sashes: the rivals threw leather belts around each other's waists, trying to knock them down. Poddubny had five minutes for his opponents. Newspapers printed portraits of the new circus star, Ivan was the idol of the Crimea. He had admirers, he forgot his old love, an affair with an adult, insidious Hungarian tightrope walker now excited his heart. Meanwhile, rumors reached his father that Ivan, in the most "shameful" form, in tight tights, instead of doing business, was throwing weights. The brothers transmitted: “The father is angry with you and threatens to break the shafts about you. Don't come by Christmas." And since the tightrope walker abandoned the wrestler, Poddubny went to Kyiv to disperse sadness.

They said that when asked if there was anyone in the world who could defeat him, Poddubny answered without delay: “Yes! Babs! All my life, I, a fool, have been led astray.”

It was only partly a joke, since in the biography of the hero there are a lot of dramatic moments related precisely to matters of the heart. In the Kiev circus, during a performance, his fiancee, a tightrope walker Masha Dozmarova, crashed to death.

Immediately after this bitter event, Poddubny received a telegram from St. Petersburg. The chairman of the St. Petersburg Athletic Society, Count Ribopierre, invited him for an important conversation.It turned out that the French sports society asked to send a representative of Russia to participate in international competitions for the title of world champion in French wrestling. It was 1903. As it turned out, Poddubny came to the attention of society, and he was offered to go to Paris. Ivan was assigned the best coach - Monsieur Eugene de Paris, and was given three months to prepare. In Paris, 130 professional wrestlers were waiting for him.The conditions of the competition were tough - a single defeat deprived the right of further participation in the competition.

All Paris was talking about the championship. Places in the theater "Casino de Paris" were taken with a fight. The unknown "Russian bear" won eleven fights. Poddubny, who was already 33 years old, had a duel with the favorite of the Parisians, twenty-year-old handsome athlete Raoul le Boucher. From the very first seconds of the fight, he went on a furious attack and soon ran out of steam. Poddubny only had to put it on his shoulder blades, but the Frenchman slipped out of his hands like a fish. It became clear that Raul was smeared with some kind of fatty substance. In response to the protest of Poddubny, who accused the opponent of cheating, the panel of judges, although they were convinced that olive oil had been applied to Raul's body, decided to continue the fight, and wipe Poddubny's "slippery" opponent with a towel every five minutes.

For an hour of a fight with Raoul Poddubny, he failed to put the Frenchman on his shoulder blades, although the advantage was clearly behind him. Even the spectators, who were rooting for their compatriot, were outraged when the judges, who recognized Raul's fraud, awarded him the victory after all "for beautiful and skillful avoidance of sharp tricks." In St. Petersburg, they learned about the Paris incident, but, not wanting a major scandal, they suggested by telegraph that the panel of judges repeat the duel between Poddubny and Raul. But the "winner" categorically refused.

Now fate constantly brought enemies together - the "Russian bear" and the treacherous Frenchman. When Raul arrived in St. Petersburg for the International Championship, he offered Poddubny a bribe of 20 thousand francs. For this, Poddubny put the Frenchman on all fours in the ring and kept him for about twenty minutes to the whistle of the hall. Released Raul only at the insistence of the judges.

And here is how an eyewitness describes the fight between Poddubny and another opponent - world champion Paul Pons:

“Pons was not like the usual Pons. No one else treated him as boldly as Poddubny, he threw him around the arena ... Pons did not have to make a single move, he barely had time to defend himself from Poddubny. By the end of the fight, it was a pity to look at Pons: his bloomers went down, as if he had suddenly lost twenty centimeters at the waist, his T-shirt was pulled up, crumpled and turned into a rag that I wanted to squeeze out.

Five minutes before the end of the two-hour fight, Poddubny put the world champion on both shoulder blades. The audience rose from their seats. It was not even a jubilant cry, but a roar that, as they claimed, reached Nevsky Prospekt.

At the beginning of the 20th century, all of Europe was engulfed in interest in wrestling - “the queen of sports. Schools, societies, athletic clubs, celebrities, competitions, queues, sweepstakes. Poddubny was invited to all major competitions. In 1905, in St. Petersburg, he received the first gold medal in his life and a large cash prize. His next step is international competitions for the title of world champion.

The World Cup was held in the famous Parisian theater "Folies Bergère". It was the wrestling elite - 140 best representatives. Fantastic sums were wagered. There were no bets on Poddubny. And in vain - it was he who won! A triumphant victory and already the third over Raul le Boucher!

The fourth meeting with an old enemy of Boucher with the six-time world champion was to be held in Nice. But there was an assassination attempt on Ivan... If not for his intuition and physical strength, four mercenaries would have killed him, apparently by order. Soon a rumor spread that Raul died suddenly of meningitis. The mercenaries, although they did not do their job, demanded that the customer kill the money. Raul refused them, and was beaten on the head with rubber sticks, from which he died.

Poddubny began to treat sports differently, realizing that wrestlers were traded, and sports fell into the hands of businessmen. Straightforward Poddubny was jarred by this - he did not tolerate fraud, cursed with entrepreneurs, broke contracts, having made himself famous as a person with a difficult, quarrelsome character.

Ivan refused to compete in the second half of 1910. At the age of 41, he married the dazzlingly beautiful Antonina Kvitko-Fomenko. Together with her and a two-pound chest of gold medals, he showed up in his native village of Krasenovka and decided to start a household on a grand scale. Regardless of the costs, he bought plenty of land, endowed all his relatives with it, and built a manor with a mill and an apiary for himself with his beloved Antonina.

The revolution broke out. Poddubny was poorly versed in the alignment of forces fighting for power. During the wrestling competitions in Berdyansk, he was almost put against the wall by the Makhnovists who had flown in. In Kerch, a drunken officer almost killed him by hooking his shoulder. Ivan admitted that sometimes he started performances with the Reds, finished it with the Whites.

In 1919, Antonina fled with Denikin's officer, taking with her a fair amount of gold medals from the coveted chest. This news literally knocked Poddubny off his feet. Ivan Maksimovich refused food, lay for days on end, stopped recognizing his acquaintances. Much later, he admitted that he was on the verge of real madness. When, a few years later, the ex-wife filed a message about herself and asked for forgiveness, Poddubny said: "Cut off."

In 1922, Ivan Maksimovich was invited to work in the Moscow Circus. He was already in his sixties. The doctors who examined him never ceased to be surprised: Poddubny was absolutely healthy. "Ivan Zhelezny" - they called him.

On tour of the circus in Rostov-on-Don, Poddubny meets the mother of a young wrestler Ivan Mashonin and proposes to her. The widow accepts him, and they are married in the church. To support his family, Poddubny goes on foreign tours to Germany. By this moment - all the athletes are already working in collusion with the impresario. Poddubny is immediately offered a dishonest fight and a loss for a lot of money - everyone wants a sensation, a victory over the Russian Bear. He basically leaves Europe and goes to America. Here, too, the matter was almost upset - according to American laws, athletes over thirty-eight years old could only enter the carpet with the permission of a special medical commission. Poddubny underwent a thorough examination. It was recognized that his health corresponds to the age of forty. Advertising shouted: 52-year-old "Ivan the Terrible" challenges the daredevils to a duel.

In America, they practiced not French wrestling, but wrestling without rules - everyone wanted to see the spectacle: blood, cracking bones, screams and pain. In the very first fight, the Canadian rival grabbed Ivan by the mustache, for which, however, he immediately paid the price.

Having brilliantly held meetings with the champions of America and Canada, Poddubny fought in Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco. He collected full halls. But the local customs, the very mercantile spirit of the sport evoked in him a feeling of disgust. And he decided to terminate the contract, while losing a lot of money.

Poddubny's American tour was covered in the Soviet press. Quite clearly, they staked on him as the embodiment of the strength and power of the country of victorious socialism. In honor of Poddubny, a grand celebration was arranged, in which all the eminent athletes of the city took part. The news that on June 17, 1928 the unfading "champion of champions" would fight on the open stage of the Tauride Garden instantly spread through the city. All police cordons were broken by the beginning of the competition. The trees were covered with boys who had heard from their grandfathers and fathers about a man who came into real life, it seemed, from the pages of epics and fairy tales.

During the years of fascist occupation, Poddubny lived in Yeysk. His name was familiar to the Nazis who captured the city. 70-year-old Poddubny refused to go to Germany and train German athletes, saying: “I am a Russian wrestler. And I will remain them ”and defiantly continued to wear the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Russian fairy tales are full of stories about heroes, but there were similar people in real life. Next, we will introduce you to the most famous strong men of Russia, who are in no way inferior to the heroes from fairy tales.

The most powerful king: Peter the Great

Peter the Great can hardly be called a simple king. Among the Russian autocrats, he stood out for his physical article (height 204 cm), and love for manual labor (he owned 14 craft specialties, was one of the best shipbuilders not only in Russia, but also in Europe, he personally wielded tools). The irrepressible energy of the Russian emperor amazed his contemporaries. Peter twisted coins with his fingers, rolled iron pans into a ram's horn. Returning in 1698 from the Great Embassy, ​​not far from Riga, he bought a horse, later named Lisetta, and decided to reforge it. The king tested the strength of the horseshoe in his own way. If he can twist it - a bad horseshoe. Can't - good. The blacksmith redid the work several times. Finally, Peter was satisfied with the quality, he gave the blacksmith a copper penny. The blacksmith was also not so simple. Rolling a nickel with his fingers, he said that the quality of the coin did not suit him. So the blacksmith bargained for "gold". A fairy tale was even composed among the people about this episode from the life of the king.

The most powerful governor: Evpatiy Kolovrat

Evpatiy Kolovrat, despite the epic halo, is a historical figure. He was born in the village of Frolovo, Shilovsky volost. According to The Tale of the Devastation of Ryazan by Batu, Yevpaty Kolovrat learned about the Mongols' invasion of the Ryazan Principality and, with a small detachment, moved to help, but found the city already devastated. "... the sovereigns of the slain and many people who died: some were killed and whipped, others were burned, and others were sunk." Having overtaken the Mongols already in the Suzdal lands, the squad of Evpaty Kolovrat killed the Mongol-Tatar rearguard. “And Yevpaty beat them so mercilessly that the swords were dulled, and he took the Tatar swords and cut them.” Batu sent his best warrior Khostovrul against Kolovrat, but Evpaty defeated the Tatar hero in a fight, cutting him to the saddle. Despite the huge numerical superiority, the Tatars could not defeat the Kolovrat squad until they came up with the idea of ​​using stone-beaten siege weapons against them. As a tribute to the Russian warrior, Batu gave the body of the murdered Yevpaty Kolovrat to the remnants of his squad and ordered them to be released in peace. The case for the history of Ancient Russia is extraordinary.

Bulls and Bears Winner: Grigory Rusakov

The turn of the 19th-20th centuries was surprisingly prolific for strongmen. One of them was Grigory Rusakov from Kursk, who was born in 1879 in the family of a simple peasant. As a wrestler, Rusakov performed in 1909 in the Donbass, where he worked in a mine. Rusakov quickly became a local champion and received an invitation to work in the Moscow circus. So he became a professional wrestler. Fortunately, the parameters allowed - a two-meter height and 150 kilograms of weight. Having gained popularity in the capitals, Grigory Rusakov began touring Russia, and then the world - he won world championships in Argentina (1913) and Paris (1915). Rusakov, like other eminent wrestlers, was personally released by Nicholas II from military service, but the revolution of 1917 cut short his professional career as a wrestler. According to some sources, he lived quietly and peacefully in the settlement of Mikhailovka in the Kursk province, according to others, he earned his bread in Murmansk, competing in the fight against local strongmen. Not everything went smoothly in Rusakov's life. He was prosecuted three times in 1929, 1938, 1944. Remained in history, for example, such a case: once Rusakov trained at the mill, throwing sacks of grain. The grain woke up and Rusakov was sentenced to three years, but he was released two years later - at the request of Ivan Poddubny. Rusakov was also known for repeatedly entering into demonstration fights with bears, bending horseshoes and rails, and once in London he defeated a bull in a fight. Grigory Fomich died absurdly: he fell off a truck when he wanted to break a tree bough hanging over the body on the go. He was paralyzed from the fall. He died a year later.

Invincible: Ivan Poddubny

Oddly enough, the sports career of the invincible Poddubny began with a defeat. He worked as a loader in the port, then he decided to try his hand at wrestling in the circus of Ivan Beskoravayny. Ivan lost his first fight. Since that time, he set himself a tough training regimen, exercised with two-pound weights, a 112-kilogram barbell, gave up tobacco and alcohol, and doused himself with cold water. Until the end of his life he carried a cast-iron cane with him. Soon he became one of the most famous wrestlers not only in Russia but also in Europe. His main opponent was the Frenchman Raoul de Boucher. They got together three times. Despite the dirty methods that the Frenchman practiced, Poddubny not only defeated him, but also gave the cunning Frenchman in St. Petersburg 20 minutes of shame, holding him in an iron grip.

An eyewitness to this fight described what he saw as follows: “By the end of the fight, it was a pity to look at Pons: his bloomers went down, as if he had suddenly lost twenty centimeters at the waist, his T-shirt was pulled up, crumpled and turned into a rag that I wanted to squeeze out.” Conquered Poddubny and America. There he collected full halls, competing according to the rules of American wrestling. From the United States, he actually fled, terminating the predatory contract and leaving the Americans the fees due to him. He himself said more than once: "I am a Russian wrestler." And the strongman Poddubny also had a sad relationship with the “weaker sex”. He admitted that the only force that could defeat him was the women: “All my life, a fool, they knocked me off the path.”

"Iron Samson": Alexander Zass

Alexander Zass remained in history as "Iron Samson". Fame came to him during the First World War. He escaped from Austrian captivity, carried a wounded horse from the battlefield. He found his fate in the Hungarian circus, he developed the numbers himself, he carried a horse or a piano around the arena with a pianist and dancer sitting on the lid; caught with his hands a 90-kilogram cannonball, which was fired from a circus cannon from a distance of 8 meters; tore off the floor and held in his teeth a metal beam with assistants sitting at its ends; passing the shin of one leg through a loop of a rope fixed under the very dome, he held in his teeth a platform with a piano and a pianist; lying with his bare back on a board with nails, he held a stone weighing 500 kilograms on his chest, which was beaten with sledgehammers. "Samson" toured a lot. He was with his performances in Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, England, Ireland. Since 1924, Zass has lived permanently in England, where he was awarded the title "The Strongest Man on Earth". In 1925, the book “The Amazing Samson. Told by them." One of the merits of Zass can be considered the system of isometric exercises developed by him, aimed at strengthening the tendons. Such training allowed him, with rather modest dimensions for a strong man, to withstand huge loads. Unfortunately, almost nothing was known about him in the USSR until the 80s - the Samson was considered "alien" to the Soviet system. Alexander Zass died in 1962. He was buried near London in the small town of Hockley, where his house was.

"Russian Bear": Vasily Alekseev

Vasily Alekseev can be called the last hero of the Soviet era. He was born in 1942, since 1966 he lived almost constantly in the Rostov city of Shakhty. Despite world fame, Alekseev led a modest life, devoting himself entirely to his beloved work - weightlifting. The “Russian Bear” (as foreign fans called it) twice became the Champion of the Olympic Games, six times the World Champion, six times the European Champion, and held first place in the USSR championships for seven years. During his sports career, Vasily Alekseev set 80 world records and 81 USSR records. He is also the "eternal" owner of the current world record for the sum of three exercises - 645 kg (now there are no competitions in this discipline). Vasily Alekseev competed with himself, from time to time setting new records in the championships. It was he who opened the era of the "six hundred", the first to conquer the six hundred kilogram peak. From 1989 to 1992, Alekseev coached the national team and the United Weightlifting Team. During his coaching work, none of the members of the team was injured. His training system can be called revolutionary. He criticized the lifting of maximum weights in training, trying to emphasize strength endurance and a combination of types of training. So, he loved, taking the barbell, to go to barbecues, trained in between swimming and rest, lifted the barbell in the water, often worked out in the fresh air. Vasily Alekseev died on November 25, 2011 in Munich at the age of 69. One of his devoted fans is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"San Sanych": Alexander Karelin

If you ask anyone, even a person far from sports, to name a famous Russian wrestler, then the name of Alexander Karelin will sound. And this despite the fact that he left big sport 15 years ago, in 2000. At birth, "San Sanych" weighed 6.5 kilograms, at the age of 13 he had a height of 178 cm and a weight of 78 kilograms. At 14, he enrolled in the Greco-Roman wrestling section in his native Novosibirsk. The first coach - Viktor Kuznetsov - remained Karelin's mentor throughout his sports career. 4 years after joining the section, Karelin has already become the world champion among youth. During his sports career, the wrestler collected all kinds of titles, won 887 fights, lost only two times. Three times he took Olympic gold, 9 times he became the world champion, 12 times - the champion of Europe, 13 times he took gold at the championships of the USSR, CIS and Russia. Alexander Karelin was awarded the Golden Belt four times as the best wrestler on the planet.

In 1999, the popular Japanese fighter Akira Maeda, who was considered invincible in his homeland, decided to put on a spectacular show at the end of his career and challenged Alexander Karelin. The Russian wrestler had to be persuaded for a long time, but in the end he nevertheless agreed - sports ambition played. The fight took place on February 20, 1999. Karelin used in the ring only the arsenal of his native Greco-Roman wrestling. Maeda managed to land a few kicks at the beginning of the fight, but within a minute, he turned into a training dummy for practicing throws. The "swan song" of the Japanese wrestler did not work out.

The greatest Russian wrestler who did not know defeat.

A hero who defeated the strongest wrestlers of all continents in fifty cities in fourteen countries of the world.

For 40 years of performances, he has not lost a single championship (he had defeats only in separate fights). He received world recognition as a "champion of champions", "Russian hero".

Abroad, the name of I. Poddubny is a Russian brand. Like red caviar, vodka, Cossack choir.

He settled in Yeysk in 1927 and lived here for 22 years.

Eysk Ivan Maksimovich chose not by chance. Many ancestors of Poddubny lived in the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, who moved in the second half of the 18th century from the Zaporizhzhya Sich. And now, in Yeysk and its region, the surname Poddubny is quite common.

He died at the age of 78 in 1949. He was buried in our city, in the park that bears his name.

Ivan Poddubny was born on September 26 (October 8), 1871 in Ukraine, in the village of Krasenovka (now Cherkasy region), into a peasant family. Father, Maxim Ivanovich, had a small farm. The family was large - seven children: 4 sons and 3 daughters. Ivan was the eldest. He helped with the housework from the age of seven: she grazed geese, cows, carried grain on oxen.

From the age of 13 he worked as a laborer for a pan in his native Krasenovka, then for a landowner in the neighboring Bogodukhovka. He was not taken into the army as the eldest son. For ten years, Ivan bent his back on the local rich in his native land. In 1892, as he himself writes in his autobiography, "he no longer wanted to live in the countryside and left to work." Worked as a port loader- first a year in Odessa, and then two years in Sevastopol. 20-year-old I. Poddubny, who was distinguished by enviable physical data, immediately attracted the attention of the owners of the Livas unloading company, where he worked. When in 1895 the company moved to Feodosia, Ivan was appointed senior worker at the office. He no longer dragged 14-pound sacks of wheat into the holds of foreign ships for 14 hours. There was free time, met two students of seafaring classes, settled with them in the same apartment.

Anton Preobrazhensky and Vasily Vasilyev got Poddubny into sports in six months. And when in 1896 a circus arrived in the city with a professional wrestling championship, Poddubny decided to test himself both in weight lifting and in Russian-Swiss belt wrestling. In the first weight lifting competition, he lost. But in the fight he won all the participants of the championship. Belt wrestling was popular in his native Krasenovka (known in Russia since the 13th century). The end of the 19th century in the history of wrestling is marked by an unusually large enthusiasm for French wrestling in Russia and abroad. The term "wrestling mania" even appeared, meaning a craze for wrestling. The audience was amazed at the strength and technical dexterity of an unknown, seemingly muzhik-clumsy, strongly built kid. The victorious debut was unexpected for Poddubny himself. Ivan for the first time felt the taste of success, the taste of glory.

In January 1897, he left to wrestle in Sevastopol, went to the championship parade in the circus of the Italian Enrico Truzzi as a professional wrestler. He is in his 27th year. Seems like a late start. However, perseverance and perseverance led him to the glory of the strongest wrestler. Three years later (1900) he moved to Kyiv and entered into a contract to perform as a belt wrestler in the circus of the Nikitin brothers. For three years of work with them, Ivan Maksimovich traveled all over the European part of Russia, performed in Kazan, Saratov, Astrakhan.

In 1903, the St. Petersburg Athletic Society invites him to take part in the sixth Parisian championship in French wrestling. Wrestling championships in France were then the main measure in assessing the rank of wrestlers. The 32-year-old athlete has already managed to get acquainted with the basics of French (classical) wrestling. However, he truly mastered it under the guidance of a gifted coach, Eugène de Paris, in preparation for the competition for the world title.

I. Poddubny learned how to properly train his body. As he recalls in his autobiography:“I trained daily with three wrestlers: with the first 20 minutes, with the second - 30 minutes, and with the third - 40-50 minutes, until each of them was completely exhausted to such an extent that he could no longer control his hands. After that, for 10-15 minutes, I ran with five-pound dumbbells in my hands, which, due to fatigue, were almost an unbearable burden for my hands. Then they put me for 15 minutes in a steam bath with a temperature of up to 50 degrees. At the end he took a shower; one day with semi-icy water, the other with a temperature of about 30 degrees .. Then they wrapped me in a sheet and a warm bathrobe for 30 minutes, so that excess moisture would evaporate from the body and proper blood circulation would be achieved, and in parallel with this - give rest to the body for the upcoming 10- kilometer walk, which was carried out with the fastest gymnastic step. This is how the "wrestling heart" was trained. As a result, that power was created, which was not equal on the wrestling mat.

Possessing outstanding physical strength, Poddubny was not muscular - his muscles lay all over his body in colossal layers. But his figure overwhelmed everyone with his calm power. Here are his anthrometric data: with a height of 184 cm, he had a weight of 118 kg, chest circumference - 134 cm, biceps - 45 cm, forearms - 36 cm, wrists - 21 cm, neck - 50 cm, belts - 104 cm, hips - 72 cm, calves - 47 cm.

So, after three months of training, under the guidance of Eugene de Paris, Ivan Maksimovich goes to Paris. 130 wrestlers came to the World Championship from different countries. The appearance on the carpet of a baggy-looking Russian wrestler was met with ridicule. The French public was waiting for the port loader, who had gathered the impudence to go out onto the carpet, to “fail miserably”. But this did not bother Poddubny - he knew that he was defending the honor of Russia. And soon, the spoiled audience realized that the Russian Ivan was not such a "clumsy bear" as he seemed at first, and applauded him, and threw flowers under his feet.

Ivan Maksimovich won in 11 fights. But in the 12th, he loses to the 20-year-old Frenchman Raul le Boucher and drops out of the tournament. The Frenchman rubbed himself with olive oil before the championship, and during the fight he came out with an oily sweat. Poddubny's grips and tricks failed. He demanded to wipe Raoul every five minutes of wrestling, but the sweat reappeared. And the Russian lost to the elusive Raoul le Boucher by only two points. The Frenchman's scam and the injustice of refereeing had a depressing effect on Poddubny. With a heavy heart, he returned to Russia, promising himself that he would still reckon with the scoundrel Frenchman.

And he kept his word. He won a brilliant victory over Raoul le Boucher in 1904 at the international championship in St. Petersburg. In a duel, having exhausted the Frenchman with continuous grips, Poddubny put him on all fours and held him in this position for forty-one minutes, saying: “This is for cheating, this is for olive oil.” It was a victory not only for Poddubny, it was a victory for Russia.

Honesty, directness, incorruptibility distinguished I. M. Poddubny throughout his long sports life. In 1905, Ivan Maksimovich again went to Paris and there he won the title of world champion for the first time. He is invited in great demand on a tour of Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, France, Belgium, Germany. Three years of touring put him forward as the undisputed champion, he did not give anyone the opportunity to put himself on the shoulder blades. All the strongest fighters in the world were his opponents. Participating in dozens of the largest championships in Russia and Europe, Poddubny takes first place in each of them. From 1905 to 1909, he won the world title six times in a row. Before him, no one could do it.

Poddubny fought sharply, with a twinkle. At the right moment, he put all his strength into movement, acted like an explosion. His famous techniques followed one after another in different directions, stunned the enemy and unbalanced him. He was considered a fighter with an "iron will". Ivan Maksimovich started wrestling at the age of 26.

Forty-five years he played in the championships. His performance and athletic survivability are striking. He gave an unsurpassed example of athletic longevity. At the age of 55, the hero makes an almost two-year tour of the United States, having mastered the techniques of freestyle wrestling, performs in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other cities, defeating the strongest wrestlers in hour-long fights. Newspapers closely followed the victories of the "Russian bear", called Poddubny "America's champion". The millions earned in two years of American tours were never handed over to Eve. Maksimovich. It is known for certain that the Americans offered him to change citizenship. The American immigration services set a condition: either he remains in America, or he loses all the money he has earned. To which the strong man proudly replied that he preferred the second. And it is still not known whether they remained on accounts in American banks or were used by the wrestler's relatives.

Ivan Maksimovich was married twice and had an adopted son. First wife - artist Antonina Kvitko-Khomenko. In 1909, Ivan Maksimovich came with his young wife to the neighboring village of Bogodukhovka from his parents. We bought 200 acres of land, started a garden, an apiary. However, Antonina did not like rural life. And when Denikin's men were in charge in the Cherkasy region, she fled with one white officer, taking all the medals of I. Poddubny, which he had won before 1909. In 1920, Ivan Maksimovich divorced her. People then said that they saw Antonina in France. She led a wild life. Medals of the wrestler-champion have not been found so far.

Second wife- Maria Stepanovna Mashoshina. Once Ivan Maksimovich, speaking in Rostov-on-Don, stayed overnight in the house of a young wrestler Ivan Romanovich (professional wrestler, worked in the Rostov circus under the pseudonym Yan Romanych). Here he met his mother, Maria Semyonovna, who worked as a baker in a bakery. Poddubny was fascinated by the friendliness of this pretty woman. In 1927, after returning from a sports tour of America, he married her. And they moved to live in Yeysk. And the adopted son of Poddubny, Ivan Mashoshin, left professional wrestling, graduated from a technical university. For many years he worked as the chief engineer of the Rostov Automobile Assembly Plant. In March 1943, he died during a Nazi air raid on Rostov. He left behind a son, Roman. Ivan Maksimovich took care of him as if he were his own grandson. Taught sports. Roman studied at the Dynamo children's sports school, trained in classical wrestling. But during the Great Patriotic War, Roman Mashoshin went to defend his homeland, was seriously wounded. I had to refuse to participate in wrestling competitions.

So, in 1927, the hero continues to tour the country, buys a house in Yeisk, on the banks of the Yeisk estuary. He could afford to settle somewhere on the coast of the Mediterranean or the Atlantic. But no, a true patriot of his country, he chose Yeysk on the map of Russia, because, to a Ukrainian by origin, he was native, soft in the south, with life-giving humor, the dialect of Ukrainian Kuban. Ivan Maksimovich easily and naturally “fitted” into the habitual life of our townspeople and felt comfortable here at home. The famous athlete became the idol of all the boys of Yeysk.

In 1939, the country celebrates the 40th anniversary of Poddubny's circus activities. He was invited to Moscow from Yeysk, settled in the Moscow Hotel. Ivan Maksimovich, dressed in leotards, was carried by athletes in a chariot across Red Square. This became the apotheosis of the sports festival in Moscow. “As soon as the chariot drove into Red Square, Poddubny was recognized: they were shouting, applauding. Applauded and members of the Central Committee and members of the government, standing on the podium of the Lenin Mausoleum. On the chariot, behind Poddubny, on the shield was written: "World Wrestling Champion 1898-1939." On November 19, 1939, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR awarded Poddubny with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and awarded him the honorary title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

In 1941, a wrestler at the age of seventy was solemnly retired. After leaving the carpet, the hero lived in Yeysk, swam in the estuary, performed at the local theater with memories, went to the market, met with schoolchildren-athletes.

From August 42nd to February 43rd, Yeysk was occupied by the Nazis. Ivan Maksimovich did not evacuate. Heart hurt. He was treated at a local sanatorium. Believing in folk medicine, he trusted more drugs and tinctures made from forest herbs. Life was difficult, and Poddubny, like all townspeople, had to look for a way to feed his family and himself. And food, for his pumped up body, required a lot. He could take a loaf of bread, cut it in half, spread half a kilo of butter and eat it like a normal sandwich. As he wrote in his memoirs: "In order not to die of hunger, I had to keep a billiard room."

The world famous "champion of champions" worked during the occupation as a marker in a billiard room. It was located in a sailor's club, which is on R. Efremov Street (now Sverdlov Street), opposite the building of the Yeysk sanatorium, between the street. Lenin and Kommunarov. Near the billiard room there was a cinema hall of the sanatorium, where the occupiers watched newsreels of the front-line chronicle. Tipsy German officers from the cinema tumbled into the billiard room. The Germans knew Ivan Poddubny. Rumors circulated around the city that the Germans supposedly offered the hero to leave for Germany, to train German wrestlers, but he flatly refused. The townspeople said that in the billiard room he had order and cleanliness. He did not tolerate the raging drunken Germans and put them out of the door without ceremony.

He shocked the Nazis by walking with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. But the Germans respected and did not touch Ivan the Great. That's what they called him. When, at the beginning of 1943, the invaders fled from Yeysk, thunderclouds began to gather around the fighter: “I worked for the Germans! Served the Nazis! The time was harsh, front-line. Particularly zealous "patriots" were ready to drive our fellow countryman to places "not so remote." However, reason prevailed. Justice won. The hero was not touched.

Ivan Maksimovich, in the very first days after the liberation of Yeysk, went to military units, promoting sports and a healthy lifestyle. The Yeisk City Executive Committee gave him coupons for food in the canteen and cards for dry rations. In those war years, such cards were issued only to very necessary specialists.

After the war, I. Poddubny was 74 years old. He spoke with memories, showed wrestling techniques, corresponded with athletes, gave them advice on what and how to eat, how to temper the body, rejoiced at the victories of our wrestlers. He signed his letters like this: "Russian hero Ivan Poddubny." He was healthy and strong at his age, but in May 1947 he had an accident - an unsuccessful fall and a hip fracture. Ivan Maksimovich was bedridden. The bone did not heal for a long time. Without crutches, he could not move. For an athlete who experiences physical activity all his life and exercises with kettlebells until old age, bed rest and crutches have become fatal. But he did not give up, he trained even on one crutch and with a stick. However, my heart began to fail.

8August 1949 at 6 am, the hero died. I. Poddubny was buried in Zagorodny Park, next to the graves of pilots who died in the sky over Yeisk during the Great Patriotic War. All the inhabitants of Yeysk and all the surrounding villages came to the funeral, and famous wrestlers flew in. And in 1965, by decision of the Yeisk City Executive Committee, the park was named after I. M. Poddubny.

In 1955, at the grave of Iv. Maksimovich, a monument was unveiled. The monument is a vertically standing slab of black marble. On the front is an oval portrait of Poddubny with a champion ribbon. Below is the inscription “Honored Artist of the RSFSR, multiple world champion I. M. Poddubny. 1871-1949". On the reverse side - the epitaph of the Yeysk poet A. S. Akhanov:

“I am full of people’s love for myself,
Here the Russian hero lies;
He has never been defeated
We win and the score is forgotten.
Years will pass...
Without fading
He will live in our hearts!
I don't know my rivals
Only death could not defeat him.

Not far from the grave is the Poddubny Memorial Museum. It was opened in 1971 on the centenary of the birth of Ivan Maksimovich. This is a unique institution, which is the only museum in Russia dedicated to one athlete. The design of the exposition is based on the image of the circus "Chapiteau", which is associated with the sports and labor biography of Poddubny. The museum's funds include more than 2,500 exhibits, including personal items, unique photographs and posters that tell about life and sports career.

Particularly impressive are steel nails twisted with a finger-thick ribbon, chains torn by a great wrestler, horseshoes broken in half, a robe about one and a half meters wide, the original Order of the Red Banner of Labor. The same order that he was not afraid to wear under the Germans during the occupation. Training equipment is stored here, among them a barbell of 75 kg. In general, a cast-iron axle or an ordinary piece of rail could serve as a sports equipment for Poddubny. But he developed the strength of his fingers with the help of ordinary tennis balls that he carried with him.

He also had the famous cast-iron cane, about which there were legends. They say that when he arrived in the United States, he was met by a crowd of journalists in the New York port. Ivan Maksimovich gave one of them to hold his "cane" and he, from an unexpected weight, dropped it on his feet. With this "cane", 19.5 kg. I. Poddubny was walking along the streets of Yeysk. Now it is kept in the museum. In the basement there is a wrestling hall of the Youth Sports School No. 1.

A memorial plaque was installed on the house where the wrestler lived: “In this house from 1927 to 1949 lived the Russian hero Ivan Maksimovich Poddubny, Honored Artist of the RSFSR, Honored Master of Sports of the USSR, world champion in Greco-Roman wrestling.” The house, located on the corner of Sovetov and Pushkin streets, is still standing.

Ivan Maksimovich had no children, and after the death of his wife, new tenants settled in the house. Therefore, a new building was built for the museum. Every year the city hosts All-Russian tournaments in Greco-Roman wrestling, dedicated to the memory of I.M. Poddubny. Wrestlers who take first place in ten weight categories receive the right to be awarded the title of "Master of Sports of Russia", and the winner in the absolute weight category is awarded a special prize from the head of the city. I. M. Poddubny left about himself the legendary glory of a hero, whose name is a symbol of invincible Russian strength. Now work is underway on a project to install a monument to I. Poddubny in Yeysk.

The name of the wrestler Ivan Poddubny, which has not disappeared from posters for about half a century, has become widely known throughout the world. In Russian periodicals, Ivan Poddubny was often called the "Russian hero", but in reality the Poddubny were Zaporozhye Cossacks. Their ancestors fought in the troops of Ivan the Terrible, defending Russia from the Tatars, and under Peter the Great they fought with the Swedes near Poltava. In his story "Prince Silver" Alexei Tolstoy mentioned Fyodor Poddubny as a man of lean build "with many scars on his face."

The outstanding athlete was born on October 8, 1871 in the former Poltava province in the village of Krasenovka, Zolotonosha district (now Cherkasy region). Ivan was the firstborn, and after his birth, the Poddubny couple had three more sons and three daughters.

Ivan Poddubny's father, Maxim Ivanovich, had his own small farm in Krasenivka and possessed colossal physical strength: he alone could lift and carry bags of grain weighing five pounds without much effort. The fellow villagers of the Poddubnys recalled that once at the fair, Maxim Ivanovich bought a cast-iron base for a cart, which was called a “way” in another way. It had to be thrown onto a cart, but there were no assistants nearby, and Maxim decided to do everything on his own. He took two logs and laid them in such a way that one end lay on the ground and the other on the cart, and then he began to slowly move the "way" along them, as if on rails, holding back the load being moved with his whole body. But suddenly the logs parted, and the cart rolled down. Maxim Ivanovich, in order to stop her, put his leg up, and the huge “move” stopped, but the leg could not withstand such a huge weight and broke. Ignoring this, he held the cast-iron part all the time until people came running to help. And even after that, despite the broken leg, he himself took the purchase home.

The mother of Ivan Poddubny, Anna Danilovna, came from the old Cossack family Naumenko, whose family was famous for its longevity. According to some reports, Ivan's maternal grandfather was a soldier, served in the army for 25 years, and lived to be 120 years old.

Ivan Poddubny grew up just like all peasant children. At the age of seven, Ivan grazed geese, then cows. Soon he began to carry grain on oxen, from the age of twelve he worked as a farm laborer, herding sheep and going to reap bread with richer relatives for dinner and modest pay. At the same time, Ivan helped his father, burdened with a large family, with the housework. By the age of 16, Ivan had such strength that he could easily bend a cow to the ground, simply by taking it by the horns. The Poddubny family was famous for the heroic strength throughout the Poltava region. Father Maxim Ivanovich stopped the britzka, holding the wheel. Once he and Ivan were driving a cart loaded with grain to the top into the city and got stuck in the mud. Then they unharnessed the oxen, and stood in their place to drag the cart. At the same time, the Poddubnys did not live richly.

For Ivan, his father became both the first coach and the first opponent. On holidays, to the delight of the villagers, they wrestled. Both strong men, surrounded on all sides by a close wall of fellow villagers, took each other by the belts and did not let go until someone was lying on the shoulder blades. Sometimes Maxim Ivanovich, sparing the vanity of his teenage son, was generous and succumbed. But later Ivan Poddubny himself said that the person who, indeed, was stronger than himself, was only his father.

In his village, Ivan fell in love for the first time, but the daughter of a wealthy peasant Alenka Vityak was not given away for him, and when Ivan turned 21, he went to work in the Crimea, where he got a job as a loader in the Lavas cargo company in one of the seaports. He spent 14-16 hours a day on ladders, dragging loads, while working with ease and very quickly. Even seasoned loaders were surprised when he shouldered a huge box, which was beyond the strength of even three, stretched out to his full height and strode up the trembling gangplank.

After a short time, the fame of the strength of the loader spread throughout all the ports of the Crimea. Soon Poddubny was brought together by fate with two students of seafaring classes Anton Preobrazhensky and Vasily Vasiliev. They were athletes and true fans of weightlifting, and convinced Ivan to take up sports, although he was extremely skeptical about training. His interest in sports increased after Anton Preobrazhensky gave him an autobiography of the famous athlete Karl Abs. In it, Poddubny was interested in the author’s statement that by constant training he managed to triple his natural strength, and Ivan began to train daily, performed exercises with weights, and did gymnastics. Together with Preobrazhensky, Ivan ran, squeezed weights and performed gymnastic exercises on shells in the yard of nautical classes. “In the course of six months,” recalled Poddubny, “I made great achievements in the sense of sports, and most importantly, I felt a great predominance over Preobrazhensky, this fascinated me even more, and I completely devoted myself to sports.”

In the spring of 1896, the "Circus of Beskorovayny" arrived in the city. In addition to a list of circus performances, his program contained a promise to show "Russian-Swiss belt wrestling." The posters announced that anyone could take part in the competitions of strongmen, and the winner was entitled to a prize. On the third day, Ivan Poddubny dared to take part in the competition and signed up with the judge. He later said: "But I must confess that in the competition they gave me a good shot, and I failed." Ashamed and booed, he took the defeat hard. But a few days later, the promised “Russian-Swiss wrestling” on the belts began in the circus, and Poddubny saw that it was almost no different from those competitions that were held in his native village. Ivan signed up again. The public, disappointed by Ivan's previous failure, greeted him with skepticism. Extending his hand for the traditional handshake, the professional wrestler smiled. He jerked Ivan aside, but he stood rooted to the spot. Moreover, he himself put pressure on the wrestler. The circus performer also leaned forward with his whole body. It was a mistake, and Poddubny had to use it more than once. He tensed, sharply straightened up, tore the wrestler off the mat. A moment later, a thump was heard. Describing an arc in the air with his feet, the circus performer fell on his back. Stunned by such a quick victory, the audience remained silent. Then she became furious.

Let's have another, - said Poddubny.

The “other” was an Italian wrestler, who also soon lay on the mat. So in a few days, Ivan Poddubny overcame all the athletes, including Georg Lurich, who later became the world champion in French wrestling. Only with Peter Yankovsky, who was half a head taller than Ivan and weighed 144 kilograms, Poddubny's fight ended in a draw.

Theodosians went to the circus on Poddubny until the fall, until the end of the season. On January 1, 1897, Poddubny took the calculation and left for Sevastopol, to the Truzzi circus, where they already knew about his successes. In the circus, it was decided that at first Poddubny would perform as an amateur, but it was an old trick. A professional wrestler, who was to play the role of "amateur", usually came to the city two weeks or a month before the arrival of the troupe, and went to work somewhere as a loader. Later, Poddubny entered the arena in the same costume in which he performed during his Feodosia debut. Razumov was put up against him. But as soon as Ivan took hold of the handles and wanted to lift the wrestler, the handles came off the belt and remained in his hands. The audience roared with delight. Everyone decided that this happened due to the exorbitant strength of Poddubny. In fact, the cunning Truzzi used another old trick - he cut the handles. It was soon announced that Poddubny had switched to professional wrestlers.

Even in Feodosia, Ivan understood the laws of professional wrestling. Circus tournaments were most often performances. They featured imitation wrestling and cascades of moves practiced with acrobatic precision. But Ivan understood something else. There can be no equality in strength and art. Someone should always be stronger and more dexterous than others, and the inquisitive, observant Ivan Poddubny quickly, like a sponge, absorbed new knowledge, mastered the intricacies of belt wrestling. He began to defeat his rivals, using not only strength, but also technique, causing the approval of the audience. After reading books about weightlifting and wrestling, Ivan compiled an individual training program for himself. He ran daily, jumped, performed exercises with weights, set the correct breathing and doused himself with ice water, refused to eat excesses, setting meal times that he strictly observed. He also gave up bad habits: smoking and drinking alcohol. Soon he became unrecognizable, because from a clumsy and rough strongman he turned into an athlete who perfectly mastered the technique of wrestling, referring to his profession as a real art. Many years later, being a world famous champion, Ivan Lebedev told about him: “The one who broke the world's best wrestlers without any regret and without the slightest embarrassment. He possessed extraordinary strength, comparable only to a natural hurricane. Of all the laws of life, he knew only one: "homo homini lupus est" and selflessly followed it. In jerks, he was also out of competition. Even if it happened that the enemy resisted especially desperately, then Poddubny would definitely step on his foot in the stalls. He was terrible not only for Russians, but also for all foreign wrestlers: he won’t quit, he’ll break him like that.

Then his first tour began, and the first fame in the world of sports appeared. Ivan Poddubny moved to Odessa, and later, at the suggestion of the circus of the Nikitin brothers, he moved to Kyiv. Thus began his tour, during which he acted not only as a wrestler, but also as an athlete. For example, he could hold three people at the same time on one outstretched arm. During his speech in Novorossiysk, a very funny incident occurred. The famous Swedish wrestler Anderson entered the ring against Poddubny. A few minutes later, the Swede was lifted into the air and placed on the shoulder blades. It happened so quickly that the public decided that the Swede succumbed to the Ukrainian wrestler. Poddubny suggested repeating the fight. When this proposal was handed over to the Swede, he replied that he would fight only when Poddubny agreed to defeat. Ivan Maksimovich was outraged. The wife of the director of the circus where these competitions were held, with tears in her eyes, begged Poddubny to agree. Otherwise, the money for tickets would have to be returned, and this would lead to the ruin of the circus. Poddubny, without much desire, agreed. Anticipating victory, the Swede entered the arena. Poddubny took him by the belt, raised him above him, holding him at outstretched arms, lay down on his shoulder blades, and put the enemy on his chest. The audience went wild with delight, and the defeated Swede fled from the arena in disgrace.

The glory of Ivan Poddubny grew and grew stronger every year. But he was increasingly annoyed by the customs of the championships, and he even made attempts to return to Feodosia in order to work as a loader again, but this intention was not destined to be fulfilled. When he was on tour in Voronezh, he received a letter from the chairman of the St. Petersburg Athletic Society, G.I. Ribopierre, who suggested that he urgently come to St. Petersburg. After arriving in St. Petersburg, Poddubny learned that the athletic society had received an offer to send a representative of Russia to Paris to participate in competitions for the title of world champion in French wrestling in 1903. They searched for a candidate all over Russia, but they never found a better wrestler than Ivan Poddubny. At that time, the anthropometric data of the athlete were as follows: height - 184 centimeters, weight - 120 kilograms, chest circumference - 134 centimeters, biceps - 45 centimeters, forearm - 36 centimeters, wrist - 21 centimeters, neck - 50 centimeters, waist - 104 centimeters, thigh - 70 centimeters, calves - 47 centimeters and the base of the lower leg - 44 centimeters. Experts said that it was incredible physical data.

He began preparing for the World Championship under the guidance of the great French wrestling coach Eugene. As Poddubny himself recalled, training sessions of unusual intensity for that time began. “For a whole month,” he wrote in his memoirs, “I trained daily with three wrestlers: with the first - 20 minutes, with the second - 30 and with the third - from 40 to 50 minutes, until each of them turned out to be completely exhausted to the point to the point where he couldn't even use his hands. After that, I ran for 10-15 minutes holding five-pound dumbbells, which by the end became an unbearable burden for my hands ... ". According to the doctor E. Garnich-Garnitsky, who, together with A. Kuprin, created a club of athletes in Kyiv, where the future “champion of champions” trained at one time, “Poddubny was able to develop energy like an explosion at the right moments and not lose his “courage” in the most difficult and dangerous moments of the struggle. He was a smart fighter, the fury of Achilles lived in him, and at the same time Poddubny was artistic and knew how to please the public.

The 1903 French Wrestling World Championship brought together many outstanding wrestlers in the French capital. The rules for the participants were very strict - if a competitor lost at least one fight, he was eliminated from the championship. In Paris, Poddubny ended up with another Russian wrestler, Alexander Aberg. Ivan Poddubny won his first victory over the German champion, a contender for a prize-winning place, Ernest Siegfried. At the sixtieth minute, he threw the German on the carpet. The second he laid down was the bestial Frenchman Favue, called the "terrible coachman" by the newspapers. He was incredibly strong, but clumsy. The Russian wrestler won eleven victories in a row and his twelfth opponent was Raul le Boucher, who defeated Aberg. Raoul le Boucher was fifteen years younger than Poddubny and 2 centimeters taller than him. The fight went at a very fast pace. Boucher tried to unbalance the opponent, using an alternation of various techniques. Poddubny withstood this onslaught and went on the offensive himself. A few minutes later, the Frenchman was completely wet, and all of Ivan's tricks began to fail one after another. Bush seemed to be slipping out of his hands. Then Poddubny guessed that the Frenchman had smeared himself with some kind of fat, which was a gross violation of the rules. A protest was made by Poddubny. The judges conducted a test, during which it turned out that Boucher lubricated himself with olive oil. Boucher was wiped dry, but he still sweated, and the oil showed through on his skin. However, the judges, instead of counting the defeat, decided to wipe it every 5 minutes. But that didn't help either. As a result, the judges scored more points in favor of the Frenchman, and Poddubny dropped out of the competition. The Russian Athletic Society offered Bush to fight Poddubny again and guaranteed him a payment of 10 thousand francs in case of victory, but the Frenchman refused this offer.

After the championship, Poddubny went to the village, decided to quit the sport, and only long persuasion from friends and the coach made him change his mind. After a short period of time, he took part in the Moscow Championship, and already in the first days of the competition he defeated the famous wrestler Ivan Shemyakin.

In August 1904, the Russkoye Slovo newspaper wrote about a wrestling competition in Moscow in the Aquarium Garden. “So, the other day,” the correspondent of the publication reported, “Poddubny and the German Abs fought. The fight was fierce. Opponents in the struggle flew on the ramp, on the back curtain, broke the scenes. Things got really ugly. Finally, after 37 minutes of fruitless struggle, Messrs. Poddubny and Abs found themselves backstage. The judges gave the call. The fighters didn't hear anything. Poddubny grabbed Abs, carried him on one arm to the stage and with all his strength - Poddubny's strength! - slammed his head on the floor ... In the wings there was a hysterical cry of Abs's wife. Abs lay unconscious. They gave me a curtain. The audience shouted: “Abs! Show Abs! What happened to Abs? And behind the scenes there was such a scene. The doctor appeared, Abs was poured with water. The doctor testified that there was no displacement of the vertebrae. Poddubny assured that "on the part of Abs, fainting is a pretense." And he accused Abs that he fought “not according to the rules” and deliberately tried to transfer the fight to the wings or the ramp at difficult moments. The commotion in the audience lasted ten minutes. Finally, the curtain opened and Mr. Abs appeared on the stage "to calm the audience."

In 1904, in St. Petersburg, at the World Championships in the final, Poddubny again met with Bush. The French public did not believe in the wrestling genius of Poddubny. Both the spectators and the organizers of the tournament believed that Poddubny did not know what wrestling was, and won thanks to one natural force. Three thousand people came to see the competitions in the Cinizelli circus in St. Petersburg per day. The championship was organized by entrepreneur Dumont with his companions. The French expected to take the first prizes. Thirty wrestlers took part in the competition, among whom were world celebrities, including the French - two-time world champion Paul Pons and Raul le Boucher, co-organizers of the tournament. At this tournament, the organizers had already distributed places in the finals in advance, for which four cash prizes were given out: for the first place - 3000 rubles, for other places - 1000, 600 and 400 rubles. When the organizers found that Poddubny was guaranteed to take third place, they changed the conditions of the tournament, combining the prizes into one. As a result, the winner was to receive five thousand rubles. The organizers did not believe that Poddubny could defeat everyone. The duel with Raul again became the decisive match, and Poddubny decided to cheat. He calculated the development of events many moves ahead. Knowing the strength and dexterity of Raul, he did not show him all his strength and skill. All thirty minutes of the fight, Poddubny watched only to prevent the enemy from holding a single reception. A new fight was scheduled for the next day, and Raul immediately attacked Poddubny. It was felt that he wanted to break the enemy in the first minutes. But Poddubny also did not hold back. From his side, the reception followed the reception, and Raul was confused. At the fifteenth minute, he hit the "ground floor", after which Poddubny broke and twisted it for another twenty-seven minutes, now and then remembering Paris and olive oil. At the forty-second minute, Raul, from under the Russian wrestler, wanted to make a statement to the judges. Poddubny did not let him go, but the judges insisted that he let the enemy go. Raul got up, walked, staggering, to the referee's table and declared that he could no longer continue the fight. Retiring to the director's room, Raul was crying. Officers from the public crowded there in vain persuaded him to continue the fight. The last opponent of Poddubny was the two-meter giant Paul Pons. The initial fifteen minutes Poddubny was looking for the weaknesses of the enemy, and after the break he went on the attack. One of the eyewitnesses of this fight recalled that Poddubny "thrown him around the arena, constantly forcing him to go to the ground, which Pons did not like at all." The circus was waiting for a big event. Pons didn't get up off the carpet. “By the end of the fight, it was a pity to look at him,” said the same eyewitness, “his tights began to hang on him, as if Pons had suddenly lost twenty centimeters at the waist, crumpled up and turned into a rag that I wanted to squeeze out.” After this victory, Poddubny was given such honors that only national heroes were awarded.

The following year, 1905, Poddubny became the winner of the Paris World Championship. He defeated his formidable opponents one by one. Agile, fast, strong, he won the applause of the Parisians, but he was still far from the popularity of the champion Jesse Pedersen, who also did not have a single defeat and reached the final with Poddubny. Twenty hours they continued walking on the carpet and trying to hold some kind of reception. Then Ivan Poddubny decided to go for a trick - he began to feign rapid breathing and fatigue. Pedersen perked up and took him in a girth. However, Poddubny felt that the Dane's hands were still incredibly strong, and waited a little longer. Pedersen twice embraced the Russian hero, and on the third time he suddenly squeezed the Dane's hands and "from a half-supples he threw him so hard that he himself flew over him." In one of the descriptions of this fight, Ivan Maksimovich added that he "used his own combined technique from the Tatar wrestling and purely threw it on the shoulder blades." It happened exactly one hour and thirty-six minutes into the contraction.

The championship woke up unprecedented passions. The Parisians became interested in wrestling. Everyone was interested in wrestlers - from a worker to the president of the republic. In all the windows were exhibited portraits of Poddubny in a hat, with a mustache, and in a Circassian coat. The Parisians admired his build. Under the portraits, where Poddubny stood in tights, raising his arms and tensing his muscles, there was a signature: "His back is phenomenal." The French considered Poddubny a demigod, besieged and sought acquaintance. It was a triumph for Russia. With his victory in Paris in 1905, Ivan Poddubny paved the way for Russian wrestlers to European championships, from where they brought prizes and titles, consolidating the glory of Russian professional sports.

In 1906 he went to Bucharest and won the championship there. In November he was again in Paris and again challenged the world championship. In the final, Poddubny met with the German Heinrich Eberle, who was called "a vivid personification of the best physical virtues of his nation." Eberle threw Pons, Kara-Akhmet, Petrov and Pytlyasinsky on the carpet. Poddubny watched Eberle, and he did not have a feeling of superiority over the German. Eberle was in no way inferior to the Russian wrestler in terms of constitution, reaction, or striving for victory. The fight between Eberle and Poddubny lasted more than an hour. Experience won, the tactical skill of Poddubny. Having exhausted the German, he pressed him to the carpet with his shoulder blades. In Milan, he defeated Pedersen. Then Poddubny fought in London, later in Brussels, Amsterdam and Aachen. At the end of 1907 in Paris, Ivan Poddubny again became the world champion.

In February 1908, Poddubny took part in the championship organized in Berlin through a figurehead by the German champion Jacob Koch. Strong athletes fought there - Pedersen, Siegfried, Pengal. Koch claimed first place, but was afraid of Poddubny, and therefore offered him a deal - 2 thousand marks for losing in the final. Ivan Poddubny agreed, but on the stage he carefully laid Koch on both shoulder blades. Poddubny's trick was made public, and the German became the subject of ridicule. The name of Poddubny did not leave the pages of European newspapers. Journalists came up with the title "champion of champions" for him. In 1909, in Paris, Ivan Maksimovich confirmed his title by defeating the German Weber in the final of the Frankfurt championship. Poddubny was then about forty years old, but the right lifestyle helped him to be in good shape.

During the tour of Ivan Poddubny in Italy, Raul le Boucher hired five assassins, but their collusion was overheard by another French wrestler, Embable de la Calmette, and was killed for it. Later, Poddubny simply scattered the bandits during their attack. And, although the work remained unfulfilled, the bandits began to demand payment from the customer. He refused to pay and was himself killed.

Circus historians believe that the "golden age" of French wrestling was 1904-1909. It was during these years that Poddubny won most of his victories. His awards, stored in a special chest - gold medals and badges - by the end of the "golden age" weighed two pounds. He was popular in Russia and Europe, thousands of postcards with his portraits were sold. A friend of Poddubny, the famous couplet clown Petrus Tarakhno, wrote about him: "Everything in him was commensurable, everything was overflowing with power and courageous beauty, everything spoke of unusual strength." Also enthusiastically wrote about Poddubny and another of his acquaintances, the son of a Donetsk miner, acrobat clown Vitaly Lazarenko. Ivan Poddubny, possessing extraordinary strength, was also distinguished by his speed of reaction and performed well the most difficult tricks. He was an intelligent and experienced fighter, able to correctly calculate his strength and navigate the capabilities of the enemy.

Poddubny's favorite joke was to let someone hold his massive cane, which was immediately dropped, as it looked wooden, inside it was entirely made of cast iron and weighed 16 kilograms. In the 1910s, the album “Wrestlers” was released in St. Petersburg, and Poddubny was given the following description there: “Strong as a natural hurricane. Of all the laws of life, one knows: “homo homini lupus est” (man is a wolf to man). If he doesn't quit, he'll break it."

In 1910, Poddubny stopped performing and returned to the Poltava region in Krasenivka. He wanted family happiness, and he bought a mansion in which, as a boy, he worked for the landowner Abel. In the vicinity of Krasenivka and neighboring Bogodukhovka, he acquired 120 acres of black soil, benefited his relatives with land allotments, built an estate in Bogodukhivka on an area of ​​13 acres, and started two mills. He managed to achieve all this thanks to the fact that he received high fees. The titles of the world champion were also generously paid. Soon he married Nina Kvitko-Fomenko, and after a while he went bankrupt. One of his mills was burned out of evil by his younger brother, the second, like the estate, he sold to pay off a debt.

In 1913, Poddubny began performing again. During the new fights, the Black Mask was exposed, under which the experienced wrestler Alexander Garkavenko was hiding, and a duel with another famous champion, Ivan Zaikin, who once said: “Only outstanding athletes could maintain their sporting honor and not go to bed on the orders of the championship organizer at a certain minute. athletes such as Ivan Poddubny, Ivan Shemyakin and Nikolai Vakhturov.”

When the First World War began, and then the civil war, Poddubny could not determine his civic position. “I started with the reds and finished with the whites…” he once said. However, this turbulent time still left an imprint in his fate. In 1919, he was nearly killed in a Zhytomyr circus by drunken anarchists and forced to flee, leaving behind all his belongings and livelihood. After that, Ivan Poddubny wandered for a long time without money and work. A little later, in Kerch, he was shot at by a drunken officer. The bullet passed on a tangent, and only slightly scratched Poddubny's shoulder. In the same year, an unpleasant meeting for Ivan with Makhno took place in Berdyansk. There was a legend about how Ivan Maksimovich got to the Makhnovists and fought in Berdyansk with the strongest Makhnovist - a certain Gritsko. Poddubny laid him on both shoulder blades, which upset Nestor Makhno a lot.

In 1920, he visited the dungeons of the Odessa Cheka. It was said that one day he was almost shot by mistake, as they were mistaken for the organizer of Jewish pogroms by the name of Poddubov, who was also a fighter.

A big blow for him at that time was the news from home that his wife Nina had found a replacement for him, and fled, taking all his awards with her. Soon she wrote: “On my knees I will go all the way to you, Vanechka.” In love, Ivan Poddubny was not very lucky, but in his personal life and before marriage there were many dramatic moments. They said that when asked if there was anyone in the world who could defeat him, Poddubny answered without delay: “Yes! Babs! All my life, I, a fool, have been led astray.” It was his first love Alenka, and later the forty-year-old Hungarian tightrope walker Emilia, with whom Poddubny was completely bewitched, offered her a hand and heart, not suspecting that she was not the only admirer of the beauty. As a result, the insidious Emilia fled from Poddubny with a wealthy admirer. One day, a neighbor who traveled by chance with a cast-iron to the Crimea brought news to Krasenovka: “Your unlucky Ivan left the port, throws weights in the circus. They say that a Hungarian girl lured him, who walks on a tightrope in their circus. He seems to be planning to marry her." The brothers wrote to Ivan: “Father is angry with you and threatens to break off the shafts about you. Don't come by Christmas."

In the troupe of the Kyiv circus of the Nikitin brothers, Ivan Poddubny met the young gymnast Masha Dozmarova. He could have seated her in the palm of his hand, she was so tiny and graceful. Love for her overwhelmed him, and was mutual. Poddubny decided to marry, but tragedy prevented this. One day, Poddubny was waiting for the end of the Machine Room behind the heavy drapery that separated the stage. Suddenly there was a thud and a woman's scream. Jumping into the arena, he saw the prostrate body of his beloved. Masha was already dead.

Since 1922, Poddubny worked in the Moscow State Circus, then in Petrograd. In 1922, Ivan Maksimovich married again. On tour in Rostov-on-Don, he met the mother of a young wrestler Ivan Mashonin, Maria Semyonovna, who worked in a bakery. She also liked Poddubny, and she agreed to become his wife. To start a new life with Maria Semyonovna, money was needed, and Poddubny went on tour to Germany, where he worked for a year. However, he no longer received those fees that could allow him a comfortable life, and in the fall of 1925 Ivan Maksimovich went to America, where he had to fight according to the rules of freestyle wrestling and retrain. In the US, classical wrestling was not held in high esteem. Poddubny had to learn freestyle wrestling, almost not constrained by the rules. The tougher and more ferocious the fight, the more success it had with American viewers. During Ivan Poddubny's stay in the USA, Joe Stecher was considered the champion. His legs seemed incredibly thick and tenacious. Stecher owed his fame to them. He entwined opponents with powerful legs, and it was almost impossible to unclench them. Stecher's meeting with Poddubny attracted an unprecedented number of spectators. Ivan Maksimovich opened his opponent's legs, but when he grabbed the American by the belt and wanted to throw him over himself, standing on the bridge, Stecher's legs entwined his legs again. So none of them achieved a decisive advantage.

In the United States, homesickness took possession of Poddubny more and more, and by the end of 1927 he announced his departure. The organizers of the fights did not want to lose such a fighter, he was persuaded, blackmailed and even threatened, but nothing could keep Poddubny in a foreign country. More than a thousand people attended the farewell banquet in honor of his departure.

Returning home, Ivan Maksimovich moved to Yeysk with his wife and stepson, where he bought a nice house with a large garden. But Poddubny could not sit still. And every year, Maria Semenovna accompanied her husband on distant wanderings - to Baku, Voronezh, Stalingrad, Odessa, Astrakhan, Irkutsk and many other cities. Even at sixty-six he never left the carpet. The decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of November 19, 1939 on awarding Ivan Poddubny for outstanding services in the development of Soviet sports with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and on conferring on him the title of Honored Artist of the RSFSR caused a flood of congratulatory letters.

After the Great Patriotic War began, the seventy-year-old Poddubny did not want to evacuate from Yeysk: “Where to run? Die soon." His heart really began to ache. Not trusting medicines, he was treated with tinctures from steppe Kuban herbs. In August 1942, the Germans entered Yeysk, and in the very first days of the occupation, he was detained by the Gestapo, who saw an old man calmly walking down the street in a straw, gray shirt loose and with the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, which Poddubny never took off. He was soon released from the Gestapo, as his name was well known there. Moreover, he soon began working as a marker in the billiard room, as he had to feed his loved ones. But since there was a bar nearby, Poddubny threw drunk players out the door of the billiard room, thus fulfilling the role of bouncers. According to the recollections of the inhabitants of Yeysk: “The rowdy Fritzes were very proud that Ivan the Great himself put them on the street. One day a representative of the German command came to Poddubny and offered to go to Germany to train German athletes. He refused and said: “I am a Russian wrestler. I will stay with them." And this statement got away with Poddubny. The Germans bowed before his strength and worldwide fame.

When units of the Red Army entered Yeysk in February 1943, denunciations rained down on Poddubny. The NKVD took over Ivan Maksimovich, where they conducted a thorough check, but they did not find any facts of cooperation with the Nazis. As for work in the billiard room, it was qualified "as a purely commercial institution." After the liberation of Yeysk, Ivan Maksimovich traveled to nearby military units and hospitals, spoke with his memoirs. But the times were not easy. Paek could not even to a small extent satisfy the needs of the mighty wrestler's organism. He wrote to the Yeisk City Council: “According to the book, I get 500 grams of bread, which I don’t have enough. I ask you to add another 200 grams to me so that I can exist. October 15, 1943". He asked for help from Voroshilov, but did not receive an answer from Moscow. He often came to the director of the Yeysk bakery, and he never refused the old man a piece of bread. If Poddubny was sent from Krasnodar an additional sugar ration for a month, he ate it in one day. To support himself, he wore one medal after another. Sometimes, from malnutrition, he fell into bed and lay for several days to build up strength. It was noticeable that the constant feeling of hunger, the inability to saturate his body, far from being the same as everyone else, left its mark on him. After the war, they already saw another Poddubny: with slumped shoulders, with an expression of sadness and resentment, frozen on his face.

One paramedic said that when he put cans to Poddubny, he saw that his back was in terrible scars from burns. When asked about their origin, the silent, balanced fighter replied: “It was Engels who taught me Lenism.” As it turned out, Ivan Maksimovich was put in 1937 in the prison of the Rostov Department of the NKVD, where he was tortured with an electric soldering iron, demanding to give account numbers and addresses of foreign banks in which he could keep his savings. A year later, he was nevertheless released, after which he said that he was arrested for "language" and for "passport". For "language" he was punished for stories about the lives of people in other countries. And with the passport the following story turned out. Poddubny was recorded as "Russian" and the letter "i" in the surname was replaced with "o". The police refused to exchange the passport. Then he himself corrected a letter in his surname, crossed out the word "Russian" and wrote "Ukrainian", for which he was imprisoned.

In 1945, 74-year-old Ivan Poddubny was awarded the title of Honored Master of Sports of the USSR. One day, returning from the market, he fell. The doctors diagnosed him with a closed fracture of the femoral neck. The powerful organism now refused to help: the bone did not grow together. He managed to get on crutches only to the bench, which was put up to the gate by his wife. Here he could talk to people passing by.

Poddubny died on August 8, 1949 at the seventy-eighth year of his life. Those who knew their family said that for Poddubny this is not age. Having received a telegram from Moscow “To bury as it should be”, the coffin with the body of Poddubny was installed in the building of a sports school. He was buried not in the cemetery, but in the city park, where the graves of the pilots who died here remained from the war years. They put up a simple fence, writing on the board with red lead: "Ivan Poddubny." Soon this area was covered with grass, and local goats and cows grazed there. But one day, in the news on the BBC, it was reported that in the city of Yeysk, in desolation, almost wiped off the face of the earth, is the grave of Ivan Poddubny, a man whom no one could ever put on the shoulder blades. Then the authorities began to look for a burial place and erected a granite monument on it, on which the inscription was carved on a black granite stone: "Here lies the Russian hero." In 1988, the stele on his grave was broken, and the inscription "Khakhol-Petliurist!" appeared on it.

In 1955, a book entitled "Russian hero Ivan Poddubny" was published in Moscow. Several films and documentaries have been made about him. About the relationship between Ivan Poddubny and Maria Mashoshina, a program from the cycle “More than Love” was filmed.

Since 1962, Russia has annually hosted international classical wrestling competitions for the Ivan Poddubny Prize, whose life fits into an exclusively Russian plot, where the happiness of victory, popular glory and the tragedy of oblivion merge into one.

A documentary film "The Tragedy of a Strongman" was shot about Ivan Poddubny.

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The text was prepared by Alina Polushkina

Used materials:

Lyudmila Tretyakova, Ivan's Absolute Power
Site materials www.budofilms.org
Site materials www.history.vn.ua
Sergey Osipov, “Remained a fighter under all regimes”
Pravda.ru “Poddubny, the legendary Russian Ivan”
Nikolai Sukhomlin, "Bogatyr Ivan Poddubny: from loaders to champions"
Oleg Slepynin, "The Hamburg account of Ivan Poddubny"
Petr Semenenko, "Champion of Champions" (history of the famous names of Russian athletics)
Site materials www.aif.ru
Site materials www.bestpeopleofrussia.r
Site materials www.hardgainer.ru
Site materials www.calend.ru
Site materials www.slavput.ru

Ivan Poddubny is a professional wrestler, athlete and circus performer. A legendary man, whose performances were sold out in Russia, France, Italy, Germany and America. Ivan Maksimovich Poddubny was born on September 26 (old style) 1871 in the village of Bogodukhovka, Poltava province.

Ivan inherited his remarkable physical strength from his father, a descendant of the Zaporizhzhya Cossacks. The future strongman from childhood was accustomed to hard peasant labor, from the age of 12 he worked as a laborer. Ivan's mother had a beautiful voice. A subtle ear for music was passed on to his son. On Sundays, the hero Poddubny sang in the church choir.

At the age of 22, the guy left his native village for the Crimea, Ivan was pushed to this step by love. Alena, the girl whom Ivan loved, grew up in a wealthy family, so her father was categorically against marriage to the poor Poddubny. Ivan dreamed of earning a lot of money, getting rich and returning to the girl, but soon after leaving, the young man forgot about her. For 3 years, the future athlete worked as a loader in the ports of Sevastopol and Feodosia. There Poddubny met sailors who spoke about the training system.

Sport

For the first time, Poddubny entered the ring in 1896, when the Beskaravayny circus toured the Crimea. From that moment began the athlete's sports career. Port loader Ivan followed the performances of the athletes with interest. After the number, the entertainer turned to the audience with a proposal to take part in the duel. Poddubny came out and surpassed the titled athletes who performed "on the belts". The beginning of a wrestling career was laid.

In 1903, the chairman of the Society of Athletes in St. Petersburg invited Ivan Poddubny to participate in the World Championships in Paris. For 3 months, the wrestler had to master the French style of wrestling. The workouts were intense.

In Paris, the "Russian bear" opposed titled athletes. Ivan Maksimovich won 11 fights, but lost to the Frenchman Bush. Before the fight, Bush went to the trick - he smeared his body with oil so that the opponent's hands would slide over him. The judges awarded the victory to Bush, and Ivan Poddubny received a lesson for life. Since then, Ivan has become an ardent opponent of dirty methods in the ring.

In 1905, an international championship was again held in Paris, Ivan's victory in it was triumphant. In the next 3 years, the winning streak continued. Poddubny was invited to competitions in different countries. Journalists wrote about the athlete only as a “champion of champions”. The life of the hero passed on the road, but he dreamed of his own home, family, and in 1910 he decided to leave the sport.

Circus career

Poddubny returned to the circus arena at the age of 42, worked first in Zhytomyr, then in Kerch. In 1922, when Ivan Poddubny was already 51 years old, the strong man was invited to the troupe of the Moscow Circus. After a medical examination, the doctors said that the athlete was in excellent health, there were no contraindications.

Then there was work in the Petrograd circus. The difficult financial situation forced Ivan Poddubny to agree to tour in Germany and America. Performances were sold out, but in 1927 the athlete decided to return to Russia. It is assumed that in the United States the wrestler earned a lot of money, which remained in an account in an American bank.

Ivan Poddubny performed in the circus until the age of 70, and this was the artist's personal record.

Personal life

Ivan's first love for a girl from his native village was short-lived. Rather, not even love, but youthful love.

For the second time, the athlete fell in love with tightrope walker Emilia. The girl was older and more experienced than Ivan, she subtly played on the feelings of the young man, forcing the athlete to indulge her whims and whims. Soon a wealthy admirer appeared on the horizon of Emilia, with whom the woman left.

After the flight of Emilia, Ivan moved to Kyiv. Here the man met the fragile gymnast Masha. The petite girl reciprocated the man. The couple made plans for the future, but fate decreed otherwise. During the performance, Mashenka fell off the trapeze and crashed.

At the age of 40, Ivan Poddubny married for the first time. His wife was the beautiful Antonina Kvitko-Fomenko. The couple bought a plot of land, built a house and started a farm. The marriage lasted 7 years, until Antonina met an officer and ran away with him - at that time Poddubny was touring in Odessa. A few years later, Antonina wanted to return to her husband, but the man did not forgive her.

The last love of Ivan Poddubny is the widow Maria Mashonina, the mother of his student. The strongman was shocked by the beauty and sensuality of a woman. The couple lived on the shores of the Sea of ​​Azov, in Yeysk, where they bought a house after the American tour of the athlete. With Maria, the Russian hero lived to death. Poddubny had no children, but Ivan Maksimovich treated his son Maria with paternal tenderness.

Death

Poddubny died on August 8, 1949 from a heart attack. The food ration, which was given out in those years, was not enough for the athlete's body for normal functioning.

After the death of the champion, the wife was able to pay for a simple grave without a monument. And only when they wrote in the press that the champion was resting in a grave overgrown with weeds, a monument was erected to Ivan Poddubny. The inscription on the tombstone reads: "Here lies the Russian hero."

• From childhood, Ivan Maksimovich established a strict sports regimen. A wrestler with a height of 185 cm weighed 120 kg. Contemporaries of Poddubny have repeatedly said that the strongman constantly carried with him a steel cane weighing 16 kg. By 1910, the athlete had already won a large number of awards and trophies. It is assumed that by that time the total weight of the badges and gold medals of the athlete was two pounds.
• In 1919, drunken anarchists tried to shoot Poddubny in the Zhytomyr circus. A similar incident occurred later in Kerch. The wrestler was shot by an officer who was in a state of intoxication, and a year later the athlete ended up in the dungeons of the Odessa Cheka. The black streak in the life of Ivan Maksimovich was continued by his wife's betrayal.

• The wrestler grew his famous mustache in 1898. The man agreed to such a radical step, having listened to the advice of the Kyiv circus performer Akim Nikitin. He advised the athlete to change his appearance, pointing to the roots of the artist, who came from the Zaporozhye Cossacks. Then the famous photo of Poddubny appeared with a mustache, in a Circassian coat with a dagger and gazyrs.
• When Poddubny was 53 years old, the wrestler lost to Ivan Chufistov, a famous Ryazan wrestler. After a hard fight, Ivan Maksimovich said to his opponent:

“Oh, Vanka, I didn’t lose to you, but to my old age.”

• During the Great Patriotic War, the athlete remained on the territory occupied by German troops. Despite this, Poddubny continued to wear the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. The Germans respected the merits of a celebrity, even allowed the strongman to open a billiard room at a military hospital, and also offered to go to Germany to train local athletes, but he answered briefly:

“I am a Russian wrestler. I will stay with them."

• In 2014, the film "Poddubny" was released, telling about the life of the legendary wrestler. According to the plot, the picture repeats in many details the Soviet film "The Wrestler and the Clown", which was created in 1958.
• The documentary film “The Tragedy of the Strongman. Ivan Poddubny”, in which the creators told about interesting facts from the life of the legend.
• When the athlete died, an order came from Moscow to bury Ivan Maksimovich with honors, but the “king of wrestlers” (nickname of Ivan Poddubny) was behind the cemetery fence. Until the beginning of the 70s, the athlete’s grave remained abandoned until the Air Force employees reminded everyone of the tragic fate of the legend. Today, the folk trail to the grave of the hero does not overgrow.