Thor Bjornsson Is ‘Saying Goodbye’ to Boxing and Moving Onto a New Challenge
Hafthor "Thor" Bjornsson surprised many of his fans when, after winning Iceland's Strongest Man for the 10th year in a row, he announced that he was quitting strongman and retraining as a boxer. Three years and a 100-pound weight loss transformation later, he beat fellow strongman-turned-fighter Eddie Hall in "the world's heaviest fight." But in a pair of recent videos on his YouTube channel, Bjornsson makes another announcement about his career and what the future holds.
"This is actually a very difficult thing to talk about," he says. "I've made a decision to move on from boxing, to not compete in boxing again, to say goodbye to boxing and just not fight again. I had a good run, you know, I did it for two and a half years, and it was nice to do so, because first when I started I had a lot of people not believe in me, a lot of people saying I was slow, I was this, I was awful... And that's OK, everybody starts somewhere, they are beginners, and I was a beginner in boxing. But I proved a lot of people wrong by working hard... I proved people wrong, and I made people proud. And that was very satisfying for me."
However, he admits that despite respecting boxing and his fellow boxers, the truth is "the passion was never really there" despite how deeply he committed to the sport, and that the entire process became a ceaseless grind. "I'm not a big fan of cardio, I think I've made that clear," he says.
So he has reevaluated how he wants to spend his time, and is now pursuing two new goals.
The first objective is to break one of his own world records. This weekend, at the Rogue Invitational in Texas, he intends to set a new weight over bar record. He initially broke this back in 2019 at the Arnold Strongman Classic, when he threw 55 pounds over a 20'2" bar, and is confident that he can improve on this. "I gave it a few years hoping that someone would break it, but no one was able to," he says. "So I think it's about time that I break this world record and then who knows, maybe I'll have to come back to strongman and break my own deadlift world record."
Bjornsson's second announcement is that he is returning to his true passion—lifting heavy things—and will be taking part in competitive powerlifting. More specifically, he is setting himself the goal of lifting a 1,000-kg total (2,204 pounds) across squat, bench press, and deadlift.
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