When Fake Muscles Go Wrong - Part 2

About three out of every four Americans are dissatisfied with how they look from time to time. It’s normal. But some of these people take extreme measures to try and achieve their dream physique, often with gruesome consequences. So, get ready for architectural abs, exploding arms, and more private mishaps. Let's investigate even more fake muscles that went seriously wrong.

Khan Baba

They say that no one man should have all that power. But there's someone who does: Khan Baba.

Real name, Arbab Khizer Hayat Khan, Baba hails from Mardan in northern Pakistan. Standing at a colossal 6’5 and self-claiming to weigh in at an absolutely devastating 961lbs, big Baba is allegedly as heavy as a horse, and is the self-anointed strongest man in the world.

How’s he so big? Well, Baba says he eats 10,000 calories a day. His daily diet consists of four chickens, 36 eggs, 6.6lbs of meat, and over 1.3 gallons of milk.

Baba says this farmstead of daily protein is the secret behind the unbelievable feats of strength he shows off on social media. He’s shared videos of himself pulling two SUVs tied to his hair and holding a motorbike with his teeth. He even claimed back in 2012 he lifted 11,000lbs at a Japanese weightlifting comp. This guy’s the real deal.

Except he’s not. Supposedly, this is Babatron smashing through a wall:

But what about when he pulled those two cars? Take a look at the footage and you'll see that the rope’s slack!

His Baba Buddies are obviously in the driver's seat. And that 11,000lb lift in Japan? There’s no record of it ever happening. As for his size, Baba is 90% pillow suit to look extra big. Beneath all that stuffing he’s just a normal dude.

There’s no doubt that Baba is a fake. He even admitted it in an interview, claiming he’s just a character created to fulfil a lifelong dream of wrestling in the WWE. However, many gullible fans still believe the ruse. And to this day, he’s never posted himself without all that cushion. So, despite the admission, it seems he’s trying to keep some element of the lie alive.

Synthol

Fitness influencers will tell you to eat more calories. But there is another way to get big. The biceps of the guy below are so big he can’t even get the food into his mouth. But it’s not because he’s been eating his protein, he used something called synthol instead.

It’s a pretty nasty concoction of oil, painkillers, and alcohol that can be injected underneath the muscles. Some bodybuilders use small doses to give them a little extra boost before comps. Then, other people use it to gain the appearance of huge muscles without putting in any of the work.

In recent years, synthol appears to have grown in popularity, much to the ire of the medical community. Videos of men with horribly swollen muscles can be found all over social media.

This synthol user didn’t stop with his arms either. He’s been injecting his shoulders to the point he looks like a Gundam. Instead of protecting the Earth Federation from the Principality of Zeon, maybe he should focus on protecting himself.

Aside from the obvious physical deformities, synthol can cause many life-long health complications like nerve damage, artery damage, heart attacks and strokes. And removing any damaged or dying tissues can require painful surgery. This stuff is no joke! That’s the thing, there are no shortcuts to getting in good shape. Sadly though, it’s not the last time old oily will be making an appearance.

Liver King

Throughout the early 2020s, Liver King, real name Brian Johnson, gained millions of social media followers by preaching his unconventional lifestyle, diet, and training methods. Brian swore that by living by what he called an “ancestral lifestyle”, you can attain his muscle-clad physique. This ancestral lifestyle appears to involve not wearing clothes, not getting a haircut, and eating copious amounts of raw liver and animal cahonies.

Brian does practice what he preaches, but noshing raw liver and animal danglers isn’t some long-safeguarded mega-secret to getting jacked. Want to know what is? Steroids! Brian’s physique was achieved through modern medicines which increase the production of specific muscle-building proteins.

That doesn't mean that Brian taking a little something to get an advantage is exactly wrong. Steroids are rife in the fitness industry. But this deli-counter caveman consistently denied it and went on every podcast under the sun harking on about how his dumb lifestyle was the secret to his physique. Why? To sell supplements, workout plans, and a load of other nonsense.

By convincing his fans that being a doo-dah muncher was the key to his physique he profited off them. And reportedly Brian was making around $100 million a year. In November 2022, YouTube royalty, More Plates More Dates, released a major expose on this Lily-Livered Fraud.

The Liver King Lie by More Plates More Dates

He’d received an email from a bodybuilding coach who’d been contacted by Brian, outlining in explicit detail his elaborate drug stack. And that little something was actually a lot of something. Turns out, Brian was spending an eyewatering $11,000 a month on the non-ancestral part of his lifestyle.

He was forced to come out and admit the liver shtick was a scam and swallow a giant piece of humble pie, which considering his usual diet, probably tasted quite nice.

Liver King Confession... I Lied. by Liver King

Still, that was 2022; has he cleaned up his act since then? Not really. After saying he was going clean, he’s since admitted to going back on some of the meds. Transparency is great, but he’s not being honest about everything. Brian continues to obscure the truth about whether his abs are real or not.

Sometimes he says they’re implants costing $10k a piece, other times he says they’ve been etched by a surgeon who removed layers of fat from between the skin and muscle to create more definition. Other times still he says he’s joking. It’s hard to trust anything he says. Brian trains hard and you can't take that away from him. However, his body is the marketing tool for the products he sells. His body cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s far from natural. He’s the fitness Kardashians.

Moses Gibson

Ladies, what’s your must-have in a male partner? If you believe social media, they’ve gotta be 6’2’’ and earning a bajillion dollars a minute. Wanna know what percentage of American men are over 6’2’’? 6%. Still, our algorithm is cluttered with this dumb take. And for someone like Moses Gibson, it rocked his confidence.

Forty-one-year-old Moses said his 5’5’’ stature made it impossible to get a girlfriend. He was miserable. He’d tried everything from shoe lifts to dodgy medications and even consulted a spiritual healer. Except none of it worked.

In a last-ditch effort, Moses underwent an agonizing leg-lengthening procedure to make himself taller. In these procedures, surgeons cut through either the upper or lower leg bones, before attaching a device which slowly moves the two ends of bone apart. As space opens up between the two ends new bone grows in the gap. If you’re thinking that sounds painful, it is. Many patients who’ve undergone the surgery say that the post-surgery lengthening procedure is excruciating. But was it worth it?

For Moses, yes. He spent over $170,000 on two leg-lengthening procedures on his upper and lower legs, and leapt from 5’5’’ to 5’10’’. That’s dramatic. As for his confidence, he found a girlfriend! But hold up. One-hundred-and-seventy thousand? We're not trying to rain on his parade, but Moses’ height wasn’t the reason he was unlucky in love.

Sure, some women would have outright rejected him. But the real issue was that he believed his height was holding him back. The surgery was successful, and he’s found love, but he didn’t need to be taller. He needed to work on that insecure voice in his head that told him he wasn’t good enough.

Also, Moses was one of the lucky ones. Not everyone who gets the surgery is so successful. A 22-year-old Chinese man who was insecure about his height had always dreamed of being taller, and finally travelled abroad in 2020 to get it done.

However, his dream of hitting 5’9’’ became a nightmare after surgery complications left him with osteomyelitis, an infection in his bone marrow. He’s now facing permanent disabilities and a huge amount of debt, and for what? A life confined to a chair? If anything, he’s going to look shorter now and face bigger barriers.

We're not saying life isn’t harder for short kings. But you don’t fix an insecure brain by getting rid of the thing it’s fixating on, it’ll just find something else to lock onto. And if the best solution has a risk of permanent disability, maybe it’s time to find someone to talk to before taking such extreme measures.

Anastasia Pokreshchuk

You have probably never seen anyone with bigger cheeks than Ukrainian Model Anastasia Pokreshchuk. Check these out:

Anastasia earned her huge social media following by posting videos of her heavily altered face. But she hasn’t always looked like this. Up until the age of 26, Anastasia looked no different from everyone else, and that bothered her.

She’s since lost track of just how many procedures, or how many thousands of dollars it’s taken to achieve her unique look. She’s had cheek fillers, lip fillers, botox, and even her jaw reshaped. That’s a lot of work. Now she’s practically unrecognizable from her former self.

Here’s a sticky situation. Anastasia looked great before, so it's sad that she felt like she needed extreme measures to be happy with herself. But she can do whatever she wants with her body, and Anastasia says she’s happy with the attention her self-described “exotic” look brings her. However, it’s hard to comment on the psychological stability of someone willing to disfigure themselves to get famous. Alterations and enhancements are not necessarily bad, but where do you draw the line?

Romario Dos Santos Alves, The Brazilian Hulk

All kids wanna grow up to be their favorite superhero. When Brazilian Romario Dos Santos Alvez was a boy, he dreamed of becoming The Hulk. The only issue was Romario was a scrawny kid, and that made him feel insecure. So as he got older, he began training at the gym, but he struggled to grow the bulging muscles of his comic book idol.

Then at the age of just 15 Romario was introduced to Synthol, and everything changed. He thought he could finally achieve the physique of his dreams and started injecting 4 milliliters of oil twice a week. Within just nine months, his arms grew by a whopping 20%.

It doesn’t look great, does it? And looks are only the start. As well that bulbous physique, Romario developed breathing difficulties and became very lethargic. Turns out, all that oil had solidified in his muscles and was causing some serious issues. After consulting a doctor, things went from bad to worse when they recommended a double-arm amputation. That’s devastating!

However, miraculously, on the day of his surgery the doctors changed their opinion. He was allowed to keep his arms but his family demanded he stop injecting. And as far as we know, he has! Good on him.

Luba Hulk

Romario isn’t the only person to become obsessed with the big green monster. Meet Luis Carlos Jesus, also known as Luba Hulk. He’s gained a pretty big following on social media for his insane physique and infectious dance moves.

Luba says his immense physique is all natural and, to maintain it, he eats plenty of couscous, salad, and around 30 eggs a day. According to the big man himself, that plus working out for almost 30 years led him to achieve his giant stature. But that is obviously not true, his massively inflated muscles are clearly another case of Synthol abuse.

Pectoral Implants

Not everyone with dodgy muscles took the Synthol shortcut. Some desperate dudes chose an even shorter option. After going through a messy divorce, one British man called Brett was feeling pretty down in the dumps. Emotionally, romantically, and worst of all, physically.

So, he decided drastic measures were needed to fix his body image issues, and he’d always fancied having a much larger chest. While most might hit the gym over a few months and do it naturally, Brett didn’t think he had that kind of time. Instead, he got pectoral implants.

Female chest implants are bags of liquid silicone made to feel like soft tissue, as shown by our friend Anastasia here.

Male implants on the other hand are blocks of flexible silicone made to look like muscle. The problem is, pec implants come with a very high rate of complication, much higher than the female procedure. Sure enough, Brett contracted a horrible infection that caused half of his chest to swell to triple the size.

Extremem Beauty Disaster: Brett's pec implant horror. by tlc uk

Doctors had to remove the implant, but it just left him looking wonky. So, they removed the other implant too, only, there was a catch. Most of his natural tissue had already dissolved beneath it! Luckily, Brett can build his pecs back up the natural way, but it would’ve been a whole lot easier if he’d just put the work in from the start.

Gregg Valentino

Not all muscle-enhancers are unwilling to put in the hard work. Bodybuilder Gregg Valentino started lifting weights when he was just 13 years old and fell in love with the gym life, training for a whopping 23 years. But as Big Greggo got older, he struggled to keep up with the younger, juiced-up guys at his gym and it began getting to him.

So, Gregg thought, if ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and began injecting some 3,000mg of synthol every week. Soon, his biceps ballooned to a staggering 28 inches.

However, it wasn’t all good beneath the hood. Gregg developed painful abscesses and swelling from injecting himself over and over again. Yet, still he carried on. Until on one occasion, when reusing a needle, he managed to rupture one of the abscesses in his bicep. His arm near enough exploded and all kinds of horrible fluids started pouring out of it.

He was rushed to the hospital to drain the excess fluid and remove the synthol. But don’t fear, amazingly, he made a full recovery! Nowadays he’s gotten over his unhealthy obsession and is sporting a much more natural look.

Ronnie Coleman

It’s hard to imagine extreme muscle measures could ever be worth it. However, bodybuilding icon Ronnie Coleman certainly thought they were. Ronnie won a staggering 26 International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation titles. But Ronnie’s colossal 300lbs stature and immense strength wasn’t natural. He took a lot of steroids and pushed his body to its very limits.

Back in 1996, during a heavy squat session, Ronnie suffered a herniated disk. Between each of your vertebrae is a squishy rubbery disk. These disks have a soft, jellylike center. When a disk herniates, the jelly center pushes out through a tear in the rubbery exterior. Normal people would go see a doctor. Not Ronnie. Insanely, he lifted through the pain for the next ten years! But that decision would prove costly.

When he retired in 2006 his body was wrecked. It took 13 surgeries to fix various injuries, except they aggravated some of the issues and left Ronnie wheelchair-bound. It doesn't mean that Ronnie is a fake, and that some of his surgeries didn’t have complications. However, he wouldn’t have needed so much surgery had he just fixed the problem right away.

His decision to ignore the injury, train through the pain, and fuel himself with dodgy substances left him way worse off than he needed to be. But there is good news. Ronnie has been having specialized physiotherapy and is beginning to gain back mobility! It’s a long path, but one we're happy to see him going down.

Photoshop Fails

Ready for some Photoshop fails? The nominations are:

With a grand total of 10 abs, this 2000s heartthrob, for his role in par-abdominal activity. And you thought the corny tribal tatt was bad enough!

And for nominee number two: Wreck it Ralph! Those hands could break more than the internet!

Nominee number three is Avengers Disassemble. This guy wanted to look like Hulk so much he’s bent the reality of space-time.

Neven Ciganovic

Meet Neven Ciganovic, a TV personality and Gigachad Bratz doll from Zagreb, Croatia. Back in 2017, he travelled to Iran for his third nose job. The simple procedure was meant to correct his septum, which is the bit of skin between your nostrils.

After the surgery, Neven awoke with an unexpected and uncomfortable feeling. His “Little Nevan” was standing to attention. It happens. But the problem Neven had was it wouldn’t go back down. Big Neven had developed priapism, which caused his member to stay in alert mode for 3 months solid, no pun intended. It took three surgeries to fix the problem.

Priapism is very unlikely. In Neven’s case, it was accidentally induced when a food supplement he was taking reacted with the painkillers used in the surgery. However, these cases are extremely rare. Thankfully, Neven says everything down there’s all back to normal now.

If you were amazed at these fake muscles, you might want to read part 1. Thanks for reading!