"I'm the fittest man in the world!" That may be. But why does Rob Powell have zero to show for it? Because the previous title holder cornered the market. And hired great lawyers

Men's Fitness, Dec, 2003 by David Kushner

"COME ON UPSTAIRS!" says Rob Powell, as he jumps from his red pickup truck. "I want to show you my injuries!" Despite having just cycled 25 miles around Waco, Texas, run seven, climbed five, worked out at two gyms, benched, curled, squatthrusted, practiced martial arts, eaten a dozen chicken sticks, and masked his sweat with several blasts of cologne. Powell explodes up the steps to his apartment door.

He bolts past the giant black dog yapping inside his cluttered living room and grabs his digital video camera, pre-cued to footage of the pancake-size blood tumor he suffered after a spill on the 500-mile cycling tour he took to film his documentary 2wice Broken. "Wait till you see this bruise! It looks like a third butt cheek!" Powell cackles, angling the tiny screen. "You want a list of my injuries? I dislocated my shoulder, separated my hip. I had a concussion the entire summer!"

After twice breaking the fitness record in the Guiness Book of World Records, the 42-year-old is on a mission to create an insane new sport built around his superhuman feats. "I'm craaaaaazy about it," he drawls in his southern accent. And as the videotape of his wounds will attest, he just might be whacked out enough to pull it off. Powell is the self-described World Fitness Champion. He used to call himself the World's Fittest Man until he got a cease-and-desist letter from the lawyers of another strangely fit fella named Joe Decker. Decker told MF by phone that Powell's claim is bogus. "He didn't break my record," Decker sniffs. "He broke a different record." Decker trademarked the title after he broke the Guinness fitness record in 2000. Powell retorts by pointing out the two Guinness certificates that hang on his wall opposite the Coors Light bar sign and the Jenny McCarthy collage. "There's my proof right there" he sighs.

If you want to become the fittest man on the planet, here's what you need to do: swim two miles, cycle 110, row 20, run 12, hike 12, row 20, climb 20 (on that much-hated elliptical machine), crank out 1,250 push-ups, 1,250 leg lifts, 1,250 jumping jacks, and 3,250 abdominal crunches. Then you must lift 300,000 pounds of weights in various upper-body reps. And it all has to be done in under 19 hours, 17 minutes, and 38 seconds--Powell's time. And if you don't have three credible witnesses and a of video cameras documenting every groan, pop, and tear, Guinness won't even consider your record.

Those Before Him

THE FIRST GUY TO INFLICT TORTURE ON HIMSELF IN THE NAME OF FITNESS was Steve Sokol, a physical therapist from San-Jose who set the benchmark in 1998 for what Guinness subsequently called the 24-Hour Fitness Challenge. Despite his notable achievement, however, Sokol wasn't splashy enough to be pictured in the Book of World Records alongside the world's heaviest beetroot (it was 52 pounds) or the fat guy who had to be buried in a coffin the size of a piano case (he was 1,069 pounds). But Sokol's conquest caught the attention of a blubbery Joe Decker, a 33-year-old former bartender in Maryland. Decker was heading for a baby-grand-size tomb of his own. He hadn't always been in such sorry shape, though. Decker was once a powerhouse fullback in high school on the fast track to college ball. During a game, he took a hard hit below the knee, causing anterior compartment syndrome--a painful injury that, instead of breaking the leg, causes it to hang and rot like a hunk of dead jerky. Decker drowned his sorrows in Twinkies and beer. Unable to afford college, he joined the military, which sent this former football star straight into the fat-boy program. "It was humiliating," he says.

Dreams squashed, Decker ended up in New Orleans, mixing Hurricanes at a Bourbon Street bar and subsisting on another great diet: Jagermeister and cigars. "I was on a vicious roller coaster" he recalls, "It was the pit of hell. I was either going to make a change or I was going to kill myself." After one long look in the mirror, he got on a plane back to Illinois and hit the ground running--and biking. "Fitness filled a void," he says. "It saved my life."

On December 2, 2000, under the watchful eyes of a video crew and two Guinness-approved judges, Decker broke Sokol's record in the 24-Hour Fitness Challenge. In a nonstop rush, he completed 13 grueling events, including 100 miles of cycling, 3,000 abdominal crunches, and lifting 278,540 pounds. A warm-up for what Powell would bring on in the future. The media ate up the redemptive story of fat boy turned fit boy, bestowing upon Decker the sexy title of World's Fittest Man. Sensing opportunity, his handlers suggested he trademark the name. From his appearances on the Weakest Link to the pages of People magazine, Decker artfully milked his story to touch the inner lard-ass lurking inside every adult. "If this fat kid can become the world's fittest man" Decker is fond of saying, "then you can lose 10 pounds!" After undergoing a transformation from the Today show's token tubby to thin man with disturbing leftover jowls, Al Roker called Decker "my hero." This January, Decker is coming out with his first book, The World's Fittest You. The trademark is paying off. "I didn't do all this for the press and publicity," he says, "but I'm not going to lie. It's been nice. Before this, I couldn't pay people to listen to me."