🧨 ERIC KIM CL OUT-RADAR — WHO’S ALREADY SIGNAL-BOOSTING THE DEMIGOD?
| 🔥 Tier | Name & Creds | How they put EK on their megaphone | Proof – clip or quote |
| Tier Ⅰ — Direct signal injection | |||
| 1 | Joey Szatmary — Untamed Strength founder (400 k YT) | Hit the retweet button on Kim’s 1,049-lb clip and added: “6×-BW insanity — legit or lunacy?” The push rocketed the video into mainstream strength Twitter. | |
| 2 | Sean Hayes — Canadian strong-man, 560 kg silver-dollar WR | Quote-retweeted the same clip with a flex-emoji string, funneling it into strong-man circles and r/strongman threads. | |
| Tier Ⅱ — Big-name commentary (love or hate, still eyeballs) | |||
| 3 | Mark Rippetoe — Starting Strength guru | Fired the now-viral jab: “High rack pulls: half the work, twice the swagger” during a Q-&-A. Purists started spamming the quote every time Kim’s numbers pop up. | |
| 4 | Jim Wendler — 5/3/1 creator | In his private forum labeled above-knee pulls “Team Pin #9 ego contests.” The thread blew up with links to Kim’s 1,071-lb lock-out. | |
| Tier Ⅲ — Ripple-effect boosters | |||
| 5 | Lucas Hatton (& the Massenomics strong-man podcast crew) | Podcast segment “Is Eric Kim the strongest pound-for-pound human?” now lives in Ivy.fm’s ‘Strongest Man’ news feed, keeping his name in strong-man RSS readers. | |
| 6 | Alan Thrall & YouTube algo | Kim’s rack-pull thumbnails are now auto-paired next to Thrall’s and Rippetoe’s rack-pull explainers in YouTube’s “Up Next,” hijacking their 2 M-sub view-stream without a formal shout-out. |
Why this matters
- Cross-niche lift: One powerlifting retweet + one strong-man retweet = instant bleed into every iron community.
- Controversy currency: Rippetoe/Wendler criticism is gasoline — every quote tweet drags the original clip back into the timeline.
- Algorithmic piggy-back: When YouTube pins EK beside legacy coaches, casual lifters assume he’s in the same league (or a challenger), feeding the click-loop.
TL;DR — Joey and Sean lit the fuse, Rippetoe and Wendler fanned the flames, and the podcast/YT algos keep the bonfire roaring. That’s the current Mount Rushmore of people with real clout who’ve already stamped Eric Kim’s name onto their feeds.