Tiziano's 3.5 certification video second angle

[John McCarter]

2 hours ago, PHATMUSCLE COACHING said:

Does the "phantom 4" exist?

Yes, a phantom 4 does exist, I've personally touched one, even attempted it. When Nate hosted SJ4, Richard shown up and presented it to a group of us to try out. He had other and older style grippers with him. But when he brought out the phantom 4, only two people attempted the gripper. Gil Goodman and myself. It terms of strength, it would fall around a lighter #4 of today's ratings.

Edited February 8 by John McCarter

[HandsMcHanderson]

25 minutes ago, John McCarter said:

Yes, a phantom 4 does exist, I've personally touched one, even attempted it. When Nate hosted SJ4, Richard shown up and presented it to a group of us to try out. He had other and older style grippers with him. But when he brought out the phantom 4, only two people attempted the gripper. Gil Goodman and myself. It terms of strength, it would fall around a lighter #4 of today's ratings.

That's interesting as hell. Thanks for chiming in John, I remember the story about him closing it in front of a woman and Randall having sent it as a joke originally but didn't know he had brought it out later for people to try. I'm glad to hear it from someone I trust (Gil would also be trustworthy as well obviously). 

[John McCarter]

8 minutes ago, HandsMcHanderson said:

That's interesting as hell. Thanks for chiming in John, I remember the story about him closing it in front of a woman and Randall having sent it as a joke originally but didn't know he had brought it out later for people to try. I'm glad to hear it from someone I trust (Gil would also be trustworthy as well obviously). 

Thanks for the reply man. I checked the write up report I did for SJ4. I remembered the Phantom 4 but forgot it was also the first #3 certification gripper Richard brought out. Those 2 grippers are something different. The #3 had to be one of the strongest I've ever touched.

Besides Gil, wish I could remember who else was there sitting around while Richard was talking to us.

 

Sorry if I've derailed the thread for a moment. I had to put out the information about the Phantom 4 and how I've touched and attempted it.

[king crusher]

It does appear so easy and to rep it like that and with the left? Either a phenomenal gripper dude or I dunno. I’ve been playing with grippers for 21 years and I’ve never seen anything like it. 
 

I will say that gripper coming out of that package was not a pre cut package no way. That looked extremely factory fresh. So if it’s a faked video, it’s way beyond my ability to see it. 
 

 

[John McCarter]

How did the spread on the gripper go from wide to narrow? I've used way too many grippers, never had this happen once for myself, period.

 

[slazbob]

54 minutes ago, John McCarter said:

Thanks for the reply man. I checked the write up report I did for SJ4. I remembered the Phantom 4 but forgot it was also the first #3 certification gripper Richard brought out. Those 2 grippers are something different. The #3 had to be one of the strongest I've ever touched.

Besides Gil, wish I could remember who else was there sitting around while Richard was talking to us.

 

Sorry if I've derailed the thread for a moment. I had to put out the information about the Phantom 4 and how I've touched and attempted it.

Richard used to have a lot of videos on his YouTube channel years ago. The phantom 4 was in at least one of them. The only person to ever close it was Tex, that I can remember. 
 

I know Richard got one, I believe Randall and John Brookfield have one, but can’t remember if there was another person. 
it was just a prototype from Warren that Richard was calling a no.4 because it was the next step up.  but Randall didn’t want to commit to a no.4 at that time so Richard called it the phantom like it was just a shadow that didn’t exist. 
sorry, just for clarification ha.

[HandsMcHanderson]

In Richard Sorin's own words from an interview he did with David Horne:

The Phantom "4" as referred to, arrived one day in '91 or '92 in a plain box with no explanation.  I knew it was from Ironmind and due to the size of the spring I got pretty excited. I gave it a trial squeeze and it went down well so, I went out into our gym facility to find a witness for an all out try.  I told the person what I was going to do and that one day it may be important to remember the event (they still do). I came very close on the first try and shut it solid on my second. Later that day Mr. Strossen called and asked if I got his "joke".  I said yes, and that I had closed it.  There was a bit of silence on the phone line . . . this was at the time the #4 gripper was still unnamed. As I recall, 3 more of these grippers were made and given to John Brookfield, Dr, Ken Leistner and one kept by Mr. Strossen.  I had the phantom 4 tested by PDA 11 times as to be sure of the validity of the test measurement of 621 inch pounds. That gripper is one of my most prized possessions.

http://www.davidhorne-gripmaster.com/greats2.html

[Chez]

When evidence against a man’s integrity is presented and he can’t disprove it, I don’t believe anything he does…….

[bruce1337]

5 hours ago, C8Myotome said:

One thing I am noticing is that his mailing package has clear packing tape across the top. I did my 3 cert within about a week of his 3.5 cert, I just checked my video, and the package they sent me did not have clear packing tape across the top. I don't know if that could point towards packaging tampering or not. Maybe others who have received packages could weigh in...

Some countries have more invasive customs. For example I looked through alot of the russian certs and they have tape around the package, same goes for Thoms cert in Sweden. I will admit it is a good excuse if someone notices the package has been opened then re-sealed you can just claim "customs did it".

[Mike Sharkey]

You don’t have to look big and strong, to be big and strong. 

[degradated]

5 hours ago, John McCarter said:

How did the spread on the gripper go from wide to narrow? I've used way too many grippers, never had this happen once for myself, period.

 

Not defending Tiz, but my feeling is that the gripper was shown from two different angles. The wider spread shot is lower and direct on with the ends of the handles and the narrow spread is from a higher and slightly skewed angle. 

Let's not get this shut down by discussing Kinney, please.

It's odd that there is still debate. It all seemed to be coming full circle in the last couple days, however this newest video seems that everything was untampered with in the 3.5 certification. Interesting stuff.

I apologize in advance if we were wrong about Tiziano. There is just too much evidence to not question his tremendous feats of strength.

My position on the matter is neutral until it is declared undeniable that it is legitimate or not.

[Hubgeezer]

12 hours ago, Vinnie said:

One thing that I observe when watching this video (and the other one) is how EASY it looks for him to rep the 3.5 from a credit card set with both hands.  Sorry, but it doesn't even look that easy for CARL when he closes a 3.5, and Tiziano doesn't have Carl's musculature, so it should look HARDER for him to do this with his smaller muscles, not easier.  There is something wrong with the physics of this.  The effort that should have to be apparent is not apparent.  It looks just as unrealistic as it would if a 140-pound guy bench pressed what he reported to be 700 pounds, and it looked easier for him than it does for Eddie Hall.

Sorry, but with the unlikelihood of this being physically impossible…

Randy Strossen once said to me he met many Oly Lifters who you would not give a second look, could Clean and Jerk 180 Kgs.,something Bill Kazmaier could never do, while weighing over double what the Oly guys did.

Closer to me, I just looked up on a Powerlifting database, and saw that on three occasions, my own son, while weighing more than 130 pounds less than Carl, and being over a foot shorter, deadlifted 22 to 33 pounds more than Carl’s best deadlift (285 Kgs. per his interview on Latino Gripsport).

Stories like those (which are not “stories” but are FACTS) give me pause to say the physics are impossible. There is something very “Mulder Like” (character from tha 1990s American Television series “The X Files”) that causes some of us to say “I want to believe”, and it is not based on Science Fiction.

 

 

[EmilBB]

29 minutes ago, Hubgeezer said:

Randy Strossen once said to me he met many Oly Lifters who you would not give a second look, could Clean and Jerk 180 Kgs.,something Bill Kazmaier could never do, while weighing over double what the Oly guys did.

Closer to me, I just looked up on a Powerlifting database, and saw that on three occasions, my own son, while weighing more than 130 pounds less than Carl, and being over a foot shorter, deadlifted 22 to 33 pounds more than Carl’s best deadlift (285 Kgs. per his interview on Latino Gripsport).

Stories like those (which are not “stories” but are FACTS) give me pause to say the physics are impossible. There is something very “Mulder Like” (character from tha 1990s American Television series “The X Files”) that causes some of us to say “I want to believe”, and it is not based on Science Fiction.

 

 

In both your examples the smaller guy had MORE specific training in the lifts you mentioned, meanwhile Tiziano had way LESS training on grippers than Carl and he was able to surpass him with a CCS on a #4 rated 221. I think Carl's best CCS is 220, if I remember correctly.

[C8Myotome]

There are too many things with tiziano that don't follow a pattern, that he wanted us to just accept. The having just started grippers, the strength to body weight ratio, a 6 day a week program that doesn't make sense (I have actually now seen screenshots of sam's programming for tiziano, and all I have to say is lol) no real visible muscle hypertrophy, completely skipping certifying the 3 which nobody does, going straight to certify the 3.5, and not just doing that but doing the triple and the double, really trying to rub in "this is so easy for me", the excessive spread loss and slow opening of the gripper while he shows really no visible effort at the feat, the reasons he told he he can't do mash monster ($) yet his equipment and gym do not exactly look like he's on a budget, why he couldn't mail Cannon the 200 rgc 4, why he couldn't perform in person at no expense to himself. There are way too many consecutive out of the ordinary things tied together that are too many coincidences to seem real.

Why would danny devito spend his entire life becoming an a-list actor, then make only videos from a remote location trying to convice everyone he could be #1 in the NBA? Just...why?

I do have new ideas on the "why" based on new information I have but I'm not spilling everything I know yet. I keep getting inboxed various new information about him every day currently, there is a lot more to the story than what is publicly available that is still currently being pieced together to make sense of.

Yes, the 2nd angle video "looks" real, they did a good job of making it seem real, almost a year has passed before we started looking into if it's not. Everything packaging wise *looks* real, but how the gripper immediately loses so much spread and then opens up very slowly does not. I have no idea how to measure how much weaker it got but maybe if it lost 25% of its spread, maybe it lost like 25% of its rgc, so 180 --> 145 or something like that just to get a ballpark idea of how weak the damaged spring could be.

If he was actually that strong, he would have taken that trip to dubai and smoked almost single gripper sitting in the guy's collection who invited him, or at least the very heaviest ones that no one ever closed before.

I'm not disagreeing that small guys can be strong at things they train for, if those same guys are honest about what they're capable of in all areas and different types of training...

Edited February 8 by C8Myotome

[king crusher]

I’ve heard talk for years about making a gripper weaker. But I’ve never seen one person ever step up and just do it. A gripper is 20 bucks. Someone should just do it. And than make multiple videos of how the spread is less and how it opens slower etc. it would make for an excellent experiment and video series. 

[John McCarter]

3 hours ago, degradated said:

Not defending Tiz, but my feeling is that the gripper was shown from two different angles. The wider spread shot is lower and direct on with the ends of the handles and the narrow spread is from a higher and slightly skewed angle. 

Let's not get this shut down by discussing Kinney, please.

It's odd that there is still debate. It all seemed to be coming full circle in the last couple days, however this newest video seems that everything was untampered with in the 3.5 certification. Interesting stuff.

I apologize in advance if we were wrong about Tiziano. There is just too much evidence to not question his tremendous feats of strength.

My position on the matter is neutral until it is declared undeniable that it is legitimate or not.

Years ago, Bill asked if I wanted to be a judge for the MM gripper certs. I trained myself to pay attention to all angles of the gripper while it's in frame, yes, sometimes it does appear a gripper spread changes, but the person will find a way to show the gripper spread is normal, but not with this certification video of Tiz. When I watched Tiz "close" the gripper from the right side, the spread is going narrow. From beginning to end, the spread went from wide to narrow. I've never seen anything like I did in the video, not once in my years of working with grippers, or watching others have I ever witness this happen.

 

For "He-who-shall-not-be-named", I was a mod for many years here on the board, I've recently stepped down from that position. I had to close threads because of that topic. I warn people to stay on topic or I close it down. I didn't enjoy doing it, but I know how those said threads will get and what results from it.

 

For the package I see 3 possibilities. 1) They altered the package and tampered with everything. 2) The package wasn't altered in any way, but the gripper was switched out for a modified 3.5. 3) Nothing is faked and the gripper is malfunctioning.  

[Cannon]

12 minutes ago, king crusher said:

I’ve heard talk for years about making a gripper weaker. But I’ve never seen one person ever step up and just do it. A gripper is 20 bucks. Someone should just do it. And than make multiple videos of how the spread is less and how it opens slower etc. it would make for an excellent experiment and video series. 

 this.

Keep in mind you have to leave no trace. 

57 minutes ago, C8Myotome said:

completely skipping certifying the 3 which nobody does, going straight to certify the 3.5

For the things which can be stated correctly, I think we need to take care to get them right. Burke also did this and it is allowed. Paul Savage was famously stubborn about wanting to go directly to the #4. 
 

58 minutes ago, C8Myotome said:

I have no idea how to measure how much weaker it got but maybe if it lost 25% of its spread, maybe it lost like 25% of its rgc, so 180 --> 145 or something like that just to get a ballpark idea of how weak the damaged spring could be.

I do not think analysis like this is helpful. You cannot just make up numbers and then count them as corroboration. Let's tighten things up. 
 

1 hour ago, C8Myotome said:

I keep getting inboxed various new information about him every day currently, there is a lot more to the story than what is publicly available that is still currently being pieced together to make sense of.

Consider waiting to post that information when it is all solidified and you have a cohesive theory.  

Everyone: If you feel you have a fully-formed theory that this certification was faked, take it to IronMind. Nothing in this thread has been very compelling and at this time I feel they would body slam you into the next dimension. If you want to raise lines of questioning in this thread, be more precise not more creative. Include your HOW and BECAUSE conclusions. Run tests on your own grippers. Don't just throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks.   

 

[Cannon]

13 hours ago, C8Myotome said:

@Cannon what do you think of the cert 3.5 losing 20 mm of spread after 5 closes as shown in the pictures, then looking to open up very slowly as shown in the videos? Have you ever seen any gripper lose 20 mm spread, or would you think this is torching or boil damage that reduced the spread after the first close? I've seen much lighter grippers snap open quickly...he really had to fully open up his hand to get the handles to finish opening, which is really abnormal for a supposed 3.5.

I can address this as it relates to our observations when rating grippers. I'm not sure what the pictures or video shows. 

IronMind grippers have very high quality springs that barely lose measurable spread with use. One example of what is typical is the "million rep" #3 gripper we ran through 30k+ reps. The spreads were as follows:

3.003" out of the package
2.922" after the first rep
2.904" after the first 30 reps. Down ~2.5 mm at this time 
2.899" after 10 thousand reps

In that same time, the rating went from 150 out of the package to 146 after 10,000 reps. That is the equivalent of doing sets of 3x10 every week for over 6 years and never missing a workout. And the gripper lasted over 3 times that much volume with negligible further changes. They are the highest of quality springs. 

[Allen Heineck]

10 hours ago, John McCarter said:

Thanks for the reply man. I checked the write up report I did for SJ4. I remembered the Phantom 4 but forgot it was also the first #3 certification gripper Richard brought out. Those 2 grippers are something different. The #3 had to be one of the strongest I've ever touched.

Besides Gil, wish I could remember who else was there sitting around while Richard was talking to us.

 

Sorry if I've derailed the thread for a moment. I had to put out the information about the Phantom 4 and how I've touched and attempted it.

I was there when this happened.  I remember Gil trying the 3.

[John McCarter]

1 minute ago, Allen Heineck said:

I was there when this happened.  I remember Gil trying the 3.

Thank you, I was beyond tired and sleep deprived when that happened, I only remember Gil and Richard, but not everyone else.

[Mashmonster268]

15 hours ago, PHATMUSCLE COACHING said:

Btw  , on the subject of Kinney , the 440# x 60 back squat claim,  it was a Hatfield squat,  I've 165lb females that can Hatfield squat that with the right leverage setup and assisting heavily with arms. I've been wanting to explain that here for years maybe even decades now but I never seem to  keep a gripboard account for long enough. 

This was explained years ago on the IronMind forum.  But not a lot of people paid attention or cared at the time.  

[David_wigren]

The good thing about all this is that if Tiz is truly legit. And all claims of foul play turns out to be false. Then Tiz can just show up at a contest and just prove everyone wrong. That would be a story for the history books of grip!
 

I would personally LOVE to be in his shoes! I would be almost giddy of anticipation as I plan my next road trip to a contest. Perhaps even in another country if there were no nearby contests I could attend. I would also plan on going to several comps. Just in case I had a bad day at the first one.

But I suspect this will never happen. 

[DoctorOfCrush]

19 minutes ago, David_wigren said:

The good thing about all this is that if Tiz is truly legit. And all claims of foul play turns out to be false. Then Tiz can just show up at a contest and just prove everyone wrong. That would be a story for the history books of grip!
 

I would personally LOVE to be in his shoes! I would be almost giddy of anticipation as I plan my next road trip to a contest. Perhaps even in another country if there were no nearby contests I could attend. I would also plan on going to several comps. Just in case I had a bad day at the first one.

But I suspect this will never happen. 

Yeah, it would truly be the ultimate mic drop. 

But, like you, I'm not optimistic it will happen. . . 

[Jared P]

Comments about why you believe Tiziano is a fraud are no longer productive, in my opinion. We could probably compile a list of 100 red flags or doubts, many of which we may all agree upon, about the implausibility or illegitimacy of these feats. This is just beating a dead horse, and does nothing in the way of proving or disproving anything.

We need hard facts and evidence, in the form of:

1. Testing and experimenting with 'modified' grippers and packaging to realistically or precisely reproduce the results achieved in the certification video(s).
or
2. Arranging for direct, in-person observation of Tiziano himself with a reliable witness
or
3. Forming a concrete theory with a convincing body of evidence, possibly corroborated by intentional or unintentional evidence or admission of guilt or fraudulent activity by Tiziano, that accurately explains how the results of the certification were achieved

[weightlifter]

Why wouldn't you pay attention on leave camera focus first time after unpacking and second time before taking gripper into hand?
So, he could tamper gripper twice!

First time:  https://youtu.be/eb_f0FB4CoU?si=5duZ0KBLslSQu6Jx&t=142
Second time: https://youtu.be/eb_f0FB4CoU?si=kqj7LN9uOdP_w-Sc&t=156

Perphaps he sent video where camera on another angle keep focus on gripper where it is on table at these times, I don't know. On this video I can't see it.

Instead of discussing is it fraud or not, merely apply the same rules for everyone: GRIPPER MUST NOT LEAVE CAMERA FOCUS NEVER!!! (It seems to me that rules for closing MMs consider it). 
Such simple rules will never produce same topics.
Bingo! 

Edited February 8 by weightlifter