In the 19th to early 20th centuries, Panagis Koutalianos became well known for his feats of strength. In fact, Koutalianos was so strong that decades later he was immortalized through a well-known Greek song, revoked even today, that said “Koutalianos is chewing iron.”
Though he traveled all over the world and defeated many great wrestlers of the time, including in the United States, he remained in relative obscurity in Greece, which at the time was small and poor. A website, dedicated to Greece’s legendary wrestler, through the extensive research by Kostas Michos is hoping to change that and restore Koutalianos on the podium of Greek champions.
Michos began his research journey on Koutalianos over two decades ago. He quickly realized that there was barely any genuine documentation on the renowned athlete and his reputation in Greek popular tradition.
“To help fill the gap, I have created this webpage to broaden my quest for information and meanwhile, to provide where I can, historically documented answers to questions regarding the life and athletic achievements of Panagis Koutalianos,” he says.
According to tradition, Koutalianos was born on the island of Koutalis in 1847. His father may have been a Greek Cypriot called Giorgos Pallikaros, whom Koutalianos only met during a trip to Cyprus in his adulthood.
Koutalianos’ strength became apparent during his time as a sailor starting at the age of 19, when he would untangle the ship’s anchors. This task would usually require several men, but Koutalianos was able to perform it single-handedly.
He left shipping to train under the wrestling instructor Bernardt in France. Equipped with this knowledge, he traveled the world and made a name for himself in wrestling and weightlifting in Argentina, Mexico and the United States. There, it is said that he killed a tiger with his bare hands and was then wearing its skin on every competition he participated afterwards. He is said to have ended his career having never lost a single fight.
After retiring from wrestling, Koutalianos continued to perform strength demonstrations. These included bending iron bars, breaking chains, and lifting rocks. His most impressive feat was carrying three canons, which he was purportedly able to fire without losing his footing.
The legendary, Greek strongman who chose Greece as his homeland
According to the biography of Koutalianos published by his two sons in the United States, Panagis grew up in the second half of the 19th century as a Greek in the Ottoman Empire. Nationalism was the dominant ideology of that time, with new nations embracing warfare as the path to successful statehood. Weightlifters and wrestlers became the “flag bearers” of their ethnic groups, symbolizing the power of their nation.
Greece, Koutalianos’ chosen homeland, drew glory and greatness from the distant historical past, but it was a newborn country, small and poor, with a national diaspora then politically insignificant. Greece’s relative obscurity, his sons say, is a key reason why Koutalianos’ achievements never earned him the leading place his name deserves in the world sports bibliography.
Koutalianos, the Greek with the Herculean power, spent the final years of his life in Istanbul, where he died two years after the Turks had forced out the remaining Greeks of Koutalis, the place where he was born.
