A new video claims somebody has finally beaten Anatoly, the mild-mannered “gym cleaner” who spends his days making bodybuilders twice his size question their life choices. This Guy Beat ANATOLY | Gym CHALLENGE Went Wrong pulled in millions of views within days, and the premise sells itself: Anatoly’s whole character runs on being underestimated, so the idea of him losing is catnip.

Here’s the honest answer. A bodybuilder wins the challenge. He does not out-lift Anatoly, and the “defeat” is just the runway for one more reveal.

What actually happens in the video

Anatoly, the janitor character played by Ukrainian powerlifter Vladimir Shmondenko, works the room the way he always does. He asks a few large bodybuilders for a challenge, plays dumb about the weights, fumbles the terminology, then moves loads a man of his apparent build has no business touching.

For the finale he asks who the strongest guy in the gym is and puts money on the outcome. The nominated bodybuilder hits the lift. Anatoly makes a show of failing, concedes, calls the bodybuilder the winner and reaches for his wallet.

Then he gets a bit of encouragement, wanders back to the bar and lifts the same weight anyway. One of the men clocks it at 405 lb (around 184 kg) and watches Anatoly move it one-handed. The bodybuilder keeps the wager. Anatoly keeps the point.

So did anyone really beat him?

Only if “beat” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. The video never names one person as the man who toppled Anatoly, and it isn’t coy for effect. There was nothing to name. This wasn’t a powerlifting meet with rules, calibrated plates, judges and matched lifts. It was a produced comedy bit built around Anatoly choosing to concede before showing he could handle the weight all along.

Is Anatoly’s strength real?

The videos are staged. The strength isn’t. Shmondenko has a genuine competitive record. As we covered in our breakdown of how strong Anatoly actually is, OpenPowerlifting logs two meets from 2018. At the Ukrainian Championships, competing at 65.6 kg, he posted a 140 kg squat, 105 kg bench, 185 kg deadlift and a 430 kg total. Later that year, at 73.7 kg, he hit a 115 kg bench and a 207.5 kg deadlift in a push-pull event.

That 207.5 kg deadlift is roughly 2.8 times his body weight. Exceptional for anyone sharing your gym floor, though short of world-class among elite competitive powerlifters.

The widely repeated 290 kg deadlift is a different story. It’s all over his socials and various profiles, but it doesn’t appear in his competition record, so treat it as a reported gym lift rather than a verified result. He may well have added serious numbers since 2018, but “documented” and “claimed” aren’t the same thing.

Why he doesn’t look like he can lift a house

In the video Anatoly says he weighs 150 lb (around 68 kg), and that light frame is the whole trick. Baggy cleaner gear hides the muscle, and the bumbling act kills any suspicion that he’s trained.

It also leans on something most gym-goers get wrong: strength isn’t dictated by how big you look. Technique, leverage, coordination and nervous-system efficiency all decide how much weight actually moves. Bodybuilders train to build muscle. Powerlifters train to produce force in specific lifts. A big physique can generate huge strength, but it doesn’t hand you the technical skill of a smaller specialist who has drilled the same movement for years. That gap is the science doing the work behind Anatoly’s pranks.

Why the “defeat” cleaned up

The standard formula is bulletproof: big lifter underestimates the cleaner, cleaner touches the weight, reality breaks. This one added a twist by promising the ending everyone assumed was impossible. Anatoly loses, hands over the cash, lets the win stand, then drags out the reveal just long enough to make you wonder if the title might be legit.

It isn’t an upset. It’s a smarter version of the same bit, and it works for the same reason the originals do: it exposes how fast we all judge strength on clothes, size and vibe. The bodybuilder won the challenge because Anatoly let him. Anatoly won the video, plugged his training platform and banked the views while everyone argued in the comments.

For more on the man under the mop, read what Anatoly eats and our comparison of his verified lifts against real powerlifters.