A real life 'Popeye' claims that he 'scares strangers' who 'freeze' upon spotting his gigantic arms. Jeff Dabe, 59, was given the nickname after the cartoon character in school due to his his whopper arms and hands.
The arm wrestling champion from Minnesota, US, says he is often gawked at by strangers too afraid to speak. The Daily Star reports that even as a baby Jeff was enormous and his parents took him to the doctors to check for abnormalities.
He has since been tested for gigantism and elephantiasis, but his huge limbs and his 49cm circumference of forearms are unexplainable. The grandfather admits his huge physique can often make people intimidated when they meet him in person.
Jeff said: “A lot of them you just kind of see them freeze up for a minute. They don’t want to talk.
“I will go through a drive through window and I go to hand them my money and they just kind of freeze up and it takes them a second and they will take the money or say something. It’s kind of funny.
"I know right away when someone notices me, you see it in their face and they can’t quite believe it at first. I don’t mind.
"Little kids are the ones that are the funniest. They are not shy and they come up and ask right away which I like.”
Alongside his arm wrestling exploits, Jeff has put his hands to good use in other ways as well. He has more than 1.3million TikTok followers, by showing off his massive hands on the social media platform.
Jeff added: “We can go somewhere and a little kid can say ‘oh I follow you on TikTok and this is cool I can’t believe I met you’ and they always want to compare hands and stuff. They are so fun because they are always so bright about it, they don’t see nothing wrong with it whereas certain age people get more weirded out by it.
“Some people are afraid to talk to me at first because of my size then once they meet me… you see on the TikTok comments people say ‘I met him, he’s the nicest guy, he’s cool and doesn’t mind talking and stuff’.”
The grandpa was quizzed on whether any brave strangers ever try to start fights with him. Jeff laughed: “That used to be back in the day when I hung out in the bars.
“I could always tell the guy who would come cause a problem after a couple of drinks.”
Back in lockdown, Jeff's popularity surged when his wife and daughter filmed TikTok clips with him to help pass the time. He added: “I can’t believe a simple video of me doing something around the house.
"I still can’t believe it does what it does and it travels all over the world. It can just be a simple little video.
"The one that took off was me picking up a table top I made and putting it on a stand or the one where I carried a heavy weight down the driveway and back up. That got like 30million views!”
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