REAL LIFE BADASS: THE MIGHTY ATOM

Breathe deeply. Refuse to be weak. Refuse to be sick. Refuse to die. Think strong and you will be. -Joseph Greenstein, The Mighty Atom

 

 

Joseph Greenstein was born in 1893, he came out six weeks premature and was so sickly and weak that doctors didn’t expect him to survive his infancy. “Joe” did, but throughout his youth he suffered from chronic asthma and lung problems, and at the age of 14 he came down with tuberculosis and was given six weeks to live.

 

It was in this sad condition that Joe met the circus strongman, a guy named Champion Volanko. Volanko, a hardcore master of Feats of Strength took Greenstein under his wing and Greenstein traveled with Volanko and the Issakoff Brothers' Circus for eighteen months, learning the strongman's training regimen and hardcore Yoga breathing techniques from an Indian strongman named The Great Gama. By the time he returned home, he was a different man; Joseph was unbelievably strong, and his diminutive 5ft 4inch body looked like it was chiselled from stone.

 

He started his career as a wrestler in which he gained minor success in Poland. But, he finally gained his prominence when he emigrated to the United States after he got married, and there he finally became a legend a few years later.

 

In Texas, he started wrestling professionally while holding down jobs in the oil fields and as a dockworker. He wrestled under the stage name of ''Kid Greenstein'' and started to gain success. However his fame did not really take off till 1914.

 

While he was in Galveston a co-worker became obsessed with Greenstein's wife, and decided that the only reason she wasn’t responding to this idiot’s unwanted advances was because she was married. So this guy came to work one day with a .38 revolver and shot Joe Greenstein at point-blank range.

 

 Some sources say his skull was so hard the bullet ricocheted off it, causing minimal damage. Others say the bullet literally flattened on impact with Greenstein’s skull, but this seems much harder to believe. Either way, by the time Greenstein walked out of the hospital under his own power that afternoon, the legend was growing. He quickly made a name for himself as one of the strongest men on earth. Performing strongman feats for cash on Coney Island, the Mighty Atom drew massive crowds as hundreds and even thousands of people packed in to witness his FEATS OF STRENGTH. He could drive nails through sheet metal with his bare hands. He could change a car tire without tools. He could bend bars with his teeth, bite through steel chains and quarters, and un-bend horseshoes by pushing them against his forehead.

 

In the 30s he laid on a bed of nails, put a plank across his body, and then sat there while a full-size Dixieland band performed show tunes on his chest. In 1928 a Buffalo newspaper mentioned that he secured a Fairchild FC-2 fucking AIRPLANE to his hair with a chain, then held the aircraft in place while the pilot revved the engine up to 30 miles an hour. Another strongman tried this same feat of strength a few years later and died when he scalped himself. 

 

Joe Greenstein was also known for his intolerance of anti-Semitism which gave him an even bigger legend. In 1938, after he tore a ''No Jews or dogs allowed'' sign from a public building. He then beat and hospitalized 18 men who decided to take umbrage with his view. He was arrested for the assault, but he was eventually released when court refused to believe that he done it all by himself.

 

The Might Atom continued performing strongman feats well into his 80s, and was featured in things like the Guinness Book and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. He sold out Madison Square Garden, taught fighting techniques to the IDF, inspired DC Comics’ character “The Atom”, sold his own line of health care products out of the back of his van, wrote some poetry, and had 10 kids with his still-smoking-hot wife. He passed away in 1977 at the age of 84.

 

 

Just before his death, he could still be found wandering the streets of New York City alone at night, just hoping some punk would have the guts to try and mug him.