An arm wrestling champion has been dubbed a Marvel superhero after revealing how he looked as a teenage boy.

Jeff Dabe is usually referred to as “Popeye” – but fans now say he is more like The Incredible Hulk.

The father-of-three, 60, has meaty tree trunk forearms that are 53cm in circumference.

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And in a recent TikTok post, he said he was “born this way”.

Jeff shocked his 1.5million followers by sharing photos from his school days that show off his hulking limbs.

One replied: “Imagine having to wrestle him in high school.”

A second went with: “This dude was born a superhero.”

Another added: “You are a miracle of nature.”

One impressed fan of his colossal muscles said: “Real-life incredible Hulk.”

A fifth gushing comment on the popular post read: “You’re a real-life Marvel hero.”

Jeff is from Minnesota, US, and is still arm wrestling to this day – and he keeps strong by working with heavy machinery on his 10 acre farm.

He was enormous from birth and as a kid doctors concluded that his size was unexplainable after running tests for gigantism and elephantiasis.

Speaking with Daily Star earlier this year, he said his appearance unsurprisingly intimidates strangers.

He 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-thru 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.”

He added: “Some people are afraid to talk to me at first because 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’.”

Jeff was first nicknamed Popeye in school by the cheerleading squad and it has stuck ever since.

The grandad later became a state arm wrestling champ and he hopes to compete at a high level for another two or three years.

His popularity also surged in lockdown when his daughter posted videos on TikTok showing him doing mundane things with his giant hands.

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Laughing, he told us: “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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