Kevin Meskews's Southern California IronGrip Challenge over the weekend did more than provide a venue for a bunch of gung-ho grip guys to get together and do what they enjoy most: In a battle between Clayton Edgin and the dragon, the dragon lost.

For almost a decade and half, fully closing a No. 3 Captains of Crush® gripper has been the universal standard of a world-class crushing grip, and while many amazing performances have been recorded in battles against this beast, Clayton Edgin's name should be remembered for this weekend's performance.

"Before the contest," Edgin said, "we had all talked it over and decided to honor the spirit of the challenge you set forth with regards to the grippers and use a credit card for all max gripper attempts. This did mean that a couple guys could not close the #3 who can usually do it, but that's what happens when you don't train with a shallower set! The #3 that we used was a good stout one and I liked it."

When Edgin was done, he had knocked off ten reps, on his way to winning the overall contest—an awesome display of crushing power on this legendary gripper.

"I probably could have gotten 5-6 more reps on that #3 with opening the gripper to parallel but there was NO way I was going to try to pass off baby reps in front of Odd Haugen! I had a blast at the contest and look forward to doing more of them. For what it's worth, my best with the #3 is 19 reps, opening it to parallel each time, but those are pretty small reps really."

World's Strongest Man competitor and the defending US National Rolling Thunder® Champion Odd Haugen, "was the Head Judge, with some assistance wity the Captains of Crush (CoC) gripper event from David Erives. The new COC rules were in effect," Meskew explained, "and the Dale Harder Strength tables were used to score the individual events [IronMind® Hub and Rolling Thunder®, along with the Captains of Crush® grippers], with the highest aggregate the winner. The grip folks seem to be a pretty darn close-knit group, everyone pulls for everyone else, something you don't see too often in sports like powerlifting."