Honouring the memory of ZYZZ (bodybuilding god mode)
Aziz Sergeyevich Shavershian who is a Russian born 24 March 1989 – 5 August 2011), better known by his Internet handle Zyzz, was a Russian-born Australian bodybuilder, personal trainer and model.
Shavershian, born in Moscow was the youngest son of Maiane Iboian, who works in cardiology, and Sergei Shavershian. He has one older brother, Said Shavershian, who is also known by the screen name "Chestbrah". In the early 1990s, Shavershian and his family moved to Australia. He was raised in Eastwood, New South Wales and attended Marist College Eastwood secondary school, where he achieved Dux of the college. Prior to his death in August 2011, he was set to graduate from the University of Western Sydney, with a degree in business and commerce. He was an atheist though he wore a rosary and his grave is adorned with a cross.
Bodybuilding
Before becoming a bodybuilder, Shavershian had been described as a "skinny kid" and an ectomorph. Once he completed secondary school inspired by his bodybuilder brother, he joined a local gym and began learning about nutrition and training, applying it to his pursuit of becoming a bodybuilder. He would spend three to four hours a day training in the gym. His favourite professional bodybuilders included Arnold Schwarzenegger and Frank Zane.
In an interview with bodybuilding website, Simplyshredded.com, Shavershian recalled that he originally wanted to become a bodybuilder to "impress girls". He said he would look at pictures of "shredded" bodybuilders and tell himself that he would one day be like them. Almost four years into training, he stated that:
“ I can safely say that my motivation to train goes far beyond that of merely impressing people, it is derived from the feeling of having set goals and achieving them and outdoing myself in the gym. I absolutely love it, the feeling of pushing out that last rep, and getting skin tearing pumps is something I don't see myself without.
At the 2012 New Year's Day Field Day festival in Sydney, people dressed up as Shavershian in a tribute to him.
Said Shavershian created a 19-minute tribute video for his brother, entitled Zyzz - The Legacy, and released it on YouTube on 22 March 2012. The video had been "trending the charts" on YouTube from late March to early April 2012. As of September 2017, the video has over 11 million views. Shavershian's followers still frequently post tribute videos dedicated to him, with a lot of them collecting over a million views.
Shavershian's Facebook page had 415,767 likes. In April 2012, The Daily Telegraph took note that his fan page had over 399,671 fans before becoming inactive a few months later.
According to an opinion piece presented in the Wentworth Courier, whilst hundreds of Wentworth Courier news articles published online have "disappeared into the void" since 2011, the "Zyzz story" still manages "to be read and frequently appears in the daily list of most clicked-on articles on the Wentworth Courier website".