The boy who was once dubbed “the heaviest boy in the world” by Guinness World Records has died at the age of 21. Dzhambulat Khatokhov weighed 75 pounds when he was just two years old, between 40 and 50 pounds more than boys typically weigh at that age, and his weight continued to rise as he grew older. At age 13 he weighed 397 pounds.
Khatokhov was able to use his size as an advantage and became a sumo wrestler. The man who runs the sumo wrestling organization he competed in announced the death on his Instagram feed. “The record holder of the Guinness Book of Records, the first sumo wrestler of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic Dzhambulat Khatokhov has passed away,” Gubzhev said in a translation by TASS. ”My condolences to the relatives and friends.”
No cause of death was given, although Reuters quoted a Russian media outlet saying he had a previous history of kidney problems.
When Khatokhov was just 7 years old and weighed 224 pounds, he was the focus of a documentary called “World’s Biggest Boy.” Sadly, a doctor had tried to tell the boy’s mother about potentially serious health issues that could come from his weight and size, but the mother brushed off the doctor’s recommendations when she was interviewed in the documentary.
“My child is not ill, he’s just unique. If others think otherwise, that’s up to them,” she said in the documentary.
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