Apparently Monday's video session at the Shark Tank came and went with nary a mention of what the rest of us thought to be an incredible display of strength.

At the risk of punting the video clip any further, Mtawarira earned his Beeeeeeast! chant by holding the 1.98m, 112kg Bresler by the stitching of his shorts above his head for an interminable five seconds as he tried to right a back-flip after a restart gone wrong.

The impressive part was how calmly Beast put the lock forward down after warming to his "He ain't heavy" task, and I suppose the fact that Bresler didn't drop the ball when the rest of us would have simply wet ourselves.

As a Huffington Post reader commented on the footage, there's probably a seamstress somewhere in Malaysia who deserves equal credit, but the Beast - twice - got a bigger cheer at my pub than any try scored on Saturday.

But while the rest of us were giving 10 points for effort, the Sharks coaches were probably quibbling about how two restarts went so awry that their lock nearly landed on his head.

For the Sharks not to have replayed the incident in their video session on Monday, one can only come to three conclusions.

The first one is the street slang about hating the game and not the player, and the second is that it's a good thing the Sharks coaches don't watch rugby like the rest of us.

The probable alternative is that they actually expect that kind of thing from Mtawarira.

Sharks strength and conditioning coach Marc Steele betrayed as much in his assessment of the whole thing: "It's not the first time he's done it. I think he did it in the Currie Cup semifinal in 2010."

Steele admitted that it took a while for the feat to register with him on the touchline.

"I suppose I was pretty glad he didn't drop him - it was a long way down," he said. "But it was really only when the crowd started cheering and going off that we realised it was an incredible show of strength."

Having seen Mtawarira do some jaw-dropping things in the gym, Steele didn't bat an eyelid.

Those from the Jake White school of evaluating a rugby player's strength - you're only as good as your gym numbers, was the former Bok coach's mantra - will be happy to know how the Beast fares in the iron-pumping stakes.

Apparently he could bench press more than two of me stacked up at 185kg, squat a crane-lifting 220kg, and touch the 200kg mark again in the dead lift.

All told, Beast is obviously not a bad guy to have on your side in a bar fight. Being a born-again Christian, you might struggle to get him in the mood, but that's a story for another day.

"We don't even concentrate on things like the bench press, squats and so on with Beast because he is one of those guys blessed with raw natural strength," said Steele.

"If we did he would hit world records."

The incident might not have been impressive to the Sharks, but it was a reminder why most of us watch rugby, not to mention that it turned heads from as far afield as the US, where they actually think Gridiron is a tough-man's game.