Aziz Shavershian

Aziz Sergeyevich Shavershian was an Australian bodybuilder and model. He established a cult following after posting videos of himself on YouTube, starting in 2007.

On 5 August 2011, while on holiday in Thailand, Shavershian suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 22.

Biography Shavershian was born in Moscow to Kurdish parents from Armenia. He was the youngest son of Maiane Iboian, who works in cardiology, and Sergei Shavershian. He had one older brother, Said Shavershian, who is also known by the screen name "Chestbrah". In 1993, Shavershian, aged four, and his family moved to Australia. He was raised in Eastwood, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney,

Bodybuilding Before becoming a bodybuilder, Shavershian had been described as a "skinny kid" and an ectomorph. Once he completed secondary school, His favourite professional bodybuilders included Arnold Schwarzenegger and Frank Zane. which he had made popular. and Zyzz's Bodybuilding Bible was released on 17 May 2011, based on a compilation of bodybuilding knowledge he had acquired over his four years of training.

On 14 July 2011, Shavershian's brother Said was arrested for possession of anabolic steroids, The Sydney Morning Herald covered the case, and included a photo of Shavershian. He objected to the use of his picture to illustrate what was essentially an article on the misuse of anabolic steroids. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the company which employed Shavershian as a stripper maintained that he was "a lovely guy, aside from the steroids". Shavershian often used phrases such as "riding bicycles", which, according to The Daily Telegraph, is "gym slang for using a cycle of steroids". He was taken to a hospital, where doctors were unable to revive him. His family stated he had shown several minor symptoms in the few months leading up to August 2011, including high blood pressure and occasional shortness of breath. He had a family history of heart problems. Before his death, Shavershian had posted a video of himself on a social networking site, which would later come out 18th on Nine News's "Top News Videos of the Year" for 2011. Over the May 2011 to May 2012 period, Google statistics showed that he was searched as many times as Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister of Australia at that time.

Said Shavershian created a 19-minute tribute video for his brother, titled 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 March 2026, the video has over 18.5 million views. Shavershian's followers still post tribute videos dedicated to him, with a lot of them collecting over a million views.

According to a 2013 opinion piece in the Wentworth Courier, whilst hundreds of Wentworth Courier news articles published online have "disappeared into the void" since 2011, the "Zyzz story" continued "to be read and frequently appears in the daily list of most clicked-on articles on the Wentworth Courier website".

In a report on organized crime's control of the underground steroid trade, reporter Mark Willacy called Shavershian the "pin-up boy for the bodybuilding crowd."

In November 2022, Flume covered Bag Raiders' song "Shooting Stars" with Shavershian's older brother, Said (known publicly as Chestbrah), for Triple J's Like a Version. In the cover, Chestbrah enters from behind Flume, and "muzzes out", the dance Zyzz made famous.

A documentary about his life and death by Selina Miles, Poster Boy: Becoming Zyzz, was released in 2026.

Filmography