Смэш был слишком сильным.

Был is the past-tense form of быть (to be).

Russian usually does not use to be in the present tense, but it does use it in the past and future.

So:

• Смэш слишком сильный. = The smash is too strong.
• Смэш был слишком сильным. = The smash was too strong/powerful.

Because this sentence is in the past, был is needed.

The form of to be in the past agrees with the gender and number of the subject.

Here the subject is смэш, which is a masculine singular noun in Russian, so the verb is:

• был = masculine singular
• была = feminine singular
• было = neuter singular
• были = plural

So:

• удар был... = masculine
• подача была... = feminine
• движение было... = neuter
• удары были... = plural

This is one of the most common questions learners ask.

In Смэш был слишком сильным, сильным is in the instrumental case. After past-tense быть (was) and similar verbs, Russian often uses the instrumental for the predicate adjective or noun.

So:

• Он был сильным. = He was strong.
• Смэш был слишком сильным. = The smash was too strong.

This pattern is very common.

A learner may expect сильный, but сильным sounds natural here because it is functioning as the predicate after был.

In standard Russian, сильным is the normal choice here.

Using сильный after был is much less standard in this kind of sentence. Learners should treat был слишком сильным as the correct and safest pattern.

So if you want to say was too strong/powerful, use:

• был слишком сильным

not normally:

• был слишком сильный

Слишком means too in the sense of more than is good, needed, or acceptable.

So:

• слишком сильный / слишком сильным = too strong
• слишком быстрый = too fast
• слишком поздно = too late

It does not just mean very.

Compare:

• очень сильный = very strong
• слишком сильный = too strong

That difference is important.

Смэш is in the nominative case, because it is the subject of the sentence.

The sentence structure is basically:

• Смэш = subject
• был = was
• слишком сильным = too strong

So the subject stays in the nominative:

• смэш

while the adjective after был appears in the instrumental:

• сильным

Смэш is a borrowed noun, most likely from sports vocabulary, especially games like tennis, badminton, or volleyball contexts.

In Russian, borrowed words like this are often assigned a gender based on how they behave in the language. Смэш is treated as a regular masculine noun, which is why you get:

• смэш был
• сильным

It declines like many masculine nouns ending in a consonant.

Russian has no articles.

So where English says:

• The smash was too strong
• A smash was too strong

Russian simply says:

• Смэш был слишком сильным.

Whether it means the smash, a smash, or just the smash in context depends on the situation and context, not on a separate word like the or a.

Yes. Russian word order is more flexible than English, although the neutral order here is very natural:

• Смэш был слишком сильным.

You might also see other orders for emphasis, for example:

• Слишком сильным был смэш.
• Был смэш слишком сильным? (in special contexts, though not the most basic way to ask it)

The basic meaning stays similar, but the emphasis changes. For learners, the given order is the best one to use first.

It comes from the adjective сильный (strong).

Here is the change:

• dictionary form: сильный
• masculine/neuter instrumental singular: сильным

That ending -ым is a very common instrumental ending for hard-stem adjectives.

Similar examples:

• новый → новым
• быстрый → быстрым
• сильный → сильным

So сильным is just the instrumental form of сильный.

Yes. Russian has short-form adjectives, and сильный has the short form силён for masculine singular.

So you could also say:

• Смэш был слишком силён.

This is grammatical, but сильным is often easier for learners because it follows the common был + instrumental adjective pattern.

Compare:

• Он был сильным.
• Он был силён.

Both are possible, but they are slightly different stylistically. The full-form instrumental version is often the more straightforward one for learners to recognize and produce.

A simple pronunciation guide is:

• Смэш — sounds roughly like smesh
• был — roughly byl with the Russian ы sound
• слишком — stress on the second syllable: слиШком
• сильным — stress on the first syllable: СИЛьным

So the stress pattern is:

• смэш был слиШком СИЛьным

For many English speakers, the hardest sound here is ы in был. It is not the same as English ee or ih.