The Joe Rogan Experience - #2510 - Devon Larratt

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Devon Larratt is a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces and a professional arm wrestler who is widely considered one of the sport’s greatest competitors.www.youtube.com/@devlarratthttps://armbet.nethttps://linktr.ee/devonlarratt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Check, check. What's happening, my man. I'm so happy. So happy to see you. Wow.

What's going on. Joe, thank you so much, first of all. My pleasure. I feel like, you know, you are the loudspeaker of the planet, man, and I'm so honored to be here. That's a very uncomfortable position to be in, I'll tell you that. It's very weird. Yeah, I bet. I bet.

But look, I mean, you've talked to. everybody in the planet. And I think I'm honored to be your first arm wrestler. Well, if I'm going to have an arm wrestler, it has to be the goat. Oh, highly debated, but I'll take it. You're in the conversation. Yeah, I'm in the conversation. There's a couple of us, I think.

John Brazink. I don't know, how close do you follow arm wrestling? Very little. Yeah. I follow you. I'm most fascinated by the fact that you can't extend your arm. Yeah. His arms don't straighten out.

No, they don't. going unfortunately. That didn't work. Yeah. It didn't work when I was trying to fight Thor either. It kind of limited the extension. When did that start happening? So I was, I got into club arm wrestling.

I'm wrestling when I was a kid, but I got in a club arm wrestling around like 18. By the time I was 20 or so, we have this champion called Crazy George. okay he's like a very old very decorated champion and he famously at the time for me he couldn't straighten his elbows and i was like oh man i can't wait until my elbows don't straighten like a silly a silly wish right so it started early like i think i was like probably like in my late 20s and it just the the range started to shrink and how why does that from it's just pressure mostly, like just the constant pressure on the elbow joint causes, you know, osteophytes potentially. And it doesn't happen to all the arm wrestlers.

Have you got an MRI on it? I've had three surgeries. To straighten them out? To remove bone and scar tissue. Just chip bones and stuff? Chip bones. Dr. Pollock bless his soul at the Ottawa Hospital has extended my career till this age, you know. Yeah, that's probably one of the worst chronic conditions

that armresters get is, you know, if the bone growth gets bad enough, it can start to constrict your nerves or blood flow, and that's when it becomes a problem. Has that happened to you? 100%. Yeah? Yeah.

So I was what I was probably, it was like 2013, so like 13 years ago, was when I had my first surgery. And at that point, like, trying to move forward, trying to move forward. Pull it out as far as you can go. That's it. That's it, buddy.

That's it. Wow. Yeah. The left is a little more than the right. It looks like. Probably a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

And I've had two surgeries on the right, one on the left. But in my mind, you know, it's a small price to pay. You know, like I'm as all in in arm wrestling as you can possibly be. And this is our cost of admission for some of us, you know. Does that happen to every arm wrestling? No. No? No.

No. No? wrestlers, it's a style thing. It's a genetic predisposition. It's, I rolled the dice wrong one day and had a bad match. You know, I think what happens is, it's really, it's the pressure, it's the bones over time. And then it's, if you're a dummy and, you know, keep on doing it when you should probably rest, that probably doesn't help. And I'm guilty, you know, so. Most of the greats. Anyways, it doesn't affect me in the sport.

I actually, I call it weaponized arthritis. Okay? Because there are ways you can kind of make your loss of range work for you at times. Really? Yeah, because there's like, right, you know, like if you're doing an arm bar, okay, like your body resists with the ligaments and the tendons. So that starts higher for me. And I think that there's a muscular strength component that kicks in as well. well right at the end of the range to protect you.

So I just have a higher, you know, arm bar, you know. Does it, did it help you in arm bars as well? Oh, God, no, it doesn't. A good jiu-jitsu guy is still going to, he's still going to arm bar me. It's also the bones would just snap. Yeah, it's just going to snap higher. Yeah, it's just going to snap in bad places. Yeah.

Did you ever try hanging from like a chin-up bar to straighten it out? I've tried a lot of things. I saw a video with you in Jujumufu. Is that how you say his name? Yeah, Juji. Juji Mufu? Yeah, Jujimu. Okay.

John Kahl. Yeah, he's great. He's great. He's such a character. But they were rolling, they were trying to, like, do some stuff with, like, these big metal bars to roll out your muscles. And you were in fucking agony. Yeah. I was like, that is crazy to watch.

Like, you really can't straighten your arm. And when they were trying, you were screaming. Yeah. Yeah, it's terrible. I've kind of just accepted it. Did you ever try to hang? I've tried so many things. But when I was young, when I was 20, I was wishing for the day that I could be like crazy George.

We're armed those straight now. It's interesting, you know, like, I'm not, if I was, like, all about straightening my arm, I could probably still do it. Because the bone is actually removed. Now it's a sheath. There's like a capsule that surrounds a joint that is probably the root cause of it. it. What is the capsule made of? I believe it's, uh, was a fascia, uh, just connective structure. I think it encapsulates the joint. So everything is just sort of condensed to hold the joint together? I think so. Wow. Yeah. It's kind of a unique study. If you were like a physiologist,

you're studying human anatomy, you would say, okay, like what is possible? Yeah. You know, like, do you know about David Goggins's knees? I know David Goggins. I don't know about his knees. his knees are so great. He's bone on bone with both knees. And he went to the doctor and the doctor said, I don't know how you can walk with these knees. Forget about run thousands of miles. So his knees had the, what is it called, Jamie?

It's like wolf something. It's like there's a condition when you're bone on bone for so long where the bone actually spreads out. And the doctor said, I'd heard about this in theory. I've never seen it on an actual human being where his knee, the bone had grown out so weird that his knees were moving at like odd angles. So they had a saw his tibia and move his knee down.

So he's still bone on bone, but now he has a flat surface. And so they cut it and then screwed it into place. And then he just rode a stationary bike for like fucking five months, like a maniac and then started running again. Bone on bone. Beautiful. Love it. It's crazy.

He's wild, man. See if you can find what the condition is. It says it's called Wolf's Law, biological principles stating that bones adapt and grow thicker and densers or physical stress. Is that? I think that's it. Yeah. And his grew thicker and like kind of mushroomed out at the top of the knee because there's nothing there. There's no, and it's just bang, bang, bang, bang.

So it just kept growing out. And if you see, see, do we have the images of the surgery? I know I sent it to you a long-ass time ago. Yeah, I mean, it's showing a bunch of pictures from when he was on here. So see that where he, the fingerprints on his shin? That's because he had so much edema on his leg that he could squeeze it and put his, that's after the surgery. Awesome. Yeah, but look at the actual, yeah, look at that, the photo of what the knee looks like.

That's not him. That's not him. That's like an image of what it looked like. Okay, so they saw it and then they screw it down in place. They saw it slightly, you know, like a wedge off a piece of wood. You lower it, level it out, and then screw it in place. Yeah, for sure I have something similar. I've been bone on bone for probably two decades.

Really? Yeah. All the cartilage is gone. Nothing. So when I went in, got my surgery, doctor told me I have no, like, there's nothing there but bone. He said, Devin, maybe we can extend, maybe we can give you another couple years on your, on your career, maybe.

How long ago did you say this? That was like 15 years ago. I'm probably, no kidding. I probably pulled off my best show ever six weeks ago. Really? How old are you? I'm 51. That's amazing.

And I have another shot at the world title. I'm still number one in the divisions. So, you know, I'm lucky. But I think it's all, it's, the doctors will say something, but it's just not true. You can do anything. Well, Gagins is a perfect example of that, and I guess so are you. It's like the idea that you can't do something is based on when most people quit.

Yeah. Pain is an interesting thing to try and master, you know. It's information, and you have to be able to live with it and work with it. But it's good. It's good to have this pain because it's kind of a guide on where you need to get better. You know, the tendons and the tendons. and the tenonist structures of the elbow are super, super taxed in arm wrestling.

And the process of rehabilitation and development of these structures under great duress and trauma is difficult, and it requires a lot of time and monotony, which a lot of people aren't willing to put in. I'm shocked at how much time grip training takes. Yeah. It takes forever.

It's disgusting. I've been trying to jack my, Those grip strength things, the strongest I ever got to is 164. And I'm like, I want to get to 200. I feel like in my lifetime I can get to 200. I can't get past 164. And the thing is like I keep lifting weights with my arms. I keep, and I've always tired.

So like every time I squeeze that thing, my hands are always sore. So I'm like, shit, I got to take some time off to see if I can get it stronger. And so I'm doing all these wrist curls. And I've got the forearm finisher from golden grip. Yeah. And I've got these big. fat things that I use for cables to rotate wrists. And my hands got bigger.

I'm definitely stronger, but it's like, I don't know when to lay off of it. How many days a week do you do grip training? What's your guess? Every day. Of course. Every day. Every day. And is that the way to do it?

Is that the smart way to do it? Because I know you talked to a lot of those rock climber guys, and they have the craziest grip strength. Yeah. one of the things that I'll just say right away is a lot of people associate grip with arm wrestling and 100%. It's of massive importance. But the real technical nuance of the sport is to try and make the other person hold on to you. Right. So it's not necessary. Grip is more like defense and added offense, but the first step is to try and tax the other person's grip. But how do you do that?

I think that everything, there's, we're opening up like technical arm wrestling, okay? Open it up. Yeah. Okay. So I think from my position, the opening move in arm wrestling is a concept called rising. Like, you know the movie Over the Top? Mm-hmm. Okay, this is the opening step of the sport.

And what it is is basically an attempt to get a better grip. And if I can, the concept of making the other opponent hold a, onto you, that's the first step in technical supremacy. Okay, if you can make the other person hold on to you, if you can touch their fingers, if you can get their fingers activated and they're holding onto you, that's, they're, they're less efficient. Okay. Yeah.

So it's about attacking weakness more than it is about going where you're strong. So they're the most efficient when it's palm to palm and everything's gripped nice and tight. And as soon as you get like out here. You want the pressure interaction to be unfair to your advantage. Right. Right. Like if we were to arm wrestle, you would want to put the pressure in my fingertips.

Right. With almost like a hammer type motion. Right. So you're basically, it's almost like a curl. It's more complicated, but that's like the first way to start to think about it. Like people think about arm wrestling and think about pinning each other. Right. And this is a very short-sighted way to think about the sport.

you think about pulling the match close to you. This concept of rising is this upwards, spinning, slipping motion where the end result is you have a better grip. And anything that they try and do, it's going to go through the weakest system they have, which is their fingertips. Yeah. So it is great to have an awesome grip.

But that's not everything. So like proportionately in my workload, if I was doing 21 sets, 21 or I think I do 21 working sets typically in my workouts. One of them is dedicated purely to grip. Every day. All day. All day.

So you just do them throughout the day? I lead a very simple life at the moment. So structure it. Like how do you do it? My structure right now and I think that I'm probably one of the most dedicated armresters in the world in time. In terms of like what I do with my life and how. much energy I give the sport is I base it off of a week. Okay, so I train with the club probably twice a week.

And this changes, but typically I'm going twice a week, and these are my hardest days. And I go in there and I just completely redline and max out in the sport, okay? All the, exactly what I got to do, I'm doing at my highest, highest capacity. I have my family where all my wrestlers are some of my kid. I mean, he's a pro too. Wow. Yeah, he's competing this weekend. That's crazy.

Yeah, it's crazy. So we, like, we have our own thing where we'll hit a, like, we'll train together. But really two hard sessions a week and then whatever I fit in with my kids. And then the rest of the days are like mindless, not just the monotony level is extreme. My wife and I, I'm retired, right? So I have nothing but time. and I try to make, I just try and put everything into it.

So like, it's all day, man. It's all day. I wake up and I'm training, like, all day. So these machines, like, this is some of the shit that you have. Yeah. Now, is this a machine that's specifically designed for arm wrestling? Did this exist or did you help create this? This actually machine is handed down for me from the best female arm wrestling.

ever to exist, Leanne Dufrein, Johnny Roberts. So this is like a very standard arm wrestling equipment. It's basically an arm wrestling table with a cable system. And this is super old, okay? This table you're looking at here, that's like 40-year-old table.

And it's still working, but yeah, you can buy a pulley system on a table. And that's really, like this is basically all I do. I work on off of a table, different angles, different pressures that all just replicate the pressures in arm wrestling. So you have a fat grip, looks like a PVC tube, and then you're using that to work your fingertips and roll your wrists and just get to be really strong at that position where you're turning someone's wrist over?

We call that a multi-spinner. And what's interesting about it is you see it's a single point attachment. So it's a little bit like Swiss ball for the wrist. So it's a Swiss ball? You know, like a Swiss ball, like people do like squats on them, like the ball, in the gym. people do like a bowsu ball is that what it's called oh so is like a half right oh is that what it is swiss ball is like just a big round balls that okay yeah and you see people like a yoga ball yeah whatever they they call them right you ever jumped on a swiss ball and done squats or anything no okay

well i have the the half one yeah yeah do stuff yeah swiss ball is way more unstable so it's similar concept where it's it's very unstable through the wrist and there's different wraps but there's like a few base moves in arm wrestling probably top rolling hooking and pressing and you just do shit like this all day all day and this is in my taper okay I know it's crazy that's the hardest part this is in your what room this is in my basement oh your base room yeah and what you see here this was actually my final workout before I pulled the Russian champion Vitalya Letton like six seven weeks ago so I've taken

tapered. Normally, all these movements you see, I'm doing like a hundred repetitions. So, lots of blood flow. And when you're doing 100 repetitions, like, what, 50% max weight? No. What do you wait? Nothing. Nothing. Like 20 pounds, something like? Yeah. Really? Is that the key? I'm a bit. I experiment a lot, okay? I've done so many different systems. But this is what I've come up with that I think is best. So basically, it all revolves. around these arm wrestling practice days, where it's 100% this is what I want my body to maximize about. But the off days, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, it's all day just doing blood flow, just

increasing the amount of blood that flows through the fascia, flows through these chains in arm wrestling motions. And the 100 is all I'm trying to do is increase my circulation, especially through my connective structures and movement is so essential. Why that over why is that more beneficial than like hard strength training like small reps like low numbers of reps but high weight? So super debatable okay and I've done all of it. What I've found is in my opinion you only have so much energy and this is something we got to really weigh in because if I could just smash you know heavy stuff all time and take steps forward I do it.

it. But I've found that you don't want to detract from the thing that you're really, really trying to do. So anything that takes away from your ability to do that, I think you should look at cutting. The best part of my training is on the table. So anything that kind of messes with that, I don't want to do it. I've done a lot of systems where I'm lifting heavy. But the thing is, is they take energy, they take resources. And what I really want to do is prepare my body so I can do that specific task as good as possible. the the high rep training heals me it heals me a lot of people are like oh that's a lot of work and i'm like it's really not um it's just it's a form of healing almost yeah interesting yeah just the blood flow and the consistent movement and high repetitions yes uh it's this is highly

debated okay but i'm proving it over and over over the years i i started to do that Because arm wrestling is a strength sport. No doubt about it. So right away people think, oh, you know, heavy weight and, you know, high reps is dangerous because you're going to become an endurance guy and it's going to make you weaker. But when you go low, your work volume is tremendous. If you're doing light weight all day long, I mean, the amount of total weight you're lifting becomes astronomical.

And I think that that adaptation over long periods is wonderful. And you can't get the blood flow through the connective structures without movement. So this is really why I do it. The healing aspects, the overall metabolic conditioning that you get. Yeah, and the taper is a big part of it as well. You know, but yeah, I'm doing all my heavy lifting specifically in the sport. Like I'm not doing my heavy lifting at this time in my career. And also, I'm 51.

And I'm plagued with injuries. So I have to be very specific. I'd be very precise. Yeah, this is the best formula I've come up with. And when you were younger, did you approach it differently? I have made so many mistakes. What was the initial approach? Just lift as heavy as you can?

Yeah, lift as heavy as I can. Well, you're a giant dude already, right? So you already naturally have like big bones, big genetics. So did you power lift? Like, what did you do initially? I was a judo guy. I was a basketball guy. I was a military guy.

So I did a lot of different stuff. I was very cross-trained. I even did Iron Man for a bit. That's got to be so hard for you. Yeah. All that weight? Yeah. So when I say Iron Man, apologies, not traditional, military Iron Man.

What's the difference? Military Iron Man, you're doing it with a backpack, you're portaging a canoe, you're paddling, you're running with a backpack. So that race, you know, a winning time is, you know, probably anything under six hours, like five and a half to six hours. So it's long duration, but it's slightly heavier. So I'm still big, even for that. Like most champions, most guys who win the Iron Man are, you know, average size or even smaller. But, yeah, I mean, I'm a bigger person. But, yeah, I did a lot of different sports, but I've always loved arm wrestling.

It's always been the one I've come back to. It's, you know. What is it about it? I think that there's a lot of things about it. You know, for me personally, it was my first sport. Like, I started arm wrestling with my grandmother when I was like four years old. With your grandmother? Yeah.

Really? Never underestimate the power of a grandmother. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was a rowdy little kid. and with a German mother who didn't let me do too much crazy stuff around the house

and my grandmother used to come over and it was a reward system. She'd tell me to do chores and the result was I got to arm wrestle with her. Yeah, I never beat her. That's crazy. I never beat her. It's funny.

Her name was Levan and the current super heavyweight world champion. is Levan. So I've never beat either of them. Yeah, yeah. It's a bit trippy. Yeah, so I started, I started young. I love arm wrestling because it's a very safe fight.

Okay, like I love fighting. Everything in my life has been about fighting. And arm wrestling is one of those fight sports that has super low cost. Like we don't punch each other in the head. I'll be able to walk. nothing on my spine. My elbows don't straighten, you know. So it's low cost.

You can do it your whole life. Like we have, we've had world champions in the open division who are almost 70. What? Yeah. What? Yeah, that's cool, right? That's incredible.

I love it. How's that possible? Yeah, the hand is weird. Like, this thing here is designed for volume and it just slowly builds. You know, the hand is, the structure has so much connective tissues in it, so much tendon, and that's just, it takes so long to build.

You know, age is an advantage in a lot of ways, because you just have more time to get further in arm wrestling. Yeah, I'm 51. I'm telling you, I probably competed at the highest level, and I believe I can still go further. It's non-typical, you know, it's non-typical. And the thing that I love most about it, the very most, is the family and the bonds,

arm wrestling clubs are special places. It's very blue collar. Open doors, man. There's not a lot of money associated with the sport in terms of membership fees. I'm wrestling in each other's garages and houses. And it breeds a very tight family. I consider the club that I train with,

like they're my family. So that's my family. I mean, that's what sports's all about. You know. Yeah. Yeah, and arm wrestling is very conducive to that. So when you say it's non-typical that you could compete at this level, at this age, how old are most of the top guys?

I'd say that you hit your probably peak typically when you are low 30s. So very standard, you know. Oh, that's my buddy pork chop. Oh, there's Crazy George. This is the guy, okay? Which one's Crazy George? The dude who's down there, not the guy on the green shirt. So these are both my good buddy.

And this is the guy who can't straighten his arms on? He can't, no. He's super locked up, okay? But so he's doing this move called a King's move or outside top rule. And you see Porkchop's wrist is bent back? I love Porky. I train with Porky twice a week. But yeah, Crazy George.

And Crazy George is like 160 pounds. Really? Yeah, and Porky's like 230, completely tremendously jacked and strong. Yeah, and Porkchop is like a person. professional arm wrestler pulling at East versus West. Okay, that's our highest league. And Crazy George is... Yeah.

That's incredible. Yeah, it's completely incredible. Yeah. Another guy from our club, Matt Smith against Crazy George. I think Matt actually may have beaten him here. This is actually the time period of Crazy George's downfall. How old is Crazy George in this film? He'd probably be late 60s here.

Wow. Yeah. He's an absolute legend to me in sports. Like technically, so this guy, he spent the first like 20 years in the sport, two up, two down. Okay, go to tournament, double elimination. And that's the Canadian champ. These guys are all champions that you see him arm wrestling with. And he invented basically, he didn't invent it, but there were very few people doing this style of arm wrestling.

Okay, we call it an outside top role or a king's move. And he really figured it out. And very difficult, very difficult to deal with. And what is he doing? He's dropping down and lowering his body weight. Yeah. So there's many kind of main strengths in arm wrestling. Okay?

There's rising strength. There's pronational strength. There's cupping strength. And this pronational. See this like, this is like my favorite example. Jesus Christ. Look at that thing. That's so weird.

Show that. Who the fuck has that muscle? Arm wrestlers. That muscle is so weird. Right, so that turn. I don't even think I have that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's right. That's nuts.

Mine is non-existent. I was going to interrupt, I saw it on this thumbnail, and I was going to say, what is that? Yeah. That's fucking crazy. It's one of my dreams to have bodybuilders when they're, you know, I have BB just to be doing pronator poses one day, one day. I don't even have that You got to first turn your thumb down

Like that? Yeah And pop your wrist back There it is See it? Where? There's it Yeah yeah

Yeah, yeah There you go That's the one That's the one Fucking Little bitch ass muscle That's hilarious

That's gigantic Yeah Yeah Yeah So like different styles In arm wrestling Okay Like they have

Different roots Okay And The Kings move Top rolling In general Outside top is super dependent on pronation.

So it's all this. Twisting up. Twisting. Yeah. It's weaponized, right? We get really strong to, and there's a relationship between all the angles and the hand. The hand is very complex, right? All sorts of stuff it can do.

And the main two drivers, cupping, we call it, flexion, and pronation. And these two interact. So when one pronates, it attacks the other one's, Cup. So there's a relationship between them. So Crazy George is like the master of pro-national styles. Kings move is pro-nation style. I, over the course of my career, change techniques, change techniques, probably my

best technique is an open top role or a Kings move now. Yeah, and I learned a lot. It's like the guy that one of my first coaches, a guy called Troy Eden, he, he, he could never be George. He couldn't be George. We tried, we tried for years to figure him out. And that was back when I was like 20, right? So I've been studying this style for 30 years.

And yeah, it's a combination of locks and giveaways and balancing. Arm wrestling things happen really quickly, very, very quickly. But it's a balancing act of all these different strengths. So what is it about you that's able to keep, competing at a very high level into your 50s? I think... Is it this approach where you're just doing all these reps all day long? Do you think that's a big part of it?

Huge. Huge. Huge part of it. Because you're constantly forcing your muscles to work. You're constantly getting blood flow and you're not losing any strength. Yeah. As you get older. It's a huge part of it.

Yeah. My work volume probably exceeds most people in the sport with that. So metabolically and from a health perspective, it keeps my tendons and ligaments really functional. And, you know, I'm just, I'm just a very simple and obsessed person. And I just, I arm wrestle at every opportunity. Don't you also have some very freaky genetics? Didn't Ryan? Yeah.

Yeah. What is his last name? Rossner. Rosser. This guy is the best. Very interesting guy. Smartest person I know. Geneticist.

And he was explaining to me how unusual your genes are. We all have unusual genes. Yeah, but you have really unusual genes. Well, that topic is so big, you know, the genetic piece. I think that what a massive piece going forward for our species, you know, the mastery of genetics. It's right at the top, I think, of our highest priorities, you know. There was a thing that they were talking about last night in the green room. See if you could find this.

They think they might have figured out a way to end down syndrome. They think they might have figured out a way with genetic engineering, with CRISPR, or whatever they're using, whatever modalities they're using, to end down syndrome. Sure. Which is wild. I think that there's so many answers with genetics. You know, from, I personally believe that, and, you know, this is a big topic with freedom and everything like that. But I really believe that when you're born, you should be swabbed. and it should accompany your health, you know, card or whatever, and just as information.

You know, there's so much. Well, it probably will be in the future as these, all these techniques and all this new stuff comes out. CRISPR takes a bold leap toward silencing Down syndrome's extra chromosome. Wow. So scientists have taken an important step towards a gene therapy that could one day turn off the genetic material that causes Down syndrome. Down syndrome is a genetic condition caused by an extra chromosome, 21 and consequently hundreds of triplicate genes that lead to developmental and neurological issues according to Washington-based National Down syndrome society.

One in every 640 babies in the United States is born with Down syndrome that makes it the most common chromosomal condition. So what is it doing here? Okay, so Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence Much of the extra chromosomes activity in the cell at once. Details of the research are published in a paper in the journal proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wow. So what is weird about your genes, though?

Ryan told me, but I don't remember. He goes, you got to talk to him. Well, Ryan's actually got to talk to. I mean, I'm a high school educated guy, and I've been down to Austin several times to hang out with Ryan. I absorb everything I can from this guy. but I think that my genetics, I think I'm predisposed to endurance, actually. Endurance? I think so.

I think if you take an overall look at my genetics, I think I have a lot of, you know, favorable mutations that are, you know, predispose me to good, but it's weird. I don't know, man. Listen, the genetic side of things, I'll sound silly if I try and talk too much about it. I'll just tell you that there are favorable genetics for sure. You know, there's favorable mutations. And it's amazing, you know, if you could capture all of them from everybody and, you know, put it together and you never know what. You'd get Brian Shaw. We've scanned Brian.

That's the thing. So this project that Ryan is doing, and I like to help them out a little bit, we've been. We've been looking at elite performers and with the goal to find favorable mutations. And yeah, we scanned Brian. He's in the Bible. Yeah. That guy's in the Bible. He's like, you know, David and Goliath.

Yeah. That's, they're real people out there like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Brian. So his genetics are one out of every 500 million people. Isn't it something crazy along those lines?

Yeah. He's completely a He's right at the peak of human performance Right from a genetic standpoint Just freakish Freetish density Yeah everything everything and it's not just this bone density The dude's mindset like there's many pieces of Brian's genetics

That make him a champion But yeah he has some stuff in him that That Ryan's never seen Yeah no nobody no he had and I probably shouldn't be speaking speaking about other people's medical stuff, but I love Brian and he can sue me if he wants. Nobody has his growth hormone. He has a different type of growth hormone. What do you mean?

I don't think it's the same. What? I don't think he has a... We're opening something so cool because you talked about the Down syndrome and there's some very interesting stuff with that. But, yeah, Brian, I don't believe that Brian's growth hormone is the same as yours and mine. What does that mean? It might be molecularly different or it might have, you're going to have to talk to Ryan.

His growth hormone is a different kind of growth hormone? He has a mutation in his growth hormone. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, it does. I mean, he's almost seven feet tall and he's 400 pounds. Yeah, and he doesn't stop. It doesn't stop. But it's weird, the whole, like, Down syndrome thing, they can do stop codes, like some genes, like some mutations that you get.

From what I understand, there's like a stop code on. a gene. So whatever your gene is, when the, I guess, MRI lands on it and starts to do its thing, like there can be a stop code or something that just stops that gene from expressing. And I think that that's likely what they do with that. They'd somehow insert a stop code. But I mean, there's people out there who have like world records,

like for things like deadlift that don't have fast twitch muscle according to their genetics. So it's really weird. What do you mean they don't have fast-witch muscle? Like they have a stop code on their fast-twitch genetics. Just naturally. It doesn't make any sense at all. They're just born weird.

Born super weird. Yet they're capable of beating world records on the deadlift. Wouldn't you think that deadlift is a fast-twitch thing? Yeah. So I don't understand. I don't either. It's an amazing field. Genetics is an amazing field.

Is that a lack of understanding of what fast-twitch do? Or is it they can compensate with the other muscles? In some way? I don't think it's other muscles because I think that it would probably apply to all the musculature. So there's something that we don't understand. There's something weird going on.

Eddie, you can sue me. Eddie, all, I love you. I love you. Eddie's got a stop code. In his genes. On fast-switch muscle. Makes no sense. Well, that doesn't make any sense.

He moves so fast. I know. And he hits so fucking hard. That's crazy. It's crazy. How is that possible? I don't know. I've seen that guy hit Mitz and you're like, Jesus Christ. I know. Is this what the Hercules mean? Not that? No, no. No. No. No. Oh, that's myostatin. That's myostatin inhibitors. Yeah. So it regulates the production of myostatin, the protein that stops muscles from growing too large. So with myostatin inhibitors, they've done that with, I'm sure you've seen those whippets that have it. Yes, of course. So whippets are a weird dog. It's a very skinny, fast dog. And some whippets are born with his genetic mutation. It's a myostatin inhibits.

and they look like the Hulk. It's the crate, show an image of that, please. It is the craziest thing. That doesn't look like a real dog. Right. That doesn't look like a real dog. That's a crazy bodybuilder dog. Because if you see a regular whip it, show me a regular whip it now, please.

Yeah. Regular whipets, that's a, yeah, look at a regular whip it. Like a real fast, almost like a greyhound looking dog. And then you see the ones with the myelstatin inhibitor gene, and you're like, what the hell is going on? They look like the most freakish bodybuilder of all time, but in a dog form. And some humans have that. Belgian blues also.

The Belgian cows. Yes. Yeah. And they have it too. Yeah. So they offer already genetic therapy that gives you folostatin. So there's a balance between folostatin and myostatin. From what I understand, like the key that turns on the cell for growth is, um, is, um,

is pholostatin. And myostatin tells the cell to stop growing. You're big enough. Right. Important. Very important. Yeah. And so if you don't have myostatin, all that that turnkey gets is folostatin.

So the only signal that you're ever getting with a myostatin deficiency is folstatin. And so, yeah, so they offer a genetic therapy that increases your full staten. They offer it to who? Hmm. Anybody, anybody, anybody with enough money. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, there's a bunch of genetic therapies that they've already created. Folostatin is one of them. And so that would be for power lifters or football players or someone who just wanted to get fucking huge? I think initially it was created for longevity. Because as you age, your folostatin drops. And that's why people get smaller. They shrink as they get older. Right.

And folostatin just helps you maintain muscle mass. Yes. So I think it's mostly promoted as an anti-aging remedy, but absolutely. Like you want to get your performance up? Yeah, increase. They're doing so many wild things now. They've got this new therapy now for people with disc degeneration. I'm sure you have it.

I have it. A lot of people have it. Especially anybody who does jiu-jitsu has it, your discs just get worn out from getting cranked on and like heavy lifters. always have it, lower back issues. The disc is the soft cushion in between the spinal columns and those big bones push down that disc and over time and all that compression it squashes.

But now they've got stuff that they can inject into the disc that inflates the disks. And so all these people that have been getting artificial discs and fusions and all the problems that come with that because there's massive problems, they're going to be able to eliminate that, which is amazing. Super cool. Oh, so super cool. And I tell everybody, if you could avoid back surgery, please avoid back surgery. Don't fucking do it. There's a lot of different ways. I always tell everybody and I'll tell everybody again. Louis Simmons, his invention, that invention, the reverse hyper, fucking incredible. One of the greatest invention ever for people with lower back problems. I have one here in the studio. I have one at my house. I fucking swear by that machine. It's so good. It decompresses the spine on the, on the, on the, on the deepens.

cell and on the uplift when you're lifting up the weights it strengthens the muscles out it's like a perfect exercise for lower back issues yeah yeah it's wild when we look at the future uh in terms of performance and how far the age is being pushed like we see crazy george but uh i think i i'm optimistic that all the ages are just going to be pushed and pushed until you probably maybe not going to be a champion until you're 60 that's crazy Right. That's crazy. Well, that's for arm wrestling.

Well, I wonder what's going to happen with regular sports. The stuff that's pushing this stuff is performance-enhancing drugs. You know, peptides, stem cells, not really, that's not really a performance-hance-hensing drug, but for injuries. But testosterone, all these different steroids, all these different things. The thing about, like, combat sports in particular is that you can't use those things. They're not allowed. But when you can use them, you. you see these older athletes that have the mind of an older athlete,

but the body that works like a young guy. Right. My favorite example that is Vitor Belfort when he was in his prime. TRT Belfort. Yeah. TRT Vitor was the scariest fucking guy ever. Yeah. Because he was jacked up with testosterone,

but he was also 37 years old with a lifetime of combat sport experience, a lifetime of intelligence, but hadn't lost any speed, hadn't lost any strength, and in fact had like superhuman speed and strength. Because he was... juicy, super juicy. But it makes you think, like, man, what would the sport look like if that was open to everybody? Right.

Yeah. Interesting. It is interesting because there's a lot of guys that want to keep competing, but their body just doesn't respond the way it used to to training because they're 37 or 38 or 39. Yeah. But if you could get them on the sauce. Yeah. Right. Where's the limit?

Yeah. Right. And why not let them? Absolutely. Why not? I'm a big believer in tested sport. I think that that's wonderful. And I think that that'll never go away. And I think it's important. But I'm also a believer in open up the gates and let everybody play. Well, that's why I really love this whole idea of doing the enhanced games. It didn't really pan out the way everybody hoped. Nobody really won any records other than the one guy in the swimming, but he wore a prohibited suit that lets you swim quicker, apparently. I don't understand swimming. But I was hoping, like, you're going to see some freakish superhuman performances. But I feel like if that's going to happen, that's going to take years. I don't think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping to get to achieve, like, world records, super freak human performance.

Unless you're doing that stuff for a lot. Like, you know as well as anybody that training takes forever. It takes to build strength, to build speed, to build endurance. It takes a long-ass time. You think you're going to get strength in three months. Like, you get a little stronger. For sure. But you're not going to get freakish strength for fucking years.

It takes years. Years. Decades. Like, Juji Mufu. Like, how long has that guy been lifting weights? That guy's a fucking freak. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, you can't build this stuff overnight. And I bet he would melt a piss cup. Hoo! Listen, I think that... Not a chance. Juji, Judy, look at myself included, you know, I care about performance. This is what... what I care about, and so many people fall into the same boat.

Look at that guy. Thank you. Chance of hell that dude's natural. You know, I'll tell you. That's amazing, though, that he can do that. That kind of flexibility with that kind of mass is, look at that. While overhead pressing, a full side split, that's nuts on chairs, Jean-Claude Van Damme style. Jugee started out tricking, okay?

What's that I mean? Like, it's a form of... That sounds like... You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he actually started off. Sounds like he's picking up guys. Yeah, no, no, Juji is super cool.

It's like flipping. He was on America's Got Talent? Yeah. Oh, wow. It's like a form of acrobatics or gymnastics. Right. Yeah. Well, I've seen him do acrobatic stuff and it's really nuts.

Right. Like his physical ability, like it defies what you expect from a guy with that kind of mass. Right. Yeah. So he's a combined, like, almost gymnast. and bodybuilder. And he's probably better now than ever. And he's, I mean, I think Judy's in his 40s.

Wow. Yeah. And yeah, he's massive and healthy and, you know, absolutely kicking ass. Probably the most positive human being that I've met. He seems super positive on his YouTube videos. Yeah. And we have snorted his fucking smelly shots like...

It's strong. He's got the best stuff. He does. We've snorted his stuff about 100 times on this show. Yeah. Actually, look at him doing flips. Yeah. That's crazy that a guy with that kind of mass can move like that.

Jugi is actually the inspiration for this modern, this latest way that I'm training. It was actually... Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Juji came up to my place probably about a year and a half ago. And we were just redlining in our two-hand work. Okay, and it was so good. Two-hand work?

Yeah, so, okay, so I would be considered like the same. senior guy in my club. Okay, so, and we have this kind of rule in the, in the club just to make things work properly. Senior holds, junior works. Okay, so, so the senior is kind of staying with you, floating with you, and the junior is able to control their intensity. So the guy who would normally win the match doesn't win.

You just hold in the place. Yeah. Okay, right, like defense work in jiu-jitsu. Exactly. Okay. Okay. But just to help out that guy, typically will do two-arm work, okay, to kind of flip the script for him. So somebody can hold like me with two arms and kind of let me get to Red Line.

Yeah. So, Juji and I were doing that like a year and a half ago. And it was so good and it was so much fun. I was like, what am I doing, you know, having anything kind of cut into this? And that's when I stopped doing heavy lifting. It was as a result of training with Juji. So this two-arm work of just holding and just work on that, you feel is more important than all the lifting and all the other stuff?

Yeah. Because it's sport-specific? Exactly. And does he arm muscle? He does, a little bit. Juji does everything. But why did it working with him make you train differently? Juji is a special guy.

I think that just you don't have to be the best in your field. If you have a certain energy or a certain thing, with you. Jugi is a wonderful, creative, hardworking guy. And when you get a chance to train with them, it doesn't matter that his skill level. It's just his level of energy is so good that when we work together, it helps me.

I don't know. I don't know how it happened, but he unlocked this understanding of the priority of that training for me. I've always done it, but never... How did he unlock it? I'm not getting it. I think that our training session, And I, okay, so what happened was Juji came over.

And I normally, on days that I do tablework, I do not hit the gym, okay, because I don't want anything to kind of impact my, my tablework. And because I only had a day with Jugi, I wanted to show him how I was training. And at the time, I was training very heavy. I was training very heavy. So we did this circuit. I showed him all my latest exercises that I was prioritizing. And then we went to the club that night

And we had this awesome two-arm work But I felt as though You know, the singles and everything that I'd done earlier in the day Had a slight effect And I was like, I can't ever let that happen again I need to make sure I put all my energy Into this table training And it's funny, you know, being 51

And having over 30 years competitively in the sport I still feel like I learn You know, I still feel like I change things From event to event Yeah Well, that's a sign you're doing something fun Yeah, that's the key. You continue to get better at it and continue to grow at it.

Key life. So just the one training session with him changed your perspective on that because you just weren't performing as well? That was a tipping point. That was a tipping point for me. So I generally have a protocol, like a training kind of balance, a recipe that I'm going to follow pretty much from event to event. And this is all made by you? It's made by me. and I watch everything.

You know, I love arm wrestling, but I'm looking at sports. I'm always trying to get better. So, yeah, it's my protocol that I come up with, and then I'll tweak it based off of my results. Okay, so if I'm doing good, not much changes. If I don't do as good as I think I should do, or there's like something, I'll tweak it from event to event.

And yeah, and that night was the night that I decided I need to get rid of heavy weights because this is so good. This training is so good when done properly. And that's the key when done properly. Like two arm work can suck. Like if you do two arm work wrong, it can hurt you. It can set you back. But when done properly, it's the best training that there can be.

Yeah. Specifically for arm wrestling. And do you do stuff that's not specific for arm wrestling just for overall body strength? Like, do you feel like there's a balance to be achieved? this is the greatest criticism that I always receive as an athlete is because I don't really

just on a wrestling stuff I go for walks that's it I'm terrible really no lunges no leg curls I'm trying a little bit to work it back in

in some minimal way but it's it's interesting you know cross training versus specialization I have a long background in very broad training. Like I once upon a time was a fit human being in many aspects,

but I really care about being a champ, you know? And I could probably be a healthier guy and be able to run and squat and deadlift, or I can be a little bit of a cripple and be pulling for world title shots is the way I kind of look at, and I chose that. Wow. I should do more squats.

Well, my only thought, would be that if you conditioned and strengthened your overall body, it would just help your overall strength. Yeah. I mean, that is the thought about deadlifting and squatting is that it helps everything. Yeah. Because your whole body just becomes stronger. And it would just naturally, like your base, everything, your core, everything would just be much more, your foundation would be stronger. I hear you. But I don't know. I don't know. Obviously, I'm not an arm wrestler. I don't know either okay everything I'm playing with everything this is constantly what pretty much every reasonable person tells me and I just am like I get to a point where I do

my arm wrestling work and I'm like okay here I am if I want to beat LeVon what do I do from here and I just am like more wrist curls you know look at my does he do he's a bit more bouncing me he he LeVon lifts super heavy weights Like stupid. What does this dude look like? Show me, show me Levan. What is his last name? Sagina shvili.

Whoa. This is the pinnacle of our sport. Okay, this is the guy. How big is this dude? He gets about 420. Yeah. Oh my God. I love this guy.

Look at this motherfucker. Holy shit. That can't be real. Is that AI? Is that a picture AI? No. That one right there. Okay. That's real.

Oh my God. This is real. I don't know. I mean, that might be real. He might just be pumped. Levan is the pinnacle, okay? We scanned him, too. And surprise, he's a weirdo also.

Oh, yeah. Duh. Yeah, yeah. Look at the size of that motherfucker. He's in Little Rock in two days. In Little Rock, Arkansas? Yeah. Where does he live right now?

Georgia. Georgia, the country. There's so many weirdos that come from Georgia. Really? Yeah. Proportionally, their strength is not normal. Levant is, he hasn't. Nobody has beat this guy since 2017.

He has absolutely flattened the field, okay? He's so hairy, too. He looks like a primitive man. He looks like a science project. Look at the fucking size of that guy. Oh, my God. Smart guy. I bet.

Very cool guy. I absolutely love Levan. He has beaten the piss out of me at every opportunity. He's so big, dude. Yeah, he is. He is so big and he's so good. He's like he grew up in the trenches arm wrestling. Okay.

He didn't, he's not one of these guys who came in. You know, he made his way through the world championships. Yeah, he hasn't lost in 10 years. And so he, does he do different stuff than you do? He does. A lot of the guys have different formulas, okay? LeVon does a lot of pull-ups, really heavy ones. And he does a lot of really heavy curls.

This is the base, but he does all the same, like we do all the same exercises, just different, different formulas. Now when you hear the best guy is doing things different than you. Yeah. What keeps you from doing what he does? So we are all different. Right. That's what he used to look like? That's crazy.

Shout out to steroids. Shout out. Shout out to all the scientists out there. He's very young. that first photo. Of course. You know, he,

he slowly evolved through the world championships to what he is today. Yeah, it's interesting when, when you see different champions, and I try and learn

from everybody. I watch what everybody does. I see what they're doing. You have to also consider where your body's at, okay? I can't do the things I did when I was 25.

Physically. I just can't. I have, like I said, I've had surgeries. But yet you can still arm wrestle. Yeah. So obviously you're very strong in these particular areas,

and it's not holding you back at all. So what is holding you back? Let me say injuries. Well, arm wrestling is a big thing, okay? There's several things that you can kind of choose to focus on. Probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow, because I had multiple surgeries on it. I burn it out.

But at the beginning of my career, I was more of a hook-style arm wrestler. That's where, like, the primary kind of drive in the sport is the flexion of the wrist. And you're moving forward with your shoulder and you're kind of trying to tack the person's arm more. But over time, my elbow just got broke down to the point where, you know, I just don't have a lot of stability. Now, I continue to work on it. And quite honestly, my hooking now, this stability is probably pretty good. I think that we do, we all as athletes do the best thing we think we can. And I think that the work that I do is very precise.

Like the way the Levant trains, and please, I don't like to criticize Levant. He's the best, okay? But egotistically and arrogantly, I'm going to say that my training is more precise than his. Okay, so I'm working on very precise angles. where he's a sledgehammer at times, you know. Like, I'm working on very fine angles through my wrist, you know, a lot of pronation in my style, a lot of hand control, a lot of table time. Like, I'm doing a lot of skill-based training.

LeVon's base movements, his row, his, I mean, he's doing, he's doing 180 kilo curl. You know? Two hands or one hand? Two, but that's a... That's crazy. But he's, the amount of weight that he's wrist curling, I'm never going to get there, okay? I'm never going to catch him there. Okay, I need to catch him through something smaller.

Like, I need to be able to, like, a pit bull, like, somehow nip onto, like, his fingertip and not let it go. Because you're never going to be as big as him. Probably not. But do you think that it would benefit you at all to add size to get... I try it for every single prep that I do. In the super heavy weight division, I'm trying to get as being as strong as I can. What do you weigh now?

Today I'm probably 265. And so you're giving up a considerable amount of weight. When I compete, I can get up to 300, okay, when I'm competing. And hopefully by the time I face him again, I'll be my biggest ever. I hope when I pull him, I'll be 310 or 320, you know. And when you do that, what would you do to get that? that big would you add a bunch of weight lifting stuff no no what would you do just eat eat stay in my basement you know yeah yeah but he's doing all this other stuff this is

why I'm confused like have you tried adding all those chin-ups and all the different things that he does I am very far down the road I'm very very far down the road I've been doing this for like 32 years competitively I've gone through so many systems While it is incredible to have a great row, while it is incredible to have a great wrist flexion, while it's incredible to have great legs. Like I go to tournaments sometimes and my legs are sore. But typically the reason why you win and lose the match

is very small things in the hand and the wrist. Like this is typically the failure point. So I just try and put everything into the most valuable pieces that I think is actually going to determine my victory. And look, it apart from Levant, it's working. You know, this guy has raised the, he's raised the sport, you know, and I continue to chase him. I continue to try and beat this dude, you know, my wife. Have you gotten close?

The first time, the first time, he tore my bison. Oh, whoa. You know, see that tattoo? Uh-huh. See, it's a cat with 415. I used to call him a 415 pound pussy, you know, in the workup to the match. I just teasing them. And in Georgian, it says Levan was here

because he ripped it. Second round. So that was, the first time was a wash. The second time I pulled him, I stopped him. I stopped him round one. What does that mean? So a lot of times in arm wrestling,

get everything straight, don't move, go. And to stop a match means there's no movement. So no one's winning. Nobody's winning. And you don't just keep going to the death? Oh, yeah. You do?

Oh, yeah, 100%. Yeah, but I got, like, if you look up the second time that I arm wrestled for round one, yeah, okay. So this is the last time I pulled them, which is 2024. And when you say pulled them, it means you have a match with them. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So everything goes to the straps. And I'm telling you, like.

So is that what happens when the match doesn't work out and the hands slip away from each other? Strapes. Strapes. Do you guys put powder in your hands or anything? Yeah. Use chalk. But, yeah, this sport is a strap-based sport at this point. Like, rules are evolving in arm wrestling.

It used to be, well, in some leagues still, you get a foul. If there's a slip, somebody intentionally did it, or it's a neutral slip, and then they go to the straps. But, yeah, so we get to the straps, and this first round is the closest I've gotten to them. and in this match I think he I think he might have ripped my spine apart like yeah I couldn't walk properly for like four months

really? Yeah yeah okay so I'm top rolling I get into his wrist and I'm just like I'm in shock I'm like I can't believe so I kind of I think I had the opportunity here to do a little bit more like to seize the initiative

but I was in such shock that I got him to this point you know I'm just and then here we go his wrist is starting to go and so that's a flopper's press and I get a foul okay for see my shoulder goes below the table this is called decline humorous

and it's a foul you can't you can't do that so you start from scratch when that happens I'm actually on my second foul so that's a loss because I was being too much of an idiot in the setup and they and they gave me a foul and then from here on he just he just runs me so it's a lot What do you mean?

So in arm wrestling, if you get two fouls, it's a loss. So the match is over. Match is over. But see, this is best of seven. So from here, he runs me over. But this is the closest of gotten. Okay, we've practiced since then. We've gone on to, I'll probably practice with him this weekend.

But I'm slated to pull this monster again. It's going to happen one more time, for sure. It's what keeps me in my basement. that one guy this guy he's awesome he's a beautiful human I love this guy

he's lifting the sport in terms of performance you know like he's so hard to deal with yeah and that's it man it just gets worse it just gets worse

but yeah so I I can still win in like the 115 keel division in the 105 Kilo division. I think I've got those ones pretty much wrapped up. It's, but it's the open, man, to be the best.

Yeah. Regardless of weight. That's so much weight to give up. I know. You're giving up, what, 135 pounds? Yeah. But it's so cool to try. You know, it's so cool to try.

And what he does is he cleans my life up. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't do all this. Really? No, I'd be happy being the champ. You know? But when you're not the champ, you're not happy, and you're going to do everything you can. So even though you're a champ at your weight class is the open that haunts you. Haunts me.

Yeah. I've been there before. Like, so in 2008, I was actually, I won against this legendary figure of the sport, John Brazink. He's considered the greatest of all time. John Brazink, basically for 40 years, 40 years from the time he was like 18 to like, almost 60. Okay. He went undefeated for a life,

basically undefeated for like 25 years. Yeah. In American. This guy, this guy, super cool, okay? Different era. And you'll see the difference. Okay, so you'll see that this sport has changed. Can we pull him up?

John Brazink. John Brazink's the goat. Yeah. Yeah, he'll be there this weekend too. And is he still competing? John is not really competing, but he's just so tied into the sport. I think it's inevitable that he comes back.

How old is it? He's like 60, 61 or yeah. Wow. Yeah, he's the man. This guy's the man. So you know the movie over the top? Mm-hmm. So Sylvester, that's actually John. The tournament was real. Really? Yeah, that was a real. The movie followed the tournament. And John is actually the guy who won it. And John's not that big. No. He's not. How much is John way? On a good day, on a good day, on a great day John's like 230 but but but but when he was young and healthy probably

1 95 like so when he was winning when he like he went like he went like 25 years around 210 pounds beating every single person on the planet how he's awesome he's awesome John Brazink so John started arm wrestling was when he was a kid with his dad and he's one of the first guys John's one of the first guys who arm wrestling has kind of evolved in its respectedness, okay, as a sport. I think if you went back like 40 years and you talk about arm wrestling, people would be like, oh, that's cool, yeah, let's go arm wrestle. And I'm going to get better by arm wrestling by doing pecks and glutes and, you know,

getting my whole body strong. And John was kind of one of the first guys who was like, I'm an arm wrestler. I practice arm wrestling. I go to tournaments. I don't need to lift weights, okay? So he started young The dude's thumb is probably Like bigger than mine and he's like

You know six foot one six foot two So he's to a certain degree built for it But Masterful technician So he doesn't lift weights? No So all he did was arm wrestle to train for arm wrestling In that wild?

That's crazy So he gave this He's not a big guy No he's not That's a former Russian champion Zauer Actually no Zauer might be Georgian.

He might have been Russian at this time, but he's a, he's a Georgian. Um, yeah. Yeah. John's technique was way above everybody's. Way, way above. Uh, I remember coming up, like, I had heard about John Brazink for years before I ever saw him because, you know, it's pre-internet, right? John Brazink, like, silently ruled the arm wrestling world for decades, you know, pre-internet, pre-pre, uh, pre-p, pre all this

stuff. And yeah, and he went around the world beating all the monsters, all the, and this is who I actually got the world title from. So I beat John in 2008 for the world title. And it looks very different now, you know, like, so before, so I was probably the last of the small super heavyweights, if you call me small. Like, I'm bigger in John, but not by a lot, not by a lot. Dennis the Plankoff on the left That guy's a really famous arm wrestler He was one of the guys who really raised the level So that guy had a strength level Dennis

He came in and he won the world title Without really doing anything I can't believe he doesn't lift weights He doesn't lift weights All he does is arm wrestle All he does is arm wrestle No other kind of physical training at all He's a mechanic

He's a special guy, listen That's incredible man The arm wrestling world loves and war He's the goat. He's like the forefather. Like, I remember when I was coming up, I read everything this dude wrote. He is the one of the reasons why we all kind of respect table time. Don't need weight so much. Specialization. John is kind of poster boy for specialization. And what kind of training did he do? Dude, he arm wrestled. Just arm wrestled.

He would do specific things when he was arm wrestling. And that we keep asking the same questions about. about John. Like we think, like some people think he had like a secret setup in his basement and stuff like that. But everything kind of points towards, even if he's kind of kidding us and tricking us, it's certainly not a lot. He arm wrestled with his dad as a kid. Okay. And, you know, they're practicing all the time.

So this Iceman, okay, that's the guy who John beat to become kind of the best. Okay. This guy is like the guy before John. So he was the original king of arm wrestling. He is. Johnny Walker. Johnny Walker. Yeah, Iceman.

And he was the best for a long time, but John eventually beat him. You see, that's John is like a kid, right? John's probably like 17 there. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. But no, John arm wrestled all. Like, arm wrestling is going to make you strong.

Oh, imagine. Oh, you'll get, and that's a lot of reason why we get guys into the sport. who are in the strength fields. Like, if you're a strong man, if you're power lifting, you try arm wrestling, you'll be so sore. You'll be like, oh, my God, because people look for that, right?

Like, people want... Something that can get you really sore. Arm wrestling will get you so sore that you can barely move. I've been so sore from arm wrestling matches. I can't even walk. I can't even get up for days. For days.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. Because it's something about the way the body's designed. Like, we are actually probably designed to resist things from happening more than we are to make things happen. So we're very, very strong to stop things from happening. And arm wrestling is what that, that's the strength we really hone in on, right? Because we're locking, we get into these locked positions and then we're trying

to open the other person up. And this process of being ripped open is super taxing, super, taxing. So, yes, John ruled the armresting world for like 25 years. He's still around. Yeah, I'll get to talk to him tomorrow. Yeah. And so do you think he thinks about competing again? Of course he does. Of course he does. But he doesn't, when was the last time he did it? Last time he competed was in Dallas. He competed against a guy called Yoshi Kanai, who's the number one guy from Japan. John is way past his prime. Okay. Like John, when John was like in his 30s, he was like the Levant, but 210 pounds. Nobody could beat him.

It took a while, but the thing is arm wrestling got cool, you know, to a degree where we were on ESPN. Governments started to recognize it. So if you were from the right country, you know, you could be a pro-arm wrestler, like if you're from Georgia or Turkey or Kazakhstan. You know, so the level started rising. When did this start happening? I think that government started to recognize it. I'm going to guess here that a lot of them started to do it around the turn of the millennia. Okay.

Probably they started around then. But it takes a long time for it all to like get in it. And some countries are still switching over. I think Sweden just got recognized like I think within the last year or so. But once a country recognizes it as a sport, it's a massive. influx of cash and support. So that'll raise the level. But what happened was we got,

there was all these leagues, like there was the PAL in Europe, there was the WAL in North America. And it got the sport to a point where if you were the best, you could probably quit your job. Okay? And that was a huge step forward

because, you know, yeah, that's a big step, right? And that happened around 2015. And do you think that's because of the internet, like YouTube videos, like popularity increases, TikTok, Instagram, that kind of shit? That was massive, but that happened a bit later.

First, what happened, a lot of small little steps. You know, there was a documentary pulling John that came out. There was a couple rich guys who thought, arm wrestling was cool. And they just started to run leagues. Robert drank with the UAL, Ultimate Arm Wrestling League, out of California. I mean, it went from, like, when I first started the sport, Mike Gould Classic, if we won 500 bucks, it was the greatest day of our life, you know. It was so cool. We won 500 bucks. Like, you know, that was it. And then with, by, by 2010 or so, even before that, the PAL, we were talking about thousands of dollars.

$10,000. WAL came along and we got a massive influx of money. You were talking about $20,000, okay? And then we were on ESPN, so there were sponsors, okay, so you could get some sponsor money. If you were the best, you could barely make it. You could barely make it. And then COVID happened.

And COVID burnt down everything, burnt down all the leagues, which were kind of fractioning the sport. We had the best guys from Europe competing together, best guys from North America when all the leagues burnt down from the ashes and a lot of people and that's when TikTok and YouTube really started kicking

because everybody was locked in their house and somehow arm wrestling got found and our views went through the roof people started to follow arm wrestling is good for TikTok attention span you know you can see a home yeah and and then yeah so East versus West came along and now we're everything

at UFC we're like the UFC of arm wrestling now, East versus West. All the best guys in the world, all pull at East versus West. And there's an event every seven weeks international. So what does a top guy make to win a tournament now? You know, it's tricky when we talk about money, but you will make, like if you're a top arm wrestler now,

you're definitely, you definitely don't eat a side job. You definitely don't. And you're probably definitely making a healthy, a healthy six figures, you know, definitely. So, yeah, so East versus West kind of raised the level. After COVID, it's not the same sport. It's not. Like, the champions now, like, it's tough.

It's tough to win a world, way harder to win a world title now than it was 10 or 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Now we have LeVon. Right. Is there any drug testing? At East versus West, there's not. Okay.

So it's F1, you know, everything, everything goes. But what does F1 mean? You know, like IndyCar? Uh-huh. Everybody's got the same car. Right. F-1, like innovation. Right.

Innovation. Waf, government funded. That has testing. What is WAPF? Sorry, World Arm Wrestling Federation. So World Armed Wrestling Federation is kind of like the base of the sport. Okay. It's a world level.

So every country kind of plugs into it. They have state or provincial. Then they have national. They have like Europeans or North Americans. And then they have a world championships annually, different part of the world every year. That's tested. It's such a universal thing. Like I remember arm wrestling kids in high school.

You know, everybody knows how to arm wrestle. It's always been around. It's always been a thing. So it's a really interesting thing that, it's becoming more popular now than ever. It is. It's wonderful. I love the sport.

I think that it's a great sport because of its safety, its longevity, its simplicity. Yeah, beautiful sport. But there's a lot of aspects to it. It's simple, but you're still learning. It is. So it can be that simple. Like anything, you know, the more you dive into something, the more it opens. Yeah.

Yeah. At the level that I'm at now, you know, I continue to learn subtleties on a technical level, but it overflows more now into more vague and kind of like lifestyle principles. And I feel like that's how I get my big gains now is, you know, is the way I live my life. Like the sport, you know, kind of cleans up my whole life. Yeah. Because you want to perform well. That's it. And so you're just so dedicated that, like, you're on top of your nutrition. your sleep, everything. Everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Somewhere between, a balance between chaos and order, perfect performance is found. Mm. Yeah. The balance between chaos and order is interesting because you kind of, to become great, you kind of have to have some chaos. You, it's so essential. Yeah. Chaos is a huge part.

Talk to me about that. Oh, this is, this is, I love this one. This is so good. But this is one of my latest learning points that I've taken into account. And it's massively affected my planning, the way I plan events. So I have met many people in my life. And I've met probably in my entire life, probably like two people who I would consider completely pure, you know, like basically like a Jesus Christ kind of person, like no sin.

okay but and on the other side I've met only like a couple people who I thought were generally pure evil or you know but I think most people are somewhere in the middle okay and they need that balance in their life you know and I think that you need to if you're talking about performance on a single date this balance of what you are needs to be structured so I think that actually in the fight like when you're actually fighting A lot of people, I think, perform best in chaos. Okay, so when you get into the stage, you have to be completely wild. No rules.

Like, you need to be completely unhinged. But leading up to it, you need to structure. You need to really become very ordered. And the more you can bring order into your life, the better. I went to kind of a presentation by this guy, Mac. He's a geneticist as well. And he was talking about how life only exists in this balance between chaos and order. And from that, I brought that into my training by making sticker charts.

So when I was young, my mom used to motivate me through sticker charts. So when I did a good job, she'd give me a sticker. And I loved it. So I have brought this concept into my training where there's only two stickers. there's a blue sticker, which is, you didn't quite make it. It's representative of chaos and a white sticker, which is representative order. And after I compete, I purposefully move into chaos. And it's not as though like, oh, I'm in chaos and I let everything catch on fire.

I just, I don't need structure. I can go wherever. I can learn new things. I can try new things. I can open up my mind to whatever I want. Nothing's required. But really, I'm trying to gather data, put together a plan, so that when I move into structure,

I have a new kind of plan. So how do you structure that? Yeah. When you say you move into chaos, like you allow yourself to not have a plan. Yeah. So this is obviously very planned. Yes.

Yeah. So I will move from major, my life is structured. that I'm moved, it's in blocks. Okay, so I move from major event to major event. I am now at the very beginning of probably the longest block that I've ever had in my life. I'm going to face that guy, LeVon, in like 16 months. It's forever.

It's an eternity, you know. So I am now in this period when I can travel. I can, I can just, I can be more open. In a way, it helps get me there. You know, I am trying to come up with what I think is the perfect blend so that when I lock into my basement, I'm being super accurate. But I do believe that if you just try and be good every day, if you try and live a certain way every day, it creeps into your life.

I need like a finish line, okay? Like if I know I only have to be like this for four months or five months, I can make it. You know, if I'm like, I have to be like this for my whole life, everything creeps in, it falls apart. But it's an aid for me psychologically to remain disciplined. And it's a way for me to fit chaos into my life where it satisfies me as a human being. And I get to have fun and I get to go outside of my box. But that's the hardest thing to be a world champion at 51 is to put all your energy into something so,

This is the most difficult piece is the psychological dedication to do 10 hours of risk curls in a day. You know, this is the difficult piece. You do 10 hours of risk curls in a day. I do. I'll go, I'll get up in the morning and my wife, Jody, will help me. Okay, we'll have food. And I'm doing like, and that's a thing. So right now I'm coming up with the formula for the next one, but I was doing four.

14, seven times two, because I was going right and left. I'm going back to pumpkin training, which is right hand only. Why do you call that pumpkin training? You know about growing giant pumpkins? No. You know, you ever seen those fairs where they have like an 800 pound, right? Yeah. So what that teaches is if you want to have a giant pumpkin,

you pinch off all the flowers on the vine, except for one. Oh. Yeah, my giant pumpkin. Yeah, so I've tried and put everything into the right. I try and put all, and this is, so this is specialization. So I've done this project for like, I did it for like six years before. So when you're saying you put everything in the right, you mean you don't do wrist curls or anything with your left hand?

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Now. Is this an energy resource allocation thing?

Yes. Yeah. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Is it the difference from your right and your left? Yeah.

Jesus Christ. So you see, and I came up with this theory, you know, a little bit because of just nature, okay? And I see how nature works. But. Yeah, you have one giant gigantic form. Look at the size of the difference. Put those up. It's a bit bigger.

It's twice as big. Okay. And I was balance. Okay. I was equal. I was left-hand world champion. also, okay? I've, but as I've aged, I'm like, how can I remain at the top of the sport? I'm going to have to cut things, you know? But why does training your left arm take away from your right

arm? I think we only have so much energy. I think there's like a finite amount of energy that we have. And if I tell my body that my energy goes here, more of it will go there and more development will happen. I don't think it's like I have this limited list amount of energy where I can be like a proportionate bodybuilder and be a world champion. I think that to be at the very top, you need to be very specialized and very focused. That's what I believe. This comes, a lot of people criticize me for this. Okay. I get, I get heaps of criticism and I'm very well aware of it. And I think that if you were to. Can I stop you there? We say heaps of criticism by who and is it valid?

I don't think it's valid. So who's criticizing you? I think that most of the criticism comes from more junior players. Okay? I think that most senior arm wrestlers, most guys who are like on my level, they understand it. And to a certain degree, we all do it. Okay, I'm just an extreme example.

But a lot of guys do it. Okay, a lot of guys do this in the sport. There's a couple things that lead me to this, okay? The pumpkin is just a fun metaphor, okay? But when you get hurt in the one side, I think that a lot of people notice that somehow there's this amazing compensation that happens.

Another thing is we have freaks in the sport. We have, we attract some real weirdos. Okay, a guy called Oleg Zocke or Matthias Schlitti, okay? And these are hellboys. Real life hellboys Okay, so they have like one arm That is crazy jacked I've seen this one cat

He's a small dude Yeah And he has one arm that's like a leg Yeah What is his name? Probably Oleg, it's Oleg or Matias They're our best examples Oleg is better

Like Oleg Oleg's a world champion What's his last name Zoc What a great name Oh he's so cool What a great name Yeah and see That's the dude

Yeah that's the dude And I've fought him I've looked at the size of his His fucking left arm. That is insanity. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I actually pulled this guy at the UAL many years ago, and he was like 165 pounds. And I was the current world champion, and the kid almost beat me. Wow. Yeah. Left handed. Left handed. Yeah. Jesus Christ's arm is insane.

Isn't that awesome? That is so crazy. Yeah. He has the arm of a 300-pound man. Dude. At 170 pounds, he was almost not. even the world champion in his division. He was almost the world champion in the open.

God, look at his left arm and it's crazy. And what's extra crazy about it is the insertion points. It's not just that he's hypertrophied and blown up. Like the insertion points are different. He's like the angles of his musculature. The development, like it's wild. And how, is that genetic? Is that built?

He was born like that to assess. certain degree. But his right arm looks normal. Normal. So how is it so different on his left arm? So it's my theory, okay, that he has a bit of a blood flow disorder. Okay, I believe that, so the arterial spread in the body, for most of it, this is all the same. We have like an even distribution across our body. But I believe that his arterial spread is different. I think he's got a heavy, heavy arterial flow. To one side. This is just your own personal theory?

I've heard, I talked to Matthias. Matthias is another guy with this disorder. He was the one who kind of led me to believe that this was what was going on with him. And so this made me believe that there was so much value in blood flow alone when it comes to the expression of what you are. Like I think anything that just gets more blood flow

enhances. Yeah, the expression of the human being is largely determined by the circulation that the genetic piece receives. And I think with guys like this, it happened like in utero.

That is great. That left arm is fucking crazy. Yeah, yeah. And he got in a vicious car crash. A horrible one. Almost killed him. And he rehabbed and he's, And once again, he's the world champ again in the 85 kilo division.

Completely. And he, like, he should be dead. Like, he broke everything, like, super trauma, and he's still the best. He's pieced it back together again? Yeah, pieced him back together. And he's still the man. Wow. Yeah, but what he taught me and what other people taught me is the value.

And I believe it's all theories, okay, I could be wrong on everything. But I think that it's the blood flow that really, it heals, it strengthens. And a lot of the thing is, is the heart isn't strong enough to feed all the structures. And that's where movement comes in. So that's why I train this way, increased circulation. Yeah. Wow.

So, but I still don't understand, like, clearly he's working that one arm more than he's working the left arm. Excuse me, the right arm. Yeah, I think to a certain degree. But because of the way he was, yeah, this is Matthias, right? Same deal. Yeah, and he's like German national champion kind of level. Yeah, and like it's just it's hard to compete with. Right, but how much of that is just work with the right side over and over and over again

and how much of it is you think a genetic component? With these guys, it's a lot of genetic. Really? Yeah, with them. But I believe the reason why it's expressing that way. is because of an arterial spread. Okay, and talking to Matthias, he's the one that led me to believe that initially.

Is that arterial spread influenced by work? Like, does it change the expression of the arteries in the muscles? I think you can influence blood flow, for sure. Like, I think if you are repeatedly working one region very heavily, your circulatory system is going to adapt. Like, my endurance capabilities on my right and my left are completely different. and that's from years of doing this.

And so I have to think that, you know, it's not just a cellular thing. It's got to be the blood flow. It's got to be everything that's adapted over years. Yeah. And look, I really care about being the best. And all the information that I have makes me, I'm doing it again.

Like, I laid off it for a couple years. But I've started to do it again as I do my final prep one more time. When you say do it again, what are you doing differently? I'll go back to, so. my work capacity, work amount that I'm doing between my right and left arm, it's sometimes it's equal. Sometimes is what I do with the right is what I do with the left. Sometimes when I go to the club, I'll do right arm, I'll do left arm, and now I've just swung it back. So I go to the club and I'm basically arm wrestling everybody I can't right hand until people are kind of bored

and then I'll do some left hand work. But the right is the priority. And the same thing when I do my homework in the in the basement, I'm doing like 85 to 90% work on the right and maybe like just 10% like just, you know, just for timing and whatever on the left. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, super specialized. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. I was, I'm sorry, I was so worried like that I was going to develop like back issues, imbalance issues. Yeah. None of that ever happened. Huh. Yeah. Guys do that from archery. They develop imbalance issues, just from pulling a bow one-sided.

Like my friend Evan, he got a left-handed bow just so he could practice left-handed as well because he felt like it would balance them out. Right. I think balance is overrated. Really? Yeah. I think balance is a nice concept for, like,

some imaginary world that you live in. But if I live in a world where I'm trying to win a world title, right-handed, then I need to let my body know that this is what I'm getting ready for. And not confusing. There's an interesting comparison in Jiu-Jitsu because there's a lot of guys that have like a very strong right-side attack. Like Eddie Bravo, for instance.

Eddie Bravo's attack is almost always on the right side of the body. Obviously, he has a black belt level attack on the left, but his right-side attack is where he puts all his energy to. And his philosophy was along those same lines. If he's developed this one side, like so lethal. Yeah. I think that so much is about, you know, being able to have an icebreaker, you know, something that stops a match or wins you to match.

And at a world level, it's everything. Like, if you can bring something from a 99 to 100, you know, but it takes 15 points off your left, that's a trade that a lot of people are willing to make. You know, if I can do anything to push my right a level up, if it makes me, you know, wither away in my left, good trade. One of the things that I watched that I thought was really interesting

I've been watching a lot of these rock climbers and they're ridiculous grip strength. Yeah. A lot of these guys. There's that cat that has a YouTube channel I know you've been on it. Magnus. Magnus, how do you say his last name? Midbow.

Mitbo. And he had that one dude who's just a super freak. Eve Gravel. Yes. He trains with me. Okay. That guy went right into arm wrestling

and was fucking people up. Right away. Which is crazy. Which makes me think that maybe that kind of specialized training is like a cheat code. It's close. It's close. Yeah. Because that guy also has like enormous leg-sized forearms.

Eve Gravel. So you can find him training with Magnus because they're in Eve's basement where he does all of his training. And he's doing these like how many millimeters is the holes? Like two. Okay. So he's doing two millimeter holes with his fingers where he's hanging. Yeah. I'm telling you it makes no sense.

He's such a freak. It makes zero sense. Like Magnus is super stud, okay? Magnus is like world level climber. Eve, when it comes to the strength component of climbing, it doesn't even make strength. I don't even understand how it's how anybody could even do it. It's like credit card. He can do pull-ups off of a credit card. That's insane.

Yeah. How? I don't know. I don't know how he does it. It doesn't. And like he has like, he has like, rounded surfaces where there is nothing to bite. Right there. There's nothing.

So he's just chalking up his fingers and he hangs off of those? I want to see that. There's nothing there. I don't know how he does it. There's nothing to bite. There's nothing. And he's pulling up off. I can't even understand how he does it.

So he came into arm wrestling and he's like 150 pounds. But it's 40 pounds of it. It's forearms. So we have a tournament in August. where we both live. It's called Ottawa Open. And it attracts the strongest dudes in the region. To win the Ottawa Open is really tough.

He won at his first year after Arm Wrestling six weeks. What? Yeah. That's crazy. And he weighs what? 160. 150 pounds. Oh, my God.

No, Eve Gravel is a complete weirdo. I've never in my life met somebody who can do the stuff with grip that he can do. And it's all that training that he's doing. He's doing all this insane grip training. Yeah. Which makes me think, like, what have you did that stuff? Yeah. Yes.

Let me tell you, as good as Eve is now, he's going to get even better. Okay. I can only imagine. Yeah. Nobody is touching Eve's fingers. But like I talked about earlier, so if you kind of related to climbing, okay. Can you show me some stuff with that guy doing things? Well, I was trying to find that one.

But just show me some of the other freakish things. things he does because he could pick up things from the ground that nobody could pick up. Yeah, he does grip competition too. So that's another world that's closely tied to arm wrestling is the grip championships, right? Where they're just, it's like power lifting for grip. Right. Yeah, and he's the best at that too. Yeah.

It's just nuts, man. Yeah, it's really nuts. Yeah. So there is a high degree of crossover, right? Yeah. There is. But there are slight intricacies. Like a kind of way to think about it in climbing, if you have a great grip, you are

able to climb the wall. Okay. But in actual arm wrestling, you actually don't want to be the climber. You want to be the wall. Right. You want to make it hard for the other person's grip. You don't necessarily...

He's capable of climbing any wall. Okay. But once he figures out how to be the wall instead, he's going to be so, so difficult. It's fun to work with him. Our club in Ottawa, we have like super freaks now. We have all these new guys with ridiculous potential.

We got a guy come in who's bigger in Brian Schott. Did you ask this? Can you show me some video this guy? Yeah, he was just doing anything there. There's a bunch. Right. And I'm on not his channel too. I'm like, it's bouncing back in between his channel that he's doing stuff.

So here he's doing fat grip, arm, chin-ups. Did you see the Thomas Inch? You know, see the Thomas Inch on the left? Yes. Right? Nobody picks up the Thomas Inch when they're 150. You know? That's nuts.

Yeah, it's crazy. Like this kind of grip is just insane. Oh my God, that's crazy. He's pinch gripping. Yeah. And that guy, Magnus, is strong as shit too. Like, I saw a video of him training with Eddie Hall. Crazy strong.

And he's doing these one-arm rows with like 180 pounds on each side. And I'm like, that is bananas because he's not a big guy. No, but he's ridiculously strong as well. And even him, he's dwarfed by this guy's strength. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. Eve is considered the strongest climber.

in the world. And did you ask him when he started this and how he got that strong? I've talked to Eve a lot about his training. He's so detailed. Like the way he trains is very interesting, very progressive, very science-based. Look at those forums. That's bonkers. Yeah.

Yeah, Eve is a, and he's an artist too. He makes masks. Masks? Yeah, you know, like movie, movie masks? Oh, wow. Yeah, that's his main job. He makes masks and he can climb anything. He's super cool guy.

Wow. So seeing that, though, makes me think of a guy is that small and he has that kind of grip strength, that that has to be a massive factor. It is. And your ability to arm muscle. So why wouldn't everybody do that? If a guy is 150 pounds and he could do that shit. And he's doing it with two arms.

I mean, both of his arms are super jacked. There are levels of specialization. Right. Do you think it's maybe too late for you to do what he's doing? Because he's been doing this for decades and decades? I believe that he is so good at all his grip work. And his grip work is so high and it does have a lot of crossover. It does.

Would I want that strength? Yes, of course. I just think that the motions that I'm doing are actually even more dangerous for the sport of armor. wrestling. Like, if I was to advise, Eve, and I do. I talk to Eve, like, every week. I tell Eve, you know, the way he's going to progress his game is by probably doing these more precise movements to become the wall, you know, to become the thing that's hard to hold on to. Right. He has an amazing ability to hold on to anybody, okay? And that's going to take him really, really far in the sport. But I think that as he's, Eve, I've told him, he's older in terms of entry,

But he has world championship potential. You know, he's less than a year in the sport. Wow. Yeah, he's been arm wrestling since, like, last November. Yeah. Give him, give him like a year or two or three, and he's going to be knocking on the North American, like, you know, top pro level. Wow.

Yeah, it won't take him long. Yeah, he's a freak for one, and he's super smart. And arm wrestling is a very nice crossover for climbers because so many of the strengths are, similar, really similar. And when you say, so he's very scientific about his training, like what does he do? The thing that struck me when I spoke to him about his training is he kind of does testing. I found that very, very different from the way I train.

So before he does his workout, he does these tests like with his grip and he like says how easy or hard they are and if he's not feeling right, he won't do the training. So he'll continue to rest. You'll abort a training session because it doesn't feel right. Wow. Yeah, yeah, and I'm doing it no matter. Right, right, interesting. Yeah, look at whatever.

I've seen it. It's very detailed. It's, um... And where did he learn this from? I think he's, he's crazy. He loves armor. Sorry, he loves, he loves climbing. And I think he's just obsessed.

And I think he probably digests everything. I probably, I think he probably studies everything about climbing and strength. And he just put it all together. So what is he doing here? It looks like a static wrist test. Looks like he's measuring it through a way to see how much in a static capacity he can generate. Wow. Yeah.

Pushing isometric for arm wrestling. Yeah. So all just wrist curling ability. Isometric. Yeah. Yeah. Maximetric. Yeah.

Which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need. That locked isometric or even negative. strength. And all his squeezing... Look at that. That's crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, he's very special. That is crazy. Yeah. So that's the thing. He's got all these charts. And so he's doing this all himself because there's probably no one that could teach him this stuff. Because he's probably at the top of the food chain with this.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. He's a gift. to have come around. We love that we love that he, we've kind of got him because, uh. Oh, I'm sure.

Because when you get a freak like that, like out of nowhere, what is he doing here? Right. So he's working his curls and he's adding resistance through the elastic. So you can see he's, this is not a climber exercise I don't think anymore. He's really switching, you know. Timorous. I think, I think he's got the bug. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. It won't be long. It won't be long. He'll be at East versus West for a 70 kilo world title. Well, it's such an enormous advantage to have these fucking gigantic forearms and insane strength. Yeah. And it's just so weird that you could get these guys that are so physically small that are so damn strong.

Like when Magnus was doing rows, you're like, where's the force coming from? You have 150 pound, 160 pound body, and you're doing these 180 pounds single arms. rows. Yeah. Like where's the force coming from? Like where's the, is it a tendon strength? Is it, where's the tissue, right? Like, you look at Eddie Hall. You're like, okay, it makes sense that that guy could lift that much weight. It's massive. Yeah. This guy's not massive. If you saw him in a t-shirt, you wouldn't even, unless you looked at his forearms, you wouldn't even think he was strong. He would say, well, it probably runs or something. It looks like a normal guy that's fit. It doesn't look like a guy who can do 180-pound one-arm rows. So what,

What is that? How do you do that? Where's it coming from? Yeah, I think that for, I think that arm wrestlers, climbers, a lot of athletes, fighters, too, they start to recognize the value of the hand. You know, a lot of guys, you know, in the communities like strong man, power lifting, other strength disciplines, they get immense strength through their body and through their shoulders and different parts that by the time it goes through the chain. through the elbow, through the wrist, into the fingers, only a small portion of that is able to get managed. Right. I see that with guys when they work out with straps. I've never used straps.

Right. Because to me, with jujitsu, grip is so important. I never wanted to rely only on my muscles and not have a strong grip. Like, it didn't make any sense to me. In so many functional things, the hand is the shortcoming. Or the feet. Or the feet. Yeah.

I talked to Nick Carson once, who's a strength and conditioning trainer, And I said, what do you think is like the number one thing that fighters lack on? He said, foot strength. Yeah. I said, foot strength. He goes, yeah, foot strength. He goes, once your foot strength breaks down, everything breaks down. Your movement breaks down, your power breaks down, your ability to get out of the way of things, the ability to close the distance.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? What did he get? 160. Oh, that's crazy. I got more than him.

Yeah, he just did it really hard too. That's crazy. But that makes sense. I'm 200 pounds, right? But it's a chain, and grip is a part of the functional hand chain. Right. You know? Well, it's clearly, he's way stronger than me with Rose.

The interesting thing with grip is grip is only a small part of control. Oh, this guy, what's that guy's name? He's actually the best, Andra, right? What did he get? He's actually the best climber in the world right now. 161. Same thing. Yeah, I saw all.

Okay, that's crazy. Yeah. Derek Lewis got 218. Derek Lewis, the guy who fights in the UFC, and he did it casually. Yeah. He just, I mean, Derek's got giant paws, like catcher's mitt, pause. Yeah. And he pulled 218, he got higher than anybody.

And it didn't even look like he was trying. The guy I just arm wrestled, I think, had the world record for some time, Vitaly Lillettin. What was that? I don't know what the number is it was, but I know he had the world record. Vitali Lillettin. He, so I'm actually not big on grip. I'm not. Really?

I'm not, but most people are. There's a guy that I follow on Instagram, Jamie, pull him up. His name is Michael Eckert and 351. Boom! Is that Vitaly? Yeah. Oh my God. So listen.

So listen. So mine is probably like 70 pounds, but I beat him. Wait a minute. No, no, no. It's terrible. No, no, no. I'm crippled. Shut the fuck up. I'm telling you.

There's no way. I'm such a disappointment. I squeeze stronger than you. Yeah, you do. No, you probably do. That is literally not possible. I'm telling you. Look how this size of this guy.

Yeah, he's like 6-9. Like, he's about three. Yeah. Yeah. That is so crazy. 154 kilograms is so bananas. Yeah. That's so strong.

You can only do 70. That doesn't make any sense. When I was younger, I could do like eight or nine reps of the number three Captains of Crush. Wow. I have this sucker here on the table. What is that? Yeah.

I don't know what this is. You tell me. Squeeze it. Tell me what you do that is. 200 pounds. So this isn't a cap and the crush. This is a... I think it is.

It's not? I bought this. They just have a number on the bottom. Can't do it, Joe. Can't do it? You can't do that? Come on a half, two. Two and a half.

I do that all day long. You should come and arm wrestle with us. No, I could beat people who suck. Grip is interesting. Okay, grip is a part of control. But so much of the control through your hand has to do with the ability to control the angles. You know, can you control this way, this way, this way, this way. You know, can you spin?

You know, the grip is like the final inflection point. It's the final piece to add. Right. Yeah. Well, I understand that it's not everything. It's the thing that I've been obsessed with lately because I'm not strong at it. Grip's beautiful. So this 162 kilograms.

Yeah. Jeez. And I just- This guy Michael Eckert on Instagram, he's a guy that I follow, and he has all these grip strength tutorials. He's a Marine, and I guess that's a, that's him. And he can do 220. And he doesn't look like a very big guy either, but he does like crazy one-arm pull-ups

and he has massive forearms. But look at his thing right there. There's a thing below it. You see numbers. There it is. Oh, so this is what he's lifting. This is he's doing this for chin-ups. But he has the grip strength thing.

The really good one is the one that has neural metal. It has very little play in it. And so you get a real actual. He said it's the most accurate one of all of them. That one right there. See what says 119? So I think that's 119 kilograms. Hand is beautiful.

Yeah. What is that? 262. So he could do 262. And he's not a very big guy. So he does 100 pounds more than me. And he's not a big guy. Yeah.

I mean, when you're looking at him. But he does crazy, like, chin up stuff, 256. That's fucking nuts. So his, it's Michael Eckert, Elicart. No, Eckert, E-C-K-E-R-T. E-C-K-E-R-T. So it's Michael Eckert-U-S-E-K-E-R-T on Instagram. And this guy's turned me on and do a bunch of stuff, told me stuff to get, and what to work out with.

But I just, I'm blown away because I look at him and I go, well, you're not that. big. That's what's crazy. Like, you look at his forearms are obviously very big, very strong, but he's not like this massive guy. Like, who's that giant Russian cat? Smyev. Yeah. Boy. He's something

real special. If that guy pulled 262, I go, okay, that makes sense. But I look at Michael, and I'm like, he's not the biggest guy in the world, but he does so much grip stuff. Yeah, we're praying for Smyov to come into the sport. Oh, my God.

Yeah. That guy's a fucking freak. Freakiest. Not just freak, freakyest. Yeah. How is he alive? Like, you got to think there's not a lot of time on that hourglass. Live hard, die fast.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's pushing, there he is. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, all these strengths for our sport, they all add together. It's like his hands. Look at his fucking hands. They don't even look real. Oh, he's open about all the sauce that he's on.

He's on everything. I mean, someone, who was in here that was explaining how much growth hormone he takes? I heard he debunked that. Oh, really? I saw a video where he said it wasn't true. But I have no idea. That he wasn't taking that much. Yeah, I mean.

Someone was saying he was taking like, over a hundred or something. Some crazy thing, like 10 units of growth a day. No, I heard it was 100. A hundred units? Yeah, I heard it was like, well, that doesn't even make. Right. That seems like you. would just grow.

You would just become a giant. Like, that's like a pituitary disorder, right? Yeah. More than. Right, because that's what you're getting. It's a lot. He. Clearly, he's done a bunch of stuff, though. I mean, if you see him when he was younger, he looked like a normal athlete.

I never saw him normal. I mean, I've been following him for probably, like, six or seven years. Yeah. I mean, I think the first time I saw him, he was doing chin-ups with, like, 250 pounds strapped to him. You know, I think that's the first time I saw him. He's not normal. Yeah.

Look at this fucking size. So it's the left size? What's the left? When he's 17? Yeah. I mean, he was, look, that's not a, that's not a normal 17-year-old. No, clearly. He's pretty jacked.

But that makes sense. Like, that guy on the left makes sense. Like, I've seen guys like that before. But not at 17. No. But go to that photo again. But the guy on the right, he looks like the Incredible Hulk. Like, he looks like a superhero.

Like, it doesn't look like a real human being. Like, the size of his forearms, the size of his arms, the size of his. his biceps that doesn't look like a regular human being. It looks like a complete freak of nature or science. And he's training for arm wrestling. I could only imagine. So he's like if you follow his insta or whatever, he's doing the arm wrestling lifts,

like the pronation. And his lifting is already at a level of like world champion. Go to his Instagram, please. His Instagram got taken down so it's like some new. What? Yeah. That's right. He didn't have it.

Why did it get taken down? I don't know. I don't know. But I heard it was taken down, but he does have a new one, whether it's his or it's a fan one. I know I just saw it yesterday. Why would they take down his Instagram? Yeah, the only one I could find is just, it's like Smy of official, and it's 27 weeks ago. There's a tag, and that's all there.

But, no, there is, I know because I saw it like yesterday. Oh, so it's gone. The page is gone. There's some fan page where he's doing pronation lifts. What the fuck? What is wrong? Why would they take this guy's Instagram down? because he's inspiring people to turn into monsters.

Do you think that's what it is? I don't know. I don't know. There, this is what I'm talking about. See, now this is a much more normal, like for arm wrestling. This is actually more functional than anything through the grip, I think. So this is all pronation. That's pro nation.

Turning the wrist, lifting in same weight. Yeah. And just based off of that information that I see there, I already know. Click on that one that you got your, yeah. The fucking size of this guy. Yeah. That is so crazy. Explosive jumps.

Yeah. And the crazy thing about him is he's not competing in anything. Right. But I think that this is a guy who's just going to show up, whether it's in anything. He gets to pick. And he's probably going to show up at like a world level. Like anything like what? I'd say anything, whether power lifting.

Right. Strong man. I'd be terrified if he even got to like Blue Belt. Oh my God. Like what are you going to do? What are you going to do? How much does he weigh? I think like 340.

340 and preposterous strength. Like strength, you know, Mark Coleman always used to say that. Strength is a skill. And there's something to that because if you are that strong, there's only so much you could do with that guy's body. Yeah. Especially if he developed actual skills and understanding of leverage, positions. There you go.

Even just the base movement patterns that are really applicable. 352 lead. Yeah. Jesus. He was supposed to pull. There was a proposal for him to pull one of our guys called Leonidas Arcona. What a great name. Yeah.

It's a German guy. He just competed against Brian Shaw, like six weeks ago. He beat Brian. What? Yeah. Someone beat Brian Shaw in an arm wrestling match? Leonidas, young German champion. They competed in Germany.

It was a great fight. How big is Leonidas? Leonidas is pretty awesome. This is Leonidas and Brian Shaw. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness. That is crazy.

Yeah. Right. And nobody's got a star grip than Brian either. Brian's grip is completely wild. Seeing someone beat Brian Shaw in anything physical seems ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense. How much is this guy weigh? He's like 285 when he's in good shape.

But again, stupid strength. He's like a bodybuilder slash arm wrestler. He's not... This picture of me reacting. Yeah. He's been in the sport like... Oh my God, he's going to curl a dude. Yeah.

Yeah. Crazy strength. Oh, my God. He's massive. Massive. I just can't believe that he beat Brian Shaw. That is nuts. And that's where skill comes in.

Well, because Brian Shaw is 100 pounds heavier than him. Yeah. But it's levels, you know? Nice. And that's the thing. Like, arm wrestling has enough technique to it. It's not just how strong you are. You can look at me, okay?

I'm not on any of these guys' levels. They're all stronger than me. But on the number two in the world in the open division. Everybody in the top 50 is stronger than me, you know. But there's a high degree. That's a great picture. Wow. That is crazy.

The size difference is so massive. But I'll tell you, Brian probably has a higher potential in Leonidas. Brian's been armist in less than two years. Right. And Lee and I have been arm wrestling. No, five. Okay. Yeah.

So there's a lot of technique to it. This is a ton of technique. And a lot of just repetition, understanding the positions, where to go, what to do, how to hold. Yeah. Miniature martial art. Interesting. Yeah.

Makes sense. Yeah. Because there's some people that are not that, like Marcella Garcia, for instance, not a physically imposing guy has the craziest squeeze. Right. Like there's something about a squeeze. Like learning a position over and over and over again. fine-tuning it.

That's what's interesting about power in general. It's like the repetition of movement creates more power. Yeah. And some of it is genetic, but some of it is also just fine-tuning that motion to just this like perfect chain of energy from the floor to the strike. And it's, and it's two of us, you know, and it's that interaction. It's what you're doing, what I'm doing. And the more you're doing it, the more you understand what to do and when to.

to do it and what's happening and how to counter it and when to push, when to pull, when to hit the gas. And somebody's leading the dance and someone's following. Right. And the efficiency just changes very quickly. And before you know it, you're gassed out. I'm sure you're aware of that guy in Australia, that Tom Havillian? Yeah. That's another one.

He's another one. That's another one. Right. Who's doing this stuff in his backyard with a fucking shirt on and jeans and work boots. Yeah. And all the images, most of them, are just his back. Yeah. Awesome.

Yeah. He's another one. He's another one of these strength giants that lives out there that everybody kind of wants to pull in. I message Tom every once in a while. Yeah, look at this guy. Like, dude, when are you coming in arm wrestling? When are you coming in? And what do you say?

Yeah, I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. Is he interested? I think so. Well, he's also crazy lean, too, which is really weird. He's a strange character. Oh, the strangest, because, like, this is most of his images are his back. Yeah.

Which I don't understand why he's doing that. Well, I had the theory that he was an SF guy. You know, I had the theory that he belongs to some organization that requires him to be discreet. But there are photos of him. Yeah, not many. But there's plenty where you could see his face. Yes, but he doesn't go around broadcasting it too much, does he? I don't know.

Look, I don't know what he is. I've asked and guys say he's not. I don't know what the deal is. But for whatever reason, and he could, right, this is a guy who could probably, again, go to any one of the strength disciplines and compete happen. Right. Yeah. Because he's almost 400 pounds.

He's 6 foot 8. Yeah. And fucking shredded. See if you can find some of the images. There are images on this page of him with his shirt off doing stuff where he's like walking with, you know, doing like farmer carries. So there's some images of him with his shirt off. Yeah. Like there he is.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a, he's a Brian Shaw type. He's a, he's a smile. type, you know, just where the baseline level of strength. But looks more athletic than those guys. Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, it's, he's not as massive. He's massive, but he looks massive in a more mobile way. Do you know what I'm saying? I do, but, you know, Brian Shaw won strong man, and like, there's a lot of athleticism in strong man. Oh, for sure. I'm not saying there's not. I mean, but Brian

Shaw looks like an ape. He looks like a giant ape. Whereas this guy looks like a super athlete. He does. He looks like that image of him with his shirt off on the far right. Like he's shredded. Yeah. It looks different.

Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like he's just working on his strength. He's just like constantly... Yeah. Look at his fucking forearm muscles. Like what the fuck is going on with the top of the forearm where it meets the biceph? What the fuck is that?

Tom, if you're watching this, come to East versus West, buddy. We love you. We love you. Has he ever done anything? Yeah. Any arm wrestling stuff? Yeah, I know he has. Because so down in Australia, the president there, Phil Rasmussen, he's good friends with him.

And I know that they're arm wrestling a little bit. But yeah, there's something with him where he doesn't kind of, he doesn't want to kind of show up. I think, I don't know what it is with some of these people where they have this amazing ability, but they don't really pop. You know, do you know who Eric Spotto is? No. Eric Spotto's a guy out of Vegas Former number one in the world bench guy Okay, like he broke the world record for bench

Okay, but he didn't go to a power lifting meet Until he could break the record He didn't even show up He just showed up and he beat the world record He was doing the world record in his basement Wow And everybody's like, you know, Eric, why don't you go And make it legit?

You know? But these guys exist out there These guys in their basements or You know, wherever they're living and they, for whatever reason, they don't show up until they're the best. Yeah, Eric, this guy. Yeah, and he's an amazing arm wrestler, too.

Same theory, though. Like, it was hard to get him into competition. But I personally know that he's, like, one of the strongest arm wrestlers, but he doesn't compete. Doesn't compete. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, strength's amazing, man.

It's fun to chase strength. It's not everything in your sport, though, which is interesting. Yeah. Strength, combat. So we're a combat sport that relies heavily on strength. Yeah.

It's interesting that you consider it a combat sport. It's 100% combat sport. Why so? Because it's not applicable to real fighting. So why do you call it a combat sport? I mean, real fighting is hard to define anyways. I mean... Is it?

Well, there's levels. You know, there's levels of real fighting. I mean, look, I love UFC. It's cool, but we invented guns long ago. Of course, but that's not a sport. I mean, it is a sport in terms of like being able to shoot accurately and stuff like that, but you're using an external device, you're using a weapon. Right. With your physical body, combat sports, why would you consider arm wrestling to be a combat sport?

Well, because it's between two people and there's so much interplay and, you know, there's not the rigidity of a lot of sports that measure strength, okay? It's very much adjustment, adaption, decision-making. A lot of games. A lot of technique, a lot of adaptation. You can be super strong. But if you can't adapt, if you can't think, if you can't speak, if you can't play. Right. Yeah.

But in that sense, do you consider football a combat sport? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There's two sides and you're fighting. It's a metaphor. Okay. Look at all this stuff.

I love the UFC, but I consider it a combat sport, you know. Well, definitely, it's a combat sport. 100%. Probably one of the best examples of. The primary example. If I was going to put together, like, you know, the ultimate, like, you know, we are going to take out, like, if we were going to go to war against another nation or whatever, you know, yeah, for sure I'm looking at UFC. You guys, for sure, I'm looking at football guys, you know, looking at whoever can get the job done. and there's a lot of pieces to that.

Well, that's different. I mean, look, if they're going to war with just bodies, only using your body, that's one thing. But, you know, obviously with war, weapons, rule above all. Absolutely. Yeah. I think that that's where we're at these days.

So. Well, now we're with thumbs because now it's basically drone. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, that's the, you're going to get to a point soon where human beings are going to be irrelevant.

So when it comes to sport, arm wrestling is for me it falls into that combat sector you know where two people are engaging in a fight a metaphorical fight against each other I get it yeah

yeah yeah you'll I mean if it wasn't a combat sport then the stronger guy would normally win and they normally does but as soon as you I can get like if I could get like a guy who's been practicing arm wrestling for like four or five years they'll beat anybody

anybody that's not practicing. It's the same thing as like a jujitsu guy. If you give a jujitsu guy like four or five years on the mat and you get Brian Shaw or like some giant come in who's going to win? It really depends. I could teach Brian Shaw a few things real quick. Of course you could.

I think you could strangle pretty much anybody. And Brian Shaw is an extreme example. Yeah. Like someone, your size, yeah, it's like size the size of the sizes commensurate. Yeah, the person who's. training. Yeah. They're going to win every time. And small people dominate big people all the time. Right. Because it's that technical. It's that skill base. It's just, it's also repetition, understanding the positions, understanding mistakes, you know, knowing where to be and what to do,

how to flow, how to move with someone so you're not just going strength for strength against them. You're flowing with them. I think I think of it as a combat sport as well because I try and make it that way. Right. Well, you definitely do. And you definitely make it like psychologically. I try. Yeah, I try and pull all that stuff in. But you have an extensive military experience too. Like you started off, like when, what, what is the Canadian version of what you, what branch

the military you were in? I was with a unit called JTF2 for 16 out of my 20 years. Yeah. It was great. I'd still be there if I could, really. But it got too complicated and I had to leave. But, uh, yeah. So, what do you mean?

You know, I don't want to say it was entirely one thing or another, but it really probably had a lot to do with arm wrestling and the visibility of arm wrestling. Like, I've been arm wrestling my whole life. But, Jesus, it was 19, I think, oh, sorry, 19. It was 2014. And we were on ESPN at the time. And up to that point, I was not declared military in the public eye.

like I was a farmer as far as everybody was concerned. You know, I tried to play the operational security as well as I could. And, you know, I was an active, active JTF2 member. But there were a lot of concerns about the growth of arm wrestling for me and my, you know, exposure. And, you know, part of being an operator is, you know, you have to be anonymous. You get on an airplane. You can't have people taking pictures of you. Oh, right.

Right. So arm wrestling because of where I was and it was on ESPN and going further, they're like, Devin, you have to choose. And I'm like, oh, my God, I've been armist since I was a kid. So the long and short of that is they offered me a year off. No pay. I took it. I took it. I took the year off. And we were, I was gathering apples and eating sardines and sending my kids to school with dried apples. And me and my wife were like, oh, my God, are we crazy? Like, are we crazy? just so you try to make it in arm wrestling. It was complicated. It was complicated. Wow. Yeah, I'd done like seven tours and it's weird when you do a lot of tours, you know. Things start to gray out a little bit.

I hope so. Everything is about mission in life, right? Like everything. Like if you don't have a good mission, your life is going to fall to shit. And as soon as you start to. question any kind of that. And, you know, you play in that realm long enough. Most

guys start to at the beginning, I mean, you're just either so patriotic or you know, just so down to you know, help your country or whatever or the people around you that you don't really you're undeterred. And I think that probably

sometime around that point in my career, maybe I was struggling slightly and that combined with them telling me that I wasn't able to do something that was like the only thing I did, you know, when I left work, was kind of the thing that kind of make me take kind of a stand in my life that I was going to, you know, follow sport instead of war. sports beautiful sports very clearly building civilization and war

the further you go and it just gets to a level of murk where you're not sure so yeah so I say you're not sure you're not sure if you should be doing what you're doing you're not sure if the mission should be happening yeah because I think most people join the military and stay in the military because they genuinely believe that they're benefiting mankind or civilization to some

degree. It's a big part of it. Nobody's there for the money. You know, I mean, at the beginning, some people are because we're broke, right? But, I mean, once you spend like 10 years, I mean, you're probably okay. And, yeah, so it starts, I mean, you play enough in that world and it starts to get confusing that you're, maybe you're not doing the right thing. So, uh, and look, I, I loved my work. I thought it was great. I loved all the people I worked with, some best people in the world. Um, but, Yeah, it came to a point where there was some issues, you know, with OPSEC, not even in my career, but in others. And it kind of trickled down into unipolicy and they shut down everybody's extracurricular.

And yeah, they're like, Devon, you can't arm wrestling anymore. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm a current world champion. Like I am currently the open world champion and you're telling me I can't do it. So I was like, yeah, we're going to have to come up with some other solution. They're like, yeah, okay, years leave without pay. here's your final offer so we took it and my wife and I were like oh my god

so yeah so I went from making money and I didn't come we didn't have money you know but you were getting by yeah getting by but it meant that on that year

I like had to win it was no longer like my hobby it was like if I don't win like my kids are like not I'm going to have to sell a house or like I'm going to have to do the gamble it worked out

what was that stress like dude how old would be at the time okay that was 2014 so I'd be 39 oh wow so you're already older as an athlete yeah yeah yeah

it was totally trippy I remember being so stressed out I was so it was it was a WAL finals okay I was in the 225 pound division 20,000 bucks for first place

right hand left hand and and and I had a great sponsor okay they were matching my pace so anything I won they doubled it and they were doing some other stuff too so but but if I lost they got nothing right so I'm I'm in the back I'm in the back in the warm up area and I'm breathing I'm getting ready I'm going against this guy Ron Bath in the finals and a long-time mentor of mine guys like my older brother this guy Mike Gould comes over to me he's like He's like he used to run to practice when you were 18. He's like, you're just here because you love it. Don't worry about it.

Just go and have fun. And I'm like, okay, you're right. You're right. And I went out and I just had fun and worked out. But yeah, so I ended up doing my years leave without pay. As soon as I was taking my leave, they're like, we want you to declare. Like, we want you to tell people that your special forces now. So I went from being.

Why did they want you to do that? Because they pushed me into recruiting. Yeah. So when I got back, I tried again. I think they'd already made up their mind. When I got back, I'm like, yeah, can I have my old job back? And they're like, you're going to keep arm wrestling? And I'm like, well, you know. And they're like, okay, you're going to recruiting. And I was on, so at that point, I was on my 19th year. Okay. And you only in the Canadian forces at that time, now I think you need 25. But 20 years, continuous service, and you get like a base. pension. So I did my 19th to 20th year I went around Canada and I told people how great the JTF was and that was it. That was my career done. Wow. Yeah and now full-time armrests for last 10 years. Yeah. What a jump at 39. Yeah. That had to be so fucking nerve-wracking. It was I just, you know, I thought it was very selfish of me, you know. I thought that I was being very year,

I thought, you know, because I really believed in soldiering, I did. And, you know, to leave it, you know, made me question very much whether I was doing the right thing with my life. And then on a family level, I was like, am I being irresponsible chasing this, you know, thing that I love to do. And it's costing my kids, you know, their university education, it's costing my kids, you know, But yeah, we believed in it. We went for it. And it's all worked out. It's all worked out.

I mean, it's been a second life for me. I still love all the guys I work with. Some of them are still working. My God, guys do like 30-year careers in Special Forces. It's crazy. Yeah, a lot of the guys that I went through with, they're now in senior positions, and I bump into them every once in a while.

I just tell them how much I love them and how great they are. And yeah, I live a simple life now. It's beautiful, you know, like before life was very complicated, going on tours, you know, Special Forces life is super complex. You know, it's difficult to balance. How my wife and I made it through that, I have no idea. I have no idea, but we did. But, yeah, now I'm at home every day.

I wake up unless I'm, you know, going to some arm wrestling. It's beautiful. Well, I gotta think that the discipline that came from that life transferred over to the discipline of becoming a great arm wrestler. I think I'm still learning today from my career. I'm still digesting some of the greatest days and some of the stuff that I did. I'm still integrating it into my life. Yeah. It's a great teacher.

Well, you can't fail. No, you can't. It's just like, the ultimate consequences, the ultimate consequences, the ultimate teacher. consequences, the ultimate stakes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's beautiful. I love the concept of soldiering. I think I have it as one of the highest things that you can do.

Like there's being a mother and there's being a fighter, you know. And I personally have always believed that one of the highest orders of fighters are the guys in the military. You know, the SF guys. It's pretty awesome. But, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. I try and take all those lessons and bring them into the sport. And I try to, well, I try and let that chapter of my life, you know, feed and inspire me today. Do you talk much about your tours?

I don't a lot. It's not that, you know, anything matters at this point. I mean, it's all, like, it's all in the past. And, you know, there's nothing that I could really say now that influence is too much. But, yeah, I don't make it part of my general promotion too much, but everybody knows that I was, you know. It's a wild time in my life, you know. It's a huge chapter, you know, the military stuff, the tours that I did, you know. We did a lot of work in Afghanistan.

So, you know, the highlight of my career is working in Kandahar, you know, working with the American forces, working with the Indage forces. You know, we, JTF does, like, counterterrorism. So we're doing hits. We're doing hits at night, you know, going out and various kinds. But, yeah, it was always funny to me. People would, because people didn't know I was, you know, widely. I mean, oh, Devin's scared to come to this tournament, you know. And I was like, motherfucker.

I am in a goddamn war right now. I'm not scared to go to Nemrov Cup, you know. But, yeah. That's funny. That must have been hilarious. It was so funny for me. I'm like, you have no idea how scared I am right now, what I'm doing. War is a wild thing, you know.

The degree that it psychologically affected me is, it's been neat. I think that a lot of who I am was shaped by combat, you know, by the fear and and the lacking that I had, like the not being enough to be everything I could be in combat shaped me so much. You know, when you go on a tour, and there's different people,

there's different dudes, okay? I know some dudes who really don't get scared. They really don't. Like, they're like so down for it. Like, they can't wait to go. on the next mission, you know? And I was kind of the guy who was like completely scared shitless, but I'd go anyways, you know?

And what I kind of learned to do, which I have a great value in, is kind of the separation of myself. You know, I am a very different person day to day than when I compete or when I, for example, went and actually did the job, you know, I would completely transform. form my character. And this is something that I learned. The first tour was hard. You know, you're a regular do with a regular brain and a regular mindset doing this terrifying thing. And then, you know, you come back and you, you know, you've seen a lot of shit and you got PTSD. You wake up and your heart's going. And it's like an injury. And you can let an injury kill you

or you can heal and develop some kind of resilience to it. And I think that I, to some degree, did that by learning how to become a different person. People call it a switch, you know, where you like, all your values, the person that you are is different. You're not the same person when you're out in the field than you are when you're back on base. And I created a persona that loved it, that looked forward to it, that lusted for it. because that's what you need to be to actually perform properly. When you say he created a persona, what was the steps?

Like, how did you do that? Well, I think that one of the things is to really wrap your mind. I think the first step is to wrap your mind about the worst possible outcomes with any fear. And I don't know if a psychologist is going to tell you to do this. But, like, for example, like I'll take it a step back and we'll talk about jumping, okay? I don't like to jump at airplanes. Okay? Didn't really, you know, it's kind of scary.

So I had a certain fear there, okay? Now I got over it. I've got, you know, I've got hundreds of jumps. But what I did was I used to watch parachute fails over and over and over and over and over. And I just kind of desensitized myself to it and kind of became okay with it. And I think to a certain degree, I did the same thing with the overall concept of, worst case scenario with the war, you know, kind of accepted that I'm going to die. It's okay. I believe in the cause, believe in the mission. It's okay. So now I have to solve how to actually,

how do I get to the best performance state to do that? And you have to love what you do. You got to love what you do. So you have to find a way to love the violence. You have to find a way to love the aggression. You have to find a way to, and I think it's inside all of us. I think that the person that you are is, you know, who you've kind of created for a certain circumstance. But the truth is, is you might act a little bit different when you're sitting at the table with your mother than when you're sitting at the table with your best friend to when you're going out and doing a hit on the front lines, you know, and it's a different psychology that's going to perform best, you know, in each of And it's learning that you are not necessarily one thing.

You are whatever you want to be, you know, and you can change that. You can, and you can become that. And the more time that you spend as that role, the more you roll it out, the more you build it out, the more you're comfortable with it, the more you might even look forward to doing it again, you know. I certainly rolled that psychology into my arm wrestling. What's interesting you say, I don't know if a psychologist would tell you to do that. I don't think a psychologist would have the ability to understand what that experience even is.

There's one thing about theory and about books and about learning in school. There's a giant difference between that and application in a real world scenario where you might lose your life and you have to take a life. I don't think there's a psychologist in the world that could explain that. That's why I'm always very hesitant about even sports psychologists or fight psychologists that like teach people how to prepare for fighting. I'm like, you could probably give a fighter some tools, but for you to actually tell them what needs to be done, if you're not doing that, how can you? It's just theory. Theory. Yeah.

And there's a giant difference between theory and application where you are trying to keep your fucking brain together. and the craziest thing a human being can do. Yeah. Parachute down and gun people down. Like what is fucking crazier on earth than that? I say nothing. Well, look, I used to have that attitude as well, but I've changed my attitude when it comes to that.

I think that it's about excellence and mastery. I think that that's what life is about. And if you're in the soldiering realm, yeah, that's excellence and master. in that field. But I think wherever you are, if you're a businessman, if you're an artist, if you're a farmer, there's levels. You can be you can be a farmer that, you know, has weeds and, you know, kind of, you know, doesn't get up at the crack of dawn or whatever. And then you can be a completely psychotic farmer that does. And I think that you're on that level. Yeah.

You're just, you're on that level of mastery. And I think that that is what life is really about, is finding that thing that you're comfortable doing. and becoming a master at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now I am the Bonnie Blue of arm wrestling. Come one, come all. I get the first base with everybody.

I got to ask you about this, and this is a silly thing to ask you, because you said Kandahar. Have you heard of the legend of the Kandahar giant? Of course. Yeah. What did you hear? When did you hear?

Well, I've seen. Okay. There's some freaks out there, man. There's some freaks. So, yeah, I mean, I've seen the YouTube video. I've heard about it from other people. But legit, legit, okay? Hard for me because I was far away.

Okay, I was probably about 200 meters away. We were doing a mobility exercise. Okay, mobility, I hate mobility. Okay, mobility was my least favorite op. Mobility basically, you get in a bunch of trucks and you kind of roll out and you kind of look for a fight, okay? So we were doing like a two-week mobility in this, this region,

kind of north, north of the Pangeway. I don't remember exactly what it was called. There was this surrounded by mountains, this big valley. And we were rolling around. And so there was a village that we were going to check out. And I'm like a gunner, okay? So I don't know everything that's going on.

I'm a dude on a machine gun. Okay, but I can see everything that's happening. I kind of know what we're doing. But I know that there's a meeting. And what they have is they have these warlords. It doesn't, it's not the same kind of political system or anything that we have in like North America. Kind of the baddest dude in the region becomes in charge. Okay.

So we were meeting with one of the local warlords. And so the town was like, 500 meters away. They drove out from the town about 500 meters, and we had our trucks about 200 meters from the meeting point. Our officer and a couple dudes went forward, and we're looking.

This guy, I mean, he was maybe twice as big. He was huge. He was a massive dude. Like how big? I think he was eight feet. I think he was eight foot something. And it's embarrassing. It's like, Devin, you're crazy. He's big. And he was 200 meters away.

He was about 200 meters away. But I can see the guys. We've got optics. He was, our officer was probably somewhere at the bottom of his chest. Great big Afghan dude. Big beard, big dude. And his lackeys around him were normal size. Great big warlord.

So they're out there. There's big people. Eight feet is nuts. I have personally seen people who, who were probably over eight feet. What? Yeah. In Afghanistan?

No, no. I saw these guys up north, northern Canada. Cree. I was up in Ojibugamo, okay? This Cree village. I remember walking up. I'm there for arm wrestling. We're having an arm wrestling tournament.

And I'm looking up. We're walking up the stairs in this hockey arena. This dude, I'm like, that's a really big dude. By the time I got there, I was about me, and I'm like 6'5, I was about at his nipple. What? Yeah, big, big, big hands, big, big long hands. Like, out of the goonies, like, misshaping face.

I'm like, my God, I'm like, how big are you? He's, like, just laughed at me. And he's like, my brother, he's like, my dad's eight foot 11. He's like, like, like, what? Yeah, big. My dad's eight foot 11. I'm telling you, there's big people. And people don't know about him.

Guinness doesn't know about them. They live up in the woods. There's big people out there. And not all of them. Who is that guy, Jamie? He's from that region. apparently, I don't know how to say that. Edward Bopri.

So there's just giants that live in that region. The Cree are very big people. And the thing is, is when they get to eat, what they're supposed to eat, the problem is so many of them eat junk now, right? Because they, you know, they grow up on their... 367, sorry. 8 foot 2.5, 367 pounds, age 33. Whoa.

Yeah, I forget the name of these brothers, but there's a bunch of them. Yeah, yeah, there's some weird genetics out there, you know? Yeah. Yeah, and we're going to try and swab them. I'll give it to Ryan before you know it. But so this guy in Afghanistan was this one isolated incident? I saw one. Yeah, I just saw the one.

And he had to be eight feet tall. He is big. He's big. Yeah, he was big, big, big human being far out of the standard. Yeah, and he was a warlord. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

They're big people out there. And so the Kandahar giant story, the guy is supposed to be even bigger than that. Yeah. Yeah, I heard it. Do you believe it? I do. Yeah, I do. There's freaks out there.

There are. But this guy supposedly had like six fingers and six toes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that stuff. I just, I mean, I think that we get so used to normal people and every once in a while there's a weirdo. And these people are not being studied. There's no one there like that that region of the country is extremely remote

Extremely extremely like they don't it's it's like going back to like the 15th century Like there's there's motorcycles and some people have gas I mean but they don't have electricity Yeah, there's not even really roads Yeah and there was this one guy who was a warlord that was eight feet tall I saw him You saw him I saw him yeah from a distance but I mean I mean I there's no way he was any shorter like he was huge he was a massive and he was broad across his shoulders too he was probably twice as broad um massive massive human yeah what was that like just seeing something like that it's wild man yeah you know it's it's neat um yeah yeah it was it was

shocking but uh but it you know it's neat how they structure their leadership that's the guy in The most massive. I hope he was a nice guy. Probably wasn't. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, he seemed reasonable like we didn't get in the fight. Like we didn't, there was no fight there.

So we worked it out, whatever it was. But yeah, there are anomalies. And it's neat. It's kind of cool that he made it to a leadership position. So he must have been a smart guy too. And he must have been a good guy because I don't think a dick could have been in charge. So did you hear of that story? the Kandahar giant story.

So supposedly what happened is it's American military guys encountered this guy in the mountains. Yeah. That was just absolutely enormous. They said he was like 12 feet tall. Yeah. Well, what happened with the Nephilim, you know? Right. That's the thing.

The thing is like supposedly they had six fingers and six toes as well. Look, I believe that things come to visit and sometimes things get left behind. Who knows? Who knows? You know? There's a good chance that he's maybe just a little bit closer to all that. Or somehow a recessive and a recessive somehow found their ways together and there you go. And somehow there's a surviving population of these people still in the world that are undiscovered. It's a beautiful part of the world, that region, perfect climate, super fertile.

Like if you were going to, like if there was nothing, what a beautiful place to start life. Afghanistan's beautiful country so rich for agriculture the climate is perfect you know with the mountains and the rivers uh the seasons it's tough to beat you know I would understand why people would fight

so hard to have that territory and uh you know if you were a giant 12 feet tall and you could live anywhere you wanted you know in a valley where the rivers fed your land I can pick there yeah did you hear that story when you were over

there? That story is famous. Yeah. And I asked around, I've never met anybody who was involved in that op. I haven't. But it seems like a story that has something to it, because there's too many people telling that story. There's only one story like that. There are a lot of stories. There's more stories like that? There are. I mean, I should say there's only one story like that online that people repeat over and over again this one encounter. There are fascinating stories out there. Some that I'm closer to. Like what?

Probably the most interesting story that I'm in any way kind of close to is from that region of the world. And this is a whole other can of worms. But it's so weird. It's demonic possession. We had a guy, a guy, he was my, I worked with him very closely for super smart guy great guy awesome dude awesome soldier and uh and yeah i mean he got possessed by a demon he started speaking in tongues he knew everything about everybody he could speak different

languages uh he uh he uh he knew everything about everybody's life he knew all their sins what yeah he knew he knew all the sins people did even from their childhood He got taken to He got taken to The medical Through the medical system Before they knew it He was out of the medical system

And he was with the Padre The like the priest That comes along on some military missions They did a What do you call that when you Cleanse the demon from you? What do you call that? Exorcism

They did an exorcism He They sent him back to Canada He He's now watched by the church He has to go and check in with the church every week. I don't know what to tell you, Joe. There's a lot, I don't know.

But, yeah, and the crazy thing was, is the priest who did the exorcism said he knew the demon. He'd already done the exorcism like three or four times. On different people. Yeah, that demon was like popping in that other guys. Yeah, so, I look, Joe, I don't know what's going on in the world. I'm an arm wrestler. Okay.

But this guy knew things about. You? No. I wasn't on the tour. But the unit's very small, okay? All the guys who were there, I have very close personal relationships with. And there's no reason for me not to trust him. And this is the all the, and the guy who had it done to him, I'm very close with.

Like he comes over to my, he was my stall partner. Okay. And I see him all the time. When you say had it done to, the guy who was possessed. Yes. You knew him. I know him very well. And what did he say about it?

Yeah, he doesn't like it very much. Yeah He's he it scared him a lot Yeah Yeah Does he recall being able to speak different languages Yeah he can remember it Yeah he can remember

But he can't speak those languages anymore No it was like he was aware of everything happening But he was like he was a visitor He was like there for the ride Whoa Yeah yeah apparently he when it started It started to like started he was freezing He was locking up

And then he was locking up And then he was locking And then he started speaking in tongues, and then he was like fully. Joe, it's weird stuff out there, man. There's a lot of things that we don't understand, right? And, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. It wasn't me, but I trust the story because I know the people. I know them.

I know them very. I could hook you up with them. You want to talk to them? Tell you. I'm nervous. Tell you all about it. I don't think I would. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And how long was he possessed for? He was possessed, I think, for a couple of weeks. Maybe like a week or 10 days, something like that. Wasn't super long, but he was all messed up afterwards. Like he got, like he was done working after that. Really? He retired. Medical. Wow. Yep. But psychologically, like it wasn't like he had a schizophrenic break. So whatever it was, he could.

came back from. I don't know that schizophrenia can explain the languages. No. I don't know that it's... No, I don't think it can, but what I'm saying is they didn't diagnose him as having... No, the diagnosis was he had to go to church. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. Right? Isn't that wild? That's so crazy. That's one of the craziest ones that I've seen personally. Have you heard of other experiences like that where people have been possessed? That's it. We would think that

if a demon was going to visit someone, war would be the place to visit them and and that's an ancient that was in iraq that was in urbill okay and i mean that's an ancient ancient part of the world yeah so whatever's like history is long and misunderstood and um something's going on something's going on i can't explain it and i've kind of just been like i'm kind of like at this point of my life i'm like whatever i know i don't know everything i'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do wrist curls in my basement for next one. Yeah, he's awesome. Martin, if you're watching, come over, let's party.

I love this guy. Does he talk about it? A little bit. A little bit. I'm so curious about it. Do you think he would come on here and tell the story? Yep. Really?

Sure. Of course he would. I'm nervous. You know, James? Are you nervous, Jamie? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's a cool dude. Wow.

Yeah, I love him. I love him. Yeah, a great soldier. Brother, you've had a pretty wildlife. It's been great, really. Kind of fun, happy to be here. Yeah, it's been good. It's been good.

Well, I really enjoyed this conversation, man. I'm glad we did it. Joe, thank you so much. And really, like, I feel like it's kind of closing the loop for something with my brother. Yeah, well, you should, we should, We should tell everybody. I knew your brother, before I met you, online, and this is from your brother. Your brother made this candle, and this candle will now sit here.

He is no longer with us, but the candle will remain. Thank you so much for your time, Joe. My pleasure, brother. Anytime you want to get into arm wrestling, come on over. We'll get your grip strength working for you. No, no, I'm good, but thank you. I appreciate it. Wonderful.

And good luck. Good luck beating that. I'm going to need it. I'm going to need it. 16 months? 16 months, man. Maybe we'll talk to you before then. Yeah.

Yeah, cool. Thank you so much. Thanks, brother. All right. Bye, everybody.