Transcript of #2510 - Devon Larratt New

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night. All day!

Check, check, check. What's happening, my man?

I'm so happy.

So happy to see you.

Wow.

Let's go.

Joe, thank you so much. 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 on the planet and I think I'm honored to be your first arm wrestler.

Well, if I'm gonna have an arm wrestler, it has to be the GOAT.

Oh, highly debated, highly debated, but I'll take it.

You're in the conversation, that's for sure.

Yeah, I'm in the conversation. There's a couple of us, I think. John Brzenk. I don't know, how close do you follow arm wrestling?

Very little.

Yeah.

I follow you. Well, 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, unfortunately. That's crazy. Yeah, it didn't work when I was trying to fight Thor either. It kind of limited the extension.

But when did that start happening?

So I was— I got into club arm wrestling. I arm wrestled with my— when I was a kid, but I got into club arm wrestling around like 18. By By the time I was 20 or so, we had 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 till my elbows don't straighten. Like a silly wish, right? So it started early, like I think I was like, probably like in my late 20s, and it just, the range started to shrink.

And how, what is that from?

It's just pressure mostly, like just the constant pressure on the elbow joint causes osteophytes potentially, and it doesn't happen to all the arm wrestlers.

Have you gotten an MRI on it?

I've had 3 surgeries.

To straighten them out?

To remove bone and scar tissue.

Just chipped bones and stuff?

Chipped bones. Dr. Pawlik, bless his soul, at the Ottawa Hospital has extended my career till this age. You know, yeah, it can, that's probably one of the worst chronic conditions that arm wrestlers 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 is when I had my first surgery. And at that point, like trying to move forward, trying to move forward and—

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 2 surgeries on the right, 1 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.

And does that happen to every arm wrestler?

No, no, no. There's lots of arm 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. If you're— 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 right, I'm guilty, you know. So like most of the greats, anyways, on everything, 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 armbar, okay, like your body resists with the ligaments and the tendons.

Mm-hmm.

So that starts higher for me, and I think that there's a muscular strength component that kicks in as well right at the end of the range to protect you. So I just have a higher, you know, armbar, you know.

Does it— did it help you in armbars as well?

Oh, no, it doesn't. A good jiu-jitsu guy is still gonna— he's still gonna armbar me.

No, it's also the bones would just snap. Yeah, it's just gonna snap higher. Yeah, 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 and Juju Mufu. Yeah, is that how you say his name?

Yeah, Juji.

Juji. Yeah, Juji Mufu.

Yeah, Juji Mufu. Okay, John Call. 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 weren't fucking agony. Yeah. I was like, that is crazy to watch. Like, yeah, 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 I— when I was young, when I was 20, I was wishing for the day that I could be like Crazy George.

Where your arm doesn't straighten out.

So it's, 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 the joint that is probably the root cause of it.

What is the capsule made out of?

I believe it's— was it fascia? 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.

That'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' knees?

I know David Goggins. I don't know about his knees.

His knees are so crazy. He's bone on bone. Yeah. 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— it's, it's— 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 to 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 5 months like a maniac and then started running again, bone on bone.

Beautiful. Love it.

It's crazy.

He's wild.

See if you can find what the condition is. Says it's called Wolff's Law, biological principle stating that bones adapt and grow thicker and denser as they're physically physical stress. Is that— I think that's it. Yeah. And his grew thicker and like kind of mushroomed out. Yeah. At the top of the knee because there's nothing there. There's no— and it's just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Yeah. 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. 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. Where's— that's the— 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.

Sehr gut, sehr gut, sehr gut.

Sehr gut?

WISO Steuer ist sehr gut. Das sagen ganz viele. Cool, wer sagt das? Stiftung Warentest, Computerbild, Focus Money, Chip, Finanztipp. Such dir was aus. Mega, aber das ist doch bestimmt kompliziert. Nö, einfach Foto von der Lohnsteuerbescheinigung machen und fertig. Klingt sehr gut. Ist sehr gut. Hol dir dein Geld zurück mit WISO Steuer. Kaffee in seiner besten Form mit der neuen Qubo One Kapselmaschine von Tchibo. In jeder Qubo-Kapsel steckt Spitzenkaffee aus besonderen Anbaugebieten. Für Espresso, Kaffee-Crema oder Kaffee-Grande auf Knopfdruck. Die neue Qubo One überzeugt mit Premium-Design, kompakter Größe und kleinem Einstiegspreis ab 29 €. Dank innovativer PressBrew-Technologie wird jede Tasse besonders aromatisch mitsamt dicker Crema. Entdecke jetzt die Qubo-Kapselmaschinen in deiner Tchibo-Fiale und auf tchibo.de. Yeah, for sure. I have something similar. I've been bone on bone for probably 2 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, 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 6 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 1 in the divisions. So, you know, I'm lucky, but I think it's all, the doctors will say something, but it's just not true. You can do anything, you know?

Well, Goggins is a perfect example of that, and I guess so are you. 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 tendinous structures of the elbow are super, super taxed in arm wrestling and the process of rehabilitation Rehabilitation and development of these structures under great duress and trauma is, 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. I've been trying to jack my, my, the, those grip strength things. The strongest I ever got to is 164. And I'm like, I wanna 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'm always tired. So like every time I squeeze that thing, my hands are always sore. So I'm like, shit, I gotta 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. And I've got these big fat things that I use for cables to rotate wrists. My hands got bigger. I'm definitely stronger, but it's like, I don't know when to lay off of it and when to put— like, 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? Oh, 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, 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. Mm-hmm. 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 are 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 basically an attempt to get a better grip. And if I can— the concept of making the other opponent hold on to you, that's the first step in 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 on to you, that's— 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. Mm-hmm. 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, like with like 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, they think about pinning each other. Right. And this is, 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 gonna go through the weakest system they have, which is their fingertips. Yeah, so it is great to have an awesome grip, really.

But it'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 arm wrestlers 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. 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— we're all wrestlers. So 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, we have our own thing where we'll hit a, hit a mat, like we'll train together, but really 2 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 wrestler ever to exist, uh, Leanne Dufresne, uh, 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, this table you're looking at here, that's like 40-year-old table, and it's still working. But yeah, you can buy 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.

Mm-hmm.

So it's a little bit like Swiss ball for the wrist. So it's, it's—

Swiss ball?

What's that? You know, like a Swiss ball, like people do like squats on them, like the ball in the gym. People do like—

Oh, like a Bosu ball? Is that what it's called?

Bosu's like a half, right?

Oh, is that what it is?

Swiss ball is like just the big round balls that you see. Okay. Yeah, and you see people—

Like a yoga ball, whatever they call them.

Right. You ever jumped on a Swiss ball and done squats or anything?

No.

Okay, well—

I have the half one that I do stuff on.

Yeah, Swiss ball is way more unstable. So it's a similar concept where 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 basement.

Yeah. And what you see here, this was actually my final workout before I pulled the Russian champion Vitaly Letin like 6, 7 weeks ago. So I've tapered. Normally all these movements you see, I'm doing like 100 repetitions. So lots of blood flow.

And when you're doing 100 repetitions, like what, 50% max weight?

No.

What do you weigh? Nothing. Nothing, like 20 pounds, something like? Yeah. Really? Is that the key?

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 I basically— it all revolves around these arm wrestling practice days where I'm— it's 100%, this is what I want my body to, to, to maximize about. But the off days, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the— 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, 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. Mm-hmm. What I've found is In my opinion, you only have so much energy, and this is something we gotta really weigh in, because if I could just smash, you know, heavy stuff all the time and take steps forward, I'd do it. But, um, 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. It's just, it's a form of healing almost. Hmm.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, just the blood flow and the consistent movement and high repetitions.

Yes, it's— this is highly debated, okay? But I'm proving it over and over, over the years. I started doing— because arm wrestling is a strength sport, no doubt about it. So right away people think, oh, you know, heavyweight and, you know, high reps is dangerous because you're gonna become an endurance guy and it's, it's gonna make you weaker. But when you go low, your, your work volume is tremendous. Okay, if you're doing light, lightweight 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, 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, I'm not doing my heavy lifting at this time in my career. And also, Joe, I'm 51 and I'm plagued with injuries, so I have to be very specific. I have to 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 powerlift? Like what did you, what'd you do initially?

I was a judo guy. I was a basketball guy. I was a military guy. So I I did a lot of different stuff. I was very cross-trained. I even did Ironman for a bit.

But it's gotta be so hard for you. Yeah, it's all that weight.

Oh yeah, I— so I would— when I say Ironman, apologies, not traditional military Ironman.

So what's the difference?

Military Ironman, 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 6 hours, like 5.5 to 6 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 Ironman are, you know, average size or even smaller. But yeah, the size, 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 4 years old.

With your grandmother?

Yeah, yeah. Really? Never underestimate the power of a grandmother. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a rowdy little kid and, you know, 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 Levon, and the current super heavyweight world champion is Levon. So I've never beat either of them. Yeah, yeah, it's a bit trippy. Yeah, so 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, it's— the hand is weird. Like, this thing here is designed for volume, and it just slowly builds, you know. The hand is— the structure is— 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, there's not a lot of money associated with the sport in terms of membership fees, or I'm wrestling each other's garages and houses, and, and it breeds a very tight family. Like, I consider the club that I train with, like, they're my family. Like, so that's my— I mean, that's what sports all about, you know?

Mm-hmm.

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? What— how old are like 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 Porkchop. Oh, there's Crazy George. This is the guy, okay? So this guy—

Which one's Crazy George?

The dude who's down there. Not the guy in the green shirt. So these are both my good buddies.

And this is the guy who can't straighten his arms out?

Oh, 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 roll. 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 professional arm wrestler pulling at East vs. West, okay? That's our highest league. And Crazy George is— Yeah, he's—

That's incredible.

Yeah, it's completely incredible.

Yeah.

There's 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.

Okay, so how old is Crazy George in this film?

He'd probably be late 60s here. Okay.

Wow.

Yeah. He's an absolute legend to me in sport. Like, technically. So this guy, he spent the first like 20 years in the sport, 2 up, 2 down, okay? Go to tournament, double elimination. He's— 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 roll or a King's move. And he really figured it out. And, uh, 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, uh, rising strength, there's pronational strength, there's cupping strength. And this pronational— you see this like This is like my favorite example.

Jesus Christ, look at that thing. That's so weird. Yeah, show that. Show that.

Look at that.

Who the fuck has that muscle?

Right, arm wrestlers. That muscle's so weird. Right, so that turn.

I don't even think I have that. Where is that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's right there.

That's nuts.

Right.

Mine is nonexistent. I was gonna interrupt.

I saw it on this thumbnail and I was gonna say, what is that? Yeah. I couldn't figure it out.

That's fucking crazy.

It's one of my dreams to have bodybuilders when they're, you know, IFBB, just to be doing pronator poses one day, one day. It's the one you gotta first turn your thumb down like that and pop your wrist back. There it is.

See it?

There you go.

That's the one, bitch. That's the one fucking— yeah, little bitch-ass muscle. So that's gigantic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like different styles in arm wrestling, okay, like they have different roots, okay? And The King's move, top rolling in general, outside top rolling is super dependent on pronation.

So it's all this.

Twisting, yeah. Twisting, yeah. It's weaponized, right? We get really strong to— and there's a relationship between all the angles in 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.

Hmm.

So there's a relationship between them. So Crazy George is like the master of pronational styles. King's move is pronation style. I, over the course of my career, changed techniques, changed techniques, and probably my best technique is an open top roll or a King's Move now. Yeah, and I learned a lot. It's like the guy that— one of my first coaches, a guy called Troy Eaton, he, he could never beat George. He couldn't beat George. We tried, we tried, we tried for years to figure him out. So, and that was back when I was like 20, right? So I've been, I've been studying this style for 30 years. And yeah, it's, 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, the, the— 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, 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.

He's—

this guy's 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.

Uh, well, there— that's— that topic is so big, you know, the genetic, uh, piece. I think that what a massive piece going forward for our species, you know, um, the mastery of genetics, uh, 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 a 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 towards 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 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 they're— so what is it doing here? Um, okay, so Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence much of the extra chromosome's 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 was— 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, 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, to good. But it's weird. I don't know, man. Listen to 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, 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. Yeah. That's the thing. So this project that Ryan is doing, and I like to help him out a little bit, we've been looking at elite performers. And with the goal to find favorable mutations. And yeah, we scanned Bryan.

He's in the Bible. That guy's in the Bible. He's like, you know, David and Goliath. They're real people out there like that. Yeah, yeah, Bryan's one of them. So his genetics are 1 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. Freakish.

Bone density.

Yeah.

Everything. Everything. And it's not just his bone density. The dude's mindset. Like, there's many pieces of Bryan's genetics that make him a champion. But yeah, he has some stuff in him that Bryan's never seen. Yeah, no, nobody, nope. He has, and I probably shouldn't be speaking about other people's medical stuff, but I love Bryan 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 this. 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 gonna have to talk to Ryan. But it's—

growth hormone is different. He's 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 7 feet tall and he's 400 pounds.

Yeah, and he, and he doesn't stop. He 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 mRNA 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, 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 faster?

Like they have a stop code on their fast-twitch genetics.

Just natural.

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.

So 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, 'cause 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. Uh, Eddie, you can sue me. Eddie Hall, I love you. I love you. Uh, Eddie's got a stop code in his genes. On fast-twitch muscle. Makes no sense.

Well, that doesn't make any sense.

Makes no sense.

He moves so fast.

I know.

And he hits so fucking hard.

I know.

That's crazy.

It's crazy.

How is that possible? I don't know. I've seen that guy hit mitts and you're like, Jesus Christ.

I know.

Is this what the Hercules mean?

No. Not that?

No. Something else?

No.

Oh, that's myostatin. That's myostatin inhibitors. Yeah. So it regulates the production of myostatin, a 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. Yes, of course. So Whippets are a weird dog. It's a very skinny, fast dog, and some Whippets are born with this genetic mutation that's a myostatin inhibitor, and they look like the Hulk. It's the craziest— show an image of that, please. It is the craziest. It 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 Whippet— show me a regular Whippet now, please. Yeah, regular whippets, that's a— yeah, look at a regular whippet, like a real fast, like almost like a greyhound-looking dog. And then you see the ones with the myostatin inhibitor gene and you're like, what the hell is going on? They look like, 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 follistatin. So there's a balance between follistatin and myostatin. From what I understand, like the key that turns on the cell for growth is follistatin. 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 follistatin. So the only signal that you're ever getting with a myostatin deficiency is follistatin. And so, yeah, so they offer a genetic therapy that increases your follistatin.

They offer it to who?

Hmm. Anybody, anybody.

Anybody who's ready to get jacked.

Anybody with enough money. Rhymes with peptide. Yeah, yeah. There's a bunch of genetic therapies that they've already created. Follistatin is one of them.

And so that would be for powerlifters 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 follistatin drops, and that's why people get smaller. They shrink as they get older, right? And follistatin just helps you maintain muscle mass. Yes. So it's, it's, 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. Yeah, got this new therapy now for people with disk 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, your disks just get worn out from getting cranked on. And like, heavy lifters always have it, lower back issues.

Your—

the disk is the soft cushion in between the spinal columns, and those, those big bones push down that disk, and over time, and all that compression, it squashes. But now they've got stuff that they can inject into the disk that inflates the disks.

Yeah.

And so all these people that have been getting artificial disks and fusions and all the problems that come with that, because there's massive problems, they're gonna 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, like I always tell everybody, and I'll tell everybody again, Louis Simmons, his invention, that, that invention, the reverse hyper. Yeah, fucking incredible. One of them, 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 decel, 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're 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— well, the thing is, 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 performance-enhancing drugs, 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 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 of 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, lifetime 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 yeah, 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 or.

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? You know, I'm a big believer in tested sport. You know, I think that that's wonderful, and I think that that'll never go away, and I think it's, 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. Yeah, but I was hoping like you're gonna see some freakish superhuman performances, but I feel like if that's gonna happen, that's gonna take years. I don't think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping to get to achieve like world record super freak human performance unless you're doing that stuff for a long— like, you know as well as anybody that training takes forever. It takes to build strength, to build speed, to build endurance. Takes a long-ass time. You think you're gonna get strength in 3 months? Like, you get a little stronger for sure, but you're not gonna 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. Whoo!

Listen, I think—

not a chance.

Juji, Juji, look at so many— look at myself included, you know, I care about performance. This is, this is what, what I care about. And so many people fall into the same boat.

Look at that guy. Yeah, that dude's natural. You know, I'll tell you, Juji is probably amazing though, that he can do that, that kind of flexibility with that kind of mass. Look at that, while overhead pressing, a full side squat, a side split. That's nuts on chairs, Jean-Claude Van Damme style.

Juji started out tricking. Okay, what does that mean? Uh, like it's a form of—

that sounds like—

yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so he actually started off—

sounds like he's picking up guys.

Yeah, no, no, Juji is super cool. Uh, it's like flipping.

He was on America's Got Talent.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

It's like a form of, uh, like 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.

Mm.

And he's probably better now than ever. And he's— I mean, I think Juji's in his 40s.

Wow.

Yeah. And, uh, 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. He is. YouTube videos.

Yeah.

And we have snorted his fucking smell 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.

Juji is actually the inspiration for this modern— this, 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 senior guy in my club, okay? So, and we have this kind of rule 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're just holding them. 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 redline. Mm. 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.

Sport specific.

Exactly. And does he arm wrestle?

He does a little bit. Juji does everything.

But why did it— you working with him make you train differently?

Juji's a special guy. Um, I think that just— you don't have to be the best in your field if you have a certain energy or certain thing with you. Juji is a wonderful, creative, hard-working guy, and when you get a chance to train with him, 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— Okay, so what happened was, Juji came over, and I normally, on days that I do table work, I do not hit the gym, okay? Because I don't want anything to kind of impact my, my, my table work. And because I only had a day with Juji, 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 put— 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. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Well, that's a sign you're doing something fun.

Yeah, right.

That's the key. Continue to get better at it and continue to grow at it.

Key to life.

So just the one training session with him changed your perspective on that because you just weren't performing as well?

That was the 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 gonna follow pretty much from event to event.

And this is all made by you?

It's made by me. And I, I watch everything, you know. I, 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, if, 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 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 super specific. 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, uh, the greatest criticism that I always receive as an athlete. Is because I don't really—

just arm wrestling stuff.

I go for walks.

That's it.

I'm terrible.

Really? No lunges?

No, like, 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, in very broad training, okay? 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 it. 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 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 Levan, what do I do from here? And I just am like, more wrist curls, you know. Look at my— he do— he's a bit more balanced than me. He, he— Levan lifts super heavy weights, like stupid.

What does this dude look like? Show me, show me Levan. What is his last name?

Saginashvili. 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 the size of this motherfucker.

This, this is—

holy shit, that can't be real. Is that AI? Is that picture AI? No, that one right there.

Okay, that's real.

Oh my God, this is real. I don't know, Jamie, that might be real. He might just be pumped.

Levon is the pinnacle. Okay, we scanned him too, and surprise, he's a weirdo also. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look at the size of that motherfucker.

He's in Little Rock in 2 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, proportionately their strength is, is not normal. Levon is, uh, he hasn't— nobody has beat this guy since 2017. He has absolutely absolutely flattened the field, okay?

Like, he's so hairy too. Oh, 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. Cool. Very cool guy. Um, I, I absolutely love Levan. Um, he has beaten the piss out of me at every opportunity. Oh, he's so big. 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? Levan does a lot of pull-ups, really heavy ones. And he does a lot of really heavy curls. Mm-hmm. 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?

Um, that's what he used to look like.

That's crazy.

Shout out to steroids. Shout out, shout out to all those scientists out there.

He's very young in that first photo. Of course, you know, he, he slowly evolved through the world championships to what he is today. Um, yeah, it's interesting when, when you see different champions, and I try and learn from everybody. I, I watch what everybody does. I, I see what they're doing. Uh, 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— I have, like I said, I've had surgeries.

But yet you can still arm wrestle. Yeah. So, 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? Um, say injuries.

Well, arm wrestling is a big thing, okay? There's several things you can kind of choose to focus on. Probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow because I've had multiple surgeries on it. I burn it out. Like, 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, is the flexion of the wrist, and you're moving forward with your shoulder, and you're kind of trying to attack 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, my— 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 that Lavon trains, And I— and please, I don't like to criticize Levan. He's the best, okay? But egotistically and arrogantly, I'm gonna 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. Levan's base movements, his row, his— I mean, he's doing a 180-kilo curl. You know?

Two hands or one hand?

Two, but that's a— That's crazy. The amount of weight that he's wrist curling, I'm never gonna get there, okay? I'm never gonna— 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 gonna be as big as him.

Probably not.

But do you think that it would benefit you at all to add size?

To get— I, I try it for every single prep that I do. I'm trying— in the super heavyweight division, I'm trying to get as big and 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, 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 big? Would you add a bunch of weightlifting 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, 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 gonna determine my victory. And look at, apart from Levan, it's working, you know. This guy has 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 bicep. 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 was teasing him. 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 1. 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 1. Yeah. Okay. So this is, this is the last time I pulled him, which is 2024.

And when you say pulled him, it means you have a match with him.

Yeah, that's right. Okay. So everything goes to straps.

And I'm telling you, like, so that's what happens when the match doesn't work out and the hands slip away from each other. Straps, straps. Do you guys put powder in your hands or anything?

Yeah, use chalk. But yeah, every— 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 him. And in this match, I think he might have ripped my spine apart. Like, yeah, I couldn't walk properly for like 4 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 flop wrist press, and I get a foul. Okay, first, see my shoulder goes below the table. Uh-huh. This is called decline humerus, and it's a foul.

You can't do that.

So you start from scratch?

Well, 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 gave me a foul. And then from here on, he just runs me over.

So it's a loss? What do you mean?

So in arm wrestling, if you get 2 fouls, it's a loss.

So the match is over.

Match is over. But see, this is best of 7, so From here, he runs me over. But this is the closest I've gotten, okay? We've practiced since then. We've gone into— I'll probably practice with him this weekend. But I'm slated to pull this monster again. It's gonna happen one more time for sure. It's what keeps me in my basement.

It's what— That one guy?

This guy.

Look at the size of that motherfucker.

He's awesome. Oh, he's a beautiful human. I love this guy. He's the— 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-kilo division, in the 105-kilo division. I think I've got those ones pretty much wrapped up. It's— but, but it's the Open, man, to be the best. Yeah, regardless of weight.

That's so much weight to give up. I know, but 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? Oh no, I'd be happy being the champ, you know, but when you're not the champ, you're not happy, and you're gonna do everything you can So, so even though you're a champ at your weight class, it's 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 Brzenk. He's considered the greatest of all time. John Brzenk, basically for 40 years, 40 years, from the time he was like 18 to like almost 60, okay? He went undefeated for— 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 Brzenk. John Brzenk'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. But how old is he? 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. Oh 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 does John weigh?

On a good day, on a great day, John's like 230. But when he was young and healthy, probably 195.

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 Brzenk. So John started arm wrestling when he was a kid with his dad. And he's one of the first guys.

Can we see him do it?

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, like, and I'm gonna get better by arm wrestling by doing pecs and glutes and, you know, get 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, 6 foot 1, 6 foot 2. 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?

Isn't that wild? That's crazy. So, so it gave—

he's not a big guy.

No, he's not. That's a former Russian champion, Zaur Zaur, uh, actually no, Zaur 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 Brzenk for years before I ever saw him because, you know, it's pre-internet, right? John Brzenk like silently ruled the arm wrestling world for decades. You know, pre-internet, pre, pre, 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, if you call me small, like I'm bigger than John, But not by a lot, not by a lot. See Denis Cyplenkov 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— Denis, he came in and he won the world title without really doing anything.

Yeah, 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, listen, it's incredible.

Yeah, the arm wrestling world loves and worships John Brzenk. He's, 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 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, 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?

We keep asking the same questions about Jon. 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, 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, he was the best for a long time, but John eventually beat him. You know, 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— John, like, arm wrestling is gonna make you strong.

Make—

oh, you, you will get that. 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 strongman, if you're powerlifter, 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, I've been so sore from arm wrestling matches I can't even walk. I can't even get up for, for days. For, for days. Like, 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, super taxing. So yes, John, John ruled the arm wrestling world for like 25 years. He's still around. Yeah, I'll get to— I'll get to I'm gonna 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 Levan, 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?

—Um, I think that governments started to recognize it. I'm gonna guess here that a lot of them started to do it around the turn of the millennium. Okay, probably they started around then, but it takes a long time for it all to like get in, 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. Mm. Okay? And that was a huge step forward because— You know, um, yeah, that's a big step, right? And that happened around, uh, 2015.

And do you think that's because of the internet, like YouTube videos, like popularity increases, TikTok, Instagram, that kind of shit?

I— that was massive, but it happened a bit later. Um, first what happened, a lot of small little steps. Uh, 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, it was the greatest day of our life, you know. It was so cool, we won $500, like, you know, that was it. And then when 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, right? 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 whole— yep. And, and then, yeah, so East vs. West came along, and now we're everything. UFC— we're like the UFC of arm wrestling now. East vs. West, all the best guys in the world all pull at East vs. West, and there's an event every 7 weeks, international.

So like, what does a top guy make to win a tournament now?

Um, you know, it's, it's tricky when we talk about money, but but you will make— like, if you're a top arm wrestler now, you definitely don't need a side job. You definitely don't. And you're probably definitely making a healthy 6 figures, you know, definitely. So yeah, so East vs. 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. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, now we have Levan, right?

Is there any drug testing at East vs.

West? There's not. Okay, so it's, 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? F1, like innovation. Right, innovation. WAF, government-funded, that has testing. What is WAF? Sorry, World Armwrestling Federation. So World Armwrestling Federation is kind of like the base of the sport, okay? It's, it's a world level, so every country kind of plugs into it. They have state or provincial, then they have nationals 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. Yeah, you know, everybody knows how to arm wrestle. It's always been around. It's always been a thing. So it's really interesting to think 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't 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-hmm.

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. This is one of my latest learning points that I've taken into account, and it's massively affected my planning, the way I, 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 2 people who I would consider completely pure, you know, like basically like a Jesus Christ kind of person, like like no sin, okay? But, and on the other side, I've met only like a couple people who I thought were genuinely 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? Um, 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 a kind of a presentation by this, by this guy Mack, okay? 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, there's a blue sticker, which is, uh, he didn't quite make it. It's representative of chaos. And, and, and a white sticker, which is representative of order. And after I compete I, 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, this is obviously very planned. Yes. Yeah, so I will move from major—

my life is structured that I move, 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 gonna face that guy, Levan, 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 4 months or 5 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 a— it's an aid for me psychologically to remain disciplined.

And it's— 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 simple. This is the most difficult piece, is the psychological dedication to do 10 hours of wrist curls in a day. You know, this is the difficult—

you do 10 hours of wrist curls a day?

I do. I'll go— I'll get up in the morning and my wife Jodi will help me, okay? We'll have food and I'm doing like— and that's the thing. So right now I'm coming up with the formula for the next one, but I was doing 14 7 times 2, because I was doing right and left. I'm going back to pumpkin training, which is right hand only. I call that pumpkin training. You know about growing giant pumpkins? No. You know those— you know, you ever seen those fairs where they have like an 800-pound, right? Yeah. So what that tells— 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 put all— and this is so— this is specialization. So I've done this project for like— I did it for like 6 years before.

So when you're saying you put everything in the right, 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 there a difference between your right and your left? Yeah.

Jesus Christ. Yeah. 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 forehead. Is this one bit bigger? Look at the size of the difference. Put those up.

It's a bit bigger. It's twice as big. Okay. And I was— balanced, okay? I was equal. I was left-hand world champion also, okay? I've— but, but as I've aged, I'm like, how can I remain at the top of the sport? I'm gonna 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 limitless 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. Mm-hmm. That's, 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 of it.

And I think that if you were to— when you— can I stop you? Yeah, yeah. When you say heaps of criticism, by who? And is it valid?

Uh, 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, uh, 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, 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 Zhokh 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 Matthias. They're our best examples. Oleg is better. Like, Oleg He's a world champion. What's his last name? Zok. What a great name. Oh, he's so cool. What a great name.

Yeah, and see— Oh, that's the dude.

Yeah, yeah, that's the dude. And I've fought him.

Look at the size of 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, okay? Wow. Yeah, yeah. Left-handed. Left-handed, yeah. Jesus Christ, his 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.

Okay, 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 a certain degree.

He— 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 us is all the same. We have like an even distribution across our body. But I believe that his arterial spread is different. I, 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 is what was going on with him. And, um, 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. Mm-hmm. Yeah, the expression of the human being, uh, is largely determined by the circulation. Of that the genetic, you know, 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's— he rehabbed, and he's— and once again, he's, 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. He's still, he's still the man. But yeah, but what, 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— 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, 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 is adapted over years. Yeah, and look, I, 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 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 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 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, I was— I'm sorry, I was so worried, like, that I was gonna 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 him 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 confuse it.

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, left, but his right side attack is where he puts all his energy to. And his philosophy was along those same lines. If you just develop 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 the match. And at a world level, it's, it's everything. Like, if you can, 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 their 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 Magnusson. How do you say his last name?

Midbø.

And he has had that one dude who's just a super freak.

Yves 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, right. That guy also has like enormous leg-sized forearms. Yves Gravel. So you can find on him training with Magnus because they're in Yves' basement where he does all of his training. And he's doing these— like, how many millimeters is the hold? Like, 2. Okay, so he's doing 2-millimeter holds 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. Um, like, Magnus is super stud, okay? Magnus is like world-level climber. Yves, when it comes to the strength component of climbing, It's— it doesn't even make sense. I don't even understand how it's— how anybody could even do it. Like, 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 rounded surfaces where there is nothing to bite on. 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. Air. I, I don't know how he does it. Um, there's nothing to bite, there's nothing, and he's pulling up off— I did— I can't even understand how he does it. So he came into arm wrestling, um, and he's like 150 pounds, and but it's 40 pounds of his forearms. So we have a tournament in, in Ottawa where we both live. It's called the Ottawa Open, and it attracts the strongest dudes in the to win the Ottawa Open is really tough. He won it his first year after arm wrestling 6 weeks. What? Yeah. He's completely— That's crazy.

No, no, he's— And he weighs what, 160?

Oh my God. 150 pounds. Oh my God. No, Yves 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, think, like, what if you did that stuff?

Yeah. Yes. Let me tell you, as good as Eve is now, he's gonna 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 relate it 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 he does, because he could pick up things from the ground that nobody could pick up.

Yeah, he does grip competition too, so So that's another world that's closely tied to arm wrestling is the grip championships, right? Where they're just— it's like powerlifting 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? 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. Wall, okay? But in actual arm wrestling, you actually don't want to be the climber, you want to be the wall, right? 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 than Brian Shaw.

Did you ask this? Can you show me some video? This guy wasn't doing anything there. He was like, there's a bunch, right? And I'm on not his channel too. I'm like, it's bouncing back in between. So here he's doing fat grip one-arm chin-ups.

Did you see the, uh, 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. That'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, 'cause he's not a big guy.

No, but he's ridiculously strong as well. And that—

Even him, he's dwarfed by this guy's strength. Yeah. Which is crazy.

Yeah, Yves is considered the strongest climber strongest farmer in the world.

And did you ask him when he started this and how he got that strong?

I've talked to Yves 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 forearms.

That's bonkers. Yeah.

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

Yeah, just 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 in your ability to arm wrestle. So why wouldn't everybody do that if a guy guy is 150 pounds that 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 over. 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 arm wrestling. Like, if I was to advise— even I do, I talk to Eve like every week. Um, 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 body, okay? And that's gonna take him really, really far in the sport. But I think that as he's— 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 like a year or 2 or 3, and he's gonna 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 does testing. I found that very, very different from the way I train. Uh, 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, and if he's not feeling right, he won't do the training. So he'll continue to rest. He'll abort a training session because it doesn't feel right. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And I, I'm like, I'm doing it no matter what.

Right, right.

Interesting. Yeah, look at whatever— I've seen it. It's very detailed.

It's And where did he learn this from?

I think he's— he's crazy. He loves armor— sorry, he loves climbing. And I think he's just obsessed. And I think he probably digests everything. 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 weight to see how much in a static capacity he can generate. Rate. Wow.

Yeah, pushing isometrics for arm wrestling. Yeah, so all just wrist curling, isometric.

Yeah, maximum output, which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need, that locked isometric or even negative strength. Mm-hmm. And all his squeezing. That's crazy.

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, we love that. We love that he—

we've kind of got him because Oh, I'm sure, because when you get a freak like that, like, out of nowhere— what is he doing here?

All 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, to arm wrestling. 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 vs. 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 a 150-pound, 160-pound body and you're doing these 180-pound single-arm rows. Yeah. Like, where's the force coming from? Like, where's the— is it tendon strength? Is it— where's the tissue, right? Like, you look at Eddie Hall, you're like, okay, that makes sense that that guy could lift that much weight. 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. You'd say, well, he probably runs or something. Looks like a normal guy that's fit. He doesn't look like a guy who can do a 180-pound one-arm row. Those. 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, in the communities like strongman, powerlifting, other strength disciplines, they get immense strength through their into 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 jiu-jitsu, 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 Curson 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. Yeah, 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 his, 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? But clearly he's way stronger than me with rows.

The interesting thing with grip is grip 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, okay, that's crazy. Yeah, Derrick Lewis got 218. Derrick Lewis, the guy who fights in the UFC, and he did it casually. Yeah, he just grabbed me. Derrick's got giant paws, like catcher's mitt paws. Yeah, and he, 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 Laletin. What was that? I don't know what the number is, it was— but I know he had the world record. Vitaly Laletin. He— so I, 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 Ecker. And 351. Boom!

Is that Vitaly? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. So listen, so listen, so mine is probably like 70 pounds, but I beat him. Wait a minute, you don't— 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 squeeze stronger than you. Yeah, you do, you do. That's not possible.

No, you probably do.

That is literally not possible. I'm telling you. Look at the size of this guy. Yeah, he's like 6'9". Like he's about 3— Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is so crazy. 154 kilos.

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 8 or 9 reps of the number 3 Captain's Crush.

So I could do this sucker here on the table.

What is that? Yeah, I don't know what this is.

You tell me.

Oh God, 200 pounds. So this isn't a Captain's Crush. This is a—

I think it is. It's not.

I bought this. They just have a number on them. Can't do Joe, can't— I can't do it. 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, geez.

And I, I just—

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 as a strength— 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 like, 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— oh wow, for chin-ups. But he has the grip strength thing. The really good one is the one that has knurled metal metal. It has very little play in it, and so you get a real accurate— he said it's the most accurate one of all of them. Um, go— that one right there, see what says 119? So I think that's 119 kilograms. And so we get— yeah, what is that? 262. So he could do 262, and he's not a very big guy. 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, uh, El— Ellicott. Yeah, no, Eckert. E-C-K-E-R-T. E-C-K-E-R-T. So it's Michael Eckert underscore fit on Instagram. And this guy's turned me on to 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? Smayev.

Yeah. 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 Smayev to come into the sport. Oh my God. Yeah, that guy's a fucking freak.

Freakiest. Not just freak, freakiest.

Yeah, yeah. How is he alive? Like, you gotta think, there's not a lot of time on that hourglass. Live hard, die fast. Yeah, 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.

His fucking hands, they don't even look real. Oh, and 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.

I mean, someone was saying he was taking like 100 or something, some crazy thing like 10 units of growth a day.

I know, I heard it was 100.

100 units? Yeah, I heard it was like— well, that doesn't even make— right, that seems like you would just grow, 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. Hey, it's 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 6 or 7 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. Uh, he's not normal.

Yeah, look at this fucking size. So it's the left side. Who's— what's left when he's 17.

Yeah, I mean, he was— look at— that's not a set. That's not a normal 17-year-old. No, clearly.

Yeah, he's pretty jacked. But I— that makes sense. Like, that guy on the left makes sense. Like, I've seen guys like that.

Yeah, it's not 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 biceps abs 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— go to his Instagram, please. It's— his Instagram got taken down, so it's like some new— yeah, that's right, he didn't have Why'd 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— I don't know, like Smyev Official, and it's 27 weeks ago.

Yeah, and that's all that. But no, there is there. 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 pronation, turning the wrist.

Lifting insane 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, look at the 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 gonna show up whether it's in anything. He gets to pick, and he's probably gonna show up at like a world level.

Like anything, like what?

Besides, I'd say anything, whether powerlifting, right, strongman. I'd be terrified if he even got to like blue belt. Oh my god, like what are you gonna do?

What are you gonna do? How much does he weigh? I think like 340, 350. 340 and preposterous strength, like, yeah, strength 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 can do with that guy's body. Yeah. Especially if he developed actual skills, an understanding of leverage, positions.

Even just the base movement patterns that are really difficult.

352 lean. Yeah.

Oh, Jesus. He was supposed to pull— There was a proposal for him to pull one of our guys called Leonidas Arkoma. He's a great name. Yeah, it's a German guy. He just competed against Brian Shaw like 6 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. Okay, Leonidas is— Leonidas and Brian Shaw.

Yeah, yeah. Oh my goodness. That is crazy. Yeah, right?

And nobody's got a stronger grip than Brian either.

Brian's grip is completely wild. But seeing someone beat Brian Shaw in anything physical seems ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense.

So this guy, way, 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—

picture me reacting. Yeah, he's been in the sport like, oh my god, he's gonna curl a 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, because Brian Shaw is 100 pounds heavier than him.

Yeah, but it's, it's levels, you know? Like, and that's the thing, like, arm wrestling has enough technique to it. It's not just how strong you are. Look at— you can look at me, okay? I'm not on any of these guys' levels. They're all stronger than me, but I'm the number 2 in the world in the open division. Mm. Everybody in the top 50 is stronger than me, you know, but there's a, there's a high degree— that's a great picture.

Wow, that is crazy. But size difference is so massive.

But I'll tell you, Brian probably has a higher potential than Leonidas, right? Brian's been arm wrestling less than 2 years, right?

And Leonidas has been arm wrestling 5. Okay. Yeah. So, so there's a lot of technique to it. There's a ton of a 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 Marcelo Garcia, for instance, not, not a physically imposing guy, has the craziest squeeze. Like, there's something about a squeeze, like learning a position over and over and over again, fine-tuning feeling 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 two of us. Mm. 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 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, Tom Havilland.

He'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. 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, I love this guy. Like, dude, when are you coming in arm wrestling? When are you coming in?

And what did he say?

Eh, 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. There's— 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.

Yeah, cuz he's almost 400 pounds, he's 6 foot 8. Yeah. And fucking shredded. See if you could 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 there. So there's some images of him with his shirt off. Yeah, like there he is. Is.

Yeah, yeah, he's, he's a, he's a Brian Shaw type. He's a, he's a Smaev 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, 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 Strongman and like, there's a lot of athleticism in strongman.

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, like that image of him with his shirt off on the far right, like he's shredded. Yeah, it looks different. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he, it seems like he's just working on his strength. He's just like constantly— yeah, look at his fucking forearm muscles. Like, yeah, what the fuck is going on with the top of the forearm where it meets the bicep? What the fuck is that?

Tom, if you're watching this, come to East vs. West, buddy. We love you.

We love you. Has he ever done anything? Yeah, any arm wrestling?

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 kind of show up. I think— I don't know what it is with some of these people where they, they have this amazing ability, but they don't really pop. You know, um, do you know who Eric Spado is? No. Eric Spado'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 powerlifting meet until he could break the record. He didn't show up. He just showed up and he beat the world. He was, he was doing the world record in his basement basement. Wow. And, 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 wherever they're living, and they, 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 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, what we look at— I love UFC, it's cool, but we invented guns long ago, you know.

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, 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, you're gonna— But in that sense, do you consider football a combat sport? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. There's two sides and you're fighting. It's metaphor. Okay. Look at all this stuff. I love the UFC, but I consider it a combat sport.

Sport, you know. Well, it definitely—

yeah, it's a combat sport, 100%. Probably one of the best examples of— but the primary example, if I was gonna put together like, you know, the ultimate, like, you know, we're going to take out— like, like if we were gonna go to war against another nation or whatever, you know, yeah, for sure I'm looking at UFC 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, you look— if they're going to war with just bots, only using your body, that's one thing. But you know, obviously with war, yeah, 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 drones. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I mean, that's the— you're gonna get to a point soon where human beings are gonna be irrelevant.

So when it comes to sports arm wrestling is— falls 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 it 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 4 or 5 years 5 years, they'll beat anybody, anybody that's not practicing. It's the same thing as like a jiu-jitsu guy. If you, if you give a jiu-jitsu guy like 4 or 5 years on the mat and you get Brian Shaw or like some giant come in, who's gonna win? It really depends.

I could teach Brian Shaw a few things real quick. Of course you could. He could strangle pretty much anybody.

And Brian Shaw is an extreme example.

Yeah, but someone your size, yeah, it's like size aside, the size is commensurate, yeah, the person who's trained, yeah, they're gonna win every time. And small people dominate big people all the time, right?

Because it's that technical, it's, yeah, skill-based.

It's just, it's also repetition, understanding the positions, understanding mistakes, understand, 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 would— what branch of 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? Uh, it was, 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, uh, Jisu was 19, I think. Um, oh, Sorry, she 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, 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 arm wrestling since I was a kid. So the long and short of that is they offered me a year off 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's complicated. Yeah, I'd done like 7 tours and It's weird when you do a lot of tours, you know, things start to gray out a little bit. Also, everything is about mission in life, right? Like everything. Like if you don't have a good mission, your life is gonna 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 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 made me take kind of a stand in my life that I was gonna, you know, follow sport instead of war. Sports beautiful. Sports very clearly building civilization.

And war, you know, 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.

Mm-hmm. 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. Not— nobody's there for the money, you know. I mean, somebody 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 started— I mean, you, you, you play enough in that world and it starts to get confusing that you're— maybe you're not doing the right thing. So look, I loved my work. I thought it was great. I loved all the people I worked with, some of the best people in the world. 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 unit policy and they shut down everybody's extracurricular. And yeah, they're like, Devin, you can't arm wrestle 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 gonna 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 millions money. I had— and I didn't come— we didn't have money, you know. Uh, but you were getting by. Yeah, getting by. Uh, 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 gonna have to sell the house, or like I'm gonna have to— there's a gamble. Uh, it worked out. Yeah. What was that stress like, dude?

How old were you at the time?

Okay, that was 2014, so I'd be 39. Oh wow.

Yeah, so you're already older as an athlete. Yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, it was totally trippy. I remember being so stressed out. I was— so it was, uh, it was a WAL finals, okay? I was in the 225-pound division. $20,000 for first place. Right hand, left hand. And, and I had a great sponsor. Sponsor, okay? They were matching my pay, so anything I won, they doubled it, and they were doing some other stuff too. So, but, but if I lost, I got nothing, right? So I'm, I'm in the back, I'm in the back in the warm-up area, and I'm, I'm breathing, I'm getting ready. I'm going against this guy Ron Bath in the finals, and, uh, long-time mentor of mine, guys like my older brother, this guy Mike Gould, comes over to me, he's like, Devin, He's like, he's like, you used to run the 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, but yeah, so I ended up, I ended up doing my year's 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 you're Special Forces now.

So I went Why'd they want you to do that? Because they pushed me into recruiting. Mm. 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 gonna 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. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, now full-time armorer for the last 10 years. Yeah. What a jump at 39.

Yeah, that had to be so fucking nerve-wracking. It was.

I, I just, you know, I thought it was very selfish of me. You know, I thought that I was being very irresponsible. 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, I'm being— 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, God, guys do like 30-year careers in Special Forces. It's crazy. 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'm— 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, you're— it's, 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, now I'm at home every day. I wake up unless I'm on, you know, going to some arm wrestling tournament. 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 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. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty awesome. But yeah, 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. I— 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 influences 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, it's a, 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 Indij forces, you know. We, JTF does like counterterrorism, so we're doing hits, 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— and be, 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 Nemirov and cup, you know. But yeah, that's funny.

Yeah, 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, you know. Is it war? War is a— war is a wild thing, you know. Um, the degree that it's psychologically affected me is, uh, it's been— it's been neat, you know. I think that a lot of who I am was shaped shaped by combat, you know, by the fear, um, and, um, and the lacking that I had, like the, the, the, the not being enough to, to be everything I could be in combat, uh, shaped me so much, you know. Um, 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 my character. And this is something that I learned. The first tour was hard. You know, you're a regular dude 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 there, different. You're not the same person when you're out in the field than you are when you're, 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 created a persona, yeah, what was the steps? Like, what did— how did you do that?

Well, I think that 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 in 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 that I'm gonna 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 gotta 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 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 gonna perform best, you know, in each of those. And it's learning that you are not necessarily one thing. You are whatever you want to be, you know, and you can, 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. That's— 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. You could probably give a fighter some tools, but for you to actually tell them what needs to be done, you— if you're not doing that, how can you? What you're— 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 in the craziest thing a human being can do. Yeah, parachute down and gun people down. Like, what, what is fucking crazier on earth worth 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 mastery 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 know, 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 got— I get the first base with everybody.

I got to ask you about this, and this is a silly thing to ask you, but because you said Kandahar, yeah, have you heard of the legend of the Kandahar Giant? Of course. Yeah, what did you hear?

When did you hear? I've seen— okay, there's some freaks out there. There, man. They're some freaks. Uh, so yeah, I mean, I've seen the YouTube video, I've, I've heard about it from other people, but legit, legit, okay, um, 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 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 2-week mobility in this region, kind of north, north of the Panjshir. I don't remember exactly what it was called. It was surrounded by mountains, this big valley, and we were rolling around. And, and so 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'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. Look how big—

I think he was 8 feet. I think he was 8-foot-something. And it's embarrassing. It's like, Devin, you're crazy. And he's big.

How— and he was 200 meters away?

He's about 200 meters away, but I can see the guys. We've got— we got optics. He was— our officer was probably somewhere between— at the bottom of his chest. Great big Afghan dude, big beard, big dude, big dude. And his lackeys around him were normal size. Great big warlord. So they're out there, there's big people. There's big feet. Is nuts. I have personally seen people who were probably over 8 feet. What? Yeah, in Afghanistan? No, no, I saw these guys up north, northern Canada. Cree. I was up in Ojibwemow, 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, and 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 long hands. Like out of The Goonies, like misshapen face. I'm like, my God, I'm like, like, how big are you? He's like, just laughed at me. And he's like, my brother, my— he's like, my dad's 8 foot 11.

He's like, like, what? Yeah, big.

My dad's 8 foot 11.

I'm telling you, there's big people and, and people don't know about them. Guinness doesn't know about them. They live up in the woods. There's big people out there. And not all— is that guy Jamie?

He's from that region apparently.

I don't know how to say that.

Like Édouard Beaupré. 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 the pounds, maybe, or 367. Sorry, 8 foot 2 and a half, 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 gonna 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 8 feet tall.

He is big. He's big. Yeah, he's big, big human being. Far out of the state standard. Yeah, and he was a warlord. Wow. Yeah, yeah, they're big, 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. Believe it. Uh, I, I do. Yeah, I do. There's freaks out there.

There are. Uh, this guy supposedly had like 6 fingers and 6 toes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe, I believe that stuff. I, 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 region of the country is extremely remote. Extremely. Extremely.

Like, they don't— it's like going back to, like, the 15th century. Like, 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 8 feet tall. I saw him. You saw him? I saw him.

Yeah, from a distance. But I mean, 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 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 charge, the most massive. I hope he was a nice guy. He 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. Wow. So we worked it out, whatever 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 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.

Well, that was the thing is like supposedly they had 6 fingers and 6 toes as well.

Look, I, I believe that, uh, things come to visit and sometimes things get left behind, and 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 gonna— like, if there was nothing, what a beautiful place to start life. Afghanistan is a beautiful country, so rich for agriculture. The climate is perfect. Perfect, you know, with the mountains and the rivers, uh, the seasons. It's, 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 could pick there. Yeah.

Did you hear that story when you were over there?

That story is Yeah, and I asked around. I've never met anybody who was involved in that op. I haven't, but—

but it seems like a story that has something to it because there's too many people telling that story. There's only— only one story like that. There are a lot of stories. There's more stories like that. There are— me, 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 nother can of worms, but it's— it's so weird— as demonic possession. You know, we've— we had a guy, a guy, he was my Ryan. He— 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 knew everything about everybody's life. He knew all their sins, right? Yeah, he knew, he knew all the sins people did, even from their childhood. What? That he got taken to, uh, 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, uh, the padre, the, like, the priest that comes along on some military missions. They, uh, they did a— what do you call that when you cleanse the demon from— uh, what do you call exorcism?

They did an exorcism. He, 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, every, every week. I don't know what to tell you, Joe. There's a lot I don't know. But yeah, and then, and the crazy thing was, is the priest who did the exorcism said he knew the demon. He'd already exorcised— exorcised— he'd already done the exorcism like 3 or 4 times on different people. Yeah, that demon was like popping in and out of of guys. Yeah, so I look, I, 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? I, all the guys who were there, I have very close personal relationships with, and there's no reason for me not to trust them. And this is the only— and, and the guy who had it done to him, I'm very close with. Like, he comes over my— he was my stall partner. Okay. And I see him—

when you say had it done to the guy who was possessed, yes, you knew him?

I know him very well. What did he say about it? Yeah, he doesn't like it very much. Yeah, he's— 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. He can't speak those languages anymore. No, it was like he was aware of everything happening, but that 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, it started, he was freezing. 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. Uh, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. I don't know. It wasn't me, uh, but I trust the story because I know the people. Um, 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. 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 came back from, I don't know that schizophrenia can explain the languages. I don't know. 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, 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. Well, you 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 Erbil. Wow. Okay. And I mean That's an ancient, ancient part of the world. Yeah. So whatever's— like, history is long and misunderstood, and 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 in 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 the next Yeah, he's awesome. Martin, if you're watching, come over, let's party. Yeah, 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 a story? Yep. Really? Sure.

Of course he would. Of course he would.

I'm nervous. You nervous, Jamie?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's a cool dude. Wow. Yeah, I love him. I love him.

Yeah, great soldier. Yeah, brother, you've had a pretty wild life. It's been great, really.

Ton of fun. Happy, 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 tell her 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 Appreciate it. Wonderful. And good luck. Yeah, I'm gonna need it. I'm gonna need it. 16 months?

16 months, man.

Maybe we'll talk to you before then. Yeah, cool.

Yeah, thank you so much. Thanks, brother. All right, bye everybody.