#2510 - Devon Larratt

33:08I personally believe that, and 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 card or whatever, just as information. There's so much. Well, it probably will be in the future as all these techniques and all this new stuff comes out. CRISPR takes a bold leap toward silencing Down syndrome's extra chromosome. Wow. So scientists have taken an important step towards a gene therapy that could one day turn off the genetic material that causes Down syndrome. Down syndrome is a genetic condition caused by an extra chromosome, 21, and consequently hundreds of triplicate genes that lead to developmental and neurological issues.

33:53According to Washington-based National Down Syndrome Society, one in every 640 babies in the United States is born with Down syndrome. That makes it the most common chromosomal condition. So what is it doing here? Okay, so Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School found a way to silence much of the extra chromosomes activity in the cell at once. Details of their research are published in a paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wow. So what is weird about your genes, though? Ryan told me, but I don't remember. He goes, you've got to talk to him about your genes.

34:31Well, Ryan's actually got to talk to. I mean, I'm a high school educated guy, and I've been down to Austin several times to hang out with Ryan. I absorb everything I can from this guy. Anyway, 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 favorable mutations that predispose me to good. But it's weird. I don't know, man. Listen, the genetic side of things, I'll sound silly if I try and talk too much about it. I'll just tell you that there are favorable genetics for sure.

35:15There's favorable mutations. And it's amazing if you could capture all of them from everybody and put it together and you never know what. You'd get Brian Shaw. We've scanned Brian. That's the thing. So this project that Ryan is doing, and I like to help him out a little bit, we've been looking at elite performers with the goal to find favorable mutations. And yeah, we scanned Brian. He's in the Bible. That guy's in the Bible. He's like David and Goliath. They're real people out there like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So his genetics are one out of every 500 million people. Isn't that something crazy along those lines?

36:06Yeah, he's completely, he's right at the peak of human performance, right from a genetic standpoint. Just freakish. At Plies.com, it's not just about window treatments. It's about you, your style, your space, your way. Whether you DIY or want the pros to handle it all, you'll have the confidence of knowing it's done right. From free expert design help to our 100 % satisfaction guarantee, everything we do is made to fit your life and your windows. Shop up to 40 % off with minimum purchase and a free professional measure right now at Blinds.com. Plus, pay at your own pace starting at 0 % APR with Affirm.

36:46Terms apply. Bone density, everything. And it's not just his bone density, the dude's mindset. There's many pieces of Brian's genetics that make him a champion. um but yeah he has some stuff in him that that ryan's never seen yeah no nobody no he has and i probably shouldn't be speaking about other people's medical stuff but i love brian and he can sue me if he wants uh nobody has his uh 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 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 seven feet tall and he's 400 pounds.

37:53Yeah, 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 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.

38:34So it's really weird What do you mean they don't have fast 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 Wouldn't you think that deadlift is a fast twitch thing? Yeah. So I don't understand. I don't either. It's an amazing field. Genetics is an amazing field. Is that a lack of understanding of what fast twitch do? Or is it they can compensate with the other muscles in some way? I don't think it's other muscles because I think that it would probably apply to all the musculature.

39:12So 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 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 i know right i know is this what the hercules no not that no something else okay 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.

39:50So with myostatin inhibitors, they've done that with, I'm sure you've seen those whippets that have it. Yes, of course. So whippets are a weird dog. It's a very skinny, fast dog. And some whippets are born with this genetic mutation that's a myostatin inhibitor, and they look like the Hulk. It's the, 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, almost like a greyhound-looking dog.

40:30And then you see the ones with the myostatin inhibitor gene, and you're like, what the hell is going on? They look like the most freakish bodybuilder of all time, but in a dog form. And some humans have that. Belgian blues also the Belgian cows yes yeah and they have it too yeah so they offer already genetic genetic therapy that gives you folostatin so there's a balance between folostatin and myostatin from what I understand like the key that turns on the cell for for growth is um is folostatin and myostatin tells the cell to stop growing you're big enough right important very important yeah and so if you don't have myostatin all that that turnkey gets is folostatin so the only thing signal that you're ever getting with a myostatin deficiency is folostatin and so yeah so they offer a genetic therapy that increases your folostatin.

41:31They offer it to who? Hmm. Anybody, anybody. He'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. Folostatin is one of them. And so that would be for power lifters or football players or someone who just wanted to get fucking huge? I think initially it was created for longevity because as you age, your folostatin drops. And that's why people get smaller. They shrink as they get older. Right. And folistatin just helps you maintain muscle mass. Yes. So I think it's mostly promoted as an anti-aging remedy.

42:12But absolutely. You want to get your performance up. Yeah. They're doing so many wild things now. They've got this new therapy now for people with disc degeneration. I'm sure you have it. I have it. A lot of people have it. Especially anybody who does jujitsu has it. But your discs just get worn out from getting cranked on. And, like, heavy lifters always have it, lower back issues. The disc is the soft cushion in between the spinal columns. And those big bones push down that disc. And over time, in all that compression, it squashes. But now they've got stuff that they can inject into the disc that inflates the discs.

42:50Yeah. And so all these people that have been getting artificial discs and fusions and all the problems that come with that, because there's massive problems, they're going to be able to eliminate that, which is amazing. Super cool. Oh, so super cool. And I tell everybody, if you could avoid back surgery, please avoid back surgery. Don't fucking do it. There's a lot of different ways. I always tell everybody, and I'll tell everybody again, Louis Simmons, his invention, that invention, the reverse hyper, fucking incredible. One of the greatest invention ever for people with lower back problems. I have one here in the studio.

43:25I have one at my house. I fucking swear by that machine. It's so good. It decompresses the spine on the D-cell and on the uplift when you're lifting up the weights. It strengthens the muscles out. It's like a perfect exercise for lower back issues. Yeah. Yeah, it's wild when we look at the future in terms of performance and how far the age is being pushed. Like we see crazy George, but I think 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.

44:05Well, I wonder what's going to happen with regular sports. The stuff that's pushing this stuff is performance enhancing drugs. You know, peptides, stem cells, not really. That's not really a performance enhancing drug, but for injuries. but testosterone, all these different steroids, all these different things. The thing about 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. My favorite example of that is Vitor Belfort when he was in his prime.

44:41TRT Belfort. TRT Vitor was the scariest fucking guy ever. because he was jacked up with testosterone, but he was also 37 years old with a lifetime of combat sport experience, a lifetime of intelligence, but hadn't lost any speed, hadn't lost any strength, and in fact had like superhuman speed and strength because he was juicy, super juicy. But it makes you think like, man, what would the sport look like if that was open to everybody? Right. Yeah. Interesting. It is interesting because there's a lot of guys that want to keep competing, but their body just doesn't respond the way it used to to training because they're 37 or 38 or 39.

45:24But if you could get them on the sauce. Yeah, right. Where's the limit? Yeah. Right. And why not let them? Absolutely. Why not? I'm a big believer in tested sport. I think that that's wonderful, and I think that that'll never go away, and I think it's important. But I'm also a believer in open up the gates and let everybody play. Well, that's why I really love this whole idea of doing the enhanced games. It didn't really pan out the way everybody hoped. Nobody really won any records other than the one guy in the swimming, but he wore a prohibited suit that lets you swim quicker, apparently. I don't understand swimming.

46:01Yeah. But I was hoping, like, you were going to see some freakish superhuman performances. But I feel like if that's going to happen, that's going to take years. I don't think you would get the kind of gains that these people are hoping to get to achieve like world 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 going to get strength in three months like you get a little stronger for sure, but you're not going to get freakish strength for fucking years.

46:38It takes years years. Decades. Like Juju 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 that... Not a chance. Juju, Juju, look at myself included, you know, I care about performance. This is what I care about. And so many people fall into the same boat. Look at that guy. Dang, chance of hell that dude's natural. You know, I'll tell you, Juju is probably... That is amazing, though, that he can do that. That kind of flexibility with that kind of mass is, look at that.

47:14While overhead pressing, a full side split that's nuts on chairs, Jean-Claude Van Damme style. Juju started out tricking. What does that mean? Like, it's a form of— That sounds like— You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he actually started off— Sounds like he's picking up guys. Yeah, no, no. Juju is super cool. It's like flipping. He was on America's Got Talent? Yeah. Oh, wow. It's like a form of acrobatics or gymnastics. Right. Yeah. Well, I've seen him do acrobatic stuff, and it's really nuts. Right. Like his physical ability, like it defies what you expect from a guy with that kind of mass.

47:56Right. Yeah. So he's a combined like almost gymnast and bodybuilder. And he's probably better now than ever. And he's, I mean, I think Juju's in his 40s. Wow. Yeah. And, yeah, he's massive and healthy and, you know, absolutely kicking ass. Probably the most positive human being that I've met. He seems super positive. He is. In his YouTube videos. Yeah. And we have snorted his fucking smelly thoughts. Oh, yeah. 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.

48:37Juji is actually the inspiration for this modern, this latest way that I'm training. It was actually. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Juji came up to my place probably about a year and a half ago, and we were just redlining in our two-hand work. Okay? And it was so good. Two-hand work? Yeah. Okay, so I would be considered like the senior guy in my club. And we have this kind of rule in the club just to make things work properly. Senior holds, junior works. 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.

49:23You just hold him in place. Like defense work in jiu-jitsu. Exactly. Okay. Okay. But just to help out the, that guy typically, um, we'll do two arm work. Okay. To kind of flip the script for him. So somebody can hold like me with two arms and kind of let me get to red line. Yeah. So Juju 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?

50:08Yeah. Because it's sport-specific? Exactly. And does he arm wrestle? He does, a little bit. Juji does everything. But why did you working with him make you train differently? Juji's a special guy. I think that just you don't have to be the best in your field. If you have a certain energy or certain thing with you, Juji is a wonderful, creative, hardworking 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.

50:50I'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 Juju 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 table work. And because I only had a day with Juju, 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.

51:30But I felt as though, you know, the singles and everything that I'd done earlier in the day had a slight effect. And I was like, I can't ever let that happen again. I need to make sure I put all my energy into this table training. And it's funny, you know, being 51 and having over 30 years competitively in the sport, I still feel like I learn. You know, I still feel like I change things from event to event. Mm. Yeah. Well, that's a sign you're doing something fun. Yeah. 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?

52:07That was a tipping point. That was a tipping point for me. So I generally have a protocol, like a training kind of balance, a recipe that I'm going to follow pretty much from event to event. And this is all made by you? is made by me um 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 um 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 uh 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.

52:46And yeah, and that night was the night that I decided I need to get rid of heavy weights because this is so good. This training is so good when done properly. And that's the key when done properly. Like two arm work can suck. Like if you do two arm work wrong, it can hurt you. It can set you back. But when done properly, it's the best training that there can be. Yeah. Specifically, 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 uh is because i don't really just on wrestling stuff i go for walks that's it i'm terrible really no lunges no i'm trying a little bit to work it back in in some minimal way uh 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 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 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.

54:15Wow. 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 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 uh this is constantly what pretty much every reasonable person tells me.

54:56And I just am like, I get to a point where I do my arm wrestling work, and I'm like, okay, here I am. If I want to beat LeVon, what do I do from here? And I just am like, more wrist curls. You know? What does he do? He's a bit more balanced than me. LeVon lifts super heavy weights, like stupid. What does this dude look like? Show me LeVon. What is his last name? Saginaw Shvili. This is the pinnacle of our sport. 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. Holy shit. That can't be real. Is that AI? Is that picture AI?

55:42That one right there. 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. Duh. Yeah, yeah. Look at the size of that motherfucker. He's in Little Rock in two days. In Little Rock, Arkansas? Yeah. Where does he live right now? Georgia. Georgia the country. There's so many weirdos that come from Georgia. Really? Yeah. Proportionately, their strength is not normal. LeVon is, he hasn't, nobody has beat this guy since 2017. 17 he has 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 levon um he has beaten the piss out of me at every opportunity.

56:45He's so big. Yeah, he is. He is so big and, uh, 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, uh, you know, he, 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. Um, a lot of the guys have different formulas okay LeVon does a lot of pull ups really heavy ones and he does a lot of really heavy curls this is the base but he does all the same like we do all the same exercises just different different formulas now when you hear the best guy is doing things different than you yeah what keeps you from doing what he does so we are all different right that's what he used to look like That's crazy.

57:39Shout out to steroids. Shout out. Shout out to all the scientists out there. He's very young in that first photo. Of course. You know, he slowly evolved through the world championships to what he is today. Yeah, it's interesting when you see different champions, and I try and learn from everybody. I watch what everybody does. I see what they're doing. You have to also consider where your body's at. I can't do the things I did when I was 25. Physical? I just can't. I have, like I said, I've had surgeries. But yet you can still arm wrestle. Yeah. So obviously you're very strong in these particular areas and it's not holding you back at all.

58:25So what is holding you back when you say injuries? Well, arm wrestling is a big thing, okay? There's several things that you can kind of choose to focus on. probably my biggest limiting factor is my elbow because i'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 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 uh 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 and quite honestly my hooking now my this stability is probably pretty good um i think i think that we do we all as athletes do the best thing we think we can and um i think that the work that i do is very precise like the way the lavon trains And please, I don't like to criticize LeVon.

59:34He's the best. But egotistically and arrogantly, I'm going to say that my training is more precise than his. So I'm working on very precise angles where he's a sledgehammer at times. I'm working on very fine angles through my wrist, a lot of pronation in my style, a lot of hand control, a lot of table time. I'm doing a lot of skill-based training. uh levon's base movements his his row his is i mean he's doing he's doing 180 kilo curl you know two hands or one hand two but that's a that's crazy but he's the the amount of weight that he's wrist curling i'm never 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 pitbull like somehow nip on to 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?

1:00:46Try it for every single prep that I do. I'm trying in the super heavyweight division I'm trying to get as big as strong as I can. What do you weigh now? Today I'm probably 265. And so you're giving up a considerable amount of weight. Yeah, 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 uh 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 um while it is incredible to have a great row while it is incredible to have a great um a great wrist flexion while it's incredible to have great legs like i go to tournaments sometimes my legs are sore but typically the reason why you win and lose the match is very small things in the hand and the wrist like this is typically the failure point so i just try and put everything into the most valuable pieces that i think is actually going to determine my victory.

1:02:16And look, apart from LeVon, it's working. This guy has raised the sport. And I continue to chase him. I continue to try and beat this dude. Have you gotten close?

1:02:35The first time, the first time, he tore my bicep. Oh, whoa. 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 work up to the match I was teasing them and in Georgian it says LaVon was here because he ripped it second round So that was the first time was a wash The second time I pulled him I Stopped him I stopped him round one What does that mean so a lot of times in arm wrestling get everything straight don't move go and to stop a match means there's no movement so no one's winning nobody's winning and you don't just keep going to the death oh yeah you do oh yeah 100 % yeah but I got like if you look up the second time that I arm wrestled for round one yeah okay so this is 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 so is that what happens when the match doesn't work out and the hands slip away from each other?

1:03:48straps do you guys put powder in your hands or anything? use chalk but yeah this sport is a strap based sport at this point rules are evolving in arm wrestling it used to be 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. I couldn't walk properly for like four months. Really? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so I'm top rolling. I get into his wrist and I'm just like, I'm in shock.

1:04:36I'm like I can't believe it. So I kind of, I think I had the opportunity here to do a little bit more like to seize the initiative, but I was in such shock that I got him to this point. You know, I'm just and then here we go His wrist is starting to go and so that's a flopper's press and I get a foul. Okay, first see my shoulder goes below the table. Uh-huh. This is called decline humerus and it's and it's a foul. You can't 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 and they gave me a foul and Then from here on he just he just runs me.

1:05:15So it's a loss. What do you mean? So in arm wrestling if you get two fouls, uh-huh, it's a loss so the match is over match is over but see this is best of seven so From here he runs me over But this is the closest I've gotten okay. We've practiced since then we've we've we've gone on to i'll probably practice with him this weekend um but i'm slated to pull this monster again it's gonna happen one more time for sure it's uh it's what keeps me in my basement it's one guy this guy the size of that motherfucker he's awesome oh he's a he's a beautiful human i i i love i love this guy he's 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 uh 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 um 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 no 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 is the open that open haunts you haunts me Yeah.

1:06:55I've been there before. Like, so in 2008, I was actually, I won against this legendary figure of the sport, John Brzezink. He's considered the greatest of all time. John Brzezink, basically for 40 years, 40 years from the time he was like 18 to like almost 60. Okay. He went undefeated for like, basically undefeated for like 25 years. Yeah. He ain't American. 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 Brzezink. John Brzezink's the GOAT. Yeah. Yeah, he'll be there this weekend too. And is he still competing?

1:07:40John is not really competing, but he's just so tied into the sport. I think it's inevitable that he comes back. How old is he? He's like 60, 61. Wow. Yeah, he's the man. This guy's the man. So you know the movie Over the Top? So Sylvester, that's actually John. The tournament was real. Really? Yeah, that was a real. The movie followed the tournament. And John is actually the guy who won it. And John's not that big. No, he's not. How much does John weigh? On a good day, on a great day, John's like 230. But when he was young and healthy, probably 195. Like so when he was winning when he like he went like he went like 25 years around 210 pounds beating every single person on the planet how he's awesome He's awesome John Berzink so John started arm wrestling was when he was a kid with his dad and he's one of the first guys John's one of the first guys who arm wrestling has kind of evolved in its respectedness, okay, as a sport.

1:08:50I think if you went back like 40 years and you talk about arm wrestling, people would be like, oh, that's cool. Yeah, let's go arm wrestle. And I'm going to get better arm wrestling by doing pecs and glutes and, you know, getting my whole body strong. And John was kind of one of the first guys who was like, I'm an arm wrestler. I practice arm wrestling. I go to tournaments. I don't need to lift weights, okay? So he started young. The dude's thumb is probably like bigger than mine. and he's like, you know, six foot one, six foot two. So he's to a certain degree built for it, but masterful technician.

1:09:26So 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. Right, so it gave... He's not a big guy. No, he's not. That's a former Russian champion, Zauer. Actually, no, Zauer might be Georgian. He might have been Russian at this time, but he's a Georgian. Yeah. Yeah, John's technique was way above everybody's, way, way above. I remember coming up, like I had heard about John Brzezink for years before I ever saw him because, you know, it's pre-internet, right? John Brzezink like silently ruled the arm wrestling world for decades, you know, pre-internet, pre-all this stuff.

1:10:11and yeah and he went around the world beating all the monsters all the and this is who i actually got the 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 um see dennis Saplankov on the left, that guy's a really famous arm wrestler. He was one of the guys who really raised the level. So that guy had a strength level, Dennis. He came in and he won the world title without really doing anything.

1:10:51I 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.

1:11:06He's a special guy. Listen, listen. That's incredible, man. The arm wrestling world loves and worships John Brzezink. He's the GOAT. He's like the forefather. 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 specialization. And what kind of training did he do? He arm wrestled. Just arm wrestled. Did he do specific things when he was arm wrestling? We keep asking the same questions about John. Like we think like some people think he had like a secret setup in his basement and stuff like that.

1:11:48But everything kind of points towards even if he's kind of kidding us and tricking us, it's certainly not a lot. He arm wrestled with his dad as a kid. Okay. And, you know, they're practicing all the time. So this Iceman, okay, that's the guy who John beat to become kind of the best. Okay, this guy is like the guy before John. So he was the original king of arm wrestling. He is, yeah. Johnny Walker. Johnny Walker, yeah, Iceman. And 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. To kids, summer isn't just time off.

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1:13:26I've been so sore from arm wrestling matches I can't even walk. I can't even get up for days, for days. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 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'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.

1:14:07Super, super taxing. So, yes, John ruled the arm wrestling world for like 25 years. He's still around. Yeah, I'll get to talk to him tomorrow. Yeah. And so do you think he thinks about competing again? Of course he does. Of course he does. But 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, when John was, like, in his 30s, he was like the LeVon, 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.

1:14:58Governments started to recognize it. So if you were from the right country, you could be a pro arm wrestler, like if you're from Georgia or Turkey or Kazakhstan. So the level started rising. When did this start happening? I think that governments started to recognize it. I'm going to guess here that a lot of them started to do it around the turn of the millennia. 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.

1:15:54And it got the sport to a point where if you were the best, you could probably quit your job. Okay? And that was a huge step forward because, you know, yeah, that's a big step, right? And that happened around 2015. And do you think that's because of the internet, like YouTube videos, like popularity increases, TikTok, Instagram, that kind of shit? That was massive, but it happened a bit later. First, what happened, a lot of small little steps. 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.

1:16:40Robert Drink with the UAL, Ultimate Arm Wrestling League out of California. It went from, like when I first started the sport, mike google classic if we won 500 bucks it was the greatest day of our life you know it was so cool we won 500 bucks like you know um that was it uh and then with by by by 2010 or so to even before that the pal we were talking about thousands of dollars ten thousand dollars wal came along we got a massive influx of money you're talking about twenty thousand dollars 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.

1:17:21You 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, yeah. And then, yeah, so East versus West came along and now we're everything.

1:18:04UFC, we're like the UFC of arm wrestling now, East versus West. All the best guys in the world all pull at East versus West. And there's an event every seven weeks international. So what does a top guy make to win a tournament now? You know, it's tricky when we talk about money, but you will make, like if you're a top arm wrestler now, you definitely don't need a side job. You definitely don't. And you're probably definitely making a healthy six figures. You know, definitely. So, yeah, so East versus West kind of raised the level. After COVID, it's not the same sport. It's not. Like, the champions now, like, it's tough.

1:18:52It's tough to win a world title. Way harder to win a world title now than it was 10 or 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. Now we have LeVon. Right. Is there any drug testing? At East versus West, there's not. Okay, so it's F1. You know, everything goes. But what does F1 mean? You know, like IndyCar? Everybody's got the same car. F1, like innovation. Right. Innovation. WAF, government funded, that has testing. What is WAF? Sorry, World Arm Wrestling Federation. So World Arm Wrestling Federation is kind of like the base of the sport. Okay. It's a world level. So every country kind of plugs into it. They have state or provincial.

1:19:39Then they have national. They have like Europeans or North Americans. And then they have a world championships annually, different part of the world every year. That's tested. It's such a universal thing. Like I remember arm wrestling kids in high school. 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.

1:20:23It'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. 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 you're on top of your nutrition, your sleep, everything.

1:21:03Everything. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere between a balance between chaos and order, perfect performance is found. Yeah. The balance between chaos and order is interesting because you kind of, to become great, you kind of have to have some chaos. It's so essential. Yeah. Chaos is a huge part. Talk to me about that. What is that? 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 plan events. So I have met many people in my life. And I've met probably in my entire life probably like two people who I would consider completely pure.

1:21:54You know, like basically like a Jesus Christ kind of person. like no sin okay but and on the other side of I've met only like a couple people who I thought were generally pure evil or you know but I think most people are somewhere in the middle okay and they need that balance in their life you know and I think that you need to if you're talking about performance on a single date this balance of what you are needs to be structured so I think that actually in the fight, like when you're actually fighting, a lot of people, I think, perform best in chaos. Okay. So when you get into the stage, you have to be completely wild.

1:22:35No 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. Um, I went to a, uh, kind of a, a presentation, uh, by this, by this guy, Mac. Okay. He's a geneticist as well. And he was talking about how life only exists in this balance between chaos and order. And, and from that, I, 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.

1:23:22So I have brought this concept into my training where there's only two stickers. There's a blue sticker, which is, you didn't quite make it. It's representative of chaos. And a white sticker, which is representative of order. And after I compete, I purposefully move into chaos. and it's not as though like oh I'm in chaos and I let everything catch on fire I just I don't need structure I can go wherever I can learn new things I can try new things I can open up my mind to whatever I want nothing's required but really I'm trying to gather data put together a plan so that when I move into structure I have a new kind of plan um so how do you structure that like when when you say you move into chaos, like you allow yourself to not have a plan.

1:24:16Yeah. So this is obviously very planned. Yes. Yeah. So I will move from major, my life is structured that I'm moving. It's in blocks. Okay. So I move from major event to major event. I am now at the very beginning of probably the longest block that I've ever had in my life. I'm going to face that guy, LaVon, 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 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.

1:25:07But 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. OK, like if I know I only have to be like this for four months or five months, I can make it. You know, if I'm like I have to be like this for my whole life, everything creeps in, it falls apart. But it's a it's an aid for me psychologically to remain disciplined. and it's a way for me to fit chaos into my life where it satisfies me as a human being and I get to have fun and I get to go outside of my box. But that's the hardest thing to be a world champion at 51 is to put all your energy into something so simple.

1:25:55This 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. OK, 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, seven times two because I was doing right and left. I'm going back to pumpkin training, which is right hand only. Why do they call that pumpkin tree? You know about growing giant pumpkins? No. You ever seen those fairs where they have like 800 pounds?

1:26:42Yeah. So what that teaches is if you want to have a giant pumpkin, you pinch off all the flowers on the vine except for one. Oh. My giant pumpkin. Yeah, so I've tried to 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 six years before. So when you're saying you put everything in the right, you mean you don't do wrist curls or anything with your left hand? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Now. Is this an energy resource allocation thing? Yes. Yeah. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Is this the difference between your right and your left?

1:27:28Yeah. Jesus Christ. So you see, and I came up with this theory a little bit because of just nature, okay? And I see how nature works. Yeah, you have one gigantic form. Look at the size of the difference. Put those up. It's a bit bigger. It's twice as big. Okay? And I was balanced, okay? I was left-hand world champion also, okay? I've but but as of age 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 limited less amount of energy where I can be like a proportionate bodybuilder and be a world champion.

1:28:28I think that to be at the very top, you need to be very specialized and very focused. That's what I believe. This comes – a lot of people criticize me for this. I get heaps of criticism and I'm very well aware of it. And I think that if you were to – Can I stop you? Yeah, yeah. We say heaps of criticism by who and is it valid? I don't think it's valid. So who's criticizing you? I think that most of the criticism comes from more junior players. I think that most senior arm wrestlers, most guys who are on my level, they understand it. And to a certain degree, we all do it. I'm just an extreme example.

1:29:10But a lot of guys do it. A lot of guys do this in the sport. There's a couple things that lead me to this. The pumpkin is just a fun metaphor. 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 attract some real weirdos. A guy called Oleg Zock or Matthias Schlitti. 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?

1:30:01Probably Oleg. It's Oleg or Matias. They're our best examples. Oleg is better. Like Oleg's a world champion. What's his last name? Zock. What a great name. Oh, he's so cool. What a great name. Yeah. 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. Wow. Yeah, yeah. Left-handed. Left-handed, yeah. Jesus Christ, his arm is insane. Isn't that awesome? That is so crazy.

1:30:39Yeah. He has the arm of a 300-pound man. Dude, at 170 pounds, he was almost not even the world champion in his division. He was almost the world champion in the open. God, look at his left arm and it's crazy. And what's extra crazy about it is the insertion points. It's not just that he's hypertrophied and blown up. Like the insertion points are different. He's like the angles of his musculature, the development. like it's wild. And how is that genetic? Is that built? He was born like that to a certain degree. But his right arm looks normal. Normal. So how is it so different on his left arm? So it's my theory, okay, that he has a bit of a blood flow disorder.

1:31:29Okay. 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 yeah the expression of the human being uh is largely determined by the circulation of that the genetic you know peace receives um and i think with guys Like this it happened like in utero That is great that left arm is fucking crazy.

1:32:37Yeah. Yeah, and he got in a vicious car crash 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 just pieced it back together again? Yeah, pieced them back together. And he's still the man. Wow. Yeah, but what he taught me and what other people taught me is the value. And I believe it's all theories, okay? I could be wrong on everything. But I think that it's the blood flow that really heals, it strengthens.

1:33:20And a lot of the thing 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, increase circulation. Yeah. Wow. So, but I still don't understand, like, clearly he's working that one arm more than he's working the left arm. Excuse me, the right arm. Yeah, I think to a certain degree. But because of the way he was, yeah, this is Matthias, right? Same deal. Yeah, and he's like German national champion kind of level. Yeah, and like it's just it's hard to compete with. Right, but how much of that is just work with the right side over and over and over again?

1:34:04And how much of it is you think a genetic component? With these guys, it's a lot of genetic. Really? Yeah, with them. But I believe the reason why it's expressing that way is because of an arterial spread. Okay, and talking to Matthias, he's the one that led me to believe that initially. Is that arterial spread influenced by work? Like does it change the expression of the arteries in the muscles? I think you can influence blood flow for sure. Like I think if you are repeatedly working one region very heavily, your circulatory system is going to adapt. Like my endurance capabilities on my right and my left are completely different.

1:34:44And 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 has adapted over years. Yeah. And look, I really care about being the best. And all the information that I have makes me, I'm doing it again. Like I laid off it for a couple of 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.

1:35:24Sometimes 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 uh i was so worried like that i was going to develop like back issues imbalance issues yeah none of that ever happened huh yeah guys do that from archery they develop imbalance issues just from pulling a bow one-sided like my friend evan he got a left-handed bow just so he could practice left-handed as well because he felt like it would balance 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.

1:36:48Like Eddie Bravo, for instance. Eddie Bravo's attack is almost always on the right side of the body. Obviously, he has a black belt level attack on the left. But his right side attack is where he puts all his energy to. And his philosophy was along those same lines. If 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 everything. Like if you can bring something from a 99 to 100, you know, but it takes 15 points off your left, that's a trade that a lot of people are willing to make.

1:37:29You 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. Magnus. Magnus. How do you say his last name? Mitbo. Mitbo. And he 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.

1:38:05Right away. Which is crazy. which makes me think that maybe that kind of specialized training is like a cheat code. It's close. It's close. Yeah. Because that guy also has like enormous leg-sized forearms. Eve Gravel. See if you can find him training with Magnus because they're in Eve's basement where he does all of his training. And he's doing these, like how many millimeters is the holes? Like two. Okay. So he's doing two millimeter holes with his fingers where he's hanging. Yeah. I'm telling you, it makes no sense. He's such a freak. It makes zero sense. Like, Magnus is super stud, okay? Magnus is like world-level climber.

1:38:46Eve, when it comes to the strength component of climbing, it doesn't even make strength. I don't even understand how anybody could even do it. It's like credit card. He can do pull-ups off of a credit card. That's insane. Yeah. How? I don't know. I don't know how he does it. It doesn't, and like he has like 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. I don't know how he does it. There's nothing to bite. There's nothing. And he's pulling up off. I can't even understand how he does it.

1:39:26So he came into arm wrestling and he's like 150 pounds. But it's 40 pounds of his forearms. So we have a tournament in Ottawa where we both live. It's called the Ottawa Open, and it attracts the strongest dudes in the region. To win the Ottawa Open is really tough. He won it his first year after arm wrestling six weeks. What? Yeah. That's crazy. No, no. And he weighs what? 160? Like 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, which makes me think, like, what if you did that stuff?

1:40:11Yeah. Yes. Let me tell you, as good as Eve is now, he's going to get even better. Okay. I can only imagine. Yeah. Nobody is touching Eve's fingers. But like I talked about earlier, so if you kind of 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 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.

1:40:49Right. Yeah, and he's the best at that, too. Yeah. It's just nuts, man. Yeah, it's really nuts. Yeah. So there is a high degree of crossover, right? Yeah. There is. But there are slight intricacies. Like a kind of way to think about it in climbing, if you have a great grip, you are able to climb the wall. Okay. But in actual arm wrestling, you actually don't want to be the climber. You want to be the wall. Right. 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.

1:41:31It's fun to work with them 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? He wasn't doing anything there. He was explaining his dead list 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 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 not that's crazy Like this kind of grip is just insane.

1:42:08Oh 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-armed rows with like 180 pounds on each side And I'm like that is bananas cuz he's not a big guy No, but he's ridiculously strong as well and that when I in him he's dwarfed by this guy's strength. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. Eve is considered the strongest climber in the world. And did you ask him when he started this and how he got that strong? I've talked to Eve a lot about his training. He's so detailed. Like the way he trains is very interesting, very progressive, very science-based.

1:42:50Look at those forearms. That's bonkers. Yeah. Yeah. Eve is a, and he's an artist too. He makes masks. Masks? Yeah, you know, like movie masks. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's his main job. He makes masks and he can climb anything. Yeah. He's a super cool guy. Wow. So seeing that, though, makes me think if 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 is 150 pounds and he could do that shit and he's doing it with two arms. I mean, both of his arms are super jacked. There are levels of specialization.

1:43:36Right. Do you think it's maybe too late for you to do what he's doing because he's been doing this for decades and decades? I believe that he is so good at all his grip work. And his grip work is so high, and it does have a lot of crossover. It does. Would I want that strength? Yes, of course. I just think that the motions that I'm doing are actually even more dangerous for the sport of arm wrestling. Like, if I was to advise, even I do, I talk to Eve, like, every week. I tell Eve, you know, the way he's going to progress his game is by probably doing these more precise movements to become the wall, you know, to become the thing that's hard to hold on to.

1:44:18Right. He has an amazing ability to hold on to anybody. Okay? And that's going to take him really, really far in the sport. But I think that as he's, I've told him, he's older in terms of entry, but he has world championship potential. You know, he's less than a year in the sport. Wow. Yeah, he's been arm wrestling since like last November. Yeah. Give him give him like a give him like a year or two or three 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 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?

1:45:09The thing that struck me when I spoke to him about his training is he kind of does testing. I found that very, very different from the way I train. So before he does his workout, he does these tests like with his grip and he like says how easy or hard they are. And if 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. And I'm doing it. 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 crazy. He loves armor. Sorry, he loves climbing.

1:45:52And 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. It looks like he's measuring it through a weight to see how much in a static capacity he can generate. Wow. Yeah. Pushing isometrics for arm wrestling. Yeah. So all just wrist curling ability. Isometric. Yeah. Maximum output, which is really the main strength that arm wrestlers need. That locked isometric or even negative strength. and all his squeezing. Look at that.

1:46:36That'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 love that we've kind of got him. Oh, I'm sure. Because when you get a freak like that, like out of nowhere, what is he doing here? Right. So he's working his curls and he's adding resistance through the elastic. So you can see, this is not a climber exercise, I don't think, anymore.

1:47:22He's really switching. To armrest. I think he's got the bug. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It won't be long. It won't be long. He'll be at East versus West for a 70-kilo world title. Well, it's such an enormous advantage to have these fucking gigantic forearms and insane strength. Yeah. And it's just so weird that you could get these guys that are so physically small that are so damn strong. Like when Magnus was doing rows, you're like, where's the force coming from? You have 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 a tendon strength?

1:48:07Is 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 is 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, it probably runs or something looks like a normal guy that's fit. He doesn't look like a guy who can do 180-pound one-arm rows. So what is that? How do you do that? Where's it coming from? Yeah, I think that arm wrestlers, climbers, a lot of athletes, fighters too, they start to recognize the value of the hand.

1:48:45You know, a lot of guys, you know, in the communities like strongman, powerlifting, other strength disciplines, they get immense strength through their body, through their shoulders, and different parts that by the time it goes through the chain, through the elbow, through the wrist, and through 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 Kerson 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.

1:49:37Yeah, I said foot strength because yeah foot strength He goes once a 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. More on the grip strength. 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. Well, it's clearly he's way stronger than me with rows. The interesting thing with grip is Grip is only a small part of control.

1:50:19Oh This guy what's that guy's name? He's he's actually the best Ondra right? What did he get? He's actually the best climber in the world right now 161 same thing 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 great I mean, Derek's got giant paws, like catcher's mitt paws. And he pulled 218. He got higher than anybody. And it didn't even look like he was trying. The guy I just arm wrestled, I think, had the world record for some time. Vitaly Lillettin. What was that? I don't know what the number is, but I know he had the world record.

1:50:56Vitaly Lillettin. So I'm actually not big on grip. I'm not. Really? I'm not. But most people are. There's a guy that I follow on Instagram. Jamie, pull him up. His name is Michael Eckert and 351. Boom. Is that Vitaly? Yeah. 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'm such a disappointment. I squeeze stronger than you. Yeah, you do. That's not possible. No, you probably do. That is literally not possible. I'm telling you.

1:51:31Look at how size this guy. Yeah, he's like 6 '9". Like, he's about 3. Yeah. Yeah, it's so crazy 154 kilograms is so bananas. Yeah, that's so strong. You can only do 70 that doesn't make any sense when I was younger I could do like eight or nine reps of the number three captain's a crush So I can have this sucker here on the table. What is it? Yeah?

1:52:00200 pounds, so this isn't a captain the crush. This is a I think it is it's not I bought those. They just have a number on the bottom. Can't do it, Joe. I can't do it. You can't do that? Come on. One and a half, two and a half. I do that all day long. Man, 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? And, you know, the grip is like the final inflection point.

1:52:35It's the final piece to add. Right. Yeah. Well, I understand that it's not everything. It's a thing that I've been obsessed with lately because I'm not strong at it. Grip's beautiful. So this 162 kilograms. Jeez. And I just. This guy, Michael Eckert on Instagram. He's a guy that I follow and he has all these grip strength tutorials. He's a Marine and I guess has 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 and he has massive forearms but like look at his thing right there uh 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 uh the grip strength thing the really good one is the one that has knurled metal.

1:53:27It 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. That one right there. See what it says? 119. So I think that's 119 kilograms.

1:53:45Hand is beautiful. Yeah. What is that? 262. So he could do 262, and he's not a very big guy so he does a hundred 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 uh michael eckert

1:54:14elicart no eckert e c k e r t e c k e r t so it's michael eckert uh underscore fit on instagram and uh this guy's uh 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 and very strong, but he's not like this massive guy. Like who's that giant Russian cat? Smaev. 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.

1:55:01Yeah, we're praying for Smaev to come into the sport. Oh my God. Yeah. That guy's a fucking freak freakiest not just freak freaky est 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 um yeah i mean all these strengths for our sport they all add together Look at his hands. Look at his fucking hands. They don't even look real. 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.

1:55:48Oh, really? I saw a video where he said it wasn't true, but I have no idea. That he wasn't taking that much. Yeah, I mean. Someone was saying he was taking like. Over 100 or something. Some crazy thing, like 10 units of growth a day. No, 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. You would just become a giant. Like that's like a pituitary disorder, right? Yeah, more than. Right, because that's what you're getting. It's a lot. Well, 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.

1:56:20I never saw him normal. I mean, I've been following him for probably like six or seven years. Yeah, I mean I think the first time I saw him he was doing chin-offs with like 250 pounds strapped to him, you know, I think that's the first time I saw

1:56:36So it's a left size who's what's the 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 But not at 17. No. But go to that photo again. But the guy on the right, he looks like the Incredible Hulk. Like he looks like a superhero. Like it doesn't look like a real human being. Like the size of his forearms, the size of his biceps, that doesn't look like a regular human being. It looks like a complete freak of nature or science.

1:57:12And he's training for arm wrestling. I could only imagine. So he's like if you follow his Insta or whatever, he's doing the arm wrestling lifts. like the pronation and his lifting is already at a level of like world champion go to his instagram please it's his instagram got taken down so it's like some new yeah that's right he didn't have it why did he 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 it's like smy of official and it's 27 seven weeks ago there was a tag and that's all there 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.

1:58:22So 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 going to show up whether it's in anything and pick he gets to pick and he's probably going to show up at like a world level Like anything like what? I'd say anything, whether powerlifting, strongman. I'd be terrified if he even got to like blue belt.

1:59:09Oh my God. Like what are you going to do? What are you going to do? How much does he weigh? I think like 340. 340 and preposterous strength. Like strength, you know, Mark Coleman always used to say that strength is a skill. And there's something to that because if you are that strong, there's only so much you can do with that guy's body. Yeah. Especially if he developed actual skills and understanding of leverage positions Even just the base movement patterns that are really to lead Jesus he was supposed to pull there was a proposal for him to pull one of our guys called Leonidas Arcona He's a great name.

1:59:46Yeah, so German guy. He just competed against Brian shot like six weeks ago He beat Brian what yeah someone beat Brian shot and arm wrestling match Leonidas, young German champion. They competed in Germany. It was a great fight. How big is Leonidas? Leonidas is pretty awesome. This is Leonidas and Brian Shaw. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my goodness. That is crazy. Yeah, right. And nobody's got a starter grip than Brian either. Brian's grip is completely wild. Seeing someone beat Brian Shaw in anything physical seems ridiculous. It doesn't even make sense. How much does this guy weigh? He's like 285 when he's in good shape.

2:00:28But, again, stupid strength. He's like a bodybuilder slash arm wrestler. This is a picture of me reacting. Yeah. He's been in the sport like. Oh, my God. He's going to curl a dude.

2:00:46Crazy strength. Oh, my God. He's massive. Massive. I just can't believe that he beat Brian Shaw. That is nuts. And that's where skill comes in. Well, because Brian Shaw is 100 pounds heavier than him. Yeah, but it's levels, you know? Right. And that's the thing. Arm wrestling has enough technique to it. It's not just how strong you are. You can look at me, okay? I'm not on any of these guys' levels. They're all stronger than me. But I'm the number two in the world in the open division. Everybody in the top 50 is stronger than me, you know? But there's a high degree. That's a great picture. Wow.

2:01:20That is crazy. The size difference is so massive. But I'll tell you, Brian probably has a higher potential than Leonidas. Brian's been arm wrestling less than two years. Right. And Leonidas has been arm wrestling for? About five. Okay. So there's a lot of technique to it. There's a ton of technique. And a lot of just repetition, understanding the positions, where to go, what to do, how to hold. Yeah. Miniature martial art. Interesting. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Because there's some people that are not that, like Marcelo Garcia, for instance, not a physically imposing guy. has the craziest squeeze.

2:01:56Like there's something about a squeeze, like learning a position over and over and over again, fine-tuning it. That's what's interesting about power in general. It's like the repetition of movement creates more power. Yeah. And some of it is genetic, but some of it is also just fine-tuning that motion to just this like perfect chain of energy from the floor to the strike. and it's two of us. 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.

2:02:38And somebody's leading the dance and someone's following. 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. Tom Havilland. he's another one who's doing this stuff in his backyard with a fucking shirt on and jeans and work boots and all the images, most of them, are just his back 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 like dude when are you coming in arm wrestling when are you coming in I'm optimistic I'm optimistic.

2:03:20Is he interested? I think so. Well, he's also crazy lean, too, which is really weird. He's a strange character. Oh, the strangest. Because, like, this is most of his images are his back. Yeah. Which I don't understand why he's doing that. Well, I had the theory that he was an SF guy. You know? I had the theory that he belongs to some organization that requires him to be discreet. But there are photos of him. Yeah, not many. But there's plenty where you could see his face. Yes, but he doesn't go around broadcasting it too much, does he? I don't know. Look, I don't know what he is. I've asked and guys say he's not.

2:03:56I 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 happily. Yeah. Because he's almost 400 pounds. He's 6 '8". Yeah. And fucking shredded. See if you can find some of the images. There are images on this page of him with his shirt off doing stuff where he's like walking with, you know, doing like farmer carries. So there's some images of him with his shirt off. Yeah. Like there he is. Yeah. Yeah. He's a Brian Shaw type. He's a Smaev type, you know, just where the baseline level of strength.

2:04:36But looks more athletic than those guys. Do you know what I'm saying? Like 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, one strong man, and, like, there's a lot of athleticism in strong man. Oh, for sure. I'm not saying there's not. I mean, but Brian Shaw looks like an ape. He looks like a giant ape, whereas this guy looks like a super athlete. He does. You know, he looks like that image of him with his shirt off on the far right. Like, he's shredded. Yeah. He looks different. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

2:05:14And it seems like he's just working on his strength. He's just like constantly. Yeah. Look at his fucking forearm muscles. 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 versus West, buddy. We love you. We love you. Has he ever done anything? Yeah. Any arm wrestling stuff? Yeah, I know he has. Because so down in Australia, the president there, Phil Rasmussen, he's good friends with him. And I know that they're arm wrestling a little bit. But, yeah, there's something with him where he doesn't kind of he doesn't want to kind of show up.

2:05:49I 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, do you know who Eric Spato is? No. Eric Spato'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 even show up. He just showed up and he beat the world record. He was doing the world record in his basement. Wow. And everybody's like, you know, Eric, why don't you go and make it legit? You know, but these guys exist out there.

2:06:26These guys in their basements or wherever they're living. And they, for whatever reason, they don't show up until they're the best. Yeah. Eric. This guy. Yeah. And he's an amazing arm wrestler, too. Same theory, though. Like, it was hard to get him into competition. But I personally know that he's, like, one of the strongest arm wrestlers. But he doesn't compete. Doesn't compete. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, strength's amazing, man. It's fun to chase strength. It's not everything in your sport, though, which is interesting. Yeah. Strength, combat. So we're a combat sport that relies heavily on strength. It's interesting you consider it a combat sport.

2:07:09It's 100 % a 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. Is it? Well, there's levels. There's levels of real fighting. I mean, look, I love UFC. It's cool, but we invented guns long ago. Of course, but that's not a sport. I mean it is a sport in terms of like being able to shoot accurately and stuff like that But you're using an external device 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?

2:07:59It'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, 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. Right. Look at all this stuff. I love the UFC but I consider it a combat sport you know well it definitely is a combat sport 100 % probably one of the best examples of but the primary example if I was going to put together like you know the ultimate like you know we were going to take out like if we were going to go to war against another nation or whatever you know yeah for sure I'm looking at UFC 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.

2:08:58Well, that's different. I mean, look, if they're going to war with just bodies, only using your body, that's one thing. But, you know, obviously with war, weapons, rule above all. Absolutely. I think that that's where we're at these days. Well, now we're with thumbs because now it's basically drones. Yeah. You're going to get to a point soon where human beings are going to be irrelevant. So when it comes to sport arm wrestling is falls for me it falls into that combat sector you know where two people are are engaging in a fight a metaphorical fight against each other i get it yeah yeah yeah you'll you'll i mean if if it wasn't um a combat sport then the stronger guy would normally win and and they normally does but as soon as you i can get like if i could get like a guy who's been practicing arm wrestling for like four or five years they'll beat anybody anybody that's not practicing it's the same thing as like a jujitsu guy if you if you give a jujitsu guy like four or five years on the mat and you get brian shaw or like some giant come in who's gonna win it really depends i could teach brian shaw a few things real course he could get strangled yeah and brian shaw is an extreme example Yeah.

2:10:18Okay. Someone your size. Yeah. It's like size to size. The size is commensurate. Yeah. The person who's training. Yeah. They're going to win every time. And small people dominate big people all the time. Right. Because it's that technical. It's that skill base. It's just, it's also repetition, understanding the positions, understanding mistakes, understanding, 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.

2:10:53Right. 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 is the Canadian version of what you, 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. How so? What do you mean? You know, I don't want to say it was entirely one thing or another, but it really probably had a lot to do with arm wrestling and the visibility of arm wrestling.

2:11:34Like I've been arm wrestling my whole life, but Jisoo was 19, I think. Oh, sorry, not 19. It was 2014. 14 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, uh, you know, um, I was an active, active JTF2 member. Um, 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 and oh right so arm wrestling because of where where i was and it was on espn and going further they're like devon you have to choose and i'm like oh my god i've been armistice i was a kid so the long and short of that is uh they offered me a year off uh 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 uh it was complicated it was complicated yeah i'd done like seven tours and um it's weird when you do a lot of tours you know um things start to gray out a little bit and everything is about mission in life right like everything like if you don't have a good mission your life is going to fall to shit and as soon as you start to question any kind of that and you know you you play in that realm long enough most guys start to at the beginning i mean you're just either so patriotic or, you know, just so down to, you know, help your country or whatever, or the people around you that you don't really, you're undeterred.

2:13:41And I think that probably sometime around that point in my career, maybe I was struggling slightly. And that combined with the, 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 uh was kind of the thing that kind of make me take kind of a stand in my life that I was gonna you know follow sport instead of war um 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 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 uh you're probably okay and um yeah so it I mean, you play enough in that world, and it starts to get confusing that maybe you're not doing the right thing.

2:15:02So, 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 Unipolicy, and they shut down everybody's extracurricular. and yeah they're like devon 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 i went from making money and i had and i didn't come we didn't have money you know but you were getting by yeah getting by but it meant that on that year I like had to win it was no longer like my hobby it was like if I don't win like my kids are like not I'm gonna have to sell a house or like I'm gonna have to it was a gamble it worked out what was that stress like how old were you at the time okay that was 2014 so I'd be 39 Oh, wow.

2:16:20So 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 a, it was a WAL finals. Okay. I was in the 225 pound division, 20 ,000 bucks for first place, right hand, left hand. And, and I had a great sponsor. Okay. They were matching my pay. So anything I won, they doubled it and they were doing some other stuff too. but if I lost I got nothing so I'm in the back I'm in the back in the warm up area and I'm breathing I'm getting ready I'm going against this guy Ron Bath in the finals and a long time mentor of mine guys like my older brother this guy Mike Gould comes over to me he's like 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 uh i ended up um doing my years leave without pay as soon as i was taking my leave they're like we want you to declare like we want you to tell people that you're special forces now so i went from why why they want you to do that because they pushed me into recruiting yeah so when i got back i tried again i think they'd already made up their mind uh 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.

2:18:16And that was it. That was my career. Done. Wow. Yeah, and now full-time armrest for the last 10 years. What a jump at 39. Yeah. That had to be so fucking nerve-wracking. It was... I just, you know, I thought it was very selfish of me, you know. I thought that I was being very 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, 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.

2:19:08But, yeah, we believed in it. We went for it, and it's all worked out. It's all worked out. I mean, it's been a second life for me. I still love all the guys I work with. Some of them are still working. My God. Guys do like 30-year careers in the 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 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.

2:19:53You know, it's difficult to balance. How my wife and I made it through that, I have no idea. I have no idea, but we did. But yeah, now I'm at home every day. I wake up unless I'm going to some arm wrestling tournament. It's beautiful. Well, I got to think that the discipline that came from that life transferred over 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.

2:20:37Yeah. 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 um but uh yeah it's it's it's i try and take all those lessons and bring them into the sport and i try to um 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 i don't a lot um i it's not that uh 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 um yeah i don't make it part of my general promotion too much but everybody knows that i was you know uh it's a it's a it's a wild time in my life you know uh it's a huge chapter you know the military stuff the tours that i did you know we we did a lot of work in afghanistan so you know the highlight of my career is working in kandahar um you know working with the american forces working with the indage forces you know we jtf does like counterterrorism so we're doing hits we're doing hits at night you know going out and various kinds but yeah it was always funny to me people would because people didn't know I was, you know, widely.

2:22:19Oh, Devin's scared to come to this tournament, you know. And I was like, motherfucker, I am in a goddamn war right now. I am not scared to go to Nemrov Cup, you know. But, yeah. That's funny. Yeah, it was good. 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. War is a wild thing, you know. The degree that it's psychologically affected me is it's been it's been me. You know, I think that a lot of who I am was shaped by combat, you know, by the fear and and the lacking that I had. Like the the the the not being enough to to be everything I could be in combat shaped me so much.

2:23:15you 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 uh and i was kind of the guy who was like completely scared shitless but i'd go anyways you know um and what i kind of learn 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.

2:24:03And 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. Um, and then, you know, you come back and you, you know, you've seen a lot of shit and you, 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 uh people call it a switch you know where you like all your values the person that you are is different you're not the same person when you're out in the field than you are when you're 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 how did you do that well um 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 um with any fear and i don't know if a psychologist is going to tell you to do this but like for example like um i'll take it a step back we'll talk about jumping okay I don't like to jump in airplanes.

2:25:32Okay. Didn't really, you know, it's kind of scary. So I had a certain fear there. Okay. Now I got over it. I've got, you know, I've got hundreds of jumps. But what I did was I used to watch parachute fails over and over and over and over and over. And I just kind of desensitized myself to it and kind of became okay with it. And I think to a certain degree, I did the same thing with the overall concept of worst case scenario with the war. You know, kind of accepted that I'm going to die. It's OK. I believe in the cause, believe in the mission. It's OK. So now I have to solve how to actually how do I get to the best performance state to do that?

2:26:16And you have to love what you do. You got to love what you do. So you have to find a way to love the violence. You have to find a way to love the aggression. You have to find a way to, and I think it's inside all of us. I think that the person that you are is, you know, who you've kind of created for a certain circumstance. But the truth is, is you might act a little bit different when you're sitting at the table with your mother than when you're sitting at the table with your best friend to when you're going out and doing a hit on the front lines, you know. And it's a different psychology that's going to perform best, you know, in each of those.

2:26:51And it's learning that you are not necessarily one thing. You are whatever you want to be, you know, and you can change that. 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.

2:27:34There's a giant difference between that and application in a real world scenario where you might lose your life and you have to take a life. I don't think there's a psychologist in the world that could explain that. that's why i'm always very hesitant about even sports psychologists or fight psychologists that like teach people how to prepare for fighting like 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 you it's just theory theory yeah and there's a giant difference between theory and Application where you are trying to keep your fucking brain together in the craziest thing a human being can do Yeah parachute down and gun people down like what what is fucking crazier on earth than that?

2:28:26I say nothing. Yeah, well look I used to have that attitude as well But I've 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, 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, if you're a farmer, um, 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 it.

2:29:04And I think that you're on that level. Yeah. You're on that level of mastery. And I think that that is what life is really about, is finding that thing that you're comfortable doing and becoming a master at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now I am the Bonnie Blue of arm wrestling. Come one, come all. I get the first base with everybody. I got to ask you about this, and this is a silly thing to ask you, because you said Kandahar. Have you heard of the legend of the Kandahar giant? Yes, of course. Yeah. What did you hear? When did you hear? Well, I've seen. Okay. There's some freaks out there, man. There's some freaks.

2:29:46So, yeah, I mean, I've seen the YouTube video. I've heard about it from other people. But legit, legit, okay? Hard for me because I was far away, okay? I was probably about 200 meters away. We were doing a mobility exercise. Okay, mobility, I hate mobility. Okay, mobility was my least favorite op. Mobility, basically, you get in a bunch of trucks and you kind of roll out and you kind of look for a fight. Okay. So we were doing like a two-week mobility in this region, kind of north of the Panjway. I don't remember exactly what it was called. surrounded by mountains, this big valley. And we were rolling around.

2:30:35And 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.

2:31:20and we had our trucks about 200 meters from the meeting point. Our officer and a couple dudes went forward, and we're looking. This guy, I mean, he was maybe twice as big. He was huge. He was a massive dude. Like how big? I think he was 8 feet. I think he was 8 foot something. It's embarrassing. It's like, Devin, you're crazy. He's big. And he was 200 meters away? He's about 200 meters away, but I can see the guys. We've got optics. He was, our officer was probably somewhere at the bottom of his chest. Great big Afghan dude. Big beard. Big dude. Big dude. And his lackeys around him were normal size.

2:32:06Great big warlord. So they're out there. There's big people. Eight feet is nuts. I have personally seen people who were probably over eight feet. What? Yeah. In Afghanistan? No, no. I saw these guys up north, northern Canada, Cree. I was up in Ojibugumo, 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 in his nipple. What? Yeah, big, big, big hands.

2:32:48Big, long hands. Like, out of the Goonies, like, misshapen face. I'm like, my God. I'm like, how big are you? He's like, just laughed at me. And he's like, my brother, he's like, my dad's 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 people don't know about him. Guinness doesn't know about him. They live up in the woods. There's big people out there. And not all of them. Who is that guy, Jamie? He's from that region, apparently. I don't know how to say that. Edouard Bopri? So there's just Cree. Giants that live in that region? Eight foot three.

2:33:22The Cree are very big people. And the thing is, is when they get to eat what they're supposed to eat, the problem is so many of them eat junk now, right? Because they, you know, they grow up on their— 367 pounds, maybe? Or 367, sorry. Eight foot two 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 going to try and swab him. 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.

2:34:04And he had to be eight feet tall. He is big. He's big. Yeah. He's big, big human being far out of the standard. Yeah. And he was a warlord. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, they're big people out there. And so the Kandahar giant story, the guy is supposed to be even bigger than that. Yeah. Yeah, I heard it. Do you believe it? I do. Yeah, I do. There's freaks out there. There are. But this guy supposedly had like six fingers and six toes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that stuff. I just, I mean, I think that we get so used to normal people and every once in a while there's a weirdo. And these people are not being studied.

2:34:44There'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 eight 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. Massive, massive human.

2:35:25Yeah. What was that like, just seeing something like that? It was wild, man. Yeah, you know, it's neat. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was shocking, but it's neat how they structure their leadership. That's the guy in charge. The most massive guy, of course. I hope he was a nice guy. Probably wasn't. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, he seemed reasonable. Like, we didn't get in a fight. Like, we didn't, there was no fight there. So we worked it out, whatever it was. But, yeah, there are anomalies, and it's neat. It's kind of cool that he made it to a leadership position. So he must have been a smart guy, too.

2:36:06And he must have been a good guy because I don't think a dick could have been in charge. So did you hear of that story, the Kandahar giant story? So supposedly what happened is it's American military guys encountered this guy in the mountains. Yeah. That was just absolutely enormous. They said he was like 12 feet tall. Yeah. Well, what happened with the Nephilim? You know? Right. That's the thing. The thing is, supposedly, they had six fingers and six toes as well. Look, I believe that things come to visit, and sometimes things get left behind, and who knows? Who knows? 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.

2:36:58And somehow there's a surviving population of these people still in the world that are undiscovered. It's a beautiful part of the world, that region. Perfect climate. Super fertile. Like if you were going to, like if there was nothing, what a beautiful place to start life. Afghanistan is a beautiful country. So rich for agriculture. The climate is perfect. You know, with the mountains and the rivers, the seasons, it's tough to beat. You know, I would understand why people would fight so hard to have that territory. And, 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.

2:37:41Yeah. Did you hear that story when you were over there? That story is famous. Yeah. And I asked around. I've never met anybody who was involved in that op. I haven't. But it seems like a story that has something to it because there's too many people telling that story. There's only one story like that. There are a lot of stories. There's more stories like that? There are. I 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.

2:38:26And this is a whole other can of worms, but it's so weird. It's demonic possession. We had a guy, a guy, he was my, I worked with him very closely for, super smart guy. Great guy. Awesome dude. Awesome soldier. And yeah, I mean, he got possessed by a demon. He started speaking in tongues. he knew everything about everybody he could speak different languages he he knew everything about everybody's life he knew all their sins yeah he knew he knew all the sins people did even from their childhood that he got taken to he got taken to the medical through the medical system before they knew it he was out of the medical system and he was with the padre 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 uh 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 uh but Yeah, and the crazy thing was is the priest who did the exorcism said he knew the demon.

2:39:48He'd already done the exorcism like three or four times. On different people. Yeah, because that demon was like popping in at other guys. Yeah, so Joe, I don't know what's going on in the world. I'm an arm wrestler. But this guy knew things about you? No, I wasn't on the tour. But the unit's very small. Okay. All the guys who were there, I have very close personal relationships with, and there's no reason for me not to trust him. And this is the, all the, and the guy who had it done to him, I'm very close with. Like he comes over my, he was my stall partner. Okay. Uh, and I see him. When you say had it done to the guy who was possessed.

2:40:26Yes. You knew him. I know him very well. And what did he say about it? Yeah. He doesn't like it very much. Yeah. He's, he, it scared him a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Does he recall being able to speak different languages? Yeah, he can remember it. But he can't speak those languages anymore. He can't speak those languages. No, it was like he was aware of everything happening, but he was a visitor. He was there for the ride. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. Apparently, when 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 fully. Joe it's weird stuff out there man there's a lot of things that we don't understand right yeah I don't know what to tell you it wasn't me but I trust the story because I know the people I know them I could hook you up with them you want to talk to them tell you all about it I don't think I would wow Yeah, but how long was he possessed for he was possessed?

2:41:37I 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 But psychologically like it wasn't like he had a schizophrenic break so whatever it was he came back from I I don't know that schizophrenia can explain the languages. I don't know that. No, I don't think it can. But what I'm saying is they didn't diagnose him as having. No, the diagnosis was he had to go to church. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. Right. Isn't that wild? That's so crazy.

2:42:19That's one of the craziest ones that I've seen personally. Have you heard of other experiences like that where people have been possessed? That's it. We would think that if a demon was going to visit someone, war would be the place to visit them. And that's an ancient, that was in Iraq. That was in Erbil. 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.

2:42:59I'm just gonna I'm just gonna do wrist curls in my basement 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 I'm so curious about it. Do you think he would come on here and tell the story? Yep, really sure Of course, of course he would I'm nervous

2:43:27Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Martin, 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 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. Yeah, well, we should tell everybody. I knew your brother before I met you online, and this is from your brother. Your brother made this candle, and this candle will now sit here.

2:44:08He is no longer with us, but the candle will remain. Thank you so much for your time, Joe. My pleasure, brother. Anytime you want to get into arm wrestling, come on over. We'll get your grip strength working for you. No, no, I'm good, but thank you. I appreciate it. Wonderful. And good luck. Yeah. Good luck beating that fucking giant dude. I'm going to need it. 16 months? 16 months, man. Maybe we'll talk to you before then. Yeah. Do it again. Yeah, cool. Thank you so much. Thanks, brother. All right. Bye, everybody.