Lucy Gellman Photo
World Arm Wrestling League match held Saturday at Trinity Bar.
Gabe Stiles stepped up to the table. Around 20 arm wrestlers and spectators pressed their bodies closer to Trinity Bar‘s shallow stage, craning their necks around a group of photographers.
Stiles (at left in photo), a baby-faced 18 year-old Wilbur Cross senior, remained calm and slack-jawed, his bicep and elbow steady on the table. He threaded his fingers into those of his opponent, Anthony Vidal, as if this were just another practice in the school gym. Breathed in. Breathed out.
That was, of course, until referee and two-time arm wrestling world champion Ron “The High Chief” Klemba uttered the magic words: “Ready … Go!”
The air pressure shifted slightly. Stiles was kinetic, pulling with everything he had. Vidal grunted just slightly.
Stiles furrowed his brow and puffed out his cheeks. Then, swiftly and with what seemed like the force of his whole body, he guided Vidal’s arm to the upper left of the table.
Bam! The round was his.
“Everybody was kind to me, and I felt good here,” he said after more than 10 grueling rounds, hoisting up his medal and certificates as he spoke to Cross teammates Alexander Toupou, Kamaz Williams and DeShar Blackmon. He won first place-left arm in the novice category and second place-right arm Saturday at a daylong Arm Wrestling League tournament.
Stiles’ arm wrestling journey began three and a half years ago, when he was having trouble finding a niche as a freshman. There was the new dynamic of high school to get used to, a sea of student faces when he arrived at school every morning. The arduous process of making new friends and maintaining old ones. A growing workload.
Then he found a way to work through it, pull by pull: a once-weekly arm wrestling club led by Cross chemistry teacher Mike Selearis, himself a champion in the World Arm Wrestling League’s 195-pound weight class. Stiles came to meetings because the sport looked fun. He stayed for an unexpected sense of family.
That back story was just one of the many that emerged Saturday at the state tournament for the World Arm Wrestling League (WAL), organized by Selearis and held for the first time at Trinity on Orange Street.
From early to late afternoon, a handful of competitors from around the state, as well as from Maine and New Hampshire, stepped up to an arm wrestling table to face of for the title of champion. The overall winners will go on to compete in Las Vegas in early 2016, as will victors from other statewide matches that were held Saturday afternoon.
“It’s been awesome,” said Klemba, a psychotherapist who has arm wrestled professionally for 15 years, and trains “Team Dungeon” out of his Portland, Conn., home on Saturdays. “To me it’s a game of angles and geometry. We have a very tight group of individuals. I put this together loosely, but it’s formed into quite a tight-knit group.”
A match, Klemba explained to amateurs (i.e. this reporter) before the tournament, goes like this, from start to finish: Two arm wrestlers in the same weight class — that’s 0 – 165, 166 – 195, 196 – 225, and 226+ pounds for men, and 0 – 128, 129 – 148, and 149+ pounds for women — face off at a table that is just big enough to support their elbows, which rest on leather-and-foam pads. For traction, some competitors powder their hands with chalk; others choose to rely on bare skin. The arm that isn’t wrestling grips a side bar. Before they begin, a referee checks placement of their hands, elbows and forearms, as even a minor misplacement or flub can result in serious injury, from tendonitis of the bicep to a fractured humeral bone. GO! is called triumphantly. And then the pullers pull with all they’ve got, because — literally — that’s the name of the game. If a “slip of grip” that doesn’t look like a cop out occurs, one more step is added: an AWL-sanctioned strap, to keep competitors’ hands bound during the bout.
Every competitor has his and her own secrets, Klemba added. But it’s ultimately a game about strategy, timing and knowing how and when to push one’s boundaries.
“The game is so techniquey — if you’ve got technique, you can beat a 600-pound strongman because you know how to arm wrestle,” he said confidently after the tournament’s end, offering to show the day’s losers tips before they scattered for the afternoon. “You keep him away from his power, and you can win.”
Their reasons for staying have to do with a little-known fact about the sport, which is slowly gaining recognition: It has community at its core. Unlike ice hockey, dedicated almost entirely to the clumsy ballet of beating one’s opponent senseless, or even wrestling, in which fury and choreography dance around each other in the ring, arm wrestling demands a culture of mutual respect for the opponent, the only other face you’ll be seeing across the table. For something that can be over — and leave one in agonizing pain — after as little as 12 to 15 seconds, that’s pretty cool.
Like in the case of Carlos Beltran, a pro out of practice after his job’s time constraints became too much to continue the sport. Confident and hoping the avoid injury at the start of the tournament — his first in seven years — he swallowed defeat after a match with Ukranian Bo Mamczynski went south, fast. “It’s like a family,” he said, shrugging off the loss as he spoke. “If you pull for so many years, if you know people, it’s a friendly atmosphere. Sometimes we can talk a little junk, be a little bit mean, but at the end of the day, it’s like a family.”
“There is a lot of competitiveness. Everybody leaves with sore arms and some broken spirits and self esteem issues,” said Klemba. “But we actually love each other. That’s what makes it kind of interesting. There is a lot of camaraderie in the sport. It may look like two gentleman hate each other, but they actually have a lot of respect for the work they put in in trying to beat each other. When I go up to a table, I want to showcase the fruits of my labor. But if somebody gets up there and beats me, I have nothing but admiration for the work that they’ve done.”
And when the family gets together, it really gets together. Between matches, which are typically over in under a minute, and sometimes in under 30 seconds, competitors took moments to hug, high five, and grin broadly at each other before and after the winning pull — or between fouls and false starts that were settled with an AWL-sanctioned strap. It takes a lot of training around an arm wrestling table to go pro, all of them said, and that necessitates a sort of bonding.
“Arm wrestlers are really nice people,” said Jon Brown, a deceptively petite heavyweight who has been in the sport for six and a half years and dominated Saturday. “They’ll show you anything you need to know … the arm wrestling community is filled with awesome guys. Very open, very friendly. It’s a small sport, and arm wrestlers are very hungry to meet new people. When it’s such a close-knot group, you’re more of a family. It’s not about money, it’s not about prestige — it’s about doing the best we can.”
Kelly Sciarappa, who started arm wrestling two years ago to keep up with her husband Chris, was one of just two women competing. (Deb Selaris, in the video above, will be going on to Las Vegas). She said that sometimes an outpouring of love for the sport and its practitioners is enough to keep a novice like her, Stiles or Toupou in the game.
“I’ve never been an athlete, but this just clicked. It’s really one big happy family — everybody’s friends and we all help each other,” she said. “Once I saw that, I had to be a part of it.”
Interesting topic. There is an enormous sports community in New Haven, and really appreciate reading about all those pursuits. Unlike some aspects of life here, sports generally seems more unifying, accessible and positive. Those featured in this article echo that and can't help but smile.