In Arm’s Way : More Than Brute Strength Is Used for This White-Knuckle Ride

Clayton Brown bench presses 350 pounds, a fact that caused him to believe he was an arm-wrestler. So when he heard about the Los Angeles Arm-Wrestling Championships being held at Fallbrook Mall, only a few blocks from his Canoga Park home, he took his wife and child to the tournament and planned to show them exactly why he spends so much time in the gym. But things didn’t work out. There were a few other facts he should have known but didn’t.

It would have helped to know something about Joel Fisher, his first-round opponent. Fisher’s favorite movie was “The Fly,” a story about a guy being changed into a hideous insect who has a penchant for arm-wrestling. In a particularly repulsive bar scene, he gets into a match with a brute who looks like he could kill larvae with his breath. We all know the Fly is going to win, but it comes as somewhat of a shock when he snaps his opponent’s wrist in half.

Fisher likes that part best.

Knowing Fisher’s tastes in graphic violence would have forced Brown to take him more seriously. But Brown knew only what he could see. Tall and skinny, with biceps that didn’t bulge, Fisher was unimpressive. Brown, on the other hand, had the build of a weight-lifter, his buffed arms on display in a sleeveless T-shirt.

In checking out Fisher before the match, Brown thought he had a good reason for an overconfident smirk. But as the referees adjusted the combatants’ grips on the customized arm-wrestling table, Brown was only seconds away from finding out that Fisher was capable of beating the Fly left-handed, then pulling off his wings for kicks. Contrary to his physical appearance, Fisher is ranked as a world champion by a few of the nearly 100 associations that are fighting for a piece of the arm-wrestling pie.

“That Fisher guy is baaaad ,” said Dirk Cooney, who was competing in the under-145 featherweight division.

Brown, of course, never had a chance. When the refs said “Go!” his right hand hit the touch pad before he could blink. Stunned, he stood motionless, his mouth hanging open, a silly grin forming on his lips. Finally, he turned and walked back to his wife and child, who had witnessed the debacle.

Fisher watched Brown join his family. “I heard a cracking sound when we were arm-wrestling,” Fisher said. “But I don’t see him complaining, so everything must be all right.”

Brown was still in a state of shock. “His wrist strength really surprised me,” he said. “I couldn’t get his wrist to do anything. It was like a wall. I was impressed.”

Informed that Fisher was a world-class arm-wrestler, Brown looked relieved. “Now I don’t feel so bad,” he sighed.

With arm-wrestling on the far-out fringes of the sports scene, it’s no wonder that its stars can go out in public without getting recognized. At the Canoga Park event, Fisher and other champions, like light-heavyweights Jack Wynn and Len Brower, were unknown to all but a small circle of aficionados who pay attention to the nationwide series of tournaments sponsored by--no surprise here--beer companies.

“Arm-wrestling is huge in places like the Midwest,” said Steve Simons, president of the World Professional Arm-Wrestling Assn., which was running the event at the mall. “It becomes a happening once a year in Des Moines. All three TV stations cover it. We’ve got a tournament coming up at the Kansas State Fair. More than 2,000 screaming people will be there watching, all drunk. It’s a gas.”

But Fallbrook Mall wasn’t the Kansas State Fair. The crowd fluctuated between 100 and 200 curious spectators, most of them sober-looking weekend shoppers who were lured away from back-to-school sales by the shouts, grunts and cheers ringing through the mall.

“I was browsing in the video store and heard all this racket and thought the Pope was here,” said Brenda Willis of Woodland Hills. “I never expected to see an arm-wrestling tournament at the mall.”

The Forum certainly would have given the event more credibility with the press. Considering its billing as the championship of L.A., it wasn’t a media event--not one TV reporter was in sight.

Despite its popularity in the hinterlands, arm-wrestling doesn’t appear likely to be the sport of the ‘90s. National tournaments occasionally show up on ESPN, and the National Football League Players Assn. holds a tournament every year. It’s a matter of image, and the arm-wrestling promoters are having difficulty convincing anybody that the sport is anything more than a barroom diversion.

Sylvester Stallone’s $25 million movie, “Over the Top,” was supposed to give arm-wrestling a shot in the arm, a megadose of publicity to popularize the sport. But the movie did nothing except send arm-wrestling’s image back to the dark ages.

“It was a horrible, awful movie,” Simons said. “It portrayed arm-wrestlers as thugs and did nothing for our sport.” Fortunately for arm-wrestling, the movie bombed. Nobody went to see it except the kind of 13-year-old boys who don’t think there’s enough violence on Saturday-morning cartoons.

Simons says the sport has come a long way since the ancient Greeks used arm-wrestling as an alternative to death matches in settling arguments. It is genteel enough today to be presented under the sunlit rotunda of a suburban shopping mall, in full view of innocent children. And arm-wrestlers don’t necessarily have hair on their teeth and beer on their breath. Most of the competitors at Fallbrook looked like guys who wandered in after choir practice. Wynn was wearing lime-striped Bermudas, Brower a button-down shirt and wire rim glasses.

About 65 men and a few women paid $10 each to enter. Twenty percent “were walk-ons,” Simons said. A handful were world champions. Most had never wrestled in a tournament but honed their skills in dark bars and dank locker rooms. “Seventy-five percent told me they had never been beaten,” Simons said. The most unlikely competitor: Juanita Bremer, a 63-year-old grandmother of eight who said, “Jesus taught me to arm-wrestle.” She won the women’s open division.

“We’ve got people competing from all walks of life,” Simons said. “Carpenters. Truck drivers. Actors. Salesmen. Doctors. We’ve even had a priest compete. It’s grass-roots types.” Simons flipped through the entry forms and stopped. “Here’s a financial planner. See, this is a chance for anybody to be an athlete. It’s a blast. All you need is an arm and a desire to compete.”

An hour before the tournament, a dozen young entrants had weighed in on the Detecto and were milling about a jerry-rigged stage at the center of the mall. The odor of Ben-Gay was overwhelming the tasty aroma from the pecan sticky roles at a nearby Cinnamon Bear shop. A uniformed guard on the beefed-up security force tested his walkie-talkie: “132 to base. Can you read?” A woman sneered at an arm-wrestler who was doing hand-stand push-ups against a storefront. Other shoppers walked by, ignoring him. Not all the men in the mall had a desire to compete in the tournament.

“I do all my wrestling with him,” said Lloyd Sloggett, motioning to a baby carriage where little Andrew, 7 months, was staring at the ceiling.

Sloggett and his wife rolled the carriage past a group of young featherweights who were psyching up for the match. Technique and strength are said to be 80% of winning in arm-wrestling, the rest emotion. Tim Tetu, a 5-foot-6 tool-crib attendant from Torrance with a lightning bolt tattooed on his right forearm, was working on his emotion by staring intensely at a row of gold trophies.

“I’m going to win,” he said matter-of-factly. “My name’s on one of those trophies. I hope the P.A. announcer knows how to pronounce it. It’s T plus 2. T-2.”

Like most men, T-2 got his arm-wrestling start as a young boy developing his macho instincts. While the girls were playing house, T-2 and his buddies were going over the top on the dining-room table. T-2, however, never had much success.

“All my friends used to beat me in junior high,” he lamented, “but I became obsessed with arm-wrestling. I worked out and worked out. Curls. Pull-ups. The old inner tube trick”--he did a curl with an imaginary bicycle tube hooked under his foot. “I strived to win.”

Presto. “Nobody beats me anymore,” he said.

Despite his bravado, T-2 managed to remain calm as the first round approached. Which was exactly opposite the behavior of Dirk Cooney. As T-2 stood there with his arms folded, Cooney, a 22-year-old Tarzana resident who works on music videos, looked like he was plugged in to a 220 outlet. Describing himself as “a madman,” Cooney explained that he had consumed enough honey to bury a Cinnamon Bear doughnut.

“I’m carbed out,” he said, pacing in circles. “I’m gonna smoke ‘em.”

Cooney was entered in both the left- and right-handed competitions. Lucky for him. Right-handers smoked him in the first two rounds. So much for the honey rush. As a left-hander, however, he won his division, erupting in jubilation when he flattened his opponent’s arm in the championship match. T-2 reached the semifinals before being eliminated on what he thought was a dubious call by the referee.

“I don’t believe my hand was down,” he said dejectedly.

Even though most matches during the four-hour tournament lasted only seconds, there were enough dramatic moments to excite even the least knowledgeable spectator.

“I don’t know a thing,” said Mary Janowitz, a gray-haired lady from Canoga Park, “but this is really neat.”

People cheered when 4-11 Julie Stanley, who brought a booster step to stand on, won the women’s lightweight division. People laughed when light-heavyweight Steve Rodriguez shouted “ambulance!” after having his arm nailed to the table by Wynn.

And people went crazy when Shawn Ryan won his first-round heavyweight match. Using walking canes, Ryan, 27, pulled himself on stage, then supported himself during the match by leaning his torso on the table and grasping the hand peg with a withered left hand. Groaning, he took two minutes to pin his opponent. The crowd exploded in cheers. The ever-frenzied Cooney ran to the table and high-fived him.

“You are baaaad , dude!” Cooney shouted.

Afterward, Ryan, a home boy from Canoga Park, joked with security guards, most of whom knew him and his brother Pat, a former college football player. Fourteen years ago, Shawn was hit by a car and lost the use of his legs and left arm. “I don’t like to say ‘paralyzed,’ ” he said.

Appropriately, the Fallbrook tournament was a charity event, with entry fees going to The Miami Project to find a cure for paralysis.

“I can do 200 sit-ups at a time,” Ryan enthused. “I’m strong ‘cause I used to work out with my brother before the accident. Then when I went to Pierce I used my wheelchair. Every day. Back and forth from Platt to Victory. Five miles each way.”

To tournament insiders, the most eagerly awaited match was a semifinal pitting Reseda’s Wynn against Brower. Wynn, 28, is a warehouse worker at Ralphs, where, he pointed out, “I’m undefeated.” Brower, 38, discovered his talents in the Army when he arm-wrestled in the barracks. Both men were world champions, but Brower was weary of his opponent.

“Wynn is pretty tough,” said Brower, who lives in Hawthorne. “He’ll probably make me look like a nobody.”

Seemingly relaxed, the men positioned themselves at the table. The referees made sure their shoulders were square and their grips equal--the higher the grip, the better the leverage. On the “Go!” command, the combatants’ faces reddened and every muscle fiber in their body tensed. For a few seconds, their hands remained locked in an upright position, then Wynn’s eyes bulged with fury and he strained to end the stalemate. Ten seconds later, Brower’s right hand slowly pressed against the touch pad.

Cooney was awed. “ Baaaad ,” he said. “Really baaaad .”