Powerfully Armed : Contestants at World Arm Wrestling Championships Claim Their ‘Sport’ Takes Both Muscle and Brains

After three vein-popping efforts that were declared false starts, 275-pound Steven M. Judish stepped back to prepare for one final clash with his 283-pound opponent, Humberto Panzetti, the amateur arm-wrestling champion of Brazil.

This would be, relatively speaking, an endurance contest. It took Judish--himself a two-time world amateur champion--about 30 seconds to pin Panzetti’s arm to a blue pad on a wooden table as scores of supporters screamed their support for the two titans.

“I had to put everything out of my mind but my wrist,” Judish said Sunday after beating Panzetti in a preliminary match in the 16th World Amateur Arm Wrestling Championships at William Peak Park.

“I covet this title very much,” Judish said, though the championship would elude him this year. “I train for one year to arm wrestle for 10 seconds.”

If Chicago is the “City of the Big Shoulders,” Buena Park became the city of the powerful arms Sunday.

As part of the city’s annual Silverado Days celebration, nearly 150 contestants from around the country and the world took their turns standing at a pair of small, wooden tables on a square wooden platform, beneath a red-and-white canopy.

Their explosive contests of strength entertained an equal number of spectators in four sets of bleachers that surrounded the stage.

The matches ran continuously, most taking well under 30 seconds to complete; many lasted only seconds. Competitors gripped their opponents’ hands with one hand and pulled on handles with the other, their faces distorted with efforts to pin one another.

Sometimes the speed of the contests surprised first-time spectators.

“Was that it? “ asked Sara Bayon, of La Palma, after one match. “Don’t blink, or you’ll miss it,” she called to a friend.

What accounts for the enthusiasm for an activity usually performed in taverns and at kitchen tables? More than a dozen participants produced variations on the same response: the one-on-one competition.

“I didn’t have to depend on anyone but me,” said Bruce E. Way, 39, of San Marcos, a former champion working as a referee Sunday. “Win or lose, I didn’t have to answer to anyone. That’s what I like about it.”

Way, a heavy equipment operator, said “it’s a character builder. It’s a thinking sport.”

Arm wrestling, said Judish, a 38-year-old bouncer from Huntington Beach, “takes more than strength. . . . It’s quick, explosive. You have to have heart.”

Judish, a two-time world champion who dressed in black, said that because of his size he trains by having partners use two hands to his one.

International entrants from Italy, Brazil and Canada joined Americans from Vermont to Hawaii for the daylong event, which included five men’s right-handed weight divisions and four left-handed. Only a handful of women showed up for two right-handed competitions.

“I wish there were more women who came out,” said one, Joanna G. Bailey, 31, a clothes buyer from Filmore. “There should be as many women out here as men.”

Cindy K. Coghan, a 22-year-old restaurant manager from Hesperia, said the attraction for her is the feeling of “power when you get to the table.”

No longer simply a barroom pastime, arm wrestling has several national associations for amateurs and professionals, as well as a quarterly magazine, “The Armbender,” published in Scranton, Pa.

The magazine, published by the World Arm Wrestling Federation, describes arm wrestling as “the cleanest and most decent sport in America,” and lists affiliated organizations in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Egypt, India, Guyana, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia, among others.

Despite the emphasis on brawn and brute strength, a number of competitors stressed the psychological aspects of arm wrestling. Phillip H. Beaudry, a 35-year-old machinist from Vermont, who took first place in the lightweight division for left-handed wrestlers, said the sport is only half-physical: “You need the mental to go with the muscle.”

Arm wrestlers said the sport received two boosts from the media: coverage by ABC-TV’s Wide World of Sports in the early 1970s; and Sylvester Stallone’s 1987 movie about the sport, “Over the Top.”

At least half a dozen arm wrestlers who had speaking parts in the Stallone film attended Sunday’s competition, in various capacities.

The ABC exposure provided “the first step of taking it out of the barroom and making it a competitive sport,” said Way, the referee who played an oil-drinking arm wrestler who beat Stallone in the movie. “That brought a few promoters to the sport and we began getting sponsors,” including beer, soft drink and pizza companies.

Still, said Corey A. Maline, a 35-year-old Santa Ana carpenter, people don’t give arm wrestling the recognition it deserves.

“They think it’s a sideshow, but it’s not,” he said. “It’s a sport.”