Devon Larratt: Arm Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #265
i get so passionate about it i get so angry you know because there's this saying like oh can you beat him in a hook can you be man win win that's it just win and don't talk to me about anything else you believe the match is finished and i wonder if that gets in the head of the other person you see this yeah quit the following is a conversation with devon larret ben many to be one of the greatest arm wrestlers in history this is a lex friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's devin larrit you are considered to be one of the greatest arm wrestlers in history plus are one of the most charismatic and uh fun people to watch in arm wrestling but let me first start with the ridiculous the controversial opinion i actually really enjoy over the top the movie with uh sylvester stallone where he's a trucker it's like a father-son movie it's uh you know like a bunch of sports have the definitive movies unboxing has rocky maybe folk style collegiate wrestling has uh vision quest um what else is there billiards says color of money yeah this is uh the sort of movie for arm wrestling so what did over the top get right what did he get wrong about arm wrestling that was actually based off of a real story a lot of people don't know that now the over the top movie i mean to a certain degree that's actually real life like that tournament over the top was real yeah it was literally named over the top yes yes there was a trucker division and the guy actually won a truck for real his name is john berzing you know who that is right so the actual over-the-top tournament the trucker division was won by john who is john bozenk he he is a lot of people talk about him as like a legend and uh one of if not the greatest arm wrestlers of all time john brzenk is every arm wrestler's father to a certain degree all of us um the entire sport looks up to him uh he it's incredible what he's done i mean at 18 he won over the top at 57 he just competed with me a couple months ago still at the world level 18 that's 40 years of being at the top of the sport it's incredible uh he's hailed as the greatest of all time in the sport arm wrestling um yeah and he doesn't he's beating some monsters oh yeah yeah and he doesn't i mean when you talk about like the uh the evolution of the sport he's responsible for so much of it like when you talk about like a lot of times when you go back like 20 years 30 years a lot of us looked at arm wrestling i think it's i mean as something you could kind of do and he's the first guy who's like if you want to get better at arm wrestling you got arm wrestle and it seems so simple but you know he answered so many questions that all of us had about techniques in the sport uh back you know pre pre-video internet um yeah he's everybody he's been everybody's target for like 40 years so in terms of strength there's a power in terms of skill what did he teach the sport of arm wrestling so if you look how did the sport change from 80s 90s to uh the arts you were at the top of the world for many years you know um i many argue you're still at the very top of the world but like you were very dominant both left and right hand in uh i don't know 2008 to 2013 something like that yeah um so how does that sport evolve to today so it's hard for me to comment you know prior to you know when i came to the sport was kind of mid-90s like i've been arm wrestling my whole life but uh i wasn't really involved in the sport to a a major degree until probably you know mid 90s but i'll say that before the mid-90s it was really hard to get good at arm wrestling very difficult um everybody was doing it wrong really like it was really rare to find people who were technically good arm wrestlers it was very underground you know when i when i got into sport it was a flyer that came in the mail you had to know somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody and then you go to a club and you can't do anything with these people and and they'll and they knew how to arm wrestle they did but real masters were rare and you know then internet internet helped everybody communication uh the transfer of knowledge became so much faster people became technically you know invested people started training sharing sharing ideas by i'd say two thousand and well probably around the turn of the millennia i'd say that professional leagues started to slowly pick up more organized bigger productions started attract more athletes more people took it seriously by 2010 i'd say there was another jump um more serious leagues a little bit more money by 2015 more major media like people were investing a lot of money like uh you know millionaires billionaires type of people were organizing events setting up leagues and uh yeah i mean the past five years it's just blown up uh the techniques i mean if if i was to go back to when i started uh you know what what took me 10 or 15 years to learn i mean new guys are showing up and they've got it down in like a year yeah yeah well the thing about it the development of the sport is it's like i was telling you off mike it's a battle of one versus one yeah and then that can turn into battle of nations which you know there is there's canada there's the united states there's all the eastern europe russia georgia all of that that that's what makes some of the greatest sports and olympics great like weightlifting it's a battle of nations not just the battle of individuals and it's almost like these two humans represent the two nations and i see that very much we'll talk about your matches coming up but there is um that battle between north america and that other part of the world yeah yeah north america is very prized you know the north american champion is always highly sought after because they're typically the most famous even still when you know quite arguably there's always somebody in eastern europe who's just monstrous uh it's typically the north american athlete who's more recognized by the way oh yeah we'll have a cup here with some maple syrup cheers should probably show you you just down that whole thing no no no i'm going to sip it i'm going to sip it you know but by all means it's really good right yeah that is uh maple syrup yeah that's a perfect july day from canada in a bottle yeah so you're uh on a totally uh on a total tangent you are known for appreciating food in all kinds of ways but one of the things you're known for is pancakes that is uh yeah that's gone to a crazy place in the sport but yeah like where did that originate so um where that originated when it went from like your actual love for pancakes to the meme yeah so so i think what happened was uh um so i had a match with michael todd big match uh michael great champion um he's another guy who's you know he's never gonna get off the horse uh you know he's uh jesus his elbow is a complete disaster um probably one of the most loved and hated guys in the sport right now is it because of the king's move yeah the king's move brings him a lot of hate um not from me not from a lot of people but a lot of observers have a big problem with the king's move what's wrong with being a little bit controversial that's fun you know i get so passionate about it i get so angry you know because there's a saying like oh can you beat him in a hook can you be man win yeah win that's all that matters that's it just win and don't talk to me about anything else if you can win with style win will stop but don't talk to me about anything but winning other it's that's the priority so you had this match with mkhitaryan yeah so i was in a terrible place um i guess it was i get so screwed up with years it's 2022 now right no it's 20 30. what are you talking about yeah that's right i think it is actually 20 30. we're way ahead of schedule yeah oh man that's right so when was this this was like a decade ago or no no this is uh like a year and a bit ago so this is very recent very recent yeah so i got really sick yeah this is the match right okay awesome match uh so this is this match is for the legacy hammer so we invented this thing called the legacy hammer and michael took it from me and i think 2018 and then kovid shut everything down and michael went overseas to try and set up because at that time michael was a north american champion he beat me and he went to dubai and he organized this great big match with lavon and the whole thing fell apart organizers leagues we wouldn't let it happen but there was still an ability to have a match of significance happen so michael's like who do you want and like let's give devin a rematch and i'm like yes and i was really sick at the time uh i had dvt i had pulmonary embolism i was mentally in a terrible place and i got offered the match and i just totally turned my life around and i committed really hard yeah and uh what happened in this match by the way oh i just totally destroyed him yeah i just beat the piss out of him yeah um michael's a good friend of mine but uh yeah there's a lot of camaraderie yeah you guys talked afterwards but we fight like like brothers you know like so we let each other really fight hard against each other but so i was i knew i mean strength and mass they go hand in hand and i committed to just getting as big and as strong as i could and literally i was eating pancakes every day bacon pancakes every sloppy bit of garbage food i could eat i was trying to eat healthy also but if there was garbage food i'd eat it what do you mean bacon and pancakes isn't healthy what are you talking about exactly ah people should go watch there's a video where you make like the the canadian meal of uh bacon with some bacon cooking tips water that was interesting yeah and then um and then obviously pancakes and maple syrup all over the whole thing yeah yeah you're making me very hungry i i've caused more diabetes and then uh you know probably gonna get in trouble karmically for making the world obese you should probably write a like like a book the pancake diet yeah devin larry yep i think i will do that one day so you said uh mass and strength go hand in hand just at a big level about arm wrestling what's more important strength power endurance skill strategy or mental toughness like what how do these components all come into play in arm wrestling they're all important you can use everything and you can adjust your strategy based off of the tools that you have uh i would say if i i could pick ever just one thing to have more of uh i would i would say that it would be strength gained while fighting while actually i'm wrestling not off the off day no no so you get stronger from arm wrestling how do you get stronger from armrest like in jiu jitsu and grappling you can get good by training with people much uh technically worse than you so with white belts and blue belts yeah it's actually beneficial degree because you get to work stuff out right but i wouldn't say it develops like that intensity and power required to go against um people at your level so what how do you balance that do you is it okay to go against people that are much weaker than you or that you really have to go against people at the same level i think that a blended strategy is probably the best um i i'd say kind of a rule is whatever you do you get better at right so you want to be kind of as precise as possible you don't want to get hurt and it's just about investment and the answer is not always the same things are going to change i am currently a big believer in what i call tower building right so you have to do a lot of volume to build a great tower you you need to have a ton a ton of volume so so when you look at how to best build volume you want to do workouts that aren't particularly challenging to make you feel good and do them so that when you add them all together you you get the biggest number so many easy workouts a day that are specific as possible in my opinion is the best way to lay the foundation for an extreme peak and precision right like there's no more precise way to get strong at arm wrestling than arm wrestle so how often can you arm wrestle what's your training regimen you're talk you've talked about this as the climb right what is the training process to get great at arm wrestling well again it's going to depend on what level you're at um the answer at the beginning might not be the same for me a guy who's been doing it almost 30 years i have to harvest i have to harvest energy from clubs uh i call it cosmic punch sorry to interrupt you were here in austin texas you are in austin texas but you were at the what was it called the the water tank yeah he had an awesome crowd it was great i get to watch i got to interact with a lot of those guys um yes just amazing community amazing human beings i got to talk to dimitri in russian in in english he's uh he's an engineer his wife is an engineer so he's a brilliant dude but also uh one of the toughest i guess guys you faced there yeah but you faced i don't know how many people must have been hundreds of yeah so the bar was full yeah and that that for me is a perfect training scenario yeah so if i go in and just kind of be i'm like a lightning rod and i just absorb everything that i can get from people you know all their effort uh that's perfect that's perfect but i'm lucky because i'm in a place that i can handle it you know if i was losing or failing this would not be optimal but because i'm i'm strong enough i've been doing it long enough that i can kind of absorb it without damaging me this is perfect this is perfect i typically when i'm training up for a very serious match i'll try and do that uh three or four times a week and then the days in between i will just do blood flow rehab blood flow rehab i will never hit a pr a record i'll never do it anymore i don't do it i used to a lot of things change that's why i say like there's a lot of ways to do it this is currently a system that's working very well for me so when you say pr you're not aggressively chasing a peak you're just building and building a building yeah my only peak that i care about is for this cycle the 25th of june that's my only pr let's talk about the 25th oh yeah let's talk about lavon sigunishvilli the georgian hulk yeah uh question number one is it possible to beat him he is widely acknowledged as the most powerful person in arm wrestling today is he beatable and it's so how everybody's beatable everybody's beatable lavon is incredible he's uh he is what this modern peak of arm wrestling represents so for people who are just listening we we also have an overlay of a video of lavonne going against vitali will let in another top three person in the world perhaps yeah in arm wrestling and the lavon is the guy on the right just big i love it and the the aggression uh i mean actually sort of underneath it all is it seems to be a teddy bear but when he turns it on yeah it's uh it's raw power he's the full package lavonne is uh he represents the pinnacle um there's dennis in the background he's like i want to be back in there yeah lavon has a lot of bases covered uh he's i mean he's curling 300 pounds with one arm i mean the strength that he shows for arm wrestling is is is so far ahead of the field it's very very strong um [Music] but it's absolutely possible it's absolutely possible the one thing that i'm confident about well i'd say there's two things the two things i'm confident about is that i have more experience than he does and experience counts for a lot the other thing is my ability to breathe and recover so if ever there's an opportunity for the tide to turn that's i think where he'll never get it back so i think if i can somehow find a hole in his game then uh yeah so you you want to hold off the initial like assault of power and that and then wear them out and to find the hole and then so it's how much of that is mental how much of it is just the physical ability to do for your muscles to have the endurance to hold off i like to make the sport bigger and a lot of things that most arm wrestlers believe the sport is i always try and push those boundaries so there is definitely a mental aspect to it when you're faced with something that you've never seen before that's when things like experience comes in he can become surprised where what's a surprise for him is routine for me so my adjustments will be more precise more accurate that's how i get in that's how i get in yeah i play i play a dirty game you know so some of it uh how important is confidence in the whole in the progression of the match is there ups and downs of confidence like holy shit i actually have a chance to win this holy shit i'm winning this you're done there's some of my favorite moments i don't know if those are fake or not in terms of your expressions if faking until you make it but whenever you shake your head or whatever it you make it apparent that you believe the match is finished and i wonder if that gets in the head of the other person when you start to actually uh so i'm sure you're doing things in like precise detailed things with your hands to also indicate that you believe they're finished but you're facially just see this yeah quit oh that's right because it's 15 yet so that's ultimate the battle is about it's like it's you're done it's you might as well give up commitment is so important in anything that you do right like um i always kind of try and bring things to a level of commitment that's uncommon i i think that that's a lot of reasons why i do well is because i just get so committed in the whole process and by the time that i actually show up to fight i sometimes just wish that they would kill me you know i wish that they would because that's what that's how far i want to go like people talk about like how committed are you to the match like if you're committed to the match and you lose you should be hurt like that's i'm often unhappy when i lose a match and i don't have an injury i'm like damn like what the fuck like i should have like i feel i feel like i didn't commit you know um i don't know if you know dan gable is the wrestler he oh yeah he was dawn uh he has on the podcast yeah yeah uh he he talked about his whole career he dreamed of working so hard that he gets he can't get off the mat right by himself and he was always dis he's disappointed ultimately at the end of his career because he was always able to get off the mat on his own accord so he wants to yeah leave it all on the mat just from exhaustion so that that's what commitment looks like yeah what what is this process what is this climb for probably the toughest match of your career i would say the most epic match in in arm wrestling history i mean it's really building up you are the you said north america that's a i mean i think uh by a councilman you're one of the greatest arm wrestlers ever he is one of the scariest wrestlers ever and so this match uh by the way where is it happening it'll be in dubai in dubai yeah june so what does the climb look like the climb for me um what i have to change in my life always people talk about being a professional i've always loved the sport i've loved it like crazy but to me the path is about simplicity and removal of distractions i do better and better the more i get rid of everything nothing else so that my life is just the goal just the target and everything else is off the table and that's that's where i need to get to um where there's nothing there's nothing between me and him and every single day you're putting in the volume every day all day now you said you worked out so you yesterday you did hundreds of arm wrestling matches and then today you said in the morning you still worked out so what was that workout so you you're mixing up stuff where you're doing weights also uh this morning you know i try to really focus on what's administratively easy uh that's a big part of me is everything i do so i just travel with bands yeah i got bands with me and it's rehabilitative in nature so i'm really focusing on blood flow uh feeling good doing proper movements but yeah just uh band workout in the hotel what does a band workout look like so are you doing the arm wrestling movement are you oh do that see what you did there what's that yeah it's you that you want to bring them in up oh the up thing up up up into your center right you think what can you control out here no you bring everything close you want every just that's it don't worry about pinning painting happens once it's close to you yeah yeah the pinning is people always think about pinning you don't think about pinning how much of the body is a part of this too like the uh the core the torso because it feels like there's that almost like uh mike tyson punch power right yep does it come from the hips too and the the legs it just gives you the body the whole body it's definitely the whole body like everything is working uh you're connected to the table at times as far as your base sometimes your base is your feet but a lot of times you can base off the table so so you can base off your hips but i'll tell you no arm wrestler cares about doing squats no arm wrestlers doing planks yeah okay it's all about the forearm and the actions of the hand yeah that's always the limiting factor you look at a guy like oleg zok okay do you know this guy oleg zak marvelous he's a he's that total hellboy he's my inspiration to what i call pumpkin training but um what's pumpkin training uh probably we'll get into that but i only train my right arm that's it yeah with homework but back to full body it is full body my my good friend matt mask when he arm wrestled me he actually blew his internal abductor in his in his leg so yeah people walk away from tournament their calves can be sore sometimes you know it happens but no oh there he is right there yeah oh like he's he is a real life hell boy he's like he's like 170 pounds there look at his arm look at his hair it's crazy yeah yeah he's totally crazy that's you doing left right there so that's by the way lavon you're going right yeah yeah so can you say more about the the mental side are you visualizing what it takes to beat him are you trying to get in his head um all of these things so do you think it's possible to get in a set um there's definitely strategies that you can do depending on who it is you're facing uh it's very good to know who it is you're fighting and choose the correct strategy mentally but i always follow a process when it comes to my mental preparation when i'm far away from an event i just always build up my opponent build them i build them i respect them to a point where i almost start to fear them and start to believe that they'll beat me and this is a very vital part of my preparation and that's where i am right now with lavon i don't i just build them up build them up into this thing that scares me and it forces me to be responsible you know because i don't want to lose you know i want to win so the greater my opponent the greater i can build their worth in my mind the more motivation it gives me then there comes a point when uh when it changes and then i start to degrade them and uh yeah that's when it normally starts to get fun and uh normally by the time i face them uh i just try and completely dominate from every interaction from start to finish yeah when uh in the actual moment of the match like in in the moments leading up to it what's the feeling is it uh fear is it confidence anxiety what what's going through your mind i love to fight i love it uh lo i always have i um there's there's every day where you have you know the distractions of life and then there's really living in the moment right it's whatever you love to do and that's when you can you know really be free uh i i'm free when i'm fighting right so you put me in that good fight and i just love it i don't think about the past i don't think about the future i just think about killing that dude in front of me and i enjoy that and just being intensely in the moment just that's it just right there just fighting as hard as i can do you study the opponent like do you have you for this particular match do you study videos of lavon i've seen everything i've read everything i get opinions from other people i watch very closely yeah what do you make of his evolution so so he's he's grown in size but also you've talked about his um you know evolution technically as well well then studying him since we're in the uh build your opponent to be terrifying stage uh what uh what makes him great he's very impressive the the greatest thing about him is is his strength that's the thing that sets him apart from everyone uh his strength specialized strength exact strength for arm wrestling i believe it's unmatched can we just uh linger on that word strength what does strength mean what does it feel like are we talking about um bicep like shoulder we're talking about like whatever control right the wrist yeah is it the where what how does strength manifest you know like when i touch your hand when we grab arms i feel like fuck that's true that there's control what is that feeling where does that come from we're in arm wrestling when you're at the top of the world where does that come from so it's chains there's chains of strength and in arm wrestling this is like technical strength okay and we use these technical chains to fight each other the the change that i'll talk about is so you'll talk remember how we talked about the post this upwards drive this ability to close this angle this is a chain um it can be used it's it's a technical attack it's also an attack that can be built with with training just the ability to just drive upwards uh there's a chain where you cup right cup your wrist and cup your wrist in and the anchor and the chain brings you right to your heart right to your center right this chain and this can be done at any time there's a pronation chain and that's that's to turn your thumb over right turn your thumb over and you attack the person's cupping chain and there's a huge number of muscles involved in each chain and that's why i say it's a chain right but they're movements and these movements you can develop in the gym or through practice so you don't mean so it's easy to sort of interpret strength to mean the the how much you curl essentially yeah but you mean the chain it's all right and that's like i mean people talk as a bicep i mean yes there's bicep for sure involved but i i'll always be inaccurate if i try and tell you like what muscles are the so i prefer to explain it in a movement and then everything that's involved to do that movement right yeah and levon's movements for arm wrestling are incredibly impressive what do you attribute to how much of that is genetics how much of it is some training thing he's doing i think that lavon is very special in terms of his genetics like not everybody can be levon you know yeah there's there's not many lavons out there um but what i've encountered in the bias that i always see like when people talk about people like lavonne they discount the other side so very quickly and the thing is lavon rarely has to show it on the other side because he's so far ahead you talk about the technical application of the sport he so rarely needs to show it but he's clearly incredible if you watch his progression he came up having very difficult technical struggles to overcome georgia is a great country for arm wrestling like there's this guy gennady click vina who no one would ever say is not technical and you know it took him years to defeat him to a point where now it's not it's not even a discussion yeah you talk about the progression they had a lot of battles together over the years yeah it's fascinating to see the tides turn oh yeah and once they've turned it's like completely completely different level yeah i mean he's got he's got strength he's got technique some people will argue that his technique is flawed at times they've shown matches where he hasn't shown the best technique but he's still one and i think sometimes he just plays with people you know like uh there's a famous match that he had with uh they call him the bruce lee of arm wrestling a guy called anger bayev uh kurta gali angerbaiev he's they had a match in the top eight great match curtis ali is like 220 pound guy from kazakhstan uh brilliant technician but power wise you know not in the same world and curtigali did well even though he lost six nothing he still did well but in my opinion lavon didn't care lavon was like grabbing him low and just like whatever like i will show him things that he's not seen before i will um he hasn't competed often in this rule set which will be a challenge for him but uh yeah what can i say like lavon he's he's everest yeah yeah yeah you are seen by basically everybody is the big big underdog but you also even even in the eastern even uh i mean i talk to russians a lot they're you uh you know that moment in rocky when they start cheering for rocky yeah yeah you're kind of the they they love you they want you to win and just you know it's not even um just the battle itself is inspiring and it's it's it's like the culmination in your career because it's you know you're at the top for a long time but it's like it's almost like it should be over for you but no you're returning it's it is like this big moment yeah the big climb i will be the pointy end of the spear for north america yeah uh beautiful well let's uh thanks for bringing that match up let's talk about just um the the the match against uh dennis your left-hand match yeah he's also terrifying and seen as one of the strongest probably the uh one of if not the strongest left hand arm wrestler yeah there's a lot to be said there maybe you could talk about this match at a high level why did you take on this match why did you do the left hand yeah versus the right hand what can you tell the story okay dennis the plank off there's so much about this match i love dennis russian guy yeah russian guy russian i used to call him dennis chernobyl uh what a monster he kind of uh led i'd say this new era of arm wrestling where the super heavyweight strength level has just gone through the roof i wanted the match for such a long time we tried to get the match uh we couldn't get it organized this is back in like you know 2008 to 2012 couldn't get the match couldn't get the match i've always been more of a one-on-one puller he was doing the uh the tournament format i was ranked number one in the world and towards the end it kind of was very undecided i ended up getting surgery i ended up abandoning the super heavyweight division i went down at 225s for a few years wal failed temporarily um so the 225 pound division was scrapped and i said okay i'm gonna go for the for the big crown once again and i started uh to go after super heavyweights the 2018 season was right hand uh i started to enter negotiations to have the match with him i we've been chasing the match for 10 years they want to do it left hand i want to do a right hand i just wanted to i just wanted to do the match i wanted to do the match with dennis i wanted to meet dennis so people should know that you were the right hand has always been your strongest it has been i mean i had surgery in 2016. i hate to make excuses i hate to do it um dennis was better than me that day even on my best day if you had gone back my entire career at no single day do i beat dennis to plank off in 2018 i would like to think that i could maybe do it now but at that point there would be no version that could have beat him i left all right uh right hand no i i'm curious about the right uh but left hand so is the world well it might still happen it might but uh dennis completely destroyed me um and i learned a lot from it i i think before the dennis match i think i was i don't know i i don't know exactly what your word to use maybe i felt like my thinking was a little bit elitist uh and i really learned a lot i was really humbled that day um [Music] by how far and how professional and how prepared dennis was and how seriously he took the sport there's a mental a slightly terrifying calmness to him which only comes with extreme preparation i think yeah his level of dedication uh was extremely inspiring to me you know i used to do a job where it was serious enough that the the price could be death right and i arm wrestled throughout that entire period and i always kind of looked at uh you know the cost of doing an activity being death limited to soldiering and i i kind of changed my mind a lot after that match i realized that anything that you're in love with once you get far enough down the road and professional enough at it it's gonna kill you like doesn't matter what you're doing if you're crazy enough about anything it's probably gonna take your life for me in some way and that doesn't mean you rush towards death it's just your level of investment and level of risk can have some catastrophic effects bukowski charles bukowski i think has the quote uh do what you love and let it kill you right like that right and i understood that dennis's level of professionalism far exceeded mine in what we were doing at the time and i realized that you know i i was no longer employed i was now in the world of professional arm wrestling and i realized that uh you know what was i doing like how serious was i so dennis is an incredible guy is there moments in that match there's there's humility there too from him that was a fascinating uh sort of it seemed like you realize that you just hit a wall and you were not ready enough for it it was incredible there was so many things that i remember about the dentist match i mean i remember you know seeing video of somebody and then meeting them in person it's different i remember in the weigh-ins sorry not the weigh-ins and the the standoff that we did you know before the match i'm looking at him like i'm close i'm looking at his arms and his bicep it looked like an ass like it was like a freaking glute muscle yeah like his entire structure was so sinewy and just so strong i was like wow he's so physically so impressive and i remember when i arm wrestled him a certain at a certain time he allowed me to kind of set my position you can very you can't really tell because it happens very quickly but he let me set my position which means i kind of got my locks in where where you can kind of really do a great hold and he just ripped through me just so you you were able to get this great position so it was tore right through me yeah and uh the first time i ever thought that uh you know he that i had torn something i thought like after the match i'm like did he rip my chest right in half like um what yes no i didn't i didn't actually nothing went purple or anything but um yeah the strength gap was very significant with dennis uh so could he what would it take to beat him on that day um it would it would take me just being a little bit stronger um and and more healthy yeah uh my left was not as healthy as it should be like i didn't have a full rounded technical arsenal it takes a time after surgery it really does like i mean you can be good but after a surgery like what i had you know you're probably looking at three or four years before you're starting to hit technical proficiency the way you should be and uh yeah just a bit stronger how do you interpret the calmness on his face well what is that about the z actually it's very russian it's a russian it's a russian thing i think i don't know i see a lot of russians like that you know they're so like stoic and i'm such a fan of russia i i really want to go to moscow i've been saying it forever you've never been not yet not yet i i want to go i want to just go and live there for like a month and just train the moscow has got such a crazy arm wrestling scene they've got from what i understand they just have so many clubs there's so many strong athletes just go and just lightning rod yeah are you considered doing something of that sort it's like rocky iv again oh yeah like oh and lead up to june i would certainly consider it i've got only one trip planned at the moment administration is very important what do you mean by administration so like managing your time and management yeah the management has to be very efficient you know when i'm a tourist when i'm a visitor a little bit of that goes down you know when i'm at my home and things are familiar i've got a really great grasp on my time you know everything's in place everything's perfect you know if i could magically transport moscow into my hometown and just go out and visit them yeah so it's very difficult when you're traveling you have to keep all the you have to figure out what you're eating where how are you getting the food all the socializing plus you're more and more celebrity so there's social interaction which i don't know um how draining that could be on you outside of the arm wrestling table so all you have to manage all of that because ultimately you have to focus on the fight ahead yeah yeah a lot of my strength comes from just being in a familiar place doing my routine i love to travel i love to get out there and meet people and new experiences but when i just want to really prepare for a big match yeah home is uh where i get strong so that loss against dennis was one of the few losses in your career uh how did that feel in the moments after in the days after in the months after in the years after how has it changed you as an arm wrestler as a human being well it's tough to lose uh still haunt you um [Music] i don't think so i actually was really happy to lose to dennis because you know sometimes when you lose a match there's a lot of matches that i've lost where they upset me because i know i made a mistake i didn't make a mistake with dennis he was just he was just way better there's nothing i could have done that day i'm really at peace with it dennis to me was just a big inspiration i think that me arm wrestling dennis left-handed that day just let me touch probably one of the strongest human beings on the arm wrestling table that's ever lived you know left-handed so so knowing that's possible is almost like yeah inspiration to you that i can be at that level too yeah yeah yeah seeing what dennis did uh you know just trying to absorb a little bit of his knowledge uh planted seeds in me yeah i mean when i look at my career it's it's a bit like the stock market but for sure i'm trending upwards and since really kind of wrapping my mind around uh some of the russian philosophies they really changed my training systems uh there were some base philosophies that they talked to me about over there that massively impacted my training is it possible to convert some of those philosophies into words can you describe some of the ideas they taught you so never smile right man there's so like it takes a while to break the ice with a lot of these guys uh well once you do i mean that's this deepest bonds you can form there yeah yeah for sure i think that i was raised under i believe it's a flawed it's i mean it's not flawed because it has its value as well but it's best if you understand both philosophies uh i think a north american thing that's just so ingrained in our fitness society is no pain no gain you know and just pushing and like sweating and going harder and like fighting through like and grit and toughness and but and then you talk to the russians and they're like yeah never fail you never fail never never go to failure uh always feel good always feel good it should always feel good don't um and those two philosophies express themselves very differently um and if you want to get strong yeah don't fail don't fail so that's how you they also are believers of volume yeah uh there's a lot of strategies but yeah volume is a massive principle and volume is very hard to achieve when you're believing in no pain no gain right right they don't really go together no pain no gain more injuries so the is there parallels because in in wrestling some of the greatest wrestlers of all time are russian and they they were big um dan gable talks about it they were big on play right like lighter wrestling right probably ultimately actually it boils down to that's how you achieve higher volume right like over the stretch of years the way to reduce injury um i mean in wrestling also technique might um have greater value than it does in arm wrestling obviously technique is extremely important in arm wrestling but power is like can defeat technique it seems like yeah in wrestling you can get away there's a lot of ways you can really uh uh do sneak attacks sort of use leverage all those kinds of things so there's even more incentive to do play and all that kind of stuff yeah but uh do you do you see the parallels between the two worlds oh yeah wrestling and arm wrestling 100 you saw what i did the other night right so i'm playing on the table for hours yeah right so that's that's that's that's my number one training thing that i do is i go on the table for hours and i play yeah yeah when you did uh sergey can you pull up that video it's on devin's channel the uh the water tank one oh it's like 180p it's like the the wi-fi in there was so bad yeah it's great i love it but it's uh maybe the i don't know if it was fisheye but it had a fisheye feels yeah crowded i mean so much camaraderie it was it was amazing but maybe uh just a brief mention of uh dimitri the uh the russian the russian guy what uh uh what in that play what are some memorable things here like you when you go against a bunch of different people a bunch of strangers what are all the differences and how do you grow from them how do you learn from them well everybody's a bit different so i love to go to new clubs because the energy is always high like the first time you go to a club everybody's trying to kill you yeah yeah so there's excitement yeah this is and so you feed off of that yeah you do you can you can if you're able to be strong enough to absorb it without injury it's awesome it's awesome um because they're giving you everything they can yeah yeah yeah right so it's it's very specific right like i'm gonna get way stronger at arm wrestling and what i try and do when i go to these places as i make an assumption i make an assumption that i'm the best guy there and so i'll arm wrestle in a way that kind of protects them because the more i can protect them and kind of keep them kind of in a good position they can actually give me more right so i kind of i kind of give them little pieces that i think will put them in a place that they can really give me more and so yeah that's what i'm doing and then when i see somebody like dimitri yeah i pull that in a little bit right so okay so i know dimitri's the number one guy in texas uh you know lots of respect to the guy i i won't give him all the pieces until i really kind of gauge where he's at because i certainly in training don't want to fail i don't want that i don't want to when you fail in arm wrestling it's just imagine it's just bad technique and you're trying and bad technique you're going to get hurt yeah so you always want to be in a strong position here what about in how do how does endurance come into play here and here's video yeah strapping up with that's right yeah how do you i mean you went for like i don't know two hours a year yeah so the first this first run of the video i think was a little over an hour and then i took a break and i probably did another 45 minutes or so but i mean do you how can are you okay with the endurance aspect of this yeah that's probably like when you talk to the arm wrestling world that's probably what i'm best known for is my endurance so this helps build that it does but that's not why i'm doing it i'm doing it to get strong in my opinion this is this is one of the best ways to get strong especially far away from the from a tournament uh or or any kind of an event i wouldn't want to do this you know even a month or even six weeks or even maybe even eight weeks before a big event i'd want to already be kind of shrinking my volume but far away from an event yeah as much volume as your body can handle and you'll feel it you'll feel it like i felt it at times like you know after the hour mark i'm like okay i can feel my blood sugar kind of diminishing i can feel like the blood that's going through my muscles is kind of like it's not really pushing more good stuff in it's start i'm starting to break down and you don't want that you don't want that quick pause bathroom break i'm good okay i kind of need one yeah i'll maybe get a sweater it's a bit is it cold do you does that matter does that care for content i couldn't make it warmer no no that doesn't matter and i still love the idea of you going to russia yeah and uh training there yeah i'm also making a trip out to russia oh yeah i went for differently well it's hard with the current conflict uh yeah the tension's there but i'm hoping uh before your match actually so may for a couple of interviews with a couple of folks some of which people know maybe i could ask you about uh to comment on some matches that stand out to you in in your in your career sure is there something uh is there a particular i have a bunch that i really enjoy but is there something that stands out to you as as uh as memorable we talked about sort of uh defining laws perhaps the dentist [Music] then um you you faced michael tyler who mentioned john brzenk you've you've faced matt um is there something that stands out to you that uh technically or psychologically you've learned a lot from i've i feel like i try and learn something from every match but there is a very special match to me that to this day i can't explain uh very weird phenomena so i think it was 2005 uh it was my first combat tour overseas so it was a active tour uh you know among among other things i i got shot during that tour like we got blown a long tour rough tour and i trained the whole time through knowing that at the end of this i was gonna have a big match so there's a champion guy called ron bath uh he's kind of if there was no john berzink there would be ron bath okay so extremely decorated unbelievable arm wrestler from the united states and this is kind of when i was just kind of coming up in the sports still i was fairly well established i was definitely the best guy in canada and i had been for a few years but i hadn't really expanded internationally too much so i had a one-on-one match with ron bath and that's the one yeah extremely hard-fought battle was 3-1 i think 3-1 but every match was really close and he won the first one and i had to kind of like dig my way out of the trenches and uh ended up coming back and winning but it was a match that was probably it was probably one of my closest matches ever and it seems like there's frustration on you what is that what was going through your mind here with these uh was it first of all going in did you think you could beat them what was the level of call i always think i can win like i always do um but you know a lot of respect to the guy um but yeah i mean i always think i can do it uh so how did what what lessons did you take away from it uh why why is it so meaningful to you well it's what happened afterwards so i had some kind of a release afterwards and that was the strange thing to me so match ended and i felt like so relaxed afterwards so calm so so you know satisfied because it was one of those matches uh that kind of takes everything from you yeah but you win it and i was relaxing in the chair and i've never had this sensation before i've never had it afterwards but it's like the center of my backbone just exploded and it was like so weird right because i'm not really spiritual that much or religious even but it's like a fire just ripped through me and it only lasted an instant just exploded through my whole body out at the top through my feet and then i was gone that was it uh weirdest thing i've ever felt my entire life um yeah but it was it was as a result of uh what happened in the match and leading up to it i had some kind of a release um so what it does is almost how did you interpret it psychologically was it like uh some kind of i mean not to be spiritual or whatever but some kind of superpower that was uh like like a lingering feeling like holy shit i them you know i can't i can't explain it and i haven't really tried hard enough to try to uh but something changed something happened there yeah something happened to me i was sore for about three or four months afterwards it's like it smoked out my entire body yeah that whole summer i was kind of sore and uh yeah and then after that like two or three years later that's when i won the world championships um yeah i mean all the matches are you know you get something from people like you know you study them you you take something from them people have an invisible crown and uh he had one and i think i took it from him [Laughter] maybe that was the feeling of wearing the crown yeah maybe what about all the trash talk how much of that did you learn does that come naturally to you you're you're one of the most charismatic fun i mean there's always like respect behind it i would say to me and i'm a fan of a lot of sports you're one of the greatest trash talkers in all of sports that i've ever seen because you're able to talk shit but there's so much love and respect behind it it's just masterful but you also get into people's heads yeah in the moment it's beautiful to watch because they it really gets it gets to some people so where does that come from this powerful weapon right yeah it's through your voice is a powerful powerful weapon and it's under utilized by so many athletes because they think that it's not sportsmanlike or something like that but the truth is i mean you can be a a weak person but with your voice you can influence and change any number of things and the same thing happens in a fight between two people if you can just be a never-ending you know flow of negative encouragement to someone or you know you know suggestion uh anything can happen it's a tool and when you're fighting a person you're not just fighting them you're fighting everyone who's watching you're fighting the crowd the referees and you know to get in the most ideal positions situations you need to use your voice yeah yeah and there's uh for people who haven't seen i i definitely recommend you watch a bunch of arm wrestling matches because um there's a crowd really gets into it and it feels it feels like there's a really intimate connection with the crowd i suppose because the crowd is allowed to be very close to you yeah and says i love it i i want the crowd like right up on me yeah yeah so sometimes oh yeah so who are you when you whenever you talk to somebody you literally pick somebody from the crowd yes oh yeah i'll i'll fuck him like i'll start fucking off his fans and like yeah like i'll start talking to their wives or whatever yeah yeah uh yeah there's jody um she's pretty dangerous to to listen to also but yeah one of his buddies mike solaris who's you know really good arm wrestler was was talking was was cheering for him so i started go after him yeah yeah smiling the whole time yeah it's fun right it's fun yeah fan is fun to listen to but it's also what's fun is how much it actually affects some of the people you're facing they get frustrated yeah it's great to see well you have to fight right like a lot of people think things will be given to them and and the thing that you know i've always believed from the time i was very young like uh i i was convinced that uh our inevitable death was gonna come from aliens right like some super aggressive super violent species was gonna come and smoke us all you know and i'm like i'm i'm not like that i'm like but as soon as one person is then you're forced to have to accept it as reality right so i like to fight for every single thing i like to try and be more and more aggressive and if someone matches me that's when i can use my endurance and if they don't then i have the tactical advantage so that's kind of my my balance point and then by the way you also yell at the ref yeah i mean the games there's like levels to this game but you know the feeling sometimes when people get frustrated it's like okay this person's cheating or like you're trying to get a good grip uh before they go before it goes and and i think some of the frustration in combination with the trash talk is what this person is cheating right but everybody is like kind of trying to achieve get an edge within the rules yeah so i try and just ramp it ramp it ramp it but uh you know everybody's different i've learned how to play the game based off of the tools that i have physically yeah and for me this works because you know my genetic makeup is more i'm more of a persistence hunter right so like i need to extend things and that works well for me um you know if i was ex more explosive i probably wouldn't have the same strategies yeah by the way for people who were just watching uh you're wearing a no limits hoodie which is uh one of your nicknames i uh i don't wash this thing too much it's my bacterial shield to uh to the world yeah yeah awesome so you mentioned jody she's often in uh in your corner and does perhaps more trash talking than even you so i mean if we could step away she's an incredible human being is sort of as a fan it's fun to watch the two of you both when you are arm wrestling and just as people you just see so much i don't know kindness and love radiating from the two of you whenever you're trash talking or talking about just uh random things or just talking about life it's just a beautiful thing to watch and thank you for sharing that with the world but maybe can you um she paid me to ask you this what what are the things you love about jody your wife jody larry what are the ways she's affected your life yeah jody and i go way back right we were in high school together um the thing that i admire most in people is is bravery uh it's to me it's the most admirable quality and jody always has inspired me because she's such a fighter you know if if she believes that something's true um she'll she just she does not back down she will she will not and you can not to say that she's can't change her mind cause she can but while she is convicted she will uh she'll not stop fighting she's pulled me out of the fire repeatedly we've we've lived through so many things i'm very lucky how has she made you a better arm wrestler she's fed me [Laughter] yeah i could see your uh you have videos of your house basically coming apart when she's not there yeah yeah yeah without jody i'm on the street uh living in a tent and uh yeah down by the eating dog food yeah yeah um bravery yeah what about love how's love made you stronger now we're gonna make uh devin uncomfortable love is difficult to accept love is one of those things that um you know a lot of times you don't feel worthy of it you know and so it's hard sometimes to accept someone's love and someone who really loves you they'll love you even when you don't you know and here you go you're gonna make me cry alex uh yeah jody and i've been through so much um and she's shown me how you know she supported me just repeatedly repeatedly some of that is loyalty and patience and perseverance and all those things that's like when love really shows itself yeah sticking through yeah together for years even when you're to the the shitty times love and faith are powerful forces in this universe you know without them that we can descend into darkness very quickly you know as a world even between people you know when love and faith is destroyed then then we fall apart you know and i've i've been graced by by the love that jody's given me you know it's allowed me to continue to build you know when you have love between people then you build together um i love i love my family i love canada i love the arm wrestling community i have a love for what we're trying to achieve as a human species you know and uh you know when that when that falls apart we don't have much yeah just with my boy there yeah yeah she um he also mentioned your uh and uh you once had a job where uh your death was a real possibility so you won the canadian special forces what did you take away from that experience that time it was such a such a great life really really loved it i honestly i never i never wanted to leave i never thought i would leave i thought i'd be there my whole life um a real honor to to get to serve what what did you get to do what was the things you loved craftsmanship wise like fun things you get to do learn and challenge yourself yeah and and you mentioned sort of honor yeah in terms of the the the serving part yeah yeah my favorite thing about serving in the special forces was for sure the people that i worked with that's probably the first thing i could say uh you know i never i always felt like totally comfortable and and putting my life in the other guy's hands i was so happy to be in a place where i felt i could follow um like it didn't matter like i knew that the people ahead of me were were incredible i knew the people beside me were incredible so just having that faith in your team is very special and to know that they're for there for a reason that has nothing to do with money you know there and that's what kind of brings everybody together is you're there to for a higher purpose uh and in terms of being an adrenaline junkie there's nothing like it i mean there's nothing like you know going out at night and fighting uh and when i say fighting like my whole life i wanted to fight uh and to me there's a lot of and look at i've said this in the past and i think it's been a personal failure of mine because i've said things like it's the highest level that you can i don't believe that to be true anymore but at the time uh i thought it was the best way i could express um my drives that i had you know to be a fighter um so oh so your sense in the past and maybe in part now is that so fighting is when humans get a chance to express themselves deeply like like that that mix of um the bravery the integrity the yeah whatever that is that makes us human that human scary can really shine and i don't believe that anymore i believe that you can do that in any field in any discipline you know if you go hard enough it all kind of starts to feel the same but at the time uh that you know expression to me was really really awesome i i loved i loved close quarter battle that was my favorite thing that's really the whole reason i was there uh can you describe close quarter battle close quarter battle is is team fighting so and it can look a lot of different ways but basically it's ground troops doing some kind of a mission and it's the orchestrated movement that is the skill the orchestrated movement and the the drills done quickly and accurately it's it's it's very difficult with communication with communication yeah absolutely so you're it's basically cooperating together absolutely yeah there's some strategies there's some adapting to the changing environment and the more the team works together the less communication there is yeah yeah uh and that's an amazing thing to do to be part of a machine well machine a team of people who can fight together like that it's i think it's it's uh we're really designed to do it like as good as we can fight as individuals the thing that makes us really good is our ability to fight as a team yeah yeah we're that's one of the things that makes us really human is that collective intelligence yeah social aspect and uh fighting is the highest of stakes so like that social interaction under the highest stakes is uh really does bring out something that's deeply human um i mean war in general brings out something deeply human it's just it's i mean obvious to say that it's tragic that it results in so much loss of life and well-being uh let me if it's okay for a brief moment to take us back to um arm wrestling we we we did this like offline we talked about you gave me some advice and about arm wrestling but maybe do a high level overview of um like the different styles and strategies that we've talked about we talked about the importance of strength and power but is there like offensive defensive styles is there we mentioned kings move uh what what what would you classify your style as it's nice for people that don't know maybe even zoom back out so arm wrestling is a sport yeah where two people have to uh when we talk about strictly the sport put their elbow on a particular pad means they have to keep that elbow on that pad and they uh win when the back of one of their hands crosses some kind of or basically touches the table that's it and uh when you actually lock up you do so depending on the organization without straps meaning there's just you agree it's like mutual agreement that you're going to uh uh clasp your hands in in a way that's fair and there's a referee that helps ensure that it's fair but of course there's these little games going on and then when you actually go all out with this battle if there's no straps you can slip out and so often you'll put the straps which means you're uh it's like marriage yep you're committed yeah uh for like somebody will have to lose essentially uh there's no pulling out so this okay so that's sort of the battle within that what are the different styles that you can speak to that people that don't know arm wrestling could uh could could yeah we can start to kind of just dance around the subject a bit i'd say there's a lot of different types there's specialists and there's kind of blenders and people who are very versatile a lot of guys win world championships on one singular move they get just extremely crisp at say a hook or a top roll and their style is very kind of focused and you'll see it with a lot of athletes like kind of a talk about guy who's very active a guy called jerry catarat okay as soon as you think jerry caderet he's got a very unique style he's got a flop wrist press okay so most of his technique is built around this one system flop wrist means you're yes what it sounds like yeah your wrist is flopped so yeah but you're like you're losing pushing so he is pushing from a losing position no he will be offensive so he will be in a press so offensively so he'll give his hand away so that he can get his shoulder behind it properly so he doesn't wow right so you can press press means put like push push yeah uh without having that hook position right which is what most people are always looking for and jerry's looking for it as well and then so example there's another one there's another specialist matt mask yeah he's a top roller right uh he basically that's his that's his great moves it's top roll and his other weapons aren't nearly as powerful this incredible top roll and then you have a lot of athletes that are more blended okay they have a lot of good options um i think that i probably fall more into that category you have people who are more speed guys okay so they try and do very little uh i'd call it attrition right so a lot of people are very willing to trade energy because they have faith that their their gas tank or their pool eventually will tire the other person out so anytime there's a trade they'll trade whereas you know a guy like travis baijin you know he was very very well known as being extremely explosive right but if the match stops typically he's going to lose all right so based off of your genetics your hand you know there's a lot of ways to skin it so i think you said something like you're a 22nd guy that's right i'm the 22nd guy so what are we what are the seconds we're talking about so a lot of the power people they want to win in the first maybe five seconds like even shorter just that first push that first press that absolutely and that's right right to the pad yeah and so you're trying to hold off that attack yeah if i beat you in a second we're not in the same world yeah when i'm with my peer group i will typically win 20 seconds and beyond that's a typical win for me when i'm with a peer whereas other guys when they're with their peers they'll win in a second right that's how they do it that's that's the way they're built that's the way they they train um yeah most guys at a higher level it all starts to kind of it starts to get more and more difficult to be a specialist at the high level now some people just have little holes in their games it's rare to get someone who can really do all the moves it's very rare what uh where would you put lavon uh i would not say he's a specialist i'd say his top role is his strongest move top roll is his strongest move yeah uh and the interesting thing about the specialist versus the blender there's a counter right every move has a move that theoretically should be the right choice so if you're a single move guy uh there's gonna be a guy out there who'll get you yeah it'll be very difficult for you to beat that guy um but like when you come to like a tournament typically specialists do much better in tournament scenarios because their singular move can get them through a tournament very quickly and efficiently whereas you get a blender in a tournament they typically will have longer and more difficult matches and you out right yeah yeah but in in super match format typically blenders do better so we uh offline also talked about arm sumo or uh freedom arm wrestling i don't know how you want to call it i love freedom exactly north american way uh so what so this is this is this idea and i watched a few videos and it looks fun it's basically removing the restriction of having to keep your elbow on the pad and just being able to arm wrestle over the whole table i i think you've mentioned that the criticism that gets is it might be injury prone or something like that yeah so can you describe this arm sumo freedom arm wrestling idea right when you come to freedom arm wrestling basically it removes the limitation of a standard arm wrestling table yeah right so basically every single thing is a freedom arm wrestling table some are better than others all right so looking for that nice table where we can kind of stand apart from each other and we're anatomically you know in a fairly safe position and the rules and freedom the way you win is like the knuckles must either touch the tabletop or you hold it off the edge for for a three count right so this is the main way to win yes you can foul like if you lift the eyeball up still a foul but you have the entire playing surface so your elbow is no longer limited to your seven by seven or seven by nine pad so you can move it all over the table you can move your body around the table a bit too and if it's a big table your body could largely be on the table yeah so it basically it's like adjusting your ring size so arm wrestling you're fighting in a phone booth yeah right so you get you're fighting in a field you're fighting you know just bigger so it just it just makes the sport bigger yeah this is japan but even on a small table there even in a slightly larger phone booth you can get a a lot more fun and variety very interesting i love it i think it makes the sport bigger i actually believe that it's the future of the sport i really do because it makes it more accessible like you don't need the equipment you do it at a bar yep all that kind of stuff yeah yeah less less equipment requirements uh kids most kids start freedom like most kids are wrestling school desks yeah yeah and like if you see a guy on the street and like whatever like you can wrestle anywhere you don't need to bring your table around with you if uh we talked about the elite level if somebody was interested in starting in arm wrestling yeah or like going from just like you know i you go to the gym you kind of lift you've arm wrestled a few times trying to get better at it trying to learn how would you advise like getting better to where you can beat your closest buddies yeah that first step first step i'd say find people find people find good people uh volume get we'll get with the club get with people who know what they're doing who can mentor you and that's really cool i i got to me i realized there's a club in austin yeah i'm sure there's in a lot of places they're everywhere we we got this app called armbat yeah which is a app that helps you find other people there yeah very easy but i mean they're all over social networks i mean it's kind of widespread now but yeah find people find people and it's just much easier to learn with another person and you'll get stronger that way but i mean do this do the lifts if you go to the gym just start doing the lifts uh and right away those will technically prepare you what are what are the lists can we describe yeah so i'd say if you want to just keep it very very simple let's just talk about three there's more there's much more than three but like when you talk about energy allocation these three lifts in my opinion should be like ninety percent of your investment is it's very big these three lifts uh and the exact percentages can you can argue about it but we'll we'll start off with the cupping of the wrist just this this is a simple thing and do it with a cable uh you know you can get a thicker diameter so it kind of you know is is more out on your fingers where an armrest is going to attack you right because any good armrest is going to attack your fingers so like open hands no no well i mean for health yes you could but like if you want to be really specific you train exactly the way you would at a table in the position that you actually start the match yeah and then you're just doing uh this kind of yes to your center your people people one of the one of the big misconceptions in arm wrestling is that you're aiming for that pin pad right no the chest up bring it close to you make it come close to you right you see like whenever i do my exercises the the vector is always pulling straight towards me yeah yeah so just uh you know cupping close to you the most dangerous thing that a person can do to me on an arm wrestling match is just pull me away from my body that that's a terrible thing for me yeah so so that cupping yeah that's a massive part of the sport uh so now when you think what does the cup do to the other person if i cup they get turned over right so this has to get really strong this pronation so so to fight the to fight that rolling exactly yeah so that's that's through the thumb yeah oh so you put uh got it you put on the thumb and you put this motion yeah got it yeah those two things those two things together this cupping and rolling this is what's going to make the person's hand bend back and once the person's hand is bent back they're just their whole game gets cut to pieces they have very little good options it's all like nasty stuff wow yeah so those two things that's a that's a huge part of of your of your investment uh rise always be climbing yeah exactly yeah those three simple things that's what i would tell anybody to spend most their time on if you want to become an art wrestler so and to use bands would be good for this bands are great because they're easy to transport the only problem i have with bands is like if you like to measure you know if you like to be precise bands just aren't that precise right so to have growth yeah yeah just i mean it's just like you know you know exactly what you need the prescription is kind of a band is kind of like and a lot of people myself included i like to uh i like to know exactly my outputs so so weights so it would be like cables yep cables are nice bands are great too i i mix the two bands are uh when i kind of don't need to they're more like easy for me i when i train bands bands are dangerous because the acceleration is so high on them like when you screw up with band training the acceleration is way faster than gravity right so if you do something bad it can can make it go really much worse yeah it's funny that you didn't mention bicep curls or uh well it's a chain it's a chain and so you're i mean the idea if you focus on these three the other stuff catches up like it's all involved this whole this whole thing is involved so if you have an axe right the blade of the axe that's that's these things right like you need the the pointy end of all your attacks to be awesome right if you have a super sharp axe yeah you could have a shitty hand yeah right yeah so focus on that the point the yeah tip of the axe yeah the tip of the axe is so important right like if i have an awesome bicep and i can't quite use it what's it good for right yeah i think a lot of the motions with the wrist that you mentioned are uh just thinking about jiu jitsu especially in the ghee yeah um there's a lot of i mean there's so much importance to this and people don't often work it um explicitly yeah so many of the chokes require yeah ability to it's almost like exactly like arm wrestling very close because you're weak here uh what's that called flop wrist yeah and you're strong with the cup oh yeah and so you just getting the muscle whatever that's involved the muscle the turning the pressure because that's where also the choke comes that little the thing that makes you win in arm wrestling is also the thing that finishes the person when you have them grabbed the strength is very similar yeah it's fascinating actually of course like you said if you want to be very good you should be doing the very specific exact motion yeah so if i was going to do jiu jitsu i'd be like working out with the ghee yeah the problem is you know uh it's difficult to construct the um the exact so you have to actually go with people and then they don't like being choked up right so like it's hard to i'm actually a big we have these kinds of debates all the time is um you know i'm a big believer in drilling i love doing something thousands of times like john donahue or somebody i mentioned to you about the jiu jitsu folks here they're less believers in drilling they they see the value of almost like the mind of of going live and exploring ideas that's that play you don't need to do the thing a thousand times you just need to always be thinking about the little details that make you uh make you better and then in action practicing like developing the strength the power the explosive the agility in action so actually rolling i don't you know i i agree with this but i just believe in volume more yeah so you can accomplish it through volume you can you can play a lot yes exactly well that's the if you really want to get it good is you're talking about i mean that's why uh a lot of these folks are training three times a day they're doing you know they're putting in the hours eight hours nine hours just just oh that's tough oh my god well so there are a lot of them are not doing going hard it's just being on the mat someone is just sitting there talking through ideas watching others or teaching explaining stuff it's just it's like it's not just physical it's it's a mental too because you're keeping in your mind and some of the greatest that's what they talk about the the wrestlers i've talked with the fighters at the top of their career they basically uh george saint pierre's like this another fellow canadian is uh he like has stick figures in his head they can't help yeah they're like in there because if you train enough hours you're it's just going to be in your head and they're all going to be playing around in your head yeah and some little detail over time it's almost like computing or something like that and that ends up uh having a result even though you're not physically doing anything it's it's it's always in there i do have to return to diet real quick i know we talk about pancakes let me quite seriously um you are one of the i mean strongest athletes in the world for your sport so you have to get big you have to get powerful you have to get strong what is the right diet for you for that like what do you eat how often do you eat um yeah from the the highest detail to the smallest or the things that make you happy and feel good yeah i've experimented with every diet i've done it all i've been a vegan uh i've done raw i've eaten only meat i've eaten balanced eaten like a bodybuilder you know you name it i've probably tried it i don't believe that it's as important in the sport of arm wrestling as it is perhaps in other sports uh i believe that i mean just to be very basic i mean if you're eating enough food you're probably gonna be okay um so it's just calories it's a lot i mean it really i mean not to over complicate it but i mean that's that's where the conversation starts are you eating enough food and it can come in any number of ways and i i i don't think it's as important as a lot of other people do i'm certainly irresponsible in a lot but the thing is is back to like volume right like you need to like if if you want to be a super heavyweight yeah it's very different than if you want to be a weight category guy yeah if you want to be a weight category guy i'd say that you need to be more responsible make better choices if you want to be a super heavyweight everything just so we're watching a delicious looking omelette so eggs bacon syrup so you don't care carbs or protein so in all the things you try so i mostly eat meet now yeah and i landed on that there's several things you know obviously i'm not but i do a lot of sport yeah and i was very surprised how my particular very specific body can perform uh better with only me why better the sports i do the mind matters and so for some reason my mind is just clear yeah and i i don't think because it feels unhealthy it just makes me feel really good i don't think i would recommend it to anybody else so it's it's interesting that that journey of just exploring can take you to figure out something about your own self one of the most interesting things that i heard about nutrition was i heard there was actually doritos yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm an idiot uh now i do i'd say over the last couple years i've really gone into the into carbs a lot and high glycemic carbs and you know just to i feel like it's one of the best things you can do if you're working out really hard just cheers add carbs yeah exactly um but oh where was i so good so you've had distracted syrup i forget everything this is distracting no the so you've added the high glycemic carbs into the mix so that you those help but that's for mass building right so there was a study that i heard about by somebody who's trying to identify heart attacks they did this great big study and at the end of it i mean didn't matter what the people ate the the most important thing was how they felt about the food that they were eating yeah so if you believe in the food if you believe that it's going to do good things for you and if you allocate it the right way it's it's going to have a positive impact and i try and do that no matter what it is like i have my foods that i think do certain things and so you know for me i know that actually i mean i learned about corn fed pumps when i was overseas uh i realized that if i i never used to eat crap really didn't i ate super clean all the time and when i was faced with imminent death more i would be like okay i'm going out tonight let's have let's have a couple ice cream bars you know like whatever and what i realized is if i eat like an entire bag of chips or like you know a bunch of chocolate bars and then i go and have a workout my workout will be incredible it'll be incredible um there's something about easily processed carbohydrate that will continue to quickly get into your blood as fast as you can burn it and there's something about that that uh well it gives you incredible blood blood flow yeah and also your mind plugging in enjoying that right and then believing it works and that's how it makes it work better exactly i mean i i feel that way i think this is really not this has been frustrating to me about the health culture in the united states in the studies that are done you know you look at like the importance of sleep the importance of ex diet all those kinds of things i i wish incorporated into that would be your mental relationship with all of these things so for example people that tell me well your sleep schedule is insane yes perhaps but also it's insane because i'm doing what i love and i don't see it as a problem right and i i think that's really important to understand if if you if you're if you sleeping crazy hours uh is not affecting your stress and it's actually making you happy or you're drawing some kind of source of happiness and pleasure and satisfaction like being awake when others aren't it's like the mike tyson thing or something like training when you you've convinced yourself everybody's sleeping and therefore you're somehow training much better right that's powerful even if you look statistically six hours maybe worse than eight hours or four hours maybe worse than six hours so the mind is a powerful thing super powerful but if you want to be a super heavyweight eat you gotta eat like stupid amounts all the time yeah you have to test your digestive system what's your favorite meal by the way just if you have to you know ah meal i am uh i do oh geez i like so much food that's tough but i'd say the food that i rely on a lot when i'm uh getting ready to compete is sushi just because it normally comes in an all-you-can-eat format you know uh so you know i love to go and just binge all you can eat just all you can eat buffets sushi is just super convenient yeah if i was a sushi all-you-can-eat buffet place i'll be terrified when i saw you uh have you had barbecue at texas i yeah i love it i love it yeah so you uh just a small tangent on this you you uh face the mountain uh you have for uh uh bjorn well first of all you arm wrestle them yeah it's interesting to ask um so this is the mountain from the game of thrones uh a strong man one of the strongest people in the world for tom the strongest person in the world what was it like i know sort of you guys maybe weren't going 1 000 but what's it like well he probably wasn't going a thousand percent yeah but like what it's interesting to think what does that strength feel like so it's a it's a specialized strength in another sport yeah what did it feel like what how strong was he what are some kind of deep insights he drawn from that battle i feel like if we were to go back a thousand years and if you give him armor and a two-handed sword he will just rip across the landscape and no one will stop him so this is the boxing match you tune into but there's also a video of them arm wrestling yeah what a titan though what a titan uh you know a guy like that tall yeah strong fit disciplined i mean he is uh he's quite a warrior 119 pounds oh yeah yeah he's he's incredibly impressive uh i really like happ thor and i like eddie hall too and i was just so i'm just so caught up with the drama okay so so eddie hall and half thor burnsen yes two of the strongest legendary strong strongmen that we have uh at you know and they were the coolest they were the top when strongman was really super cool uh i don't know all the details but they legit hit each other like legit so i think it kind of stems i don't know like like i say i'm not right there with them but uh eddie won the the world's strongest man event or something one year and like and the thing it was one of those victories where hapthor you know was not accepting of his defeat okay and there was a little bit of back and forth basically from what i understand they were gonna fight like the knight of the world's strongest man and they got kind of got pulled apart and this uh this heat between them got translated into a potential boxing match so it's very real it's a very real fight so you have the two strongest dudes on the planet are going to fight each other so so i've been like you know because arm wrestling is strong man it's it's kind of similar communities uh who who do you got if you if you're giving me financial advice oh jesus i am so bad i always call it wrong they're very different uh i i see uh hap thor's being you know more eddie hall is slimming down is that what yeah wow i see hapthor is a bit more regimented um but i see eddie hall as like way more barbaric and like a little i think he's a little bit more athletic but app thor's bigger and uh and you know they've chosen slightly different paths to prepare for the match but but what happened was like they were about to fight and eddie hall blew his bicep so me i was getting ready for lavonne in december we were supposed to arm us in december but he's got his movie and so i was like okay i can kind of get away from the sport just a little bit broaden my base that happened and i was like oh an opportunity you stepped in an opportunity to fight i'm like i'll do it so how much training you uh you you trained a little bit so can you tell about your own decision to do that what was the training like what was it yes like oh it was so much fun it was so much fun uh so basically i made a funny video and i sent it to the organizers of core sports that i would do it i'm like i'll do it i'm sure they got a thousand people who wanted to do it uh but i'm like i'm like listen i'm like i i'm an old man like i'm gimped up like everywhere outside the arm wrestling lanes uh i said but but i will 100 like if you let me fight him i'll i'll give it my all and uh and whatever they didn't get back to me they're like whatever okay so then so then they call me on a friday like five weeks before the event and they're like hey devin were you serious and i'm like oh shit and i'm like yes i was serious yeah i'll do it and they're like okay um they're like it's down to you and like two other people uh we'll get back to you in a day or two but you would do it i'm like okay so they got back to me on sunday like so right away i'm like skipping rope and i'm like and i'm so i only arm wrestle legs that's all i do so what was your you did some yeah striking training yeah so i went to um this guy that he was he was awesome zach ben bushida there uh that was it from from tristar do you know for us the hobby uh and that's and yes people in the comments i will interview him on this podcast people he's brilliant right he's an incredible guy so right away like i had no idea about the fight community across canada really and i got like by the fifth message that said you must train with ferraz uh i was like okay called him up he was incredible right away he's like yeah you can come and we'll just work with you so i got i got the call i called him on like monday at two o'clock by like seven o'clock i had my things packed and i went to montreal and i spent four weeks in in the fighter dorms just humbling yourself yeah every day just getting punched in the face you know uh over and over uh going for runs with all like they're all like olympians and pro fighters living in the dorms super cool dudes they were so good to me yeah there's a good video of you and uh for us uh just talking yeah i don't i don't remember which stage this was but this is early but you're already beginning to get humbled oh man i knew i mean i knew what i was getting into like i knew it was i knew it was gonna be a losing battle but i felt like the opportunity to fight thor like how cool is that like i had i i had to say i had to do it um i love the process and i learned a lot from doing it like the dorms i want to do something like that with arm wrestling i think we're big enough now that we can have these kind of uh you know dorms frat houses whatever you want to call it what's the dorm like so you're basically staying there yeah food is there yeah so you can you can you mentioned uh what was the word use administration yeah exactly that's it so it removes all of that makes it so simple you can just focus you know the gym is here you live here yeah you know that your life becomes simple yeah so there's a guy named jimmy pedro here in america he's a famous uh coach there's a place up in boston he has kind of a dorm like that too yeah and it that becomes essential when the community is small but you're trying to do epic things right like winning olympic gold so you have to really put the people together in these kind of minimalist conditions when they just focus on the training focus focus focus yes um yeah it wasn't enough time i mean i trained for about yes three or four weeks uh but i loved the journey and what are some of the fun things you enjoy so you did mostly striking did you uh yeah i guess it was yeah it was boxing it was straight up box boxing yeah what what are some things that were transferable what are some cool things you learned from that so from the world of armor have you taken anything back like some training regimens ideas about training even just even movements because for us is a unique mind as well for training yeah i i don't know i mean i've gone very far down the path of arm wrestling uh boxing and arm wrestling are very different they're they're very different sports uh the the physicality required is very different uh you know the mentality i mean it's fighting so it's another form of fighting which is cool the the big things that i took back from it the things that i loved about it was i had to run again you know so really work on endurance yeah yeah i was going for runs with guys in the dorms and they'd they would just destroy me just like it was so bad uh did you uh like how did you feel in the actual boxing in terms of endurance were you able to no it's just torture it was it was terrible and and the thing is is it was so crazy for me because i really was good once upon a time yeah i really was like physically like i had incredible full-body endurance you know um but you know being so specialized i realized how much i had slipped and yeah it was it was fun to try and regain i think it's affected my body composition i think since that training i've become much more lean uh i think was a very healthy thing for me to do like health-wise like i always think that you know when you're far away from competition it's really good to kind of spread out really good so i think that in that way also for your mind yeah yeah just like mm-hmm yeah yeah it's just something about clearing your i i think you've talked about this it's like uh you're basically taking steps back before you take steps forward is i forget how you call yeah the wave yeah yeah under you know you have to go under you gotta you know if you want to go above the line you have to spend some time beneath it and yeah i was definitely beneath the line for a long time yeah uh but mountain i mean like the interesting thing was as incredible as he is uh you know like what a monster and i think if you hadn't had him training in boxing you know for a long time and like from his youth i think he you know the guy could be world champion but you know to be so specialized and then to switch you're at a disadvantage yeah and and also like i know from just fighting guys in the gym in tristar some of those guys were way scarier for real like as scary as thor is like there's guys in that tristar gym that don't look like anything that would murder me much worse much worse yeah but also you know that's the difference between being in the gym and under the lights too i mean uh gsb is an example of george st pierre as an example somebody that maybe doesn't look yeah terrifying is that a tristar yep he's he trains a tristar but he's quite he's super nice super uh humble but is terrifying when he's fighting right it's dominating people you mentioned death yeah and your canadian special forces and in general thinking about mortality yeah do you think about your death do you do you contemplate the the end that this thing that this ride ends all the time yeah from uh i've thought about death from a young age are you afraid of it yeah i hate it yeah i don't want to die yeah definitely definitely don't want to die but there's times when i can rid myself of it yeah but for sure i mean i i'm not uh i'm not happy that you know death is inevitable and i'm not happy that potentially it's inevitable for all of us um but uh it does you know i like to to fight against it does it yeah that's true if you if you could be immortal would you that's my only wish oh see but here's the thing that's but the point is to have that wish it's uh it's like the all-you-can-eat buffet at uh sushi it's that sushi's more delicious if you have a limit do you have a song well i don't know i mean i don't think i get sick of stuff i'm very simple yeah i don't think i would get tired of it i really don't um i mean if someone would pose it to you do you want to live forever you would choose no yeah i would just no choose no well my answer is probably yes uh like no i would uh it's more like the snooze button do you want to do do you want to go to sleep but it's very difficult in the moment to go to sleep but if if i'm uh allowed to live forever i'm going to uh delay all the crazy like um all the ambitious goals all the all the things because ah there's always time that's fine but there is tomorrow then but there is tomorrow but see i think that takes away from the richness of like the richness of the lived experience of just each moment i think the richness of each moment comes from saying like i could die tonight like that that it tastes delicious because you're going to die i'm a i'm afraid if you're not i'm afraid all that goes away all that magic goes away if you can live forever i don't know but i'll tell you every time i have a near-death experience or think i'm gonna die i definitely live better afterwards yeah like uh it's always been that way but yeah no um that's why the stoics you know they really preach contemplating your mortality often it kind of reminds you it could this whole thing could just end any moment and it makes you really appreciate yeah i don't know i don't know certainly improving the quality of life is important but um part of me thinks that immortality is is not as fun as um would like to imagine do you think that maybe you're uh in what you're building potentially is immortal well that's what i definitely think about with robots if they were to have a human-like experience and be able to interact with humans in a deep meaningful way i think they too have to be mortal in some fundamental way that means mortal like their ride has to end as well because they won't be able to interact with humans deeply unless that's the case um like to have to have fear to have love the ability to suffer the ability to miss somebody i think scarcity is important you have to be able to truly lose somebody you have to be to to fear things you have to truly have the risk of destroying yourself and to have a sense of what it means to be a self you have to be able to lose it so if you're immortal you're just going to be i feel like you're going to be like a toaster an intelligent toaster that just serves such a negative perspective on it and then mortality yeah just think well now you just you can get all those things done that you want to do i hope you're right i hope you're right yeah i i mean potentially you could invest even harder because you're like wow i'm actually gonna be able to get all this stuff done i i think about this a lot i hope you're right but i i fear that the drive to create i can even do more all of that dissipates disappears if you have all the time in the world i just know how lazy i am and if i have all the time in the world i'm just gonna sit there and just like watch the stupidest youtube videos for the rest of all eternity ah now eternity's a long time eat doritos cheetos and just get fatter and fatter i can get in shape later there's always time that's like a long period of contemplation yeah so for the first thousand years it'll be the dorito period of the lex life and then yeah if you could you could be like jabba the hutt for a thousand years you mentioned aliens very important topic do you actually think about about this has been an increased interest and there's been increased ufo sightings and encounters all that kind of stuff the u.s government at least releasing data release releasing videos of uh pilots uh pilot observations and from airplanes of ufos do you think about this kind of stuff because you met you mentioned in the following context you mentioned like our simas will get our shit together when the aliens eventually come yeah um what do you make of all the sightings is that something you think about i thought about it a lot when i was younger um and i've just i made my conclusions and yeah i i don't think that there's a possibility that there aren't aliens i would think it would be impossible for them not to be aliens uh they're you know um you know i feel like this is pretty good real estate so you know yeah you'd probably want it but we already might be well i don't even think might i mean it's probably quite likely that we are to some degree aliens i mean all life is probably to some degree alien i like the real estate so the resources but we're also kind of interesting yeah whatever this ant colony of living organisms that we've created it's kind of interesting to study i i tend to believe that the alien civilizations that are going to reach us or have reached us are far more intelligent just orders of magnitude more intelligent than us and so it's going to be very difficult both ways actually for us to understand them and for them to dumb themselves down enough to understand us yeah probably so they might even just miss our existence all together just because it because i tend to believe i don't know what you think that we're not that special in terms of all the life forms in the universe there's a lot of cool stuff out there and has to be has to be but to us we're special yeah well that's all that matters right yeah even the human species is the most special to us humans that could be much more special species here on earth they were just totally oblivious to like trees on a scale of thousands of years maybe they're like they're on to something lex you know um i think that so much of what makes a person special is what they pass on your kids but but i think that you are quite special because you're part of this thing that's potentially giving birth to the next thing the robots the robots i should say the funny thing is while talking to devon during this podcast i i would a doorbell ring had to go downstairs and there was a big box menacing box with a new legged robot so um the hilarity of you saying that is because that that that robot is actually going to likely be the main robot that i show to the to the world in the coming months because that has the that's the highest compute level in that robot so i've been playing a lot with legged robots the um four legs so like a like a dog um i like all of robots but there's something about when a robot has legs it's able to communicate it's able to connect with humans in some kind of deep way in the way a dog can just show affection something about like step step step step and then and then the robot realizes you're here and then it steps and then notices you and the way the dog does and raises its head um it makes me feel noticed and hurt in the same way i do when a dog notices me that excitement that stupid excitement of like yes uh fellow living organism and what excites me about legged robots is that holy shit is possible to engineer this it's possible to create that feeling and i wonder where that can go there's a lot of negative possible trajectories but i have a sense that there's positive ones too you you have more love they'll take us with them yeah i think so because i i so there's this fear of robots that they become super intelligent and run away from us humans and basically become so intelligent and then they almost just not giving a damn will destroy us but i think in order for for robots to become intelligence they have to integrate themselves with society so they they by the very nature of of how they become intelligent have to bring us along so it's not that there will be this separate thing they have to like we'll have robots in the home they'll be interacting with us you have human kids and you have a bunch of robots you have robot friends you have human friends and they the robots make your human-to-human relationships much more meaningful and richer they bring more love to the world but they it's integrated it's not like they'll be developing smarter and smarter um as like um sentient beings by themselves i think that's very difficult to do you have to be doing that together with humans and so we'll come for the ride there's technical things like we might merge like cyborgs more and more well we already saw our cyborgs right with the phones and so on but more and more so with elon and neuralink deeper integration of robots and ai into like increasing the bandwidth at which they can communicate right so if we do implants in the brain i think again a lot of people are really nervous about this as am i but i think there's a lot of trajectories that are positive there and that to me is excited and also i just don't think it's possible to stop this development so we should uh steer it yeah yeah oh good did you i mean you must have watched the movie terminator right yeah of course i love turbinator yeah much worse than my favorite movie of all time yeah yeah i mean that's that's the big fear right yeah what's the conclusion with terminator isn't ultimately humanity wins i think they're at like terminator 8 now yeah you know i don't know uh yeah the so there and it's interesting actually i was going to bring this up as you were talking about it but uh but china and the united states actually don't know where canada is on this but they both have agreed that they're not going to put limits on autonomous weapon uh system development so not going to they're not going to so because china said we're not going to now us officially announced that we're not we can't well you can't it's like it's you never could right as soon as it exists and it's better people will use it well but you um there's been a global ban on bio weapons so you were able to come to an agreement there that we're not going to use biological weapons in war so it was it's a lot of people are really upset that in the case of ai driven weapons the world said nope that's okay and so now you have this potential for greater and greater automation in drones for example in picking uh bombing locations and so the area at which they attack and so you get some of that stuff that you mentioned that that drew you to the military is that teamwork between humans that decision making so their strategy but built into that team is a deep humanity like yeah even when there's an enemy there's lines that you are aware of of what is ethical what is not what is just and what is not and it's so easy for a machine uh to uh to miss all of that plow through it and do deeply inhumane acts commit atrocities that that's something that worries a lot of people yeah because uh yeah an ai based war is just is it it's terrifying especially with cyber security which is becoming more and more of an issue which is hacking yeah sort of uh people that look a lot like me being the warriors of the future yeah which is meaning people behind a a keyboard versus uh right versus the traditional warriors probably inevitable yeah and terrifying it is it is but i think if you believe that it's possible it's certainly going to happen like at some point it's just when right when does it happen anyway so that i mean to me i'm optimally ultimately optimistic about the future and to me i'm excited about the world with ai i'm even excited about uh the metaverse and all these kinds of things living more and more in the digital space in the virtual reality i think so it's a part of me that grew up in the non-internet world non-computer world you know it says all kids these days with their video games you know there's part of me that's like that um but i think what's it when technology at his best can bring out the best of humanity and so i think virtual reality all of these things over time will figure out how to how to fix it to bring out the humanity social networks the the first generation social networks now facebook twitter and so on they have so many problems they're bringing out the worst in people but i think we're learning from that and i think the next generation of social networks will be better and better and better and so i'm optimistic but of course you know one reason we may have not seen aliens yet obviously like in a way that's obvious is because once you get clever and smart and have all this cool technology you destroy yourself and we sure as humans are pretty close to that yeah yeah there might be that limit that is hard to get right i'm hoping we get all our aggression between nations out through arm wrestling competition right wouldn't that be great if that was if it was that simple yeah do you know if there's another over-the-top type movie to be made oh yeah yeah there's always stuff in the works um there's actually a there's a there's a tournament called over the top in australia that's a couple months away i think they're doing all the over top scene but uh there are arm wrestling movies that are being made right now actually i'm there's a documentary that's filming me for this whole avon thing but yeah we're probably due for another big one yeah but you're also just with your youtube channel you're doing a lot for the sport that's really cool to see just being genuine but just being like uh looking not like you're looking today but just like yeah yeah the beard yeah yeah yeah normally it's like sleepy you know and just putting yourself out there completely as you are that's a beautiful thing the best thing about the sport is it brings people together that's it yeah the community the folks i got to interact with just so awesome so excited so full of kindness i'm definitely going to find the club here and uh and start working on my uh on my arm wrestling game uh devon this is such a huge honor that you would uh spend your valuable time you'd come down to austin you would um hang out with me and uh do this kind of super cool stocky lex yeah as i mentioned uh in case people you know people i'm sure will tell me so i hang out with joe rogan all the time he's a friend i told him that he should talk to devin he's going through some stuff currently you know uh but i'm sure i hope the conversation between you devin and joe happens eventually he's uh that would be epic as well because he's a um yeah he's fighting he loves fighting he loves wrestling he loves strength and i think all of those are um like so perfectly encapsulated in the sport of arm wrestling so thank you so much for talking today thanks so much lex thanks for listening to this conversation with devon larritt to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from miyamoto musashi the only reason a warrior is alive is to fight and the only reason a warrior fights is to win thank you for listening and hope to see you next time you