It’s hard to pinpoint the origins, but the first known documentation of the sport of arm wrestling comes from 8th century Japanese mythology, which described an arm wrestling match between gods.
For a sport that’s at least 1300 years old, it’s a little odd that their defining pop culture artifact is the 1987 sports drama, “Over the Top,” starring Sylvester Stallone, who at that time had already burned up the box office with movies about boxing and professional wrestling.
Kevin Palko is one of the founders of Cleveland Arm Wrestling and their premiere male athlete. He’s a big fan of the film.
"'Over the Top’ is every arm wrestler's favorite movie. It really is. I just watched it a couple weeks ago,” Palko said.
The film, often mocked for its combination of family drama with arm wrestling, is about a single father attempting to secure a future for his son by winning an arm wrestling tournament in Las Vegas.
What gives the film gravitas for fans like Palko is that it was built around a real arm wrestling tournament. The film’s climactic final tournament, which sees Stallone face a parade of increasingly more massive and hirsute tank-top wearing monsters, was an actual tournament that was held put on for the film and featured the biggest names in the sport.
“You'll see arm wrestlers like John Brzenk, Allen Fisher, Andrew 'Cobra' Rhodes. They're actually in the movie because they were in the actual tournament,” Palko said.
Those probably aren’t household names for most, but Palko and other up-and-comers are hoping to become household names in a landscape filled with increasingly popular combat sports.
From mixed martial arts on the White House lawn to celebrities boxing, freestyle wrestling, bareknuckle fighting and Power Slap, which sees competitors simply take turns open-hand-walloping each other, combat sports have never been more mainstream. And arm wrestling is hoping to ride that wave.
Building arms like Popeye
East vs West is the world’s premiere professional arm wrestling organization and Palko is ranked 3rd in the men’s featherweight division. He’s not a very imposing figure, at around 155 pounds, until you notice his massive arms. Thanks to a constant regimen of grip and individual muscle exercises, Palko’s arms can only fairly be compared with fictional characters like Popeye or He-Man.
Palko credits the sport, which attracts powerlifters, bodybuilders and other gym athletes, with taking his fitness to a new level.
“The pump that you get and the workout that you get in your forearms is like nothing you would ever get in the gym,” Palko said.
The group meets twice a week to “pull,” which is jargon for the act of arm wrestling. It comes from the basic physics concept that drives the sport; by pulling the opponent closer, a grappler increases their leverage and ability to win.
A workout room at the Berea Rec Center houses some small rectangular tables with rods for wrestlers to grip with their non-competing hands, and pads for the elbows anchoring the fight and the hands that might get slammed. The unique furniture of the sport is built so that competitors modularly flip the cushions if they want to switch from a right arm to a left arm match.
The group has been growing rapidly in part due to the club’s aggressive social media promotion. Each week, Palko and Clint Moehle, the club’s other leader and administrator, post matches on YouTube with commentary and interviews. They also post how-to videos teaching form and exercises. This multimedia approach has brought first timers and seasoned vets to the club.
“Everybody can do arm wrestling and I think that's what's so cool,” Palko said.
Megann Galehouse is one of those people. She just came into arm wrestling earlier this year after discovering it on Reddit. She has a background in weightlifting, but had never considered the age-old hand-to-hand sport.
“I've always been naturally strong, like ever since I was little, and I have like really large hands and I used to hate that, but this sport paired with powerlifting is like a strength, it's like a positive where before I used hate it,” Galehouse said. “I used to hate it about myself and in this sport it's like people are like, ‘Oh, look at the size of your hands. It's awesome!’”
With Palko coaching her and the Cleveland Arm Wrestling club behind her, Galehouse has become a phenom in the sport.
“She went to Pittsburgh, competed at nationals, won nationals and that guaranteed her a spot to compete in the World Championships. So later in October, Megan's actually gonna go to India and compete in The World Championships for Team USA,” Palko said.
Galehouse also trains with a women’s arm wrestling club in Wellington, Ohio. In a sign of the sport’s growing popularity, groups like that are popping up all over the state.
“When I first started arm wrestling in 2014, there was only one club that I knew of in our area. That was Team Knuckleheads in Huron, Ohio. So for me, that was about a 50-minute commute every weekend,” Palko said.
Palko started Cleveland Arm Wrestling in 2020 and they frequently collaborate and invite guests from other clubs. East Ohio Arm Wrestling is based out of the Toledo area, Columbus Armbenders and the Ohio State University club hold down central Ohio, while major figures in the sport like Todd Jackson and Randall Blazen lead the Cincinnati area scene. And there are clubs dotting the small towns in between.
Why is arm wrestling gaining popularity?
The sport’s rise in popularity could be linked to a larger boom in combat sports and fitness. It certainly benefits from the fact that it requires no equipment, just an opponent and a flat surface to get started. Its popularity could also be tied to social media and digital boundaries that are disappearing constantly. But one of the main reasons that people keep returning to groups like Cleveland Arm Wrestling is the openness of the sport’s veteran figures.
On any given Saturday, complete novices may walk through the door in Berea and get a chance to have one-on-one instruction with rising figures in the sport like Palko and Galehouse.
Adam Goe is an 18 year old fitness buff from Medina in northeast Ohio. On his first day arm wrestling with the club, he got to pull with Palko and Moehle and get pointers from them. He also got to meet Billy Collins, leader of East Ohio Arm Wrestling who came in to give a guest lecture.
Goe came to arm wrestling to apply a layer of strategy and competition to his workout regime.
“I tried football, I didn't really enjoy it. I tried jiujitsu, didn't enjoy it… I got used to kind of doing like mental sports. Like I'm on the debate team for my college. I do the mock trial team for college and you know I love those, but I've wanted to always do something physical. So, I started looking around and then I saw arm wrestling,” Goe said.
Every sport boasts of its inclusivity, but there aren’t many where complete beginners can walk into a room and get one-on-one advice from seasoned vets and international up-and-comers like Palko.
Among the Cleveland Arm wrestling regulars there’s an eclectic group of young professionals, retirees, college athletes, former bouncers, bodybuilders, an ice swimmer and a man who suffered profound brain damage in a car crash twenty years ago, whose mother brings him out every week.
“A normal person that's never done sports might feel uncomfortable going into another sport, where I feel anybody can come into an arm wrestling club and get along with each other,” Palko said
The men and women of Cleveland Arm Wrestling may not be battling for custody of their kids in a high stakes Vegas tournament, but in an ancient sport, they’re finding new challenges and high stakes of their own to fight for.
