Sting Like a Scorpion: Going for Glory at the 2017 World Armwrestling League Championships

LAS VEGAS — Chalk dust swirling in the air, the woman in the gray T-shirt grits her teeth and prepares for battle. But the only weapons in this war are hands and arms, and victory or defeat can come in seconds.

A red strap, pinching the competitors’ taut skin, ensures their hands will not come apart.

Knuckles whiten. Grimaces greet grunts.

It’s a preliminary-round match in the increasingly popular sport of arm wrestling, and the woman in gray—Michelle Dougan, a personal trainer from Syracuse, New York—prevails over Jodi Larratt, in red.

Dougan, a 50-year-old mother of four and grandmother of four more, has stared down both melanoma and thyroid cancer. She began competitive arm wrestling three years ago at the urging of her husband, James Reid, and though she had never arm wrestled before, she took to the sport swiftly.

Standing 5 feet and 5 inches tall, Dougan goes by the nickname “The Black Scorpion.”

Last year, she qualified for the World Armwrestling League (WAL) championships, held each June in Las Vegas, where she placed in the top eight for both the left and right hands in her weight category (129-148 pounds).

Arm wrestling has held a place in America’s popular imagination ever since ABC began airing “Wide World of Sports” in the 1960s, which showcased sports as varied as slow-pitch softball, curling and cliff diving. It gained an even greater following with the movie “Over the Top,” starring Sylvester Stallone, in 1987. In recent years, ESPN has helped make arm wrestling matches mainstream.

“It fits everything you want with a popular sport,” Daniel Durbin, a professor of communication at the University of Southern California, said. “There’s straightforward combat between two individuals in a very small space, so you can readily shoot it on camera. It moves pretty quickly, like sumo-wrestling, and you can have a champion at the end.”

This year’s competition, though, almost didn’t happen. Sponsors pulled out at the last moment over contractual disputes with WAL’s president, Steve Kaplan, and then ESPN—which was set to broadcast the event live—scratched its plan.

In response, WAL canceled this year’s championships but almost as quickly reversed course and said the show would go on. The organizers, Karen Bean and Bart Wood, found a new venue off the Las Vegas Strip, Stoney’s Rockin’ Country.

Training for a major tournament requires sacrifice. For Dougan, that meant “no drinking for four months,” she said.

Dougan does cardio year-round to keep her weight down. Still, she had to shed 10 pounds in two months or else compete in a higher weight class. Weigh-in was the day before the event, and she dropped the final 3 pounds by fasting for 24 hours. Then it was time to rehydrate and consume calories before the championships on June 29, when the thermometer hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The loss of major sponsors meant prize money was slashed, from $12,500 to $1,000 for first place in each weight category for men, and from $4,000 to $500 for first place in each weight category for women. Despite the lower payouts, most competitors showed up. They’d already booked and paid for their travel, and to them it’s less about the money than the bragging rights that come with winning a hammer. But even more than that, it’s about the competition and the camaraderie.

“It’s like family,” said Ian Carnegie, a 37-year-old Canadian who competes in the super-heavyweight division (above 225 pounds). Known as “The Grippler,” Carnegie weighed 405 pounds just six weeks prior; at the competition, he tipped the scales at 367.

Everyone seemed to know everyone else at Stoney’s, even though competitors came from more than a dozen countries, as far away as Australia and Romania.

In arm wrestling, the goal is to defeat one’s opponent—ripped biceps and broken arms be damned—but sportsmanship reigns supreme. There are rarely any hard feelings upon a loss, perhaps because there’s no ambiguity in victory or defeat. No points are awarded, no score is kept, no judges make subjective calls. Referees are necessary to ensure fairness and, when competitors’ hands slip off each other, to bind them together with a strap. But a win, or loss, is obvious to all.

Arm wrestling is an ancient pastime—going back at least 4,000 years—and it’s not only about brute force and strength, said Frederick Wertz, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in New York.

“It really requires balance, not just the arm—strength and balance of the whole body,” Wertz said. “It may seem very simple, but it’s a relationship; there’s strategy, there’s finesse.”

The typical match ends in mere seconds—blink and you miss it. Now and then there’s a protracted battle, a war of attrition, like a rally in tennis that extends to an improbable 50 shots, then 60, neither side ceding an inch.

Hiding isn’t an option.

“There is no escape, no exit, no flight from the encounter, as there is even in other intimate competitions like boxing or wrestling,” Wertz said. “You must remain in competition until you win or lose. Mano a mano, hand to hand.”

Two losses in three preliminary matches for 35-year-old LeiRaun Baldwin, a.k.a. “Black Ice,” meant only one thing: “It gives me motivation to train—I got beat. I’ll be back,” Baldwin said.

The finals in each division—pitting No. 1 against No. 2—featured a best-of-three format.

“Monster” Michael Todd, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, let out barbaric yawps between each round as he paced back and forth. The 44-year-old, whose bushy beard and chiseled physique call to mind a grizzly bear, took the 2017 title for right hand in the super-heavyweight category.

Dougan did herself proud, too. In her third year of competition, she finished not just first but undefeated in the middleweight category for the right hand. Better still, she’s been cancer-free for seven years and counting.