Posted on 8 December 2010

My parents live near a champion arm wrestler. A few years ago,  I found out that he was training a guy I went to high school with in how to be a competitive arm wrestler. When I found out that he was headed to the world championships after a few successful national runs, I went to find out what it takes to be one of Canada’s top arm wrestlers.
Prince George’s Best Arm Wrestler
It was a fascinating interview, learning about all the strategy involved and how it’s treated differently in different countries (you can make a living at it in Europe, the prizes are bigger in the United States, in Canada it’s treated as something of a joke). Plus, the fact that speed is such a huge factor and that if a match lasts more than a few seconds, you’re pretty much out of the tournament because it’s so exhausting was interesting to me.
Some technical notes: the sound was a bit off since we were moving around during the interview. I had to abandon one of my favourite lines about why he liked arm wrestling (to the effect that you go on stage, try to rip a guy’s arm off, and then go for a beer with him).
In order to combat the echoey effects and to add some space to the track, I decided to add a musical bed  underneath. I wanted something like “Rocky” but I didn’t want to use “Rocky”, so I did a creative commons search on Soundcloud for tags found on the “Rocky” theme on last.fm. If you’re interested, it’s a remix of the Duranandal theme by a talented artist out of Nevada (where the world championships are being held!) going by the moniker of “Stormcat.”
This piece wound up being syndicated nationally.

Filed under: CBC