Updated 19th August 2025
Off out to sea again tonight. Not much going on I thought yesterday, but NEWSFLASH - DEAN BOLT won the Masters category of the Dracula International Cup in Romania today. Why not send him some congratulations? One of our champions right there. Our CHAMPIONS page that can be found on the menu of this site features some of our prolific international travelling champions - have a read about their exploits & get behind them if you can.
Similarly a week after winning the armgods 95kg title from Plamen Dimitrov at Valhalla4 Super Bogdan Stoica flew to Germany to take on their heavyweight champion. He won & I am not surprised at all. Bogdan has something special which goes beyond his versatility, strength & technical mastery. He has an infectious love of what he is doing & a loss will in no way deter his dedication to what he wants to do.
I think it was 1992 when Riddick Bowe took the world heavyweight boxing title off Evander Holyfield who was up to that fight unbeaten. The post match interviewer asked him whether it was time to retire. Holyfield was surprised. "I've had one bad day at the office, that's all. I'm a boxer. I love the training, the fights, the people. It's who I am & what l do. I'll lose again & it will be okay." I've told that story many times to people struggling with their losses. I remember when Bogdan took a loss to Ryan Bowen a few years back. It didn't deter him. He came back wiser & stronger.
I was with him when BLM & the Canadians were joking of his chances before Valhalla 2, & again watched him prepare against Paul Cruz, both outweighing him & fearsome pullers in their own right. Bogdan said he was just the caretaker for the belt at that 105 weight & would hold it until someone worthy comes for it. I wonder who that might be? You can't defeat a happy man like Bogdan. He'll just learn, adjust & progress on. We could all learn a lot from that example. Well done Bogdan, I think you are great.
A few of you have contacted us via the website button above to make a case for your pro status which I asked for a few weeks ago.
Progression starts with intention. New visitors to this site who are interested in starting armwrestling can find everything they need to make a start. We always say to join a club as it saves on the broken arms from strong people exerting themselves incorrectly. Clubs provide the first step to safe competition. Regional Warzones are opportunities to get experience under referee instructions & the chance to pull new people & get help from the best in the country (see the Warzone page for how it works).
Nationals find the champions & these are monitored by independent promoters who like to advertise their matches by listing the accolades of the challengers. Some decide to go onto European & World tournaments & we have a pathway for that too - but it all starts at the club level.
A new club - Borough Berzerkers - in Stevenage made themselves known last week. Welcome. They provided a list of their members who are intending to attend the Novice Nationals - club captains can help administration for the event by forwarding a list of their novices to us via the Get in touch button above. Intended weight class can be included if known.
That's all the news for this week. Now back to the usual notices that are still relevant, skip this if you've already read it the last few weeks:
A reminder that IFA WORLDS entries for the Worlds in Azerbyjan open next month (1st September) & if you're intending to go you have a lot to read & act upon - see the Worlds page.
I'll be running the next PAA WARZONE on October 4th - Yorkshire Cup in Leeds - Dan Hanlon won both arms in 2023. Rob Frampton & Mateusz Matuszczak were added last year. Is your name going to be next?
Nationals - both Novice & Pro are in November . Discussions among the board are continuing in regard to how to improve them in future. There are always considerations of what would be ideal, what is practical & who is willing to do it. We've come along way since Paul Maiden decided to form the PAA with a desire to make armwrestling in the UK bigger. Those who watched ARMGODS VALHALLA 4 on Saturday can see how that has developed. My input initially was as a caretaker President for a year or so. I was reluctant to change anything - easy to make a mess of things started by someone else. That is still a challenge but the number of participants nationally has increased & there is more armwrestling going on every week than I can keep up with. Multiple choices, lots of locations, different formats entry level to international competition. So a different landscape than what we had in 2018 before I was involved in any way.
I started on the wheelie bin against the neighbours. It was no less fun. I had an ambition to go to Japan to do the Armsumo & bring back a version of it to do here. I did all that, & more besides. I realise that I'm not such a visionary person as Paul. I'm logistically capable - I can organise things & find creative solutions when problems appear. That's how the warzones came about. I heard a few pros talking that they had cut weight to make a class that ultimately didn't run & that it was a waste of their time. I was a novice who went everywhere - pulled in any tournament pro or novice without a pin for two years - & it was 2 & out. Then get hammered on the side table. I did some supermatches too - they aren't my thing - my favourite being my loss to Jim Ayrton which was as close a scrap as I have ever had on the table. He was the better man. I listened to Gary Roberts & Travis Bagent talk about their ruler of the nation format & I tinkered with it for a few years at Udezumou before trying it out in Woodthorpe in 2023. It took a few more trials to get the format right & it seems to have provided the right balance for novices seeking progression & pros wanting to grip as many hands as possible & scrap against each other without having to cut weight unnecessarily. Tom Atherton suggested that we have a warzone league with points & a belt awarded at the end of the year for the winner. That is going to happen in 2026.
Tom also suggested that we stop doing Novice Nationals, put more resources into putting on a larger National Championship with triple elimination instead of double & each category would have a prize for the best newcomer(s). I think this would be more fun to run. Those with real ambition would look to measure themselves against that rather than hang about to win Novice Nationals & then disappear into obscurity which is what many have done. There are more routes to progression available & plenty of places to stagnate or pull leisurely if that is your thing.
Since I have been president (I took over in November 2021) I have seen 144 people qualify to pro status. I started making records of wins & top 3 places soon after the Pro Nationals of 2021 & used whatever I could find which went back to 2018 - this gives me a working list of 877 armwrestlers for the last 8 years. Some have quit, or are long term inactive. In the last 3 years I can identify 604 active armwrestlers who have competed somewhere. Of these, 360 are still novices. There were 109 novices at Novice Nationals - two of them - Oli Williams & Acho Ngo joined in at Pro nationals to make 60 total participants. Where were the rest of the novices? Some were on the side table or in the audience, but most were elsewhere. Many of the top three would have been in the mix I feel. Tom & I think that this is going against progression - the word "Pro" is putting some off from trying & we have created a bubble where people are content to turn up once a year & stay stagnant indefinitely if not joustled along. We have the problem too of people pretending to be novices when they clearly aren't.
There aren't any full time professional armwrestlers in the UK. It might be argued that there only a handful in the world - & if you took away social media revenue the list becomes very small. A pro armwrestler has the opportunity to win prize money - but those invited to go to the tournaments that have it are few. Armgods did a 10 grand giveaway this year open to everyone - not many of the 604 active armwrestlers took the opportunity to win a draw that didn't rely on pinning the opponent. What more encouragement is needed? Those who want to progress can turn up at regional tournaments, pull supermatches, enter independent tournaments or organise their own wheelie bin league. What I'm trying to do is to facilitate progression - the reward for that is world championship medals & maybe one day a pro armwrestler who earns enough to not work anywhere else or worry about playing with a phone camera. World championship medals have been won. The other thing I think unlikely in my lifetime.
People do what they want to do & there are a lot of choices as I have already said. We all have a choice, including me. I'm mentioning this now because I won't be running or attending a Novice Nationals in 2026. The work to make it happen starts a long while before with clubs contacted for a list of their new members, lists printed, residency checks made, cheats discouraged & all the wrangling to do with medals, certificates, venue & accompanying logistics. I am willing (if re-elected at the AGM in January) to run the regional tournaments, a triple elimination PAA UK & IRELAND National Championships at end of November/Early December 2026 along the lines of what Tom suggested & continue the year round admin as I have done for the past 4 years. Those on the board willing to take on all the accompanying duties of the Novice Nationals will have the list of how to do it given over after this years tournament & an announcement will be made thereafter of if, what & when.
In the meantime this years Novice National tournament will see the top 3 of each category being granted pro status. We need to think about what Pro Status actually means. It actually means competence & experience. You've done enough not to be lined up early in the first round of the regional warzones. If the Novice Nationals remain you will be excluded from them, but there will be no reward for being inactive - pro status is going to be earned by wins & places. This competence is also going to be assessed by the vice presidents who can assess a supermatch win. They have an eye for who is of that level & the prevalence of supermatches taking place necessitates another route of progression to be considered. The wording for this will appear on the Pro Status page in due course.
Lots to take in. Read it again a few times if needed. If your ambition is to just win the novice nationals - this might be the year to do it.
See you down the road.