Overtime Sports Bar and Grill was filled with muscular, sweating, grunting men (and a few ladies too) Saturday.
That's because the bar hosted the Northern Ontario Armwrestling Championships, put on by the Arm Melter Armwrestling League, in conjunction with Sudbury's own Team Arm Machine.
More than 100 people took part in the tournament, which featured amateur and open categories, as well as a main event super-match between Jeff Dabe of Stacy, Minnesota and Sudbury's own Brian Desormeaux.
Dabe is the current North American Professional Championship belt holder, while Desormeaux is the four-time Ontario champion.
In the end, Dabe, who's described in one online article as a real-life Popeye with 19-inch arms and huge hands, prevailed 3-2 in the super-match.
The affable Dabe joked that it's getting “tougher and tougher” to beat Desormeaux every time they have a match-up.
“He's getting closer on me,” said Dabe, a heavy equipment operator by trade who's been armwrestling since the early 1980s. “I have to work to keep him at bay.”
Desormeaux said arm wrestling with Dabe is a “dream match” for him — they've only matched up once before.
“You don't have those opportunities very often,” he said. “For me, it was a match of a lifetime, a chance to try to get the belt, be the champion holder.”
Some armwrestlers engage in WWE-style trash talk, but that's not the case for either Dabe or Desormeaux. “Me and Jeff are extremely friendly,” Desormeaux said.
He said he got into arm wrestling 11 years ago after watching the 1987 Sylvester Stallone film “Over the Top,” which is about arm wrestling.
Desormeaux said he found the movie in the $5 DVD bin at Walmart, and after watching it, his daughter said she thought he's pretty strong. “We found a tournament, and I ended up doing very well,” he said.
People love armwrestling because it's a way of asserting yourself physically that won't result in any head trauma, said tournament organizer Joe Gould.
"There's also a blue collarness about the people,” said Gould, a Belleville, Ont. resident who's the owner of Arm Fight Club.
“It's regular people, and it's a gentlemanly type of sport. Everyone is really sportsmanlike and good to each other. You've got a stereotype of bikers or something or violence. It's not that.”
Gould has a long list of arm wrestling titles himself, including six times as Canadian championship winner, but these days, he's a referee, scorekeeper and event promoter.
He said he got into armwrestling thanks to his big brother, who's 12 years older, and taught him the sport. “And I love it,” Gould said. “I love the people, and I love the competition.”
Sweat still rolling down his face, Ray Dalton spoke to Sudbury.com just after winning the amateur heavyweights division of the competition.
The amateur bouts are meant for those with less than a year of experience in the sport, and Dalton, a tall, muscle-bound young man, said he'd only been armwrestling for three months.
“It started at a trailer park,” he said. “A bunch of people got drunk and said 'You look strong, let's armwrestle.' After I was done beating that whole place, I thought 'Maybe I have something here.'
“I went to my first event in Toronto, and I won. Ever since then I've been addicted. It's a lot of fun. Even if I lose, I have a great time.”
