Armwrestling Tournaments Used To Be Legendary...

So I've been reviewing a lot of old arm wrestling footage. I want to take a look at something I came across here from 2018, almost 10 years ago. This is incredible amounts of high level arm wrestlers. A lot of them that you see at East versus West nowadays. Rest in peace to Andre Pushkar. You get to see him do really well in the left arm. This is a left arm tournament. Just look at how stacked, ridiculously stacked this class is here. So we got Pushkar versus Revaz. First match, Pushkar with that signature aggression in his face, goes right to the side, gets the win. Now we got Sonev versus, I think, Ryabtsev. I don't know how to pronounce his name, but I've seen this guy in the Lion Pride League. But look at Sonev gets the win there. Now we got Gennady. We got obese Gennady here. What happened there? Looked like he may have injured himself. I'm not sure. He just got completely ripped open there. He had a good hit and then something happened there. I don't know if there was an injury or what happened, but now we've got Trubin, Easy Pin, Kurdecha, and Krasimir. Like imagine this is a tournament class and you have to beat all these guys to win. Just a ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous tournament class. There you see Krasimir beating Kurdecha on the left. I don't think that would happen nowadays with Kurdecha's left, but Kurdecha was super new in the sport at this time, I believe. This is 2018. We got Prudnik versus Popeye. Oleg Zhok with the clean top roll. Makiyev versus Iskai Vadim, a nice top roll. Rustam Babaya versus Pushkar. Pushkar with the win. I'm not sure who this guy on the right is, but he gets sucked in the hook of Jordan Sonev. Look at how much younger he looks. This is almost 10 years ago. Absolutely crazy. Like I said, ridiculously stacked class. Trubin versus Kostadinov. Seems like we have not seen Trubin. I guess he's retired from the sport of arm wrestling. It's been a while since we've seen him. He's had a match with Levon, a super match with Levon. I believe he, maybe the last time we saw him was when he injured his pec against Georgiy Tautyev. But look at this match here. Really close match. Looks like Krasimir's just staying a little bit more well-connected. Trubin is very, very stretched open on his bicep there, so I think Krasimir's gonna win this one. Trubin trying to get his shoulder behind it to get some type of side pressure. See, he tries to do this transition where he tries to get behind it, but Krasimir gets the win. Now we got Makiya versus Oleg Zhok. Elbow foul on Oleg. Looks like they're going into the strap. Nope, elbow foul on Alan. I guess a foul in the setup, and they give the win to Oleg. Look at Ravaz. Look at this different size difference here. This has gotta be at least 100 pounds size difference. Pretty sure Ravaz is like 6'4 or something as well, 6'5. We got Prudnik versus Kurdecha. Look at this posture here. Looks like Prudnik is gonna try to shoot forward and sink the hook in. It's, I mean, almost undeniable. I don't see him going for a top roll here. It's almost setting up kind of like Alijon does. This is a similar setup to what Alijon does here, but this is in 2018. Prudnik sinks the hook, gets Kurdecha on his bicep, and gets the win. So I think Kurdecha's out of the weight class, and that was two losses. Man, Pushkar was such a monster. Imagine if he was still with us today, the level he could have reached. Now we got Babayev getting the win. We're gonna see Babayev at the upcoming East versus West event. Use code Tom. Save some money on the pay-per-view there. But looking good. Gets the win. We got Trubin again. Not too sure who his opponent. Looks like Trubin got the win, but Revaz versus Makiyev waits. Is that a false start? And then he loses in the strap. I'm not surprised. Again, huge weight difference. Think about having an open class. You have guys from the lighter weights all the way up to big monsters like Kurdecha. Let's look at Prudnik here. Getting this guy in the hook and getting the win. Sonev versus Krasimir. It looks like, did they just slow start in the hook? What was that start there? They're just slow starting? I don't know what the point of that was. Maybe he's letting it go. Looks like he was just letting that round go. We got Babayev versus Trubin, the giant killer, but he elbow fouls. Let's see if he can get the pin this time while keeping his elbow down. Wow, Trubin keeps getting in this defensive position. Probably why he, maybe he tore his pec from just pulling in a position where he's trying to get his pec involved somehow, even though he's defensive. But Babayev gets the win there. This video has almost 500,000 views, which is a lot for arm wrestling. And that just is awesome. Revaz completely destroys Prudnik there. No, here's the matchup. Here's the matchup to see. These are the top guys in the class. And Pushkar gets the win. Almost looked like Oleg was just letting him get, letting himself get pinned there. It looks like he was giving that one up for the show. Maybe that's just me. I mean, it looks like he's just, like he didn't even like do any type of offensive attack. This kind of looks a little bit artificial. I know these guys were super close. Rest in peace to Pushkar. Let's look at Revaz versus Krasimir. Wow, this is a, that was a really good start there. What a match here. What an absolute match. Just a hook war. Looks like Revaz is starting to get the edge here, but does he have enough endurance to deal with Krasimir? Looks like, oh, they call the elbow on Revaz there. So they both have one elbow foul. Just a ridiculous hook match here. And Krasimir does have more endurance, gets the win that time, but he's got to beat Oleg Zhok in the top three here. Look at that mutant hand and forearm. Good luck beating that. That's not going to be easy. I'm not sure what was said there, but no chance against Oleg Zhok. So this is the final match. Oleg, way too, way too much hands. I mean, literally, quite literally. Beats him twice to get the win. It's almost like he laid down the first time just to get to the final to face Pushkar. Just shows the level that Oleg Zhok was in 2018. Absolutely ridiculous. What an epic tournament from almost 10 years ago in 2018. Imagine if there were tournaments with absolutely stacked with guys at the highest level nowadays. I think that would be interesting just because you get to see many different stylistic match-ups that kind of make things interesting. But let me know your thoughts on that tournament and hit like and subscribe for more content. Let me know what you want to see in the comment section.