He Finally Expresses His Frustration!

Larry Wheels explained why he quit armwrestling. What happened that scared him so much that he quit the sport overnight to never look back at it again. Before we discuss that, let's talk about the former East vs West 115kg champion Dave Dave is doing an exercise that he uses to train his dragging hook. He works out on his side pressure twice a week. Looks like he has already started training for a match. And usually when Dave posts these videos, we have a match coming. We haven't heard the announcement yet, but who could it be? I would like to see a match between Dave Chafee and Michael Todd once again. Back in the days when Michael used to easily beat Dave Chafee, Dave didn't really have a flop press. Now he does have one. He cannot force Michael in the hook. But now he can start the match with his top roll attempt, which will obviously fail to finish the match against Michael. But then he can try to switch to his flop press and maybe he can get some success there. I would like to see that match. Dave is currently ranked 2. Michael is ranked 5th. He wanted a match against Ivan Matushenko. He isn't really going to get it anytime soon because Ivan has announced he needs time till December to train for this match. But Michael wants to compete in September. And if he's getting an opponent there, I think it should be Dave Chafee. Artem Morozov also posted a video where he was doing very light blood flow workout with just a band. He was doing some pronation stuff, then some side pressure, triceps, supination, riser, side pressure from a different angle, bicep from a different angle, pronation from a different angle, some cupping, more triceps and more biceps. So all of this is to obviously start recovering from his injury that he suffered in the Hermes Gasparini match. Obviously, he doesn't want to sit idle and recover that way. Almost all of the armwrestlers believe that light workout, tons and tons of repetitions are actually good for pumping some blood into the tendons and stuff and heal that way. Hermes Gasparini also posted some stories where he was getting some shockwave therapy. This device delivers high energy acoustic wave pulses, the shockwaves directly through the skin into the targeted tissue. So this helps with the growth of new blood vessels to get some blood supply and some nutrients into the tendons. It helps break up the calcifications and also some chronic scar tissue. This treatment helps in golfer's elbow, in tennis elbow, and also in tendonitis. And I think if you combine all three of these problems, you get an armwrestler's elbow. It's interesting how one match damaged both athletes in almost a similar manner. None of the armwrestlers are fit to compete in probably the next two upcoming events. Hermes was also doing some band workout, then some blood flow, and then some rice bucket or rock bucket training, whatever we can call it. Let's see who recovers faster and who puts his elbow on the east versus west elbow pad first. In the Fix episode, Kamil Jablonski expressed his frustration that many of the top armwrestlers are not available to armwrestle him. He is in top shape, he wants to compete, but nobody from the top five is available. Not Levan, not Devin, not Hermes, not Vitaly, not Morozov. He believes that Morozov was underestimated way too much by the fans coming into the Hermes-Gasparini match. While Hermes came into the match slightly overconfident and he didn't approach the opening round with maximum intensity. Once Hermes lost the first round, the momentum shifted to Morozov completely. Kamil also thinks that Morozov may have been intentionally downplaying his strength before the match just to confuse Hermes-Gasparini or to make him overconfident. And it kind of worked because he was constantly saying that he has a butter wrist, Hermes is too strong, he's the favorite, he's going to win, stuff like that. Kamil also praised Michael Todd by saying that Michael's win over Oleg Petrenko showed that how dangerous he really is. He believes that Michael is almost impossible to beat at 105 and also the 115 kg categories. Kamil's own press worked well against Michael because he has such a large frame. You cannot beat Michael with a flop press if you don't have that kind of mass behind your flop. Guys like Oleg Petrenko while weighing 105 kilos simply cannot do that. So next up, Kamil will be facing Georgy Svetkov. He wants to climb the ladder to Levan Saginashvili. In fact, he was kind of mad that why he isn't already getting a match against Levan. If Jerry got a match against Levan, why didn't he get it? He destroyed Jerry Cadarette. And he also beat Michael Todd pretty convincingly. So now Kamil thinks that a couple of more wins and the path to Levan Saginashvili is clear. He first needs to beat Georgy Svetkov. Then he would like to face and defeat Vitaly Laletin. And finally a shot against Levan Saginashvili. Let's talk about Larry Wheels now. This interview is almost a couple of months old, but I haven't really heard anyone discuss anything from there. So it's kind of new for the armwrestling community. Larry explained why he started armwrestling. And he has told us this story many times that he lost to schoolboys brother's wife. So I would say that he's kind of downplaying himself. I think it would have been something like this. She's taking a super high grip right into Larry's fingertips. Larry's thinking I will probably stop her pretty easily. She attacks and she catches Larry off guard and pins him. I don't really believe that it was like a genuine ready go or something because even a completely untrained Larry would have been way too strong for a hundred and forty fifty pound girl. Larry said that at that event, someone invited him to armwrestle just for fun. And until that time, he didn't even know that armwrestling was a serious sport. He only armwrestled a few times with his family members casually while he was growing up. His first experience, which we just discussed, was a huge reality check. Larry described it as one of the biggest humbling moments of his life. It taught him that technique matters far more than raw strength in armwrestling. At that time, he had no clue who armwrestlers were. But then later on, he started to figure out who is an actual armwrestler just by looking at their forearms. So why did Larry quit? It was witnessing and also being a part of some arm breaks. So the first incident was a bodybuilder breaking his arm while armwrestling an experienced nerdy looking guy. Larry has a clip of that, but he hasn't released it anywhere. And just a few minutes later, a gym staff member wanted to armwrestle Larry wheels just for fun. And that video we have seen, I think he's talking about this video where Larry casually went sideways, not too much force, and yet he broke this guy's arm and that completely shattered Larry wheels. He wasn't really going to the armwrestling table too much after that. And then a few months later at a college event where Larry was also present in Northern California, an amateur broke his arm within the first five minutes of the tournament starting. And this is when Larry decided that's it. He does not want to do anything more with armwrestling. Larry explained that he didn't want to see anyone else's arm getting broken. He didn't want to be responsible for causing that kind of injury. He didn't want to suffer a serious arm break himself because he believes armwrestling injuries like that arm break and stuff. It takes at least six months to recover. It's a big surgery. It leaves you with a big scar forever. And Larry does not want anything to do with that. But he does understand that these kinds of injuries are extremely rare at the pro level. These injuries mostly happen at the amateur level. The pros have kind of denser bones and they know how not to break their arm. So they are generally safe. He didn't really try to say that armwrestling is like a super dangerous sport and you are surely going to break your arm if you try this. He didn't say that. But after witnessing these injuries, he said he quits armwrestling cold turkey. That's it for this video. Thanks for watching. I will see you again. Got cold turkey. I can't do it anymore.