I am interested in finding out who are the best armwrestlers in various weight classes. If you have an opinion, please share it!
The list is long in fact too long for me to even attempt it. I consider myself to be somewhere in the pack and if someone gets me excited enough who knows. At present no one has actually gotten them all together to find out although there has been some sorting. There is only one that has repeatedly shown that he can beat the best and that is John Brzenk jr. I dont think it is just that he is stronger than anyone else and I am sure he would agree but he has done it so long and has such an arsenal of different ways he can pull on someone with a very good hook base that he is the only solid pick. All the rest have weaknesses which John has pretty much exploited. Andrey Junkov on the left hand if he could stay on cycle like he was in Briansk lefthanded but he knows that was enhancements lol. We nicknamed him Hollywood some years back because of the sunglasses and truthful way he went about it. He was so strong in the Briansk tourney that the only way anyone would have beat him lefthanded was either with a stick or to take his hand and hang on for 20 minutes or so. Alan Kareav is coming back in the picture and we will see how these others that are healing come along. No one that I know has ever stayed healthy enough for long enough to be the best except John B. Travis Bagent seems to be staying healthy but his hook needs work apparently. It is just to complicated to name a list because of the length of it not wanting to leave out anyone who could bust a podium spot on any given day. I have wrestled alot of them in the USA and Europe but for the most part that was all before I had the broken bones removed from my elbow. I am even a different person now although I am older and as John I have been sitting around soaking up any weakness any of them might have. I guess I would make a pretty good coach but I still want to pull hehe. Heck there is even a guy with your name Sergey from the Ukraine. He has a wicked hook and a great will and hit if he can keep people in there but his weakness is his toproll. He has a teamate named Taras Ivankin who is that toproll but If someone shows as much top as Taras and gets a strap match with him he has not had many people put him in the straps and it is a different world. That is his weakness. So many people and so many variations of greatness. I wouldnt begin to try and categorize them all. sorry.
I was checking out another website and they kept talking about Travis Bagent, so I was under the impression that he was pretty good. I guess I am just surprised that there is not a "best" armwrestler sort of like in boxing, but I guess this is more like baseball where even the best teams fall sometimes. Does Brzenk armwrestle regularly? It is hard to imagine that he is so good since he looks like a normal guy, ya know?
Just to throw out a couple of names:
Brzenk
Dean
Bagent
Randall
Espey
Bath
Don Underwood (although I haven't seen him in a while)
Britton Matthews (good puller, young, but haven't seen him in a while either)
All are heavyweights.
I don't really know how much this helps, but this is a rankings that was put together a while back but does not appear to have been updated in a while.
http://www.pinarm.com/Rankings/Rankings.htm
The idea that there is merely one "best" armwrestler in the world is probably a fictional one. Both because there are weight classes and because who is "best" varies by match in a way that is similar to a baseball best of 7 series, it is nearly impossible for someone to never lose. In fact, it often happens that Person A loses to Person B in a tournament only to go through the loser's bracket and beat Person B in the finals; such is armwrestling.
However, there is a clearly "elite" group of wrestlers, each of which may lay legitimate claim to the idea that they are in fact the "best." Those wrestlers include those listed earlier in this thread. It is my own personal opinion that Travis Bagent, John Brzenk, and, more recently, Jerry Caddorrette (sp) are the best of the best in the Heavyweight division.
John Brzenk, if you haven't been to http://pullingjohn.com/ you need to check out this website, it's got tons of videos, rankings (updated regularly last update 14Mar06) awesome site.......here is the rankings for top 20 armwrestlers in North America according to pullingjohn.com
Dropped out: Dan Victor (15), Paul Walther (17)
Last updated: March 31, 2006