FOR SOME reason, New England tends to be a breeding ground for top-notch arm wrestlers. “There’s probably well over a dozen professional arm wrestlers in Massachusetts alone,” says Tim Sears. “I’m talking champions, the best in the world right here.” These might not be guys you read about in the sports pages, but in the world of arm wrestling the names Allen Stilkey, Jim Witt, and Norm Devio mean something.
There’s at least one person at the Mill Hill who can beat Jim Witt. His name is Jerry Cadorette, and he’s the biggest, baddest arm wrestler around. In all professional meets, arm wrestlers are paired up according to their weight. Cadorette is in the super-heavyweight class (242 pounds and up). Witt, meanwhile, falls in the relatively scrawny category of 155 to 176 pounds. By rights, Cadorette and Witt shouldn’t even face one another, but the Cape Cod Invitational has an “overall” competition, in which the best of the best face up for a final, monumental battle. Cadorette ends up slamming Witt with ridiculous ease.
“I doubt that there are more than three or four people on the planet that can beat Jerry,” says Harry Bean. “And I’d be surprised if there’s that. No one beats Jerry Cadorette.” He adds, “He’s in my weight class, and when I see him at a meet I know what’s going to happen. Jerry can beat me any time he wants.” A subsequent Cadorette-Bean match-up corroborates this claim. Quickly.
Every now and then, Cadorette will make sport of his opponents — he’ll hold them at bay for a few seconds, smiling, before grinding their knuckles into the table. This sort of stunt has led some to resent Cadorette. “He’s arrogant,” says one arm wrestler, “and that’s not what the sport’s about.” Actually, Cadorette might be exactly what the sport needs — someone with extraordinary talent who’s prepared to grandstand a little, a Charles Barkley to play off the sport’s many Magic Johnsons. In any case, Cadorette remains unmoved by the criticism. “They were supposed to be premier arm wrestlers,” he says. “I don’t do that with newer arm wrestlers. That would be like a slap in the face.”
Sometimes, Cadorette says, he wishes someone would come along and beat him, just so he would have something to fight for. Right now, that’s looking unlikely. Since 1996, when he first claimed the world championship in his weight group, Cadorette has competed in Russia, India, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, and Sweden, and no one has come close to taking his title. “Before 1996 I was a no one,” he says. “I was always hunting for someone to beat. Now I’m the one who everyone is gunning for. Now I’m the one who’s being sought out. I have to live up to my reputation.”
Jerry Cadorette doesn’t look like much. Pug-nosed and round-faced, he’s like a character from Bazooka Joe. He does have the thigh-size biceps and the nutcracker hands, but so do most of the arm wrestlers here today. What separates Cadorette from the rest, say those involved in the game, is technique. “When you get up to the table you know,” Cadorette explains. “As soon as I get a grip on the other guy I can tell exactly how he’s going to compete and where he’s going to go. It’s my job to counter what he’s going to do. I’m probably not the strongest guy, but I know what I’m doing, and I make sure I do the right thing.”
That’s what all that pre-match fussing is about — they’re testing each other, feeling each other out, trying to read the natural inclinations of the other guy’s muscles. “It’s like chess,” says Sears. “You’re thinking ‘What’s he got? He feels strong here. See what he’s got here.’ It has almost nothing to do with biceps strength. I know bookworms, guys with glasses, their arms smaller than my wrist, and they make you look silly.”
It’s telling that Sears uses the word “silly.” For some reason, losing an arm-wrestling bout is far more humiliating — at least on a primal level — than losing a game of chess, Ping-Pong, or golf. For all its newfound professional gleam and sportsmanship, arm wrestling is still about physically subduing your opponent, overpowering him. It’s still got that air of the gladiator sport about it. And it still remains the favorite game of schoolyard bullies. As Sears puts it, “It’s a tough-guy sport.”
That’s not to say women haven’t made inroads into arm wrestling. “Until 15 years ago, there were hardly any tournaments for women,” says Bill Cox. “Now almost every contest has at least one weight class for women.” Many of the women who compete at smaller meets, Cox adds, are the wives and girlfriends of male contestants. Still, the female arm-wrestling circuit has its stars: Kathy Gentz, Sylvie Maurais, Liane Dufresne, Sherry Mundy — each of whom can hold her own against almost any man.
Before she retired a few years back, Cox’s adopted daughter, Grace Ann Swift, was a fearsome arm wrestler — a seven-time world champion. Cox recalls the time Swift was invited to the Jenny Jones show to arm wrestle — and humiliate — male audience members. “She beat them all,” Cox says. “Jenny Jones gave them a painkiller and sent them back to the audience.”
Over the last decade, arm wrestling has made some headway toward shaking off its boozy, chest-thumping image, but it still has a way to go. Take the rules and the refs and the trophies away, and the sport reverts to its natural state. Jerry Cadorette, for instance, says he can hardly walk into a bar without some would-be tough guy wanting to take him on. “It happens all the time,” he says. “It’s like being Holyfield or Tyson. It’s such a pain. People want to arm wrestle you for money and it ends up in a brawl.” Cadorette responds to his antagonists with as much humility as he can muster. “I say I don’t want to lose my title in this bar. Or I tell them where the next meet will be. If they’re adamant, I’ll go up against them and I’ll just hold them there until they give up.”
