" The world may never have seen a David quite so imposing.
A quick glance at A.J. Henson’s thigh-sized biceps and it would be hard to peg him as the underdog in much of anything, let alone an arm-wrestling competition.
But the 27-year-old Douglas High School graduate found himself in the shadow of Goliath during the World Arm Wrestling Federation Championships in Mesquite, Nev., Dec. 10.
On a massive stage in front of a frenzied crowd – with five other weights competing simultaneously – Henson faced a massive Russian, Aleksander Puzakov, to advance to the semifinals.
“It’s a wild place,” Henson said. “So many foreign languages.”
A typical arm wrestling match lasts a matter of seconds. Henson and Puzakov battled for more than a minute before Puzakov finally outlasted the Douglas strongman.
“It went on-and-on-and-on,” Henson said. “I got him almost pinned, but he was so strong he brought me all the way back and beat me.”
When determining that Puzakov was the favorite, one needs not look further than their professions. Henson works for Henson Fencing and Construction. Puzakov is a professional arm wrestler.
“In the rest of the world, arm wrestling is a huge sport,” Henson said. “It’s just not that big in the United States. In Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Slovakia, all those old Soviet countries have national arm wrestling teams. Like we have football teams, basketball teams, those guys are pros. It’s all they do. They always win. When they bring their team to Worlds, they bring their doctors, their coaches, everybody. It’s a full-time deal for them. They make a living off of it.”
Despite his disadvantage in a field where five of the top seven competitors came from Russia, Slovakia or Kazakhstan, Henson placed sixth in the world left-handed in his 198-lb. weight class.
It was Henson’s first appearance at the World Championships, due mostly to it being held in the United States for the first time in years. By winning a national championship at the United States Armwrestling Federation Championships in Billings, Mont., in August, Henson earned a shot at Worlds.
Henson had qualified for Worlds in 2006, but it was held in Japan.
“I didn’t have the time or the money to go,” he said. “It’s expensive and it’s usually overseas. It was rare for it to be here.”
For example, next year Worlds will be held in Kazakhstan, with Brazil hosting in 2012.
“With Worlds being in the U.S. this year I decided this would be the year I got serious and really tried hard,” Henson said.
Just four years ago, when he was 23, Henson had never weight-lifted. Still, he was anything but scrawny, after years of building fence for a living.
“That’s all I’ve done since I was a little kid,” he said.
Then one summer, Chris Chandler started working at the fencing company with Henson.
“He got me into it,” Henson said. “He got me to go to arm wrestling competitions and it just snowballed from there. He’s an astounding arm wrestler. He’s a several-time national champion.”
The first competition Henson competed in was in Colorado, where he finished second behind Chandler. By 2006, Henson was a national champion at 176 pounds who was occasionally ranked in the top 10 in North America. Then Chandler moved away and Henson retreated from the world of arm wrestling in 2007 and 2008. When Chandler returned to the Douglas area, Henson was thrust back into the world of bulging biceps.
By the end of 2010, Henson was ranked in the top five in North America for both arms and plans to be in the top two by the spring.
Over the years, he learned from Gaylon Russell in Douglas and Corey Miller in Cheyenne.
“It’s a very technical sport,” he said. “People don’t realize, unless they actually do it, how technical it is. You can lose a match just by your set up or moving your hand a little bit. Angle is really important. There’s a lot to it.”In order to reach Worlds, Henson had to get through Nationals first. After more than 20 matches, Henson reached the left-handed finals where he faced off against 52-year-old Mike Bowling – who would also lose to Puzakov at Worlds – and needed to beat him twice. Henson would pull out the win, but finish fourth right-handed, while only the top two went on to Worlds.
“I wish I would have (qualified), because the two Americans in my weight class never won a match,” Henson said. “I think I could have been in the top 10 righthanded, as well. But, the circumstances didn’t allow it.”
As Henson arrived in Mesquite, along with 1,300 other competitors, he set a goal to finish in the top 10. After his first match, things weren’t looking optimistic.
“I have a problem when I go to big tournaments,” he admitted. “My very first match of the day, my brain isn’t right and I’m slow and I’m not doing everything the way I should be. If I had my head in the game and beat that first guy – which I should have, the guy wasn’t better than me – I probably could have gotten in the top four. I just hosed myself on that one.”
So Henson dropped into the “B” bracket, where he proceeded to win his next seven matches to reach the quarterfinals. That was where he faced the Russian.
“The Russian guys, they were pretty unfriendly,” Henson said. “Really unfriendly, actually. They are there to win and they don’t really want to mingle.”
For most of this country, whose only exposure to arm wrestling is Sylvester Stallone’s Over the Top, the assumption is strength gets pins.
But that’s often not the case.
Henson pointed out that a quick draw is the most important trick in an arm wrestler’s bag.
“You need to be going right now. You need to be going on the ‘ready’ or you’re not going fast enough,” he said. “When I go, I go so fast, I throw my entire body with it. I keep my hand right in front of my face at all times and it gives me a tremendous amount of leverage.”
When Henson is competing, he may not be using his legs to stand at all, instead he puts his entire body weight into his arm, and thus onto his competition’s arm.
But why does Henson have such success left-handed?
“For some reason, left-handed, I pull really quick and I’m more technically sound,” he said. “I don’t know why my left is that good. I think what it is, there are more guys out there who are better right-handed than left-handed, but my left isn’t much worse than my right.”
To train for his new life as a professional arm wrestler – not that he’s going to give up fencing anytime soon – Henson works out three days a week at the rec center and has purchased specialized weight training equipment for his shop.
Before a competition, Henson will take a week off of lifting to allow his joints and muscles time to recover. He will dehydrate for at least 24 hours to drop seven pounds in order to compete at 198.
“It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of training, good eating, lifting,” he said.
On his way to winning the national title, Henson won state competitions in South Dakota, Colorado, Oklahoma, Illinois and Missouri.
Everywhere he goes, Henson is challenged. Some tough-minded guy hears he’s in the presence of one of our nation’s best, and he suddenly has to belly up to the table and prove his own worth.
Henson takes it all in stride.
“I don’t barroom arm wrestle,” he said. “There’s no point in it for me. It makes people mad. I just tell people, ‘I’m a professional. There’s no reason for you to arm wrestle me. I wouldn’t want to get embarrassed.’”
That’s unlikely. "
Sursa: www.douglas-budget.com/articles/2011/01/05/news/sports/sports11.txtCampionatul Mondial de Skandenberg 2010Left Men's 90 1 SVK3508 LUBOMIR JAGNESAK 2 RUS2823 CHERMEN KHADAEV 3 RUS2822 ALEKSANDR PUZAKOV 4 USA3924 MIKE BOWLING 5 SVK3509 GABRIEL HARCARIK 6 USA3922 AJ HENSON 7 KAZ2015 NIKOLAY LENKOV 8 CAN1813 DEREK PENNER 9 BRA3215 THIAGO FERREIRA 10 KGZ5903 ALEKSANDR LI 11 BRA3216 ROBERTO SILVA 12 FIN1505 JUHA SALMINEN 13 NOR1404 TORE MATRE 14 BUL1005 GOLEMANOV STOYAN 15 SUI3611 MARTIN ZANGGER 16 KAZ2014 BERIK TAGABAYEV 17 FRA1306 JEAN-GEORGES NAEGEL 18 SWE3007 JOHNNY LINDHOLM 19 UKR2207 OLEKSII GLAZOVYI 20 SUI3612 ROLAND BASLER 21 FIN1506 TERO SAARINEN 22 GRB2703 DAN THOMAS 23 FRA1307 CLAUDE BERTRAND 24 CAN1814 KAYNE HEMSING 25 DEN5601 LASSE KICKBUSCH
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