Pro arm wrestling filled with characters

On Sunday morning, I made a mental note, that these were the last four people/reptilelike monsters with whom I would want to pick a fight:

— Mike Tyson in his prime.

— That Bane dude from the last “Batman” movie.

— Godzilla.

— Allen Fisher.

Allen Fisher easily is the lightest; he weighs only 165 pounds. He soon will be 60, which makes him second-oldest among the aforementioned mayhem masters, but just barely — the first “Godzilla” movie came out in 1954. That would make the sea creature with the atomic breath 61, but still dangerous.

Allen Fisher is from San Diego. He is bald, or chooses to be bald, and sports a mustache. This makes him look menacing, though he’s really not. He has anvils for forearms. Veins stick out from his arms and neck like guitar strings. Bass guitar strings. A big upright bass, like the ones Dickie Smothers and that dude from Barenaked Ladies strum.

The last time I saw Allen Fisher was 2013. He was arm wrestling in a Las Vegas bar called Senor Frog’s, for peanuts. The arm wrestling matches at Senor Frog’s were delayed because one of the competitors wanted to hear “Thunderstruck” by AC/DC, instead of “The Heat Is On” by Glenn Frey.

The arm wrestling circuit was a lot more grassroots then.

Now that ESPN has become involved, the arm wrestling circuit has production value — on Sunday at Cox Pavilion, it had a director named Ben, boom cameras and microphones, a grandstand riser upon which people could stand to watch the matches and WAL girls in tiny midriff tops and the shortest of shorts.

WAL stands for World Armwrestling League, what they’re calling this new iteration of a sport that is said to have originated either during Ancient Egypt or on “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” from Petaluma, Calif., during the 1960s.

The difference in production value between arm wrestling on ESPN and arm wrestling from Senior Frog’s was so stark that practically every competitor I approached after the waves of testosterone subsided acknowledged it. The purses are much better, too.

“They used to have us on an (effin’) stage in a barn at a county fair,” said Tom “Full” Nelson of Sacramento, Calif., who won third place in a preliminary match with the weaker of his arms (right) before it was Allen Fisher’s turn.

Nelson is one of the characters the arm wrestling people cautioned me about. He said the “pullers” — which is what arm wrestlers call themselves — with whom he trains, the Sacramento Arm Benders, really are a drinking team with an arm wrestling problem, and that fifth grade were three of the best years of their lives. They also are undefeated at camping, Nelson said.

Nelson introduced me to his sister, Kelli, who had won first place in her division in the ladies arm wrestling on Saturday — arm wrestling oftentimes is a family affair, I’m told.

Tom works for UPS; Kelli for a veterinarian. Tom said were it not for arm wrestling, he probably wouldn’t have come back from an ATV accident that left him with a broken skull and other injuries. So arm wrestling has therapeutic value, too.

But mostly it has characters, and it had Petaluma, of course — and Tom Nelson said if I remember Petaluma, then I should check out his teammate, “Lightning” Luke Kindt, who is from Petaluma and would be pulling next.

Kindt would be pulling against none other than Allen Fisher. He’ll be the younger guy, Kelli Nelson said.

It would have been easier had she just said Kindt would be the guy whose eyes weren’t bulging out of his head in a maniacal fashion.

There’s a lot of gamesmanship in arm wrestling, which ESPN has to love, and then sometimes the competitors don’t agree on the grip, and they foul each other, and one is disqualified — which Luke Kindt was. At first.

After he was DQ’d but before he was reinstated, Kindt left the building, Elvis-style, and then his girlfriend ran after him, and one of the TV crew guys told Ben the director this was great drama, and that he should direct the heck out of it.

When Kindt finally returned, there was more literal hand-wringing. From my vantage point, it appeared Fisher tried to pull Kindt’s arm out of its socket. In the end, Fisher prevailed, and as he bellowed to the crowd in a pro wrestling style, this was his 46th world title, and if you want some of this, come and get it.

The WAL girls looked a little frightened.

Minutes later when Allen Fisher stopped by to chat, he was calm and composed, a totally different guy. It was like The Incredible Hulk had become Dr. Bruce Banner again.

Somebody said they call Fisher and his wife, Carolyn, also a champion puller, the “Ozzie and Harriet of Arm Wrestling.”

When I spoke to Fisher, the maniacal eyes were gone. He said Luke Kindt and him get on famously; they go back a long way; sometimes Lightning Luke wins, sometimes he does. That stuff in front of the WAL girls? That was just psychological warfare, he said.

Allen Fisher seemed like the friendliest of guys then, downright personable even, but you still could see the guitar strings in his arms. I decided I still wouldn’t want to fight him.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.