All things start somewhere and here is the basic history of the sport of Arm Wrestling!
- Arm wrestling matches started In Gilardi’s saloon located in Petaluma, CA back in 1952. The sport was founded by a young journalist named Bill Soberanes. Bill was the inspiration for first the yearly Petaluma, followed by Northern California and lastly the California arm wrestling championship. A decade after its first introduction, Bill joined hands with Dave Devoto to form the first Wristwrestling Championship in the World. Both Bill and Dave then took the arm wrestling championship to the largest auditoriums in Petaluma. The first wrist wrestling match was highly successful and the rest is history.
- By 1969, Dave Devoto signed a contract with the American Broadcasting Corporation. After the contract signing, World’s Wristwrestling Championship entered into a long relationship of 16 years with ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Majority of the people learned about Arm wrestling from ABC’s production of Wide World of Sports. ABC broadcasted arm wrestling championships on air from 1969 to 1984. By October 1995, Learning Channel started filming the arm wrestling event and broadcasted it four times all across the globe. Later on, other channels such as NBC also broadcasted arm wrestling from 1996, adding to the overall popularity of the game and making it a worldwide phenomenon.