Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Devon Larratt: The World’s Greatest Arm Wrestler | E63

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Devon Larratt: The World’s Greatest Arm Wrestler | E63 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Randall Kaplan: Where were you shot and on a scale of one to 100? How painful isn't it was
• 0:03
  Devon Larratt: a bullet that went through the side of the helicopter, the bullet hit my hand that really upset me. I was like hitting the head Don't hit my right hand. I talked about arm wrestling, and arm wrestling is absolutely my passion. And I love arm wrestling. When I was a kid, I just wanted to be the most awesome fighting machine that I could imagine myself.
• 0:23
  Devon Larratt: armwrestling requires greatness.
• 0:23
  Devon Larratt: On so many levels. There are people who need to be able to promote, who needs to be able to do the business side for me. My only desire is to be the greatest fighter I can be on the table.
• 0:41
  Randall Kaplan: Welcome to a Search of Excellence, which is about our quest for greatness and our desire to be the very best we can be to learn, educate and motivate ourselves to live up to our highest potential.
• 0:50
  Randall Kaplan: It's about planning for excellence and how we achieve excellence through incredibly hard work, dedication and perseverance. It's about believing in ourselves, and the ability to overcome the many obstacles we all face on our way there. Achieving Excellence is our goal. And it's never easy to do. We all have different backgrounds, personalities, and surroundings. We all have different routes, and hope on how we want to get there. My guest today is Devin Lariat.
• 1:12
  Randall Kaplan: Devin is one of the greatest arm wrestlers in history, he has won multiple World Championships.
• 1:19
  Randall Kaplan: And as we're going to see today, Devin is also one of the most charismatic and fun people to watch in the sport of arm wrestling. David, welcome to In Search of Excellence.
• 1:31
  Devon Larratt: Thank you so much, Randall. It's it's quite an honor.
• 1:34
  Randall Kaplan: So I think the question on most people's minds is, is arm wrestling an actual sport? I don't think 99% of people in the world would ever consider it a sport and didn't know it was a sport. So can you tell us what the sport is? The size of the table and the rules and regulations on how it all works?
• 1:55
  Devon Larratt: Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:55
  Devon Larratt: I mean, it definitely now has become a sport. So I mean, how do you define a sport? Think maybe 20 years ago, it didn't tick all the boxes. But now yeah, we have many full time guys all around the world who make a living doing this crazy thing. For me, it's an absolutely full time gig. So it's, it's what I do every day, it's how I feed my family. It's my passion has been that, you know, to some degree, since I was a kid, I started when I was young. armwrestling is a very simple sport. It's a very simple, probably one of the most base sports that there is probably one of the most ancient of all sports, you know, it's like a super handshake.
• 2:46
  Devon Larratt: Basically, you come together, you know, there's a lot of details that I'm going to bypass but we take a grip, we start the match, and one of us pins, the other ones, the tabletop, and there thereby is the winner. So it's a very simple sport at its base. But of course, like all things that deeper you look at it, you'll find that there's tons of rabbit holes and intricacies. It's, there are many federations with slightly varying rule sets. But what I've already described as the base.
• 3:24
  Devon Larratt: It's typically done on like a professional table, but you can do it everywhere. I mean, if you look at whereas most armwrestling done, it's probably done on tables. But yeah, I mean, yeah, the sport of arm wrestling, has really changed his trajectory a lot. And it's probably one of the reasons why I'm talking to you now. I'd say over the last 1015 years, the the trajectory has really changed to a point now where we are, you know, are we are we household, where we're pretty much household at this point? I think that years ago, you know, nobody knew armwrestling now I feel like at a minimum, we've been seen, you know?
• 4:14
  Randall Kaplan: So, baseball has a diamond, there's 90 feet between the bases. Football has 100 yard field. What is the size of a armwrestling table? Is there a standard tables or standard size? And I noticed in some of the videos, I was watching that you don't have to be both flat on the same surface. So how does that work?
• 4:36
  Randall Kaplan: And what are the rules and how do you actually win a match? Is it two out of three? Is it six zero? Is it one zero winner take all?
• 4:46
  Devon Larratt: So where do people compete? How do they compete on a table? What does a table look like? A standard arm wrestling table is about three and a half feet wide. Okay, I think it's I think it's 42 inches across Your playing surface is two inches from the cord from the edge and there's a seven by seven pad. So seven inches long and seven inches wide. And this is where your elbow must stay. Depending on the league, sometimes they give you a bit more sometimes they'll give you like eight inches, okay, but but typically we're talking about a seven inch playing surface and the pads are slightly offset, I think by four inches, okay, so, so if you have your centerline, two inches shift to the right, two inches shift to the left, okay, sore, slightly offset, the pin pads are raised two inches above the top of the of the elbow pad, okay, so you don't in this in most leagues, you do not have to pin right to the table, there's like a plane that you have to brake. So it's any part of the wrist to the fingertips goes below that plane, you don't actually have to touch the pad, that's considered a when there's also fouls, like you're not allowed to lift your elbow up or slide your elbow off the pad. So much of the sport is getting a fair start. Okay, so there's, there's a neutral position start. So in the neutral position start you have to see the person's thumb knuckles, the wrist has to be straight, shoulders must be square and it must start in the center of the table. The referee will initiate the match. With with a go or ready go, you can't fall start.
• 6:37
  Devon Larratt: Some files are considered stop files, some files are considered running files. It depends on the league. There is there, the more you are wrestled, the more you'll find splinters and arm wrestling is actually you know, there's a wider sport, you know, there's arm sumo there's freedom. There's there's standard arm wrestling, there's the arm wrestling is split in rural differences among leagues, but the standard is the rules don't change too much. The real base is take a grip, ready, go pin your opponent don't fall, you win the match, there's straps to if the hands come apart, you get tied together.
• 7:18
  Devon Larratt: And this is very normal. Okay, most armwrestling nowadays takes place in a strap.
• 7:24
  Randall Kaplan: What if your arm is six inches longer than the next guy or shorter, you're at a disadvantage because you can't compete, you get to raise your arm up to the same level as your opponent. Because if you're six inches shorter, you're going to have a serious disadvantage right out of the gate.
• 7:40
  Devon Larratt: There's advantages and disadvantage to any number of anatomies. Okay, like there are advantages that a short half that a short arm has that a long arm doesn't have.
• 7:51
  Devon Larratt: Typically, I'd say yeah, a taller arm, a bigger hand typically has some advantages.
• 7:56
  Devon Larratt: However, you see champions of all shapes and sizes, and there's quite a variety of techniques that you can use that will take advantage of these differences in anatomy. So however, there is a fair grip that will be negotiated at the start. And what they what they do is they make the webbing of the of the palms B level, one of the things that's very important is that thumb knuckle is showing. Okay, so when we take a grip, if both people can see the thumb knuckle, that is considered to be an even grip, there are advantages and disadvantage to different anatomies. And that's one of the things that makes an arm wrestling champion. Typically, arm wrestlers have very large and strong hands. This is normal. But there have been great champions in the past who have smaller hands and still today. It's not. It's not that simple.
• 8:58
  Randall Kaplan: So armwrestling is a sport you can essentially do your entire life and some people think it's the most basic test of strength that we can find. Is it all about strength?
• 9:08
  Randall Kaplan: And what's the technique that gets stronger if you talk about actual techniques that you need and how important they are to win an arm wrestling match.
• 9:17
  Devon Larratt: Wrestling is thought of as a strength sport and a combat sport in all combat sports strength is is extremely vital. I would equate it the same way you would to a fighter, but probably more so because of the size of the ring because of the size of the fight.
• 9:34
  Devon Larratt: Absolutely. There's tons of factors that are going to help you win an arm wrestling match strength is a humongous factor, especially strength it's trained properly. So the combination of strength and technique are at times insurmountable. Technique is many things technique in arm wrestling. It's a minute In martial art, okay, so the hand can move many different ways the pressures counter each other.
• 10:07
  Devon Larratt: What will beat one move will not beat another, there's adjustments that can be made to to be another one. It's like rock, paper, scissors. So there's reaction time and adjustment, everything comes into play. For something that looks so simple, it's surprisingly complex and, and flexible, there's a lot of adjustments that will get you the when I'd say there's probably, there's division points in a sport, there's forward and back, there's attacking the hand, there's attacking the arm. The main movements in arm wrestling would be, what would you call rising.
• 10:51
  Devon Larratt: So this lifting ability, this this lift, sometimes it's called Creation. So it's an ability to get a higher hand, this rise, it's similar to a jab and boxing, it's like one of the first things you do to kind of set your position. And the next, the next, the next two movements are kind of coupled together.
• 11:14
  Devon Larratt: When you talk about controlling at hand, you we call it copying.
• 11:18
  Devon Larratt: And basically, that's just a wrist flexion. It's everything is a chain that brings the match to your center, you cut the person, the exact opposite of that motion is pronation. So you can imagine that the cup attack someone's pronation, it'll turn the palm over. So you need to be able to rise you need to go cup, you need to be able to resist the cup, you need to be able chromates. So this rise in cup and pronation. This is how you attack someone's hand, when you attack someone's hand they lose control, they lose the ability to control angles advance, there's a whole world of technique that is achieved when the other person is holding on to you and the ability to slide your hand higher. There's also the shoulder supination supination, attack shoulder line, when when the hands come together, one of the hands and the shoulder. So when you make a line from the shoulder to the hand, that line may cut into the other person's arm or their angle may come into your arm, who's ever person's angle is cutting into the other one's arm, this is considered to have the shoulder advantage and that strength is defined through supination primarily. And then once you have it, then there's this forward driving ability that's through another part of the cup. There's, there's grip involved, there's kickback. But it's like the opening and chess, you never want to get too far from the opening. Because the opening if a person's good, technically, they'll control the whole match. Right, right from the onset. So the two main division points are the ability to rise and the ability to get the match inside. Okay, this is the base of the whole inside outside technical flow. You Yeah, it's simple. And it's very fascinating. It happens very quickly. It's a very, very fast sport. It can be, it can be very quick, most matches are decided and really less than a second, if the strength is at all different. High level matches when the strength is close, you know, you're looking at longer, you're looking at 20 seconds, you know, sometimes much longer.
• 13:43
  Devon Larratt: But yes, fast sport, fast sport, we say test your frame, test your frame, because, you know, there's muscles, there's joints, there's bones. It's not just a simpler muscular movement where you're testing your muscle muscular capacity, your entire frame will come into question.
• 14:09
  Devon Larratt: Your entire structure will be tested in an arm wrestling match.
• 14:13
  Randall Kaplan: Sylvester Stallone is one of the greatest actors or highest grossing actors of all time to tell us how he materially influenced the sport of arm wrestling.
• 14:21
  Devon Larratt: You know, the crazy thing is that movie over the top was actually based off of a real event. A lot of people don't know that. That entire movie is accurate was actually real. You know, minus minus Sylvester Stallone, but the over the top tournament, actually was a real tournament that they filmed a lot of the cuts from the movie there right out of the tournament. Yeah, took place in the 80s and was actually won by a guy called John Zink and the truckers division. First place guy actually won a real truck.
• 14:55
  Devon Larratt: Great time in the sport armwrestling One of the highlights of our of the of the early days of the sport. Yeah.
• 15:03
  Devon Larratt: Over the top was a huge boost is before my time really. But
• 15:12
  Randall Kaplan: it really put our wrestling on a map a lot of people didn't know it was a thing and people became interested in a time if you can fast forward to today, there are World Championships that feature 1000 competitors from 47 countries around the world.
• 15:25
  Randall Kaplan: Interestingly, in terms of popularity, the most popular countries are Kazakhstan, Turkey, Sweden, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Moldova, the US.
• 15:39
  Randall Kaplan: It's 16th. He talked to us about the international competition, and is armwrestling going to become more popular in the United States. And what are you doing to make it more popular?
• 15:52
  Devon Larratt: It's hard to say what country armwrestling is most popular in if, depending on what metric you look at, depending on what statistic armwrestling is very popular in the US. It's just it's on different levels. It does not have government's support. In the US. When you mentioned countries like Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, you know, a lot of the countries from Eastern Europe, Turkey, you have government support to some degree, and there's none of that in North America. So the sport looks different as a result, but make no mistake. There's a lot of armwrestling USA there's a lot of initiatives to grow arm wrestling. I think that the biggest pushers of arm wrestling right now are the highest level of the sport. So you look at you look at East versus West. You look at King of the table. You look at arm wars. These are right now the three prominent professional leagues. They represent the highest expression of the sport of arm wrestling.
• 17:01
  Devon Larratt: You also have the world Arm Wrestling Federation WAF an ephah. There's a divide.
• 17:04
  Devon Larratt: However, these two represent the highest expression of amateur omniscience particularly when where the medalists from WAF get compensation from their countries. Though the WAF and the ephah tournaments are well attended our mores. You kicking the table. And east versus West.
• 17:30
  Devon Larratt: The athletes are selected and invited these this is the best guys on the planet. There's a lot of grassroots initiatives, our bet for example. Five gives people a way to access the sport find each other. This sport is growing on a grassroots level. I think you know, when kids think something's cool, they do it.
• 17:52
  Devon Larratt: RMS is easy to find. It's very easy to find armas.
• 17:56
  Randall Kaplan: There are contracts now ESPN signed a contract for armwrestling. It's on ESPN, and ESPN two, which is pretty cool. That's where I actually saw it for the first time, probably years ago. And they run it in an unpopular time when they need to fill programming. I saw a lot during COVID as well, when ESPN wasn't doing a lot of live events.
• 18:16
  Devon Larratt: Yeah, that's right. The world armwrestling League, which was just incredible. And you know, right now they're still kind of in hibernation. Yeah, they were successful in getting our missing on ESPN. That was that was a big boost for us a massive, massive boost. Yeah, fantastic times. I was from about 2015 1415 till about 2017.
• 18:44
  Devon Larratt: So it was actually only a couple of years that we were on ESPN.
• 18:49
  Devon Larratt: We may get back on. We may. But armwrestling is always kind of just beneath the surface right now. I think that I think that really the deciding factor for anything is does it make money?
• 19:06
  Devon Larratt: Does it does it have the fans to generate financial financial, does it make sense financially?
• 19:11
  Devon Larratt: And I think that we're now at a point where it does make sense to the bigger companies to come in and you know, help out and take a piece of the action.
• 19:24
  Randall Kaplan: In my podcast I always talk about family where we come from our family helped shape our values preparation for a future you you were born in Victoria, British Columbia, but moved later in Ontario when you were two years old. You grew up on a farm can you tell us about your grandmother and the influence she had on your life and how you got into the sport.
• 19:42
  Devon Larratt: So was a kid I was just a super energized little kid and I just had a lot of need to fight a lot of need to run around and break stuff and I was just a really hired kid. Am I My grandmother, so the fables habit, she was like, Alberta, champion of the Women's Division in armwrestling. And she and I would farm wrestle from a very early age. So she would come to our house on the farm. And I should do stuff like she, you know, Baker's pies and stuff, she'd get me to go and get her apples to bake pies. And my reward for helping her was that we would get to arm wrestle. So ever since I was a kid, you know, all these things kind of, you know, formed in my mind, you know, Apple Pie armwrestling spending time with my grandmother was really great for me. You know, armwrestling was one of those things right away that I found that I could go as hard as I could, I could fight as hard as I could. And nobody got in trouble. And everything was good. So it was a beautiful way for me to express that that desire. Even from a very young age.
• 21:03
  Randall Kaplan: How old was your grandmother? You were five years old at the time?
• 21:07
  Devon Larratt: Yeah. So I mean, I guess she probably would have been probably at that point in her 50s or 60s. Yeah. And I couldn't do anything with her.
• 21:16
  Devon Larratt: Like, I mean, like, even I think even when I was like, 10, she's she would still be me. Yeah. You never be. She's the one who know, I never be my grandmother.
• 21:28
  Devon Larratt: I know. Like I went when I moved out west, I actually stayed with my grandmother for a short while before she passed. But no, I never, I never been my grandmother and our wrestling.
• 21:39
  Randall Kaplan: So let's talk about your childhood a little bit. You read pumping iron, you want to be like Arnold Schwarzenegger when you were younger? Or were you like as a kid, when you were growing up in including high school? And can you just tell us a little bit about that? I
• 21:54
  Devon Larratt: think I was probably around that same age, probably five or so he had a big library in my house. My father was quite a reader. Big library, we had actually separate houses that were filled with books. And my brother would kind of go through the books, my older brother. And there was only a couple of books that he ever showed me. And one of them was pumping iron. And I read like I was just a kid, like really young, like probably five or so.
• 23:26
  Devon Larratt: And it was the only book I ever looked at the library. And whenever I snuck away to the library, I always I always went to pumping iron. And I didn't even really read that much.
• 23:40
  Devon Larratt: Right? I just really looked at the pictures, there's a picture section in the middle of pumping iron. And I knew right from a young age, I was like, I just thought it was so cool. I thought it was so cool to see Arnold. You know, in all his glory, you know, naked woman on his shoulders. I was like, wow, you know, like, when I'm when I'm, this is where I want to go.
• 24:06
  Devon Larratt: Like this is I already loved being strong identified.
• 24:12
  Devon Larratt: Strength is a sign of what it meant to be a man. I saw strength in my father and I there was something that I wanted. Seeing in Arnold, you know, just so clearly, I was like, wow, I knew that you had to lift weights, I knew that you had to train. And yeah, from a very young age, I've been completely obsessed with strength and fitness and performance. I remember every single year, asking my parents for a weight set, you know, and they're like, No, it'll stunt your growth, it'll stunt your growth. And now we know that that's completely false. But I was finding any way I could to train, I go out on the farm and I'd find wood and I lift logs and I throw rocks as far as I could. I was training from a very young age from a very young age.
• 25:14
  Randall Kaplan: After high school, you went west, you move to Ontario, you worked in an oil field and you're getting pretty strong at that point. Then you met a professional arm wrestler.
• 25:23
  Randall Kaplan: What happened at that point?
• 25:24
  Devon Larratt: Yeah, so I was never really the best or the strongest in my school until I got to about grade 11 or grade 12 And that's when my strengths started to kick in. And around the end of high school. I was kind of the best arm wrestler that that I knew that I was aware of I'd beaten everybody.
• 25:55
  Devon Larratt: But everybody was, you know, really, really nobody in the world of armor. I went out west, and I was working in the oil fields. And everybody is like between the age of 18. And like 23 just a ton of young men from Canada, just trying to try to make their living at the beginning of their lives. And RMS and everybody, that was one of the things that we did, we arm wrestled, and we worked on the oilfield. And I could be like, everybody, I was really fit. By the time I was 1819. I was a very, very fit, young man.
• 26:34
  Devon Larratt: But the answer after every victory was always Yeah, but you can't be beyond. And the online gel was like, probably my first real, real mentor, real like he was the first person in my life like that. I knew that I just completely idolized that I completely just looked at and just wanted to replicate. The guy was like, like a Canadian Wolverine, the even to this day, the energy that I have seen out of that human being incredibly rare. His metabolism his energies was just at that time, he was 32. And I was like, 1819 At that time, I mean, the guy was such a he's such a physical just beast. Only like 165 pounds, but he was stronger than any man on that oilfield. insane level levels of athleticism.
• 27:48
  Devon Larratt: Nobody could beat him in an arm wrestling match, or a fight.
• 27:55
  Devon Larratt: Complete animal. And I used to harass him all the time. Hey, Dion, let's go. Let's go like I want to try. And he just brushed me off, brush me off. One. One night, I caught him just as he was wrapping up work. And I'm like, Hey, Dr. Let's go. And so he's like, Okay, let's go. So we went to the cafeteria table, and I could do nothing with this guy. But I'm like, completely, like just killing myself trying to beat him. And I think he was worried that I was gonna break my arm. So he let me have one.
• 28:30
  Devon Larratt: So the next day, I told everybody that I beat him. And that didn't go over so well. But I think that he saw something in me. And he was actually the first professional arm wrestler that I'd met. So that meant that he was going to competitions he was traveling the world doing the sport. And and he was my first entry point. So he taught me, armrests, and technique how to train for armwrestling he brought me to my first tournament. He was my first coach. And from there like the world opened up very different from what it is now. Back then armrests, and completely underground, completely like it was in bars. People handed each other flyers like you get a letter in the mail. There was no internet. We know the community was completely unconnected. Our messing technique, the training methods, everything was like stone age compared to what it is now. But yeah, this was my start. This is how I started with the sport. And and I've been completely hooked. Ever since ever since meaning beyond I just couldn't believe how a guy that much smaller than me that I could do nothing with it.
• 29:52
  Devon Larratt: Nothing. Nothing with him. Like, he took all my strength, all my power. And I just knew that I needed to learn what, what was going on,
• 30:04
  Randall Kaplan: regardless of what we're doing with our lives or what careers that we have our mentors necessary for our success.
• 30:11
  Devon Larratt: I think that when you have a goal, it's a light in the distance. One that can be seen clearly. Or sometimes it's obscured. Sometimes, you meet people along your journey, who are going the same direction, or have been to where you're going.
• 30:34
  Devon Larratt: And these people are amazing guides and they're their gifts to your life. Dion was and had been to where I wanted to go he was ahead of me. The things that I love about life the things that I pursue you He had pursued, he was more experienced than I was. Mentors, provide experience mentors provide guidance. You know, when you're, when you're walking on a path and it's new, you're gonna, you're gonna make many mistakes.
• 31:11
  Devon Larratt: If someone can can guide you, it will save you so much time, it's a fast forward button.
• 31:14
  Devon Larratt: Mentorship is much easier to find now, when when I was young man, mentorship took often years, you know, a lot of luck.
• 31:24
  Devon Larratt: I feel like now mentorship is a click of the button away, you know, mentorship, the power that we have in the information that we have on computers, the the internet, youtube, where you can find a subject you're interested in, search it, and the world just opens up for you without the requirement for physical travel connections, experiences that will get you to a place, you can become a master of things. Now, without ever having met somebody really, there's a lot of experience that will be mandatory for you to take steps forward. But mentorship now is so much more widely accessible.
• 32:17
  Randall Kaplan: You leave the oil field, you join the Canadian Armed Forces. You were in the armed forces for four years, and you join the Special Forces and you were deployed in Afghanistan seven times. And you were shot your first time in there and were wounded. Can you talk about your first tour and what happened when you got shot? And what motivated you to keep staying in it for another six years after that?
• 32:43
  Devon Larratt: I joined the Reserves. First. I joined the Reserves, I transferred to the regular force. And then from the regular force, I eventually joined the Special Forces. My my first tours with the regular force was very quiet, very quiet, very uneventful. It was not until I deployed with the Special Forces that they were what what you would call combat tours. And yeah, I mean, that's why I signed up, I signed up to fight, I signed up to do exactly that job. It's super, super scary. Like it really is like there's there's a lot of things about it that psychologically take time to develop so that you can do it. And be able to perform it's it's a process it doesn't it doesn't happen overnight. For everybody. You know, there's some special people out there, but I wasn't one of them. It takes time to develop the psychological strength required to go into combat, and be okay with that.
• 34:00
  Devon Larratt: But it's, it's what I always wanted. You know, like I talked about arm wrestling, and arm wrestling is absolutely my passion. And I love armwrestling. But when I was a kid, you know, I also wanted to be a fighter, you know, just just to make it very, very broad. You know, when I was a kid, I didn't say I'm going to grow up to be a professional arm wrestler. When I was a kid, I just wanted to be the most awesome fighting machine that I could imagine myself. So that ultimately is what brought me to the military Special Forces and it's what kept me there. For for my 20 year career that it was actually the complications caused by armwrestling that actually made me leave the forces. Yeah, it was the conflict between my hobby and my youth. I don't even like to call it my job because I don't feel like it was ever a job. But it was that conflict that actually made me have to leave the forces. I don't regret day I spent there. Many days I wish I was back. It's an incredible it's an incredible lifestyle and a very fulfilling one. But those days are done for me and now I am a full time sportsman.
• 35:34
  Randall Kaplan: He tell us what happened when you got shot, what tour you were on. And after that, did you go back and what motivated you to go back instead of saying I'm done I was shot.
• 35:44
  Randall Kaplan: Time to go home.
• 35:47
  Devon Larratt: So yeah, I was shot in Afghanistan. I did many tours after that was what goes through your head when you're shot? The thing is, is you accept your mortality, long before you get shot as a Special Forces soldier.
• 36:11
  Devon Larratt: I mean, you, if you are going to be a soldier who fights at the front, you accept that you are giving your life for your country, that's just part of the process. You have already accepted your death. And you're you're okay with that. I mean, nobody wants to die, particularly, you know. But, but the action of getting shot.
• 36:43
  Devon Larratt: Really, if you've gone through the process should not be a deterrence. Because you've already chosen to go and serve your country, you've already chosen to go and fight at the front. So it should come as no surprise. And it wasn't a surprise for me, I was actually surprised that I've made it through. Very thankful for that, because I'm happy with my life.
• 37:10
  Devon Larratt: But, you know, I think if you were to do a poll of guys who did the job that I do, I think that a great percentage of them find that it will be likely that they that they might not survive their career. And I think that most of them are totally okay with that. I think that most of them have accepted that and, you know, Consider it a gift if they make it through. And that's, I think the boat that I was in, I mean, you know, being shot. You realize a lot of things, you realize how lucky you are. And war, there is so much luck. I mean, there's people talking about skill and training. And these are for sure factors. But there is a portion of that luck.
• 38:08
  Devon Larratt: That is so much bigger than all those other things, the bullets, you don't see where they're coming from, you don't know who's shooting, you. You sometimes you're trapped, you have no no decision in the outcome. So a lot of a lot of deciding to go back really decides is decided by your belief in your country, it's politics. Do you believe in the mission? Do you believe it's a cause? worth the sacrifice? So long as you believe in the actions of your leaders, then as a soldier, you, you will go back? And by no means am I anything special? Okay, there's people who have received far greater wounds than me and gone back and still continue to go back. I know people who have basically died come back to life. spent months years and recovery gone back on multiple tours. Yeah.
• 39:24
  Randall Kaplan: Where were you shot and on a scale of one to 100 how painful is it?
• 39:29
  Devon Larratt: The first time I was shot, it was a bullet fragments. It was a bullet that went through the side of the helicopter and the bullet broke into pieces. The bullet hit my hand. That was really, that really upset me. I was like You hit me anyway, hit me in the head Don't hit my right hand.
• 39:48
  Devon Larratt: You know, my right hand is very important to me. It splashed the right side of my body. But it was all of the pieces were quite shallow. So it more or less just stung me. The pieces some of the pieces are still in me. But the next one happened when I was exiting the helicopter it passed through pass through my leg. The thing I'd say about getting shot it's I would say it's probably a very different experience for everyone. I would say that the way I was shot was very minor.
• 40:26
  Devon Larratt: Mine were flesh wounds and relatively shallow. I'd say that what you realize what I realized about being shot is that we actually do not live in the present. We actually live just slightly in the past fast. And that you'll learn that because of how fast the bullet moves, you know, when the bullet hits you, you do not realize that it's happening. Like when you are in a fight, you get hit with something, it happens to your living, the moment of receiving a blow or a strike. A bullet is a bit different. Because of the speed that it travels. It's so fast, that it's in and out of you, before you realize it, and then you realize, oh, I've been shot, you know, like it happened to you. Being shot is not something you kind of live through. It's something that has happened to you. Yeah, I mean, the really the probably the worst part of me being shot was we were stuck out there for like four days, because our helicopter is just a total mess of a mission. I had to take the super broad spectrum antibiotics for like four days, just because we're like, totally in the worst place in the world for bacteria.
• 41:55
  Devon Larratt: And, you know, me having a, I wish I hadn't taken them looking back, I wish I would have just taken the frickin infection seriously. But it totally wiped my floor completely wiped that right out. And then, and then my gut flora, like my entire being has been rebuilt from Kandahar.
• 42:22
  Devon Larratt: So the base of my gut is, is constructed and probably like one of the nasty places on the planet, which made me very sick for a long time, for probably about six months afterwards, I was just completely ill, like I had diarrhea for like six months, like it took a long time for my body to recover. Not from the gunshot. Not from not from the bullets. But from the, from the antibiotics. I love all the guys I served with, they're all like, they're all people I look up to everybody that I ever worked with is is kind of a hero of mine. I feel that I'm very lucky. And I got to work with some really amazing people
• 43:06
  Randall Kaplan: who said that you trusted them with your lives and that you didn't mind being a follower. But that's a little bit different than your personality and your desire to be the best and to answer something that's highly competitive. So how do you balance between those two fields?
• 43:24
  Devon Larratt: I don't think it's different at all, you know, the desire to be the best. And being a follower, I don't see a difference there really, I think that following is, is I think it's a sign of respect a lot, you know. And it doesn't mean that you cannot pursue greatness as a follower. I always wanted to be the best at my job very much, very much. That doesn't mean that I didn't fully understand that there were people who understood parts of my job better than me, and that I needed to be able to listen, I think so much of what the military teaches you is about being an expert in your field.
• 44:14
  Devon Larratt: And being part of a team. I was a huge fan of just the fighting part of being in the military, I never want to do anything more.
• 44:24
  Devon Larratt: I just wanted to be a fighter. I just wanted to be the guy who went in and fought. And I wanted to be the best that I could be at that particular piece. But you are not one thing, like when you go to fight as a country, you are just a small part. But that doesn't mean that you cannot be as excellent as possible. And it's the same thing in the world of armwrestling. Arm Wrestling requires greatness on so many levels. There are people who need to be able to promote, who needs to be able to do the business side, who need to be able to understand the technique understand how to train. For me, my only desire is to be the greatest fighter I can be on the table.
• 45:14
  Randall Kaplan: We've already talked about you said that your whole life you wanted to fight.
• 45:15
  Randall Kaplan: And that was just so focused.
• 45:18
  Randall Kaplan: But you've also said that's been a personal failure of yours. Can you talk about why that
• 45:23
  Devon Larratt: is? One of the things that I'm learning is is you know, life is such a gift.
• 45:32
  Devon Larratt: And I think that one of our jobs is to have the most happiness that we can have in this life.
• 45:45
  Devon Larratt: And I think that one of the keys to happiness one of them is to find In the things that make you feel a certain way, one of the things that we're also supposed to do is to make the world a better place. You know, and I don't think that I make any big difference. And I knew that, well, it was my belief going into the military, that it was a contribution to hold.
• 46:19
  Devon Larratt: Civilization together, I thought that that was one of the roles that the military played was stabilization. And I thought, you know, as a fighter, as someone who loves fighting, that this was a worthy contribution of, of what I had to offer, as a human being to our collective.
• 46:35
  Devon Larratt: As, as this went on, and, you know, you see the grayness and the murk that is in war, it became less clear to me that potentially I was overall having, you know, the positive effect that I was really seeking. And the more I saw the overall goodness and light, that sport, the effect that sport had on the world. One of the things that I believe strongly is that humans do better when they're together. You know, the more you can bring people together, the greater things that we can achieve, and that's one of the greatest gifts that sport does for humanity is it brings people together it forms relations, these relations carry over into your life.