Arm wrestling is on the up — Can the Birmingham Bullets help the sport get a grip?

‘It gave me a bit of life. It gave me a bit of purpose'

By Ophira Gottlieb

I walk into the SJB Community Centre on Arran Way — which is somewhat in the arse-end of nowhere — and I am immediately confronted by a hundred of the largest men I’ve ever seen. The wide open, wood-panelled, grey-carpeted function room is distinguishable from every other community centre function room only by the fact that it noticeably reeks of testosterone and sweat. This, I imagine, is not the norm for a place whose main functions include hosting children’s parties, Slimming World meet-ups, and karaoke nights. But today the centre is hosting Grip Fest, a nation-wide arm wrestling tournament, so that explains the hench blokes and the smell.

I find the Birmingham Bullets — the city’s very own arm wrestling team — scattered among competitors (or ‘pullers’) from all over England. The room is lined with custom-built arm wrestling tables, complete with elbow cushions, stiff poles to hold on to with your free hand, and large tubs of talcum powder for improving the pullers’ grip. In between it all is Maurice McMulkin, driving instructor during the week, unofficial chair of the Birmingham Bullets on Sundays.

“I’m one of the lesser pullers,” Maurice explains modestly, “but I sort of organise everything. It just fell to me.” At 58, he is somewhat older than most of the other pullers in the room — the majority of whom appear to be in their 30s, but some look as young as 16 — and, being a grey-haired man in cargo shorts, he hardly comes across as the arm wrestling type. When I ask Maurice how he got involved with the sport, he replies that it was just after lockdown, and he was bored. “When I used to play rugby, everyone had a little go, a little drunken arm wrestling,” he says. “But during lockdown I started watching videos of it online. You know, ‘arm wrestling this, that and the other.’ ” Soon enough he came across the Birmingham Bullets, at the time still a small and somewhat unaccommodating team. The Bullets had been founded by Craig Sanders, a multiple-time British Champion from Kings Heath, and consisted of only around five or six pullers battling each other in their back gardens. Maurice joined the team in 2021. “It was a bit hit and miss,” he says. Maurice may not have been the strongest puller for the Bullets, but he had something the others didn't: a 12 by six metre garage. “So I said you can come to my place if you wanna,” he explains. “It literally just snowballed from there.”

Liverpool take on Shropshire. Photo by Ophira Gottlieb/The Dispatch

Maurice bought two arm wrestling tables out of his own pocket, which typically cost a couple of hundred pounds, and he rallied the team together to purchase a few more. Nowadays the Bullets have six tables between over 50 members, including the 1987 World Arm Wrestling Champion Clive Lloyd — their oldest member, now 63. They practise in Maurice’s garage every Sunday, and sometimes on Wednesdays too, to the initial and understandable bemusement of his wife Paula. “She couldn’t really believe it,” Maurice says. “She was a bit like… ‘Really? Are you sure?’” But recently even Paula has warmed to the concept of 50-odd sweaty blokes wrestling away in her lock-up. “At the last competition she was down there the whole day,” says Maurice. “She knows everybody’s name. She even keeps the record of all the matches.”

For a group to grow from five to 50 over the course of only a couple of years is no small feat. I ask Maurice why arm wrestling seems to be taking off. “Before Covid it was all regulations,” he says. We’ve stepped outside to escape the noise of the ongoing Liverpool vs Shropshire team match. Maurice explains that post Covid, the regulations changed, meaning that the best pullers from every country could compete against each other on the world stage. “It was like a new playground,” Maurice says. “All the best guys could meet in the middle, all the rules had gone.”

This, alongside lockdown malaise and the rise of short-form video content like TikTok videos and Instagram reels, seem to be behind the worldwide increase in popularity for the sport. But Maurice attributes the fact that arm wrestling has taken off specifically in Birmingham to the size of the city, and its multicultural nature. Over half his team are not born-and-bred Brits, the majority coming from Eastern Europe: Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova — and seven Romanians, including a European champion. Maurice has additionally made his own significant efforts to improve the atmosphere and professionalism of the team. “Before, the club wasn’t that welcoming,” he says. “But now I go out of my way to make everyone feel welcome. I think it’s working.”

Morgan Hennessy of the Birmingham Bullets vs Swindon Crusader’s Dylan Daybell. Photo credit: Ophira Gottlieb/The Dispatch

My conversation with Maurice is cut short by the start of the Supermatches, which involve pairs of professional pullers going head-to-head. The atmosphere has changed accordingly, from a sort of chaotic frenzy to matches and onlookers that are focussed and intense. Suddenly, veins and eyes are bulging, and the pullers are screaming and, occasionally, throwing miniature tantrums when they lose.

During these matches I am struck by the differences in appearance between the professional pullers. My first impression of the competitors when I entered the community centre had blurred them all into a single, archetypal gym-bro — the proto-jock — but now it is suddenly quite apparent that there is no one classic arm wrestling type. Yes, swollen bodybuilders strut about the function room with pint in hand, all of them wearing scraggly beards and nipple-revealing vests, but there are other styles of puller too — namely the younger crowd, who rock up in jeans and Doc Martens, or with their caps on backwards. The oddest thing is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to which of these types will win.

Noah Burton, 33, from Walsall Common, is somewhere in between these two categories, if leaning a little towards the former. By day he runs a construction business, but he moonlights as one of the Birmingham Bullets professional pullers. I’ve just watched him defeat his opponent in a supermatch — a battle which involved an unusual amount of screaming, even for the pros.

“I’ve been doing this for two years, and I’ve been competing for about 15, 16 months,” he informs me. “I turned pro pretty fast.” In his year and a bit of competing, Noah has already won a significant number of titles: he is the Circle of Arms 102 kilo right arm champion, the Commonwealth 100 kilo right arm champion, and the BMF belt holder. “That was a 19 man elimination tournament that happened last year to see who the baddest motherfucker was,” Noah explains. To become belt holder, he had to compete in 20 matches that day, and he came out on top. “So you were the baddest motherfucker?” I enquire, and he nods sincerely. “I was the baddest motherfucker, on that day.”

Noah Burton vs Daf from Roar Arm Wrestling. Photo credit: Ophira Gottlieb/The Dispatch

Noah actually began his fighting career as an amateur boxer. In fact, at least five different people today have informed me that Noah is Tyson Fury’s cousin. “I won two national titles,” Noah says of his 10-year career. “But there was a decent gap between boxing and this, about five years where I did nothing.” Noah tells me that he loved arm wrestling as a child and at school, and had always had the desire to be strong. This desire — and his curiosity for the sport — only increased in his adult life. “Give me three beers and I’ll arm wrestle someone in the pub,” he says. But his deep interest in arm wrestling came from a tough period following his divorce. Like Maurice, Noah started watching videos of tournaments on YouTube, and not long after he joined the club. “It gave me a bit of life,” he says. “It gave me a bit of purpose.”

In fact, Noah found that arm wrestling resonated with him far more than boxing, despite its relatively low-profile and the way that the sport is perceived. “I feel like I’m built for this,” he says. “When I boxed I was never in love with it, I just did it to prove a point.” But with arm wrestling he feels differently. “I absolutely live and breathe and love this sport. Even if I’m not doing good, I just want the sport to do better, I want to see it mainstream.” Noah hopes that in the future, top arm wrestlers will get the recognition — and, crucially, the pay — that they deserve: i.e. actual money, unlike in this tournament, where the prize is a symbolic wrestling-style belt.

“If I can be a small part of that, that’s amazing,” he says. “If I can compete, that’s great.”

There has, undoubtedly, been an increase in recognition for professional arm wrestling over the last four or five years. Nowadays, the top professionals can make a living just from competing, something that has never been the case in the past. But still it remains the case that arm wrestling is considerably less watched and respected than boxing and other similar sports. I ask Noah why he thinks this might be, and he sites the lack of immediacy as a possible reason. “There’s a couple issues with it,” he says. “One thing is that it takes a long time to start a match. If someone turns the telly on and it’s the arm wrestling, and they’re watching for five minutes and nothing’s happened yet… they’re gonna turn it off.”

If this is true, then they’re missing out. The further the Supermatches unfold, the more convinced I become of arm wrestling’s appeal. As someone who finds it impossible to watch the boxing because I don’t like to see anyone getting hurt, there’s something refreshing about this harmless display of aggression — though I have heard horror stories of the occasional broken arm (and not so occasional sprained wrist). Noah agrees that some controlled aggression can be a positive thing. “I think it’s human nature to compete,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about. I believe there’s a desire in all of us, innately, to do that, and whoever’s got that desire the strongest will go the furthest.” For this reason, despite the sport still being largely overlooked, Noah believes that the future of arm wrestling is far and away a bright one. “I believe that the sport is on the rise,” he says. “It’s gonna get really, really big. People are gonna know who we are.”