As usual, there were an armwrestling competition, which gathered a large number of Asian pullers. Zil Fadli, a representative of Malaysian Armwrestling Federation told us about all the peculiarities of that great show.

Zil, tell please, how do you like the competition?

– I like the competition level, where we were able to gather competitors from South East Asia, Oceanic, and few pullers from Russia, Kazakhstan and USA. This is the first time Arnold Classic organized in Asia continent and provides a good starter prize package. Overall, Arnold Classic organizer helps me a lot in making the armwrestling competition a success and at high level.

As organizer, what can you say about competition?

– Main organizer was Arnold Classic themselves, as for armwrestling committee involved, we have two co-organizer, which is Putrajaya Armwrestling Malaysia and Super Armwrestling League (SAL) from China.

More than 70 competitors competed there. We split the categories into 5 weight classes and also for both left and right hand. The weight classes are 75kg, 85kg, 95kg, +95kg and female open.

How do you think, whose fights were the most spectacular?

– In my opinion, the highlight of the event was between Shinji Miyamoto from Japan vs Mark Luis Ben from Philipines. The total duration of the match was almost 20 minutes. In the end Mark Luis won by Shinji’s elbow foul.

The second highlighted match was between the reigning champion of Arnold Classic Australia Danny Tesch vs China Champion Zhao Zi Rui. Zi Rui won the preliminary round against Danny but lost in the final.

Can you tell something about teams, who will come to Worlds in Bulgaria?

– From what I heard, Australia will send a team of 5, New Zealand will send 3 peoples, China will send a team of 5, Malaysia will send a team of 4, Indonesia 1 person, Taiwan will send 3 peoples and Philipines will send 2.

So we can imagine that this time we’ll see a lot of new faces at the world Championship. So we’ll have a chance to compare not only American and Russian but also Asian way of pulling, which would be shown us by the best Asian armrwestlers. With them luck!

Photos: Goh Thian Weai