It’s ‘One Arm Against Another’ for This Budding San Francisco Community

By Christopher Alam

19-year-old Xidane Mercado (L) started the SF Arm Wrestling Club last year with one table and a few friends. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)

  SAN FRANCISCO — An arm-wrestling match rarely lasts longer than a few seconds. Muscles strain, veins bulge, jaws clench, until a hand is eventually forced to the pads. 

For many it’s a test of strength, though for some the sport is also a chance to find a sense of connection that can otherwise feel rare in today’s world. 

That was the case for many of those who gathered on a recent Saturday afternoon to compete in the first ever San Francisco Arm Wrestling Club tournament, held at Standard Deviant Brewery in the city’s Mission District. 

Patrons sipped craft beers as competitors gripped up over crooked elbows to see who would pull the other down. 

The sport — long associated with bars, school lunchrooms, and bragging rights — is enjoying a worldwide resurgence, including in San Francisco.

19-year-old Xidane Mercado started the SF Arm Wrestling Club last year with one table and a few friends. He grew up in Sacramento before moving to San Francisco in middle school and says he discovered arm wrestling as a child, competing against his grandfather during family gatherings. 

Mercado’s family is from the Phillipines, where the sport is seeing growing popularity.

“I have a little bit of pocket change, I have some spare time on the weekend,” he recalled of the club’s early days. “I might as well try to start something.”

At first almost nobody came so Mercado promoted the meet up on social media. The club’s inaugural practice, along a stretch of Golden Gate Park known as the Panhandle, mostly saw Mercado waiting beside his table. 

“Nobody showed up until the last 30 minutes,” he said. “Then these two guys came all the way from Redwood City. We had a really fun time. From then I was like, ‘Okay, if one person shows up, I’m happy.'”

So Mercado kept showing up every weekend. Gradually, strangers became regulars. Practices eventually moved to the larger Crocker-Amazon Park. Local media coverage, meanwhile, helped introduce more people to the club, which now boasts 100 members, with around 40 being active regulars. 

Mercado says newcomers are often surprised to discover how technical the sport really is. 

“Some people describe it as like a mini martial art,” he said. “You can tell when you grip up with someone who’s been a carpenter for like 30 years versus someone who like, I don’t know, works in tech and is on their computer all day. You can tell who’s going to be stronger.” 

Arm wrestling prompted Mercado to pursue a personal training certificate while also working part time at a chiropractor clinic and a moving company. He studied up on anatomy and physiology to improve his technique. 

He talks about the mechanism of the arm with a sense of wonder. 

“Your biceps, your brachioradialis, and your brachialis, your wrist flexors, your pronator muscles, even your finger strength,” he says, gesturing. “Not so much gripping as squeezing with your whole hand, but your finger strength specifically. Those are the muscles that make you a good arm wrestler.” 

He said years of training transform muscles and connective tissue in ways most gym-goers never develop. 

“A guy who’s arm wrestled for four years, but he’s 150 pounds, can beat a 300-pound dude who doesn’t arm wrestle,” Mercado said. “Even if they’re athletic.”

But losing too, he says, is part of the magic.

“When you’re a beginner and you go up to the table for the first time, you’re going to lose,” he said. “Guaranteed. You’re going to lose. … You’ll lose a hundred times before you can win a single match. That’s the beauty of it.”

Xidane Mercado, founder of the SF Arm Wrestling Club, says one of the biggest surprises has been the variety of people drawn to the sport. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)

‘Here, it’s just arms‘

Mercado said one of the biggest surprises has been the variety of people drawn to the sport. 

“In SF you’ll get a lot more tech people,” he said. “One of my members is a startup founder. Another member is kind of big and chunky, but he’s an art teacher for little kids. I have another guy over there who’s scrawny, but he’s actually a powerlifter, and he works in production. There’s another guy who’s doing social media. There’s all types of people.” 

The diversity extends beyond professions. Mercado says in professional arm wrestling, Eastern Europeans dominate, such as Levan Saginashvili of Georgia and Vitaly Laletin of Russia. 

“But especially in the Bay Area, there’s a lot more Asians too,” Mercado said. “When you break it down into the smaller clubs around the world, there are a ton of different people.”

That popularity in other countries is becoming more and more apparent in recent years. The international promoter East vs West formed in 2021, and has hosted high profile matches across the world, boosting the sports popularity and fueling social media attention. Their tournament next month in Jiaxing, China is its first in East Asia.

The boom in arm wrestling in the Philippines is hard to pin down. Local media have reported on the trend, with the Manila Standard ascribing it to social media growth and the rise of higher profile pullers.Though the sport has become more formalized there in recent years, such as with the formation of a national association, Mercado and others at the tournament reported its long time street-side popularity amongst older generations. 

Arm wrestling is highly community centered despite the individual nature of the competition. Mercado believes that sense of community also helps explain why arm wrestling has flourished among Filipinos, both in the Bay Area and overseas. 

“I feel like it comes from our sense of community,” he said. “Filipinos are kind-hearted people. We love just doing activities together, and arm wrestling is one of those things. You literally can do it anywhere. If there’s a table, you’re going to arm wrestle.”

Jasper Cortez lives in Concord and joined the SF Arm Wrestling Club last month. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)

Jasper Cortez lives in Concord and joined the SF Arm Wrestling Club last month. When he’s not teaching art to children at his day job, he travels throughout California to compete.

He began arm wrestling back home in the Philippines four years ago. 

“At first after the pandemic it was not as popular,” Cortez said. “But now it continues every week. Every month, there’s another competition. It’s very popular in the Philippines now.”

He has massive hands and shoulders, formerly having competed in kickboxing and motocross. His younger brother competed in arm wrestling before dropping it to train in MMA. 

But Cortez says he prefers arm wrestling – it’s competitive without being physically punishing. 

“Kickboxing is much more tiring… I like how here, it’s just arms.”

‘A beautiful time’ for the sport

Sontino Bravo, a sinewy 32 year old with long hair and small frame, was refereeing at the tournament and giving out pointers. He has been arm wrestling competitively with Sac County Arms since the club formed in 2020, traveling throughout California and across the country for competitions. He estimates he has attended nearly 70 tournaments. 

When he started, finding a practice often meant driving hours across Northern California from his hometown of Auburn. 

“You quickly realized in order to arm wrestle, you’ve got to do a lot of traveling,” Bravo said. “When I started out, I’d drive two and a half hours out to Petaluma just for a weeknight practice.”

Today, he said, the landscape looks entirely different.

“This is a really beautiful time for arm wrestling. We’ve got the San Francisco club, the Belmont club,” he said. “So many teams have popped up in these last six years that there’s a team anywhere near you.”

Bravo credits social media for much of the sport’s recent boom.

“It’s grown a lot on social media,” he said. “I’ll catch people if I’m wearing an arm wrestling shirt and they’ll say, ‘Hey, I watch arm wrestling.’ … It’s gone viral on Instagram, YouTube, plus today there was the big East vs. West tournament. That just spreads like wildfire.”

Unlike football, basketball or mixed martial arts, arm wrestling requires little equipment or financial investment, and also carries a much lower risk of injury. 

“It’s one arm against another arm,” Bravo said. “Any flat surface. No broken noses or anything. So there is that vibe to it where it is very approachable.”

Onlookers watch as pairs compete during the day-long tournament at Standard Deviant in San Francisco’s Mission District. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)

‘A family reunion’

For 24-year-old Belmont resident Alec Slede, a soft spoken guy with a linebacker’s stature, the sport started almost accidentally. 

“I would always go to bars and arm wrestle the biggest guys I could find,” he said. 

One night, he challenged a 330-pound bouncer in San Jose. After surprising everyone by beating another employee, he managed to defeat the larger bouncer with his left hand before losing a lengthy right-handed rematch. 

Two weeks later, the bouncer sent him a flyer for a local arm wrestling practice.

“I’ve been going ever since,” Slede said. He’s glad to see the San Francisco club start to get momentum. “I’m a part of a lot of good communities, and this is definitely one of them.” 

He describes arm wrestling as uniquely addictive.

“It’s just head-to-head,” he said. “Nothing else between you. Just two people putting themselves against each other. I think it’s a lot of fun. It’s addictive.” 

Slede held up the silver medal hanging around his neck. “The guy who I beat for second place was showing me all the tricks he thinks would help beat him in the future,” he said. “Everyone’s centered around helping each other grow.” 

Alec Slede (L) says arm wrestling is “uniquely addictive.” (Credit: Peter Schurmann)

Bravo agreed, and says that’s one of the sport’s defining qualities.

“If you were a basketball player or a football player, you would never be able to hit up any pro athlete,” he said. “Versus arm wrestling, you can talk to the number one guy and they’ll message you. You see a wide variety of characters in this sport. It really feels like home and like a family. Whenever you go to a tournament, it’s like a family reunion.”

‘Don’t be afraid’

That welcoming atmosphere is also what convinced SF resident Hannah Hosford to begin competing. She became loosely involved after accompanying her husband to practices, but attending a tournament in Ripon, in the San Joaquin Valley, made her want to commit.

“I realized how few women there were,” she said. “So I decided to get serious and actually start training… I’ve always wanted to do some kind of combat or strength sport, but I never had the confidence to get in there.”

Instead, she found a welcoming environment.

“The community is very warm and inviting,” she said. “I have yet to experience any of the unfortunate and all too common misogyny and toxicity that can come with strength sports.”

She’s been an active member of the SF club for a year now. At the latest tournament, several women competed, including Mercado’s mom. He hopes more women decide to give it a try.

“If you’re a woman, don’t be afraid of arm wrestling,” he said. “Everybody is nice. There was even an old lady that came by on her own to practice one time because she wanted to try it out. We’re one big family because we’re so small.”

Hannah Hosford became loosely involved after accompanying her husband to practices, but attending a tournament in Ripon, in the San Joaquin Valley, made her want to commit. (Credit: Peter Schurmann)

‘Seeing what I love’

Having attended nearly 70 tournaments over the past six years, Bravo said he was impressed by how smoothly Mercado’s first event ran.

“What can go wrong with running a tournament generally will go wrong,” he said with a laugh. “But this was really smooth. … I’m going to see a lot more of these coming up.”

For Mercado, the first tournament represented more than a successful event. Good word of mouth is gold in this tight-knit community, and he expects the good turnout this time to fuel an even bigger showing for the next one. Compared with larger competitions, he said, there is always room to improve. 

When asked whether another tournament is already planned, he gave a resounding “Hell yeah.” 

“At least one more by the end of the year,” he said. 

His success is fueling ambition. He’s imagining one day turning the SF Arm Wrestling Club into its own gym and brand.

“I’m just seeing where it takes me at the moment,” Mercado said. “I’m putting college on the back burner for now, and just seeing what I love. I believe you can be successful wherever your heart takes you, as long as you can put the effort in.”

Chris Alam is a California Local News Fellow with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.