Few athletes in any sport carry a story as extraordinary as Devon Eberhard Larratt’s. Born on April 24, 1975, in Victoria, British Columbia, Larratt has spent the better part of three decades building a legacy that blends military heroism with sporting greatness — a combination so rare that it has turned him into one of the most recognizable figures in combat sports culture worldwide, far beyond the arm-wrestling table where his legend was first forged.
Standing roughly 6 feet 5 inches tall and competing at a walking weight that has ranged between 240 and 280 pounds over the years, Larratt’s imposing frame was matched early on by an equally imposing will. His introduction to the sport wasn’t glamorous — it began with matches against his own grandmother, a farmworker who was convinced she was the best female puller in Alberta, and continued through rough, informal contests against oil rig workers across western Canada. Those early years, far removed from any spotlight, quietly built the foundation for everything that followed.
At 21, Larratt chose a path that few professional athletes ever take, enlisting in the Canadian Armed Forces and eventually earning a place in Joint Task Force 2 (JTF2), the country’s elite counter-terrorism unit. Over a 16-year military career spanning 1999 to 2016, he rose to the rank of Master Corporal and was deployed to Afghanistan seven times. He didn’t return from those deployments unscathed — he sustained shrapnel wounds to his hand and was shot in action — yet remarkably, he continued competing in arm wrestling throughout his time in uniform, training and pulling against fellow servicemen whenever the opportunity arose. It’s a detail that adds a layer of depth to his story that few competitive athletes can claim: a world champion forged, quite literally, on the battlefield.
His breakthrough on the international stage came in 2008, at Arm Wars “Deep Water,” when he faced John Brzenk, the man widely regarded as the greatest arm wrestler of all time. Larratt didn’t just compete with Brzenk — he dismantled him, winning 6-0 and becoming the first puller in roughly 25 years to defeat him in a supermatch. That single result reshaped the landscape of the sport overnight and vaulted Larratt to the world’s number one ranking, a position he would go on to defend and expand in the years that followed.
Between 2010 and 2012, Larratt did something almost unheard of in armwrestling: he held the number one world ranking on both arms simultaneously, defeating elite heavyweights like Travis Bagent, Tim Bresnan, and Andriy Pushkar along the way. When the World Armwrestling League (WAL) rose to prominence between 2014 and 2019, Larratt became its defining face, collecting right- and left-hand heavyweight and super-heavyweight titles and holding the prestigious WAL Legacy Hammer, a symbol of supremacy in the sport.
His rivalry with Michael Todd, built around Todd’s signature “Kings Move,” became one of the sport’s most talked-about storylines, while his history with Denis Cyplenkov added real drama to his legacy — a left-handed loss in 2018 that he answered emphatically in late 2023 with a dominant right-handed sweep. His supermatches against Georgian powerhouse Levan Saginashvili, staged at marquee events like King of the Table and East vs West, are still regarded among the sport’s most electric moments, and his victories over top-tier Europeans Ermes Gasparini and Vitaliy Laletin further cemented his status as a competitor who never stopped evolving.
Technically, Larratt’s game has always been built on more than brute strength. His mastery of the open toproll and the “Kings Move” defensive style allows him to absorb an opponent’s explosive opening hit and gradually drain their energy, while his emphasis on high hand position, extreme pronation, and precise hand-cupping control lets him manipulate opponents into biomechanically compromised positions. Add to that his reputation for sharp table IQ, calculated trash talk, and psychological gamesmanship before the referee’s call, and you get a competitor who wins matches long before the actual pull begins.
Beyond the table, Larratt’s influence on the sport’s visibility has been enormous. Through his YouTube presence and crossover collaborations with mainstream names like Shaquille O’Neal and Hafthor Björnsson, he has introduced arm wrestling to audiences who might never have otherwise paid attention to the sport. He has also played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in the rise of promotions like East vs West and King of the Table, helping establish sustainable professional contracts that have changed the economics of arm wrestling for competitors around the world.
Alongside his wife, Jodi Larratt, herself a competitive arm wrestler, Devon continues to be a towering presence in the sport, both literally and figuratively — a soldier turned sporting icon whose story continues to inspire new generations of pullers well beyond Canada’s borders.