Devon Larratt, Ubermensch

"He's more like a farm animal, and I'm more like a wild animal."

Years ago, Devon “No Limits” Larratt faced fellow Canadian Matt Mask in the heavyweight division. In an interview before the fight, Larratt looked into the camera and said, “Matt’s more like a farm animal and I’m more like a wild animal.” A striking thing to say about a man nicknamed “Wild Horse.” Mask is no joke either. He’s had a bad run of luck lately, but in his prime the Mask was no one to trifle with. 

Yet he was no match for Larratt. At one point in the match, Larratt held Mask off-center, stared him down, and whispered, “I want you to remember. I want you to remember.” And then Devon sank the back of the Wild Horse’s hand into the pin pad. 

I always thought Devon was just talking trash, like usual, when he quipped about Mask being a farm animal. If you watch footage of Mask, it’s hard to see his towering frame and berserker energy and then associate it with bovine docility. But then I watched a lengthy seminar Devon gave in Kentucky earlier in the month and the picture of Larratt as a wild animal became clearer. And then a phone call between him and “Monster” Michael Todd, brought it all into focus. 

In the seminar, Devon explains the trajectory of his career. He’s been arm wrestling since he was a toddler. He worked as an oil hand, then as a member of the Canadian Special Forces. Devon never stopped arm wrestling. In fact, Devon took on Ron Bath in a life-changing bout just after returning from deployment in Afghanistan. He experienced what he describes as a transcendent, bodily surge that seemed to elevate him into another state of being.

Armwrestling has since acquired a spiritual hue in Devon’s life. The next major match in his career, against Denis Cyplenkov, would bring about another change. Even though Devon faced Cyplenkov with his weaker arm, he never made excuses for his defeat. In Devon’s eyes, there was no version of him at that time that could have overtake Denis. He took his lumps and met with the Russian athletes. They imparted their wisdom: consistency, volume, and health over maximal efforts. Devon listened and adapted.

Now, Devon will tell anyone who will listen that everything you need to learn, you can learn from nature. Post-Denis, Devon began putting this into practice developing what he calls The Way of the Giant Pumpkin. Consider a vine of pumpkins: you can let the vine feed them all, or you can cut off the weaker to better feed the bigger pumpkins. Devon believes that by only training one arm, he turns it into that giant pumpkin. It allows him to recover faster from work outs so he can get more training volume while feeling healthy. There are several European armwrestlers with genetic deformities that route more blood to one side of their body, giving them disproportionately large left or right arms. These competitors also inspired Devon.

His evocation of the “natural standard” and simultenous valorization of the “unnatural,” tipped me off to what makes Devon so special, what makes him Great—he’s the picture of the Nietzschean ubermensch. 

The natural standard is an old aristocratic idea. It arrives in most if not all of the classical works of history and philosophy. On the one hand, the natural standard delimits possibility and thus circumscribes the moral world of the ruling elite. Nature can never be over come but it can be tussled with, combatted. All things decay, but Greatness endures and the value of Greatness is in part derived from the pressure of natural limits. The distinction between courage and hubris illuminates this somewhat. 

On the other hand, nature is something of a mirror. The aristocrat—here I mean one who is the Best, truly elite—is by nature better than those beneath him. It is only right that he lead. For anyone else to hold the reins would spell disaster; it would violate nature. Nietzsche points out that this kind of self-regard is the wellspring from which the ethics of old emerge. Aristocratic values stemmed from self-admiration. The Best were the standard by which each other and those below were judged. 

The advent of slave morality complicated both the natural standard and the self-admiration. Suddenly, the Best were choosing to be powerful and were thus newly culpable for their violations against the weak. Nietzsche scoffs: “It is just as absurd to ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a desire to overthrow, crush, become master, to be a thirst for enemies, resistance and triumphs, as it is to ask weakness to express itself as strength.”

This revaluation of valuations—namely, the elevation of weakness over strength, the many over the few, the democratic over the aristocratic, the Christian over the pagan—has created the world in which the ubermensch can stride onto the world stage. The old values are dead, but not entirely. The ubermensch beings something of the old Greatness of Achilles with him as he ventures forth into the new dawn—that Devon takes anatomic inspiration from those who would otherwise be considered disfigured or weak in his pursuit of Greatness indicates what might separate an ubermensch from an aristocrat.

The ubermensch carries both something brutish and something elevated with him. He forgets sleights easily, doesn’t begrudge the power of his equals (consider Devon’s perspective on his match with Cyplenkov), and he keeps moving forward. He’s more a doer than thinker, but he’s not thoughtless. Nor is Devon thoughtless—he appears to his audience partway between a guru and a Loki. An enlightened trickster. Part of the fun in watching Devon’s career is that you’re watching greatness play out in real time with more intimacy than you get from other professional athletes.

Earlier this month, Devon called Michael Todd up on the phone. 

See, the Monster has been talking shit. “Devon cheats,” he’s been saying. “I know how,” he’s been saying.

First of all, we all know Devon chisels for every single advantage he can get away with. We all knows he “cheats.” He knows how to distract refs, exploit rules, and get into people’s heads. So what? That’s the game. Either you fight that or you don’t. Arm wrestling’s a dirty sport. It doesn’t happen in country clubs. If you’re looking for fairness, you’re looking to lose.

And what happened to the effusive Michael Todd that seemed so happy to let Devon be the better man two years ago in Dubai? The Michael Todd who, when he realized he was too weak for Devon, meekly asked Larratt not to hurt him on camera? When Levan, the Georgian Hulk, ripped through Larratt and tore his biceps last year, Devon got a “Levan was here” tattoo in Georgian on his biceps. Todd, after ignominious defeat to Larratt, has taken to mewling on the internet.

So, Devon called Todd to ask he he wanted to settled on the table in the next month. Todd ducked him, lied about what he’d been saying, and then hung up on Devon. You can watch it here:

It’s one of the more humiliating things I’ve seen. But why should Devon spare Todd’s feelings? Why shouldn’t he expose him? What does the beast of prey owe the sheep?

Todd eventually offered Devon a match in a lower weight class, knowing that Devon has another match in the super heavies coming up—a coward’s offer. But can we blame Todd for this anymore than we can blame a lamb for being prey?