3 years ago
Friday, August 26, 2011
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thursday, December 18, 2008
XARM Meets ESPN
It's happened to all of us. You're sitting in your living room, watching Over the Top for the twenty-sixth time, and you start to wonder, why doesn't Stallone just crack that pudgy dope with the fu manchu in the side of the head with his free hand? Surely that would win him the respect of his estranged son. But he can't, friends. Such violence was frowned upon in the realm of legit arm wrestling—until now.
The XARM fighting league combines the intimate distance of arm wrestling with the strikes, holds and general disregard for personal well-being of mixed martial arts. The results are, in a word, awesome.
"They've got arm wrestling on tombs in Egypt that go back almost 4000 years," XARM CEO, and UFC fore-father, Art Davie says of the inspiration behind the sport. "Arm wrestling is something young guys compete at as much as anything else that they might test their manhood with, and it's something that hadn't been expanded on, quite frankly, at all."
In cooperation with Piranha Entertainment, a digital content development company, Davie designed XARM with the mobile video platform in mind.
"My idea was a short-form entertainment that would work very well on a Blackberry," he says. "Boxing and mixed martial arts and professional wrestling take place in an arena that goes from 20 to 40 feet in size. With arm wrestling, I knew I'd be doing this on a table that would be less than three feet in diameter."
But the fact that XARM tourneys will look sweet on your iPod isn't the only reason it's a sport for a new digital age. Fighters' gloves are also wired with sensors that keep a running tally of punches landed and display just how hard they're hitting, which, judging from the clip, is pretty freaking hard.
In a typical bout, the combatants, who come from a variety of martial arts backgrounds, are tethered to a table to compete in three, one-minute rounds. A winner is determined by clean KO, TKO or decision, in which judges award up to 10 points in three distinct areas of performance: effective aggressiveness (scoring clean strikes), arm wrestling pins and table generalship (who controls the bout).
The league will crown its heavyweight champion on Dec. 17 after a month-long tournament, highlights of which you can check out on the XARM website. From there, Davies hopes to host six to eight events in 2009 in five different weight classes, from lightweight to superheavyweight.
But until the league is given the OK by state athletic commissions, XARM will be featured largely in Indian casinos in California, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. As Davie will tell you, it's not easy getting a radical sport off the ground.
"The biggest challenge I've had in promoting a new sport is the same one that I had when I wrote the business plan for ultimate fighting back in '93," he says. "You know, you go to people and you show it to them and they go, "Well, this has never been done before, this will never work."
We've got a feeling this one will pan out. The only question is, how long before Kimbo Slice is named "The next big thing in extreme arm wrestling"?
The XARM fighting league combines the intimate distance of arm wrestling with the strikes, holds and general disregard for personal well-being of mixed martial arts. The results are, in a word, awesome.
"They've got arm wrestling on tombs in Egypt that go back almost 4000 years," XARM CEO, and UFC fore-father, Art Davie says of the inspiration behind the sport. "Arm wrestling is something young guys compete at as much as anything else that they might test their manhood with, and it's something that hadn't been expanded on, quite frankly, at all."
In cooperation with Piranha Entertainment, a digital content development company, Davie designed XARM with the mobile video platform in mind.
"My idea was a short-form entertainment that would work very well on a Blackberry," he says. "Boxing and mixed martial arts and professional wrestling take place in an arena that goes from 20 to 40 feet in size. With arm wrestling, I knew I'd be doing this on a table that would be less than three feet in diameter."
But the fact that XARM tourneys will look sweet on your iPod isn't the only reason it's a sport for a new digital age. Fighters' gloves are also wired with sensors that keep a running tally of punches landed and display just how hard they're hitting, which, judging from the clip, is pretty freaking hard.
In a typical bout, the combatants, who come from a variety of martial arts backgrounds, are tethered to a table to compete in three, one-minute rounds. A winner is determined by clean KO, TKO or decision, in which judges award up to 10 points in three distinct areas of performance: effective aggressiveness (scoring clean strikes), arm wrestling pins and table generalship (who controls the bout).
The league will crown its heavyweight champion on Dec. 17 after a month-long tournament, highlights of which you can check out on the XARM website. From there, Davies hopes to host six to eight events in 2009 in five different weight classes, from lightweight to superheavyweight.
But until the league is given the OK by state athletic commissions, XARM will be featured largely in Indian casinos in California, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. As Davie will tell you, it's not easy getting a radical sport off the ground.
"The biggest challenge I've had in promoting a new sport is the same one that I had when I wrote the business plan for ultimate fighting back in '93," he says. "You know, you go to people and you show it to them and they go, "Well, this has never been done before, this will never work."
We've got a feeling this one will pan out. The only question is, how long before Kimbo Slice is named "The next big thing in extreme arm wrestling"?
XARM Tournament
The XARM tournament, consisting of 10 fighters, combines arm wrestling with contact sports like boxing and martial arts. The first competition takes place in San Bernardino, CA. The winner of the Heavyweight Tournament will earn the title of “XARM Heavyweight Champion” and the top prize of $10,000. “In XARM, there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide once you step up to the table. It’s hard-core hand-to-hand combat.” said Art Davie, CEO of XARM and creator of Ultimate Fighting Championship® (UFC). “The action is tremendous. This is the most intense 3 minutes in sports.” “It’s action, it’s entertaining, it’s real,” said Ryan Magnussen, CEO of Ripe Digital Entertainment. “We know our audience will love this show and advertisers will benefit from the viewer interest and expected viral pass through.” The fighters in this first-ever tournament come from a variety of fighting backgrounds including mixed-martial arts (MMA), arm wrestling, weightlifting, football and kickboxing. Athletes participating in the XARM Heavyweight Championships are: Bond Laupua, Rick Vardell, Homer Moore, Justin Del Mugnaio, Rick Cheek, Frederick Steen, Ivan Gatoloai, Steve Walston, James Cordrey and Andy Flennoy. An XARM bout features 3 one-minute rounds with athletes tethered to the XARM table in a belted harness. The combatants’ grip hands are strapped together and fighting gloves are worn on their free hands. Punching, striking, kicking, chokeholds, and submission moves are all part of the official XARM rules. The winner of the match is the first athlete to pin his opponent’s arm, knock him out or make him submit. In the event the bout goes the full three minutes and a decision is needed, three XARM-trained judges score the match on a special, “10-point must” system. Ripe Digital Entertainment (www.ripetv.com) will also release XARM match video via VOD (Video On Demand) on Time Warner Cable and Comcast as well as via its mobile partners for view on handheld devices. XARM is optimized for the limited screen size of mobile digital delivery due to the small circumference of the tethered fighting area, bringing viewers as close to the action as they’ve ever been in combat sports. About Ripe Digital (www.ripedigital.com)Ripe Digital Entertainment was founded in 2004 as a multi-platform entertainment destination for men and has emerged as a leading digital media Company with distribution to 100 million screens across the Internet, Cable VOD and Mobile video enabled devises. Ripe is exclusively focused on producing, editorializing and monetizing entertaining short-form video programming around men’s lifestyle, automotive enthusiasts and music. About XARM (www.xarm.com)XARM is a new combat sport wholly owned by Piranha Entertainment LLC. Working with Art Davie
Sunday, November 30, 2008
MMA meets ARM Wrestling
GET ready to see a brand new sport where MMA meets ARM wrestling. You will be in full disbelief as these men battle with their hands and feet
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