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By Will Bredderman
Brooklyn Daily
Brooklyn’s favorite power couple is back — and they’re getting pumped for a show of arms on Aug. 26.
Professional arm wrestlers and lovebirds Joyce Boone and Harry Wilson can’t wait to compete in the Brooklyn-Kingsboro Arm Wrestling Championships after Hurricane Irene proved stronger than the even the borough’s bulkiest biceps last year, robbing the Gowanus pair of a chance to show their stuff.
Even though the 2011 contest got canceled, the pair haven’t been slacking off.
Boone, considered one of the foremost female forearm warriors on the planet, spent the past 12 months winning the NYC Big Apple Grapple International, the New York State Arm Wrestling Championship, and the Empire State Championship, all held in Manhattan.
Wilson competed in the men’s division of the Empire State challenge, but came in second to fellow Brooklynite Oleh Frankivskyy — meaning he’s been pushing that much harder to face Frankivskyy again in their home borough.
“I’ve been working with weights and with other guys I arm-wrestled a few years ago,” said Wilson, a retired boxer.
Boone has also been working out, too, hitting the weights and playing handball to stay limber. After all, she has her own rival who might turn up at the tournament: Angela Annunziata of the Bronx, who snapped the Brooklynite’s arm in a 1997 match. Boone finally got her revenge last year by defeating Annunziata on her own turf in the Boogie Down championships, but Annunziata may seek another rematch in Brighton Beach.
And Brooklyn’s brawniest welcomes the challenge.
“I’m always grateful when women come out — I’m used to arm wrestling a lot of guys,” said Boone, the 2010 Brooklyn-Kingsboro women’s champ, who is often called the “NYC Queen of Arms.”
In fact, one of the guys she grapples with is Wilson himself, often in hard-fought, bicep-bulging matches.
“Sometimes I win, sometimes he does, it’s a mix,” Boone said of their turbo-charged take on hand-holding. “I can beat him with my left sometimes, even though we’re both stronger in our right.”
But they won’t be pressing palms at the Kingsboro championship, according to New York Arm Wrestling Association founder and president Gene Camp, who said the championship has separate divisions for men and women.
The event goes down tournament-style, with brackets for separate weight divisions, then the winners from each weight face off. And cold hard cash goes to the winners: $100 for the strongest men’s left arm, $100 for the strongest men’s right arm, and $100 for the strongest woman overall.
“It’s a great competition,” Camp said. “People come from all over, Queens, the Bronx, even Connecticut — and then you’ve got all the locals. It should be a lot of fun.”
Brooklyn-Kingsboro Arm Wrestling Championships at the Brighton Jubilee Festival [3264 Coney Island Ave. near Brighton Beach Avenue in Brighton Beach, (718) 891–0800], Aug. 26 at 1 pm. Free to watch, $20 for men and $5 for women to compete. Contestants must register between 9:30 am and 12:45 pm.
Reach reporter Will Bredderman at (718) 260–4507 or e-mail him at wbredderman@cnglocal.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/WillBredderman