BURLINGTON, Ky. — Lanny Julian Jr. is a professional arm wrestler form Burlington, Kentucky. Over his 41-year career, the 56-year-old has earned a lot of hardware.
"I’ve taken those two (third place finishes) at amateur worlds but I’ve placed top-10 like seven times or something like that,” Julian said.
Julian can often be found training at the Burlington YMCA. Now, he's training for his biggest match yet: The Arm Wrestling World Championships in Malaysia on September 25.
Julian believes that most of arm wrestling is mental, and that positive motivation is the best way to bring home a victory.
“Everything is motivation, that’s one thing my dad always taught me,” Julian said.
“He never says if, it’s always 'when I win,'” said Julie Julian, Lanny’s wife.
Lanny’s father, Lanny Julian Sr., was the 1973 World Arm Wrestling champion. A major part of why Jr. competes is because of his father’s inspiration. However, he began training as a teenager for a different reason.
“I got tired of getting beat up by kids, and they saw if I was an arm wrestler, they’d leave me alone,” Lanny Julian Jr. said.
Over four decades later, Julian Jr. shows no mercy describing most matches against him as only taking, “Maybe a second, if you’re lucky."
Julian Jr. is a facilities supervisor at Thomas More, and is financing his own trip to Malaysia to follow his dream.
“I’ve been there (Thomas More) for 14 years. Until this happened, so few people even knew I did it,” Julian Jr. said.
Although this trip is tough to finance, Lanny refuses to go without his support system, Julie.
“I’ve come home smelling like every muscle rub, deep heat, whatever. Massaging elbows and biceps,” Julie Julian said.
“If her passport hadn’t come back we would’ve canceled this whole trip,” Julian Jr. said.
Julian Jr. is selling t-shirts to help pay for his trip. He also has a GoFundMe page, which can be found here.
