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Jerry Cadorette is a world champion arm wrestler. He also sells campers in Berkley.

greg sullivan
·4 min read

Tom Brady? Forget it. Jerry Cadorette is the true poster boy for high-quality longevity in the pro sports.

At 50, Cadorette is back in the penthouse of the arm wrestling world. A Rehoboth resident and the general manager at Camping World in Berkley, he returned from an almost two-year pandemic hiatus that dropped him out of the world rankings to defeat the highly-regarded Gendai Kvikvinia for the superheavweight/right hand world title at the East vs. West 4 event Aug. 6 in Istanbul, Turkey.

Excluding a couple of years when he had back surgery and then admittedly got lazy and didn’t work out or compete, the Attleboro High School graduate has been among the very best arm wrestlers in the world since 1996, with his fair share of time at the very top.

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His 3-2 Turkey triumph over Kvikvinia returned him to a throne. He has since turned 50. Now, the arm wrestling world is dying to see Cadorette face the sport’s reigning superstar, Levan Saginashvili, also from the country of Georgia. Cadorette said that mega showdown is shaping up to take place in April, in Dubai.

Cadorette, nicknamed Big Daddy, said it does blow his mind, at least a little bit, to be so good at his age that he could soon be one half of arguably of the biggest match in the sport’s history.

“I look at it now and I know that the sand is almost out of the hour glass,” Cadorette said recently at his Camping World office. “You don’t ever want to acknowledge that, right, to say that there’s going to be an end in sight? But I also don’t want to be the person that tries to hold onto something that’s not there.

“So, I look at it like I’ve built a pretty cool legacy. I’ve won the national championship every year [that’s he’s competed] since 1994. That’s a long time. Every world championship I went to, I won.”

Cadorette finds himself in a nice position to finish his career strong, on top, in a blaze of glory.

Following his win over Kvikvinia, Cadorette was pencilled in to face the formidable Ermes Gasparini of Italy at East vs. West 5 on Nov. 19. That match, Cadorette said, will likely be switched to East vs. West 6 in January. Gasparini is now set to face Dave Chaffee on Nov. 19.

At 50, Jerry Cadorette says he knows his arm-wrestling career won't last forever. Still, "I’ve built a pretty cool legacy," he says.
At 50, Jerry Cadorette says he knows his arm-wrestling career won't last forever. Still, "I’ve built a pretty cool legacy," he says.

And if all goes well for Cadorette, the January match will be be a tuneup, a marketing launching pad, for the Dubai battle with 400-pound Saginashvili, aka The Georgian Hulk, the monster of the arm wrestling world. That match, Cadorette said, could be a $50,000 payday.

Cadorette has six career losses. He noted that he has defeated (in some cases defeated many times) everyone who has beaten him. He said that where once he reigned supreme without training very hard, he now trains intensely. That’s the way, he said, it has to be in his growing sport.

Jerry Cadorette said he will put his weightlifting numbers up against anyone in the sport.
Jerry Cadorette said he will put his weightlifting numbers up against anyone in the sport.

Cadorette said he will put his weightlifting numbers up against anyone in the sport. He shared some of those numbers, including this bench pressing he’ll do at the end of a workout:

  • 225 pounds, 65 reps

  • 315 pounds, 35 reps

  • 405 pounds, 15 reps

  • 545 pounds, 4 reps

Cadorette somehow makes it all fit while working full time and being a husband and a father of five. His oldest child is 27. His youngest are playing Pop Warner football.

Very few of the elite in arm wrestling work a full time job, Cadorette said. Most of the very best actually make their living as social media influencers. A man who well remembers using a rotary phone, Cadorette is getting a little IT hip. He started his own YouTube channel, managed by someone else.

Jerry Cadorette's nickname is "Big Daddy."
Jerry Cadorette's nickname is "Big Daddy."

Social media, he said, is a driving force behind the current popularity surge in arm wrestling, so expect TikTok, Instragram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more to be hype vehicles if Big Daddy vs. The Georgian Hulk does become reality. The two have never met.

The Hulk, 33, has not lost since 2017. He’s won nine straight matches, the last five by 6-0 scores, against top competition, including several men who own a win over Cadorette. The freakishly huge and muscular and hairy Saginashvili destroys people, left hand and right hand. Look at a picture of him and you’re apt to think it’s been Photoshopped.

“That’s why it’s such a big thing,” Cadorette said. “It’s like the irresistible force meets the immovable object, right? So now what’s going to happen when these two collide, when him and me collide? I don’t know.”

This article originally appeared on The Taunton Daily Gazette: Arm wrestling champion Jerry Cadorette prepares to face Georgian Hulk