Sam Knowler sweeps both titles at Canadian Arm Wrestling Championships

Sam Knowler left Moncton Coliseum with both Canadian titles again, sweeping the right-hand and left-hand championships at the 2026 Canadian Armwrestling Nationals and stretching his run of wins at the Canadians to three straight years. The Ridgetown puller’s double in the June 26-28 meet was not just another medal haul. It came on the sport’s official national stage, the kind of platform the Canadian Armwrestling Federation has built since founding in 1976 and staging annual national championships every year since 1977.

That history matters because Knowler did not win this on a local card or a one-off showcase. CAWF’s championship archive runs deep, and the federation also says it hosted the first WAF World Championship in 1979. Against that backdrop, sweeping both arms at nationals is the sort of result that settles arguments fast: right and left are treated as separate classes, and CAWF rules allow competitors to enter both. Knowler turned that opportunity into a clean sweep, which says more about his table control than any single-arm specialty ever could.

The Moncton results also sharpen the comparison with other repeat winners in the sport. Garry Kell added another major line to the same championship by winning both right and left hand titles in the 75 Kilo Para Class, his 17th national championship. Knowler’s case is different only because the climb is still early and the streak is already moving. Three straight national sweeps at this stage of a career put him in rare company and make him the reference point every other Canadian puller has to measure against.

That rise did not start in Moncton. In 2024, when Knowler was 17, he had already won both arm titles in the 15-18 U-70kg class in Gatineau, Quebec, after starting arm wrestling in January of that year. He was also headed to Greece later in 2024 to represent Canada, and by 2026 he had added an even stronger result at the Arnold Classic in Columbus, Ohio, taking left-arm gold and right-arm silver in the 154-pound class against elite athletes from the United States and overseas.

He also entered Moncton with more than one signal that his name was rising nationally. A 2026 report had him leading the Armswrestler of the Year standings, and another said he helped bring an armwrestling event to Ridgetown. Put together, the picture is of a puller who is not simply winning one bracket at a time. Knowler is building a Canadian standard, and right now nobody in the country has shown they can knock him off either side of the table.