Rotorua's Maateiwarangi Heta-Morris (left) celebrates with Western Australians' Ryan Scott (centre) and Ben Carrol (right) at the Arnold Classic Australia arm-wrestling championships. Photo/Supplied
Rotorua's Maateiwarangi Heta-Morris (left) celebrates with Western Australians' Ryan Scott (centre) and Ben Carrol (right) at the Arnold Classic Australia arm-wrestling championships. Photo/Supplied
Rotorua's famous arm wrestler Maateiwarangi Heta-Morris is celebrating after winning a major international arm-wrestling tournament.
Heta-Morris, 28, powered through to win the right arm, arm wrestling class, against fellow Kiwi Ben Carrol at the Arnold Classic and Oceania arm wrestling championships in Australia yesterday.
It was the first time theworld's largest annual multi-sport festival was held in Melbourne.
The former Western Heights High School student had earlier cruised into the crucial final match beating Michael Ford from Malaysia 2-0.
Heta-Morris replicated that score line in the final and said he was overwhelmed when he won, adding he targeted Carrol's fingers as a tactic.
"It was quite overwhelming, I wanted this win for a while and sacrificed a lot of things to get here," Heta-Morris said. "My move was to attack his [Carrol's] hand and put a lot of pressure on his fingers. In the first round I managed to get him down in about two seconds and then a split second in the second."
Rotorua's famous arm wrestler Maateiwarangi Heta-Morris shows off his winning medal. Photo/Supplied
Heta-Morris was unbeaten throughout the tournament after winning all four of his previous one round clashes.
And it made up for Heta-Morris' final defeat at the inaugural Arnold Classic Asia Multi-Sport Festival in Hong Kong last year where he lost to Norwegian strongman and elite-level arm-wrestler Lars Rorbakken.
As well as collecting a hefty gold medal for his efforts Heta-Morris has also qualified to compete in Las Vegas in June at the best arm wrestling championship in the world which will be aired on ESPN.
"My main goal was to make it. Anything from now on is a bonus. It's going to be so tough because you've got the best in the world there and the added bonus of being watched by a huge audience," Heta-Morris said.
In preparation for this year's Arnold Classic Australia Heta-Morris trained six days a week, up to three hours a day - but will be increasing this ahead of his USA venture.
"I'm going to be focusing a lot more on my training and looking a lot more closely at techniques and different holds to improve on," Heta-Morris said.
