Australian Football Player Breaks Arm On Live Television
We’ve all heard the rumors about how tough Australian football players are, and last week television viewers saw the proof live! The rugby league television show The Footy Show on the Nine Network is well known for having interesting and fun diversions in the program as well as football news, but last week’s show went horribly wrong. Two former football players, Ben Ross and Wendell Sailor, who are both 6 foot 3 inches tall and weigh a muscular 100kg+, were pitted against each other for an arm wrestle, promising a difficult bout given the two hard men of rugby league as well as raising money for charity.
But the live studio audience were shocked when they heard a loud pop and saw 35 year old Ross slump to the floor screaming just four seconds in to the competition. Sailor knew immediately that Ross was badly injured, but he didn’t realize how bad it actually was. “I thought he might have just pulled a tendon. I felt so bad … it was terrible,” Sailor said on Australian television program Sunrise the next morning.
Unfortunately, breaking an arm is not an uncommon occurrence in arm wrestling. The judge who was overseeing the televised event, and who is also the President of the Australian Arm Wrestling Association, told Sailor that he’d seen it happen six or seven times before, adding it’s “one of those common occurrences that happens in arm wrestling“. Especially when you’re a bulky ex-footballer putting 110kg behind it!
Ross was immediately taken by ambulance to a Sydney hospital, and has received treatment for his broken arm which has included surgery to insert a 9cm rod to stabilize the area, and has posted some post-operation photos on his Instagram account. Full recovery is expected in 12 weeks. Despite playing 173 games in one of the world’s toughest games and having suffered arm fractures before, this injury is one of the worst that Ross has experienced.
Yet, amazingly, Ben Ross says he hasn’t sworn off arm wrestling and would do it again, particularly to raise money and awareness for charity, shrugging off his injury by saying “it just happens“. His shaken opponent Wendell Sailor, however, isn’t so keen!
