Cleve Dean is definitely one of the legends and pioneers. Just like you said, a monstrous man that probably couldn’t run a hundred yards to save his life, but had hands that were legendarily large. Baseball glove large.
Hard not to mention his size advantage over absolutely everyone during that time. (He still lost to a young John Brzenk in the Yukon Gold tournament where they filmed Over The Top. John was 195lbs at the time and is still arm wrestling at the top of the food chain.)
There are monsters nowadays, like Alex Kurdechin and Vitaly Latelin and Derek Smith, who are over 6’8” with a proportional frame. They are hard to deal with for “average” heavyweights like me, at 6’3” and 245lbs right now. Frame matters quite a bit and hand size is also more important that it should be, in the sense that you simply can’t change it and yet it still affects the outcome.
I think one thing that arm wrestling is missing is/are more weight classes. Pretty much stops at 242 most times. Sometimes at 220. So you have chubby sub200lbs guys who weighed in at 221 arm wrestling natural giants straight off the farm who are 6’6” 340lbs at 17yrs old. Ready go, sucka. Not that size is everything but come on. The problem is that not enough people participate at most events, and so you’d have to give away trophies or split up prize money for people who might not have had to arm wrestle at all. Or had to beat the same guy twice in a mismatch. I’ve seen it.
Not easy to fix. But participation is key. I try to get as many people as possible to join my local club but I’ll tell you what, some of these dudes talk mad shit about how hardass they are and then NEVER show up to practice, haha.