Courting fame as an arm wrestler and weightlifter
The more she lifted, the more effortless the weights felt. Her form improved tremendously, which led her to her involvement in an additional captivating sport, arm wrestling.
A sport that has been practiced by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans since ancient times; she was excited to test and show off her amazing arm strength in the arm wrestling arena.
The gripping sport has been gaining popularity in West Africa, and she saw it as a chance to strengthen her arms and upper body. It’s considered a game of endurance and technique. Competitors grapple locked hands with all their might, engaging their grip powers, core control and muscles.
When she competed for the first time in 2023 in Ghana, she used her strong upper body muscles well and won both the right and left arm wrestling titles for her weight class.
“I believe I was one of a very few athletes that didn’t lose any fights in both left and right arm in the arm wrestling event. I won all my fights,” noted Matthew.
“Some people kind of lose at one point and recover back at the finals or something…but I didn’t lose any of my fights.”
After competing in and winning an arm wrestling match, she felt confident and ready to find her footing on the weightlifting platform. She achieved success in the weightroom despite being at the infant stage of Olympic lifting.
In 2024, at the age of 18, she was chosen to compete in her first major international competition, the World Championships in Manama. Matthew’s lifts of 110kg in the snatch, and 135kg in clean and jerk earned her the bronze medal in the women’s 76kg, won by Song Kuk Hyang of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
“It was a very big stage,” she recalled. “It was a lot of pressure. Nobody put pressure on me to win medals. They just wanted me to go out there and show myself that I have something to offer, but I wanted to win. It was a big deal for me, getting to my first World Championships, competing against these athletes that I used to see online and admired…In a way I was shocked with the bronze and it got a lot of people talking about how strong I was.”