Meet the hardest working twins from Akwesasne.
The ground-level apartment of Thomas and Phillip Barreiro is not what you’d expect. In the living room, there’s no couch or TV, no coffee table or lamp, not even a chair. The entire surface of the floor is covered by a patchwork of wrestling mats connected by duct tape and that’s where I sit when I stop by to chat with my brothers-in-law. In the “cardio room” (what would have normally been a bedroom or office), there’s a creepy 90-pound throw dummy named Reginald who leans against the wall next to a rowing machine and stationary bike. Leather jump ropes and fitness cables dangle on plastic hooks on the walls. In the kitchen, there’s a power rack, a barbell loaded with impossibly heavy plates, and a weightlifting platform homemade of plywood and a hard rubber horse stall mat.
Noticeably, there are two sets of everything in their home: official Team Canada jackets and backpacks, training shoes, weightlifting belts, and identical suitcases with Pan American Team luggage tags. Thomas and Phillip are twins, after all. But these 30-year-old Mohawk men from Akwesasne have taken their twinning further than most: They are both international-level Greco-Roman wrestlers.
In the last six years, they each have been in the top two spots of their respective weight classes, Thomas at 97 kilograms and Phillip at 87. Thomas has been the Canadian national champion an impressive five times, and Phil, three. At the 2020 Canadian Wrestling Trials, an Olympic qualifying event that took place in Niagara Falls late last year, Thomas won and Phil took second. They have defended their titles around the world, traveling around Canada, the U.S., Brazil, Cuba, Denmark, Budapest, Kazakhstan, Chile, Argentina, Peru, and France.
GRECO-ROMAN WRESTLING IS sport where the difference between winning and getting your ass kicked can come down to the degree of hand position.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has derailed some of their big plans—most significantly, the chance for Thomas to represent Canada at the Olympics in Tokyo this summer. Regardless, they remain fierce contenders on the senior Greco-Roman international circuit and continue to train for 2021, when international competition is scheduled to resume.
It’s hard to imagine that the pair almost left wrestling behind in 2013. Burnt out from four years of relentless academic and athletic schedules at American University, a Division 1 school in Washington, DC, they thought their competition days were over. Then fate intervened.
Phil and Thomas met Doug Yeats, a four-time Canadian Olympian in Greco-Roman and Canadian Amateur Wrestling Hall of Famer. Doug started teaching them Greco, a discipline that forbids lower-body combat and instead focuses on intricate hand fighting and upper body movements. This was new to the pair; they had only ever competed in Folkstyle, the kind of full-body wrestling often depicted in movies.
Helping hands: Thomas gets in close with Coach Doug Yeats. 
Concentration required: In workouts, Phillip deadlifts 450 pounds. Thomas lifts 550. 
No rest for the weary: Thomas hits the battle ropes hard. 
Flipping out: The twins throw down the gauntlet at home.
After a few months of casual training, Doug encouraged the twins to enter the 2014 Senior Canadian Championships in Calgary.
“We thought, ‘We’re gonna go and get our asses kicked!’” said Phillip.
To their surprise, Phillip won and was also named Most Outstanding Wrestler. Thomas took fourth. Exhilarated, they realized they could compete at an even higher level.
The twins are driven by the single-minded pursuit of commandING their own bodies and especially their opponents.
Under normal circumstances, the twins travel after work to Montreal three times a week to train at the famed Tri-Star, one of the top mixed martial arts gyms in the world. It’s home to MMA great Georges St-Pierre and other top combat sports athletes.
“When we go into that gym …,” Phillip begins. Thomas finishes: “… we are not special.”
Compared to other combat sport athletes, though, the twins do have a special advantage. Training as rigorously as they do is only possible because they have live-in, world-class partners in each other (not to mention a home that doubles as a gym).
“If I didn’t have Philip, there is absolutely no way I could do what I do,” explains Thomas. “I’d have to leave Akwesasne every time I needed to train with other people.”
This perfect storm of training conditions gives them an edge in a sport where the difference between winning and getting your ass kicked can come down to the degree of hand position.
“All I’ve ever wanted from this sport is mastery,” states Thomas. Both brothers agree that getting to the Olympics would signal the pinnacle of their careers but say they’re actually driven by the single-minded pursuit of commanding their own bodies and especially their opponents.
Without a doubt, their obsession with wrestling has led them to success, but not without sacrifice. They haven’t taken a vacation in seven years. They have long days and little sleep. They miss family events. And while most of their opponents are full-time athletes who enjoy serious financial backing, the twins both work full-time jobs—Phillip as an administrator for the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribal Court, and Thomas as manager of the Kawehno:ke (Cornwall Island) unit of the Akwesasne Boys & Girls Club.
By day: Thomas at work. 
By night: Phillip laces up for training.
Their “lifestyle,” as they call it, is almost entirely self-supported. They combine their salaries to cover all living and wrestling expenses, and receive boosts from donations and community fundraisers including Indian taco sales and Mohawk auctions.
They’re grateful for the backing—both financial and emotional— they receive from their supportive family, friends, and the community, and to give back, they take part in high school clinics and coach other young wrestlers when they have time.
Both Phillip and Thomas believe a strong local wrestling culture is essential to the growth of their sport, and they’re in the idea stage of developing a project for Akwesasne kids that brings together their competition experience, coaching skills, and connections in the wrestling and MMA worlds. The goal is to lay the groundwork for the future of wrestling in the community that includes generational legacies, family support, and social reinforcement.
“We know there is a lot of untapped athletic talent here,” says Phillip.
Thomas agrees: “Anybody can learn to wrestle.”
Photography by Brittany Bonaparte / @breezybones
