weirdsports Page index.xml - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Lacrosse-style goals are officially a thing, even in the KHL: SEE IT!
Daniil Vovchenko scored the game-winner in Severstal’s 4-3 win over Spartak Moscow on Friday with the move invented by Michigan player Mike Legg in 1996 and duplicated by Andrei Svechinikov of the Carolina Hurricanes last season....

What would a 1,000 mph fastball do to a person? Watch and learn (& do not try at home!)
We’ve all seen it a thousand times: a baseball player tries to field a ball, but can’t catch it and it goes rolling on the outfield grass....

This Spikeball Rally Is A Work Of Art
It’s still summer, at least for a few precious weeks more, which means it’s still the perfect time to go play spikeball in a park near you. For those uninitiated with the game, it involves spiking a ball on a mini-trampoline and also some other stuff, but you do not have to know anything about spike...

Competitive Tag Looks Fun As Hell
Tag is usually a game reserved for children and rambunctious dogs, but what happens when you mix in some cool obstacles and parkouring English lads? You get what appears to be a pretty cool sport....

Here's A Good Idea: Curling, But With Cars
Have you ever watched curling and thought, man, this is great, but what if the stones were replaced with Soviet-era cars? A Russian insurance agent has! Here is the debut of the resulting sport, from last week:...

Tanzania's Goat Races Are Decadent And Depraved
Slumgoat Millionaire lost his first race at the Dar es Salaam Charity Goat Races. While the “owners” (sponsors, really) were standing in the corral at the center of the small racetrack, one of the MCs asked Slumgoat’s patron if he knew the rules....

Trampoline Dodgeball Exists, And It Looks Extremely Fun
I would absolutely play trampoline dodgeball, even though I didn't know it existed until about an hour ago....

Russian MMA Card Features Armored Knights Battling With Swords
We're ... not entirely sure what this is, but we watched, rapt, after learning it was happening via Twitter user @grabakahitman. This battle took place on the undercard of a show being held today by M1, a more or less reputable (?) Russian fight promotion, and features dudes in armor battling with s...

Crazy-Ass Italian Sport Combines Rugby With Bare-Knuckle Fighting
There is a sporting event held annually in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. It is called Calcio Fiorentino, and it is an ancient form of football that is essentially rugby, but with a whole bunch of dudes just mercilessly beating the crap out of each other. ...

We Have No Idea What <em>Hip Show</em> Is, But It's The Best Thing On TV
What you are watching is a clip from a Russian MMA-based show called Hip Show: Arena Combat, which is broadcast in America on AXS TV. It's really weird....


Stay Out Of The Kitchen: Day One At The World Shuffleboard Championship
A dozen pale Norwegians seek shelter among the 200 stadium seats, mercifully covered by a roof. A young, bearded American wrings out a wet towel over his bald head. An orange-clad Dutchman creaks by, white hair poking out from beneath a Florida Gators baseball cap. Elderly Japanese men stretch agai...

What Is This Weird-Ass Sport I Saw On TV Yesterday?
Yesterday a reader tweeted at me, urging me to tune into Fox Sports Midwest where "unathletic adult men" were "racing tiny bikes around a tiny track." He wasn't lying, and I watched a good half hour without ever figuring out exactly what, or who, or where I was watching....

The Year In Weird: Here Are 38 Bizarre Sports Moments, Slowed Down And Set To Music
One one of the most intriguing elements of televised sports is that the medium can be consumed in myriad and diverse ways: some viewers engage with their favorite team's local broadcasts, others watch for outstanding individual performances, and others enjoy observing tactics and strategy courtes...

Inside The Great, Freaky Sport Of Cup-Stacking
Jeff Van Gundy joked while broadcasting this week about cup-stacking. He said he could have had a future in it. Little did he know, though, what it demanded of its competitors. Stefan Fatsis, on this week's excerpt from Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, explains all the terrifying details, with ...

Finally, A Triathlon For Drunken Rageaholic Gamblers
Billiards and high-stakes poker are not exactly riveting spectator sports, but you know what would make them surefire TV entertainment? If at the end of each contest, players beat the crap out of each other....

Land Of The Giants
One would think that a team with four seven-footers in the starting lineup wouldn't need a last-second shot to win. But this is the American Basketball Association, where the official rules more resemble Calvinball than anything. Why didn't someone inform us earlier that, in their finale against the...

One Shining Moment... Of Pooh Sticking
In case you missed it on SportsCenter, today continues the 23rd annual World Pooh-Sticks Championship Race in Oxfordshire, England. The Japanese have returned to defend their title against... a lot of people with nothing better to do....

The Cold-Blooded World of Competitive Kickball
Our nation's courts have recently been home to some vicious legal battles about the sport of kickball. The WAKA (World Adult Kickball Association) has beef with DCKickball about... well, I have no idea what it's about. The news here is that there are adults out there who play kickball....

There Will Be No Sheep Tackling Here, No Sir!
To close out this sleepy Monday, we bring you sport from the other side of the pond; more specifically, the banning of such. The BBC reports that in New Zealand — wait ... that's not really "the other side of the pond," is it?; sorry, we went to grade school in the United States and thusly know no...