Crazy Sports That You'd Never Believe Existed

Football is your fiefdom, baseball is your back yard and hockey is your homestead. You're a walking encyclopedia of sports. Whenever a sporting event is about to occur in or near your home state or town, everybody wants to know your opinion. Whenever a bar quiz or a game of Trivial Pursuit turns to sports trivia, everyone rolls their eyes because they know the round belongs to you!

You're Joe Sports... But there are some crazy people out there right now devising sports so weird that even you might struggle to have heard of them.

Grab your foam fist and your slurpee cup and prepare for a tour around the weirder climes of the sporting landscape...

Image by Flickr

Bubble soccer

You've heard of zorbing, right? Well, there are some people out there for whom the process of rolling down hills and valleys in a giant plastic ball is a little too… mundane. While zorbing usually takes place on the rolling hills, bubble soccer takes place on outdoor or indoor soccer pitches and is one of the most bizarre sports to behold you've ever set eyes on. Players are encased from the waist upwards in 1.6M plastic zorbing balls so that only their legs are visible with a free range of movement.

As you might expect, lots of falling over, players barging into each other and hilarity ensues.

Chess boxing

The art of pugilism is as much about tactics and psychology as it is about footwork, endurance and the ability to hit really hard. Chess boxing is a battle on two fronts with 11 rounds alternating between... you guessed it, chess and boxing, with opponents trying to either checkmate each other or knock each other out (whichever comes first).

Extreme ironing

It was only a matter of time before somebody turned ironing into a sport. Extreme ironing works almost exactly the same as regular ironing except that it takes place while sledding down a hill. Or parasailing on the back of a jet boat. Or diving from a plane at 12,000 feet. If you've ever wondered why thrill seekers always have consistently scruffy collars and cuffs, now you know!

Shin kicking

Everyone who's ever caught a savage kick to the shin (or even just banged theirs on the coffee table) knows the unique agony of the experience. For some reason, a subculture of British masochists decided to turn this least pleasurable of activities into a sport way back in the early 17th century in what many believe to be one of England's few non-sword related martial arts. Two combattants try to kick each other in the shins until one falls over. The annual shin kicking championships are still held today in the picturesque Cotswolds. Ouch, though!

Wife carrying

Nope, that's not a typo! Many men want their wives to get off their backs, but not those who indulge in the sport of wife carrying. Originating in Finland, wife carrying involves men carrying their wives on their backs and racing through obstacle courses. It's so popular that countries around the world have National Wife Carrying teams who compete in the world championships in Finland.

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