Mainstream sports are somewhat boring. Their widespread popularity means that one cannot risk pointing their shortcomings without antagonizing an ‘expert’ or an online sports betting site fan. People who share this thinking have not only shunned conventional sports but have also come up with alternative games to spend their leisure time.
As it turns out, these ‘alternative’ sports are extremely strange. After all, when was the last time you carried your wife with her head down to win a trophy? Still, their weirdness hasn’t stopped their organizers from creating World Championships for the same.
Read on to increase your knowledge about the seven strangest sports types:
Wife Carrying
Since its beginning in Finland all those years ago, the wife-carrying sport has become so popular that every year hundreds of husbands carry their better halves on their back at the annual North American Wife Carrying Championship. The winners not only get the prize of five times the wife’s weight in cash, but they also get an entry pass to the World Championship.
Chess Boxing
Ever checkmated your opponent by knocking them out of their senses? That’s exactly the theme behind Chess boxing, a battle which consists of 11 rounds in which the competitors, dressed in the attire of boxing players, take turns between playing chess and landing punches on their opponent.
Cheese Rolling
The most dangerous of all sports you see in this article, here’s how Cheese Rolling works: someone rolls down a large cheese roll down a hill, and runners follow suit. The competitor who can first get to the bottom of the hill ends up taking the cheese home.
Egg throwing
As per the World Egg Throwing Federation (yes, there’s one), the egg-throwing sport has been popular ever since humans discovered the delight of watching their fellows fail to catch an egg. You can take part in this game by registering your name for the annual World Egg Throwing Championship which takes place in Swaton, England.
Underwater hockey
First, there was field hockey. Then we came upon ice hockey. But underwater hockey? Is it even a thing? It is, and you can see players using a stick to push a puck across the bed of a swimming pool. What’s more, this sport has been around for four decades, with the first World Championship taking place in 1980.
Toe Wrestling
If ever there was a game invented to force its players to literally go toe-to-toe with each other, it’s toe wrestling. The rules are pretty straightforward: you and your opponent have to take their shoes and socks off, interlock your toes and try to pin down your opponent’s foot.
Shin kicking
Shin kicking takes the concept of ‘never-skip-a-leg-day’ to a whole new level. This combat sport asks its contestants to kick the shin out of each other, until one of them hits the ground. Like most other games in this article, the credit for inventing shin kicking also goes to the industrious Englishmen.