We all know about soccer (football if you are British!), tennis, American football, athletics, golf, formula one and rugby. Many of us have also heard of badminton, judo, squash, road cycling, archery, croquet, equestrian and fencing. You might even have heard of Eton Fives, Gaelic football, lacrosse or kneeball. However, there are some sports in the world that are just plain odd, quite bizzarre, wacky and down right strange!
Table of Page Contents
- Here is a list of the top ten unusual sports in the world, counting down from ten to one:
- 10. Wife carrying
- 9. Dog surfing
- 8) Camel Wrestling
- 7) Muggle Quidditch
- 6) Extreme Ironing
- 5) Chess Boxing
- 4) Prison Rodeos
- 3) Worm charming
- 2) Zorbing
- 1) Kaiju Big Battel
Here is a list of the top ten unusual sports in the world, counting down from ten to one:
10. Wife carrying
This rather strange sport takes place in Finland and there is an annual competition held in Sonkajarvi when husbands carry their wives across an obstacle course. As a prize you are guven ‘the weight of your wife’ in beer! Lots of countries look at Finland wondering why on earth they do this but the Finns have a great time!
9. Dog surfing
Yes, that’s right! Dogs on a surf board! Every year at Imperial Beach in San Diego, California dogs of all breeds, sizes and shapes take part in a competition which requires them to stand on a surf board and ride the waves. Perhaps surprisingly, they can really do it.
8) Camel Wrestling
Heading over to Turkey now for a sport that has a history of 2000 years of practice. It usually takes place in the mating season when the heat of a female is enough to make two males fight. Over 2000 camels are bred specifically for the purpose. Some animal right people believe that this should be stopped but those who carry out the sport point to the cultural tradition of the sport.
7) Muggle Quidditch
You might have thought that this was a fictional sport from Harry Potter. You would be right that they are not flying about on broomsticks but muggle quidditch is indeed a thing. There are now 200 colleges in the United States that play the game. Players run about on broomsticks and otherwise many of the rules are the same as for the flying fictional version.
6) Extreme Ironing
Supposedly invented by a man from Leicester in the United Kingdom in the 1990’s this sports sees people ironing their clothes in bizarre locations. Some people have even pushed this the brink and have ironed clothes on busy roads and under the sea! Challenges get harder and harder as you push yourself further. At least you end up with uncreased clothes though! This is one of the few Unusual Sports in 2017.
5) Chess Boxing
Not the most obvious of things to put together you might think but this sport means that you have alternate rounds of chess and boxing. It requires you to be both brainy and brawny and is said to have been inspired by a science fiction novel. Unsurprisingly it attracts a rather different crows to those normally attending chess tournaments or boxing matches.
4) Prison Rodeos
You may have heard about bull fighting in Spain or running down the street in front of a bull, again in Spain but prison rodeo actually takes place in the United States. It sounds a bit of a weird way to spend your sentence but people will honestly pay to see convicts go up against bulls in the rig. Bull riding is a common feature of these rodeos.
3) Worm charming
For those of you who haven’t heard of this rather quiet sport worm charming involves encouraging earthworms to come out of the ground by stamping about the place. The World Worm Charming Championship takes place in Wilaston in Cheshire, United Kingdom every year. The world record was set in 2009 by a ten year old girl who encouraged 567 worms from the dirt. For a good worm charming soil you need a nice soil full of organic matter and it helps for it to be slightly damp. If it’s raining, even better, as the tapping of the raindrops encourages the worms to come to the surface as well.
2) Zorbing
Imagine getting inside an enormous hamster ball and rolling about the place, specifically down a hill at high speed. It first became popular in the 1990’s and has since grown and grown to become quite well known in some countries.
1) Kaiju Big Battel
This wins the crown on the list for this list of unusual sport. It is really part sport, part performance, part artistic exploration as this sport will blow your mind. It is based on Japanese character wrestling but is mostly played out in the United States. Indeed, it was invented by students in Boston. It involves players becoming a range of different characters or personalities who include So Feng, a Viking based superhero, and Dr Cube, an evil plastic surgeon. The characters then take to the arena to fight it out. As already suggested it is loosely classed as wrestling but it isn’t like any sort of wrestling that most people will have experienced before!
So, there we have it, 10 quite strange sports for you to get your heads round. By all means go and try them out or watch people doing them. Whatever your preference in the world it is likely that there is a sport out there that will suit you. Go for it!
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