Slamball

Slamball is a very recently conjured sport. The original inspiration was to mix football, basketball, and hockey (the inventors favorite sports) all into one. Though the football may have been moved more to the side, the game grew very greatly during it's first season which was televised.

Slamball is played on a court that are the exact detentions of a basketball court. The edges of the court are shielded like a hokey rink. There are four trampolines inside the three point line of each basket. A player is allowed to either shoot the ball from the ground, shoot after bouncing on a trampoline, and dunk the ball after jumping on a trampoline. There are 5 players on each team. Every member of each team must wear a soft helmet, shoulder pads, knee pads, and a mouth guard.

All of the rules in slamball are very comparable to basketball except for a few. You can legally hit anyone into the ground, even if they are carrying a ball. You cannot, however stike an opponent while he is jumping onto a trampoline.

Ferret Legging

Ferret legging falls under the category of an “endurance contest”. The goal being to see who can keep a ferret in their pants for the longest duration of time. Ferret legging started becoming a popular competition from the 1970s among coal miners in Yorkshire, England who obviously had no interest in doing any of their work.

Ferrets are the obvious choice for such a sport, as they are natural tunnel crawlers that take pleasure in cramped spaces. So for all of you environmentalist folks, the ferrets like it, so it’s cool, alright?!

To Ferret Leg, you must find a large group of male-only participants and at least a matching number of ferrests to put live inside their pants. Participants must tie their pants at the ankles before placing the two ferrets inside and fastening their belts (For obvious reasons). A female version was once held where the ferrets were inserted inside blouses, but it was not popular. Nobody wanted their lady’s lady parts smelling like a ferret. Plus, their reactions just aren’t as comical as the ones of drunken men.

Contestants are not allowed to wear underwear as it would provide protection. The ferrets must also have a full set of teeth. In order to win the contest, the man must simply not care when “he get his tool bitten”. The winner is the last to release the animal from their garments.

Other variations of the rules call of the competition to include competitors are not allowed to be not drunk or drugged, and ferrets can’t be sedated.  The ferret leggers can try to knock the animals off a spot they are biting but from the outside of their pants only.

Former ferret-legging world champion Reg Mellor (whose record time was 5 hours and 26 seconds on 5th July 1981) said that new contestants should wear white trousers so they could see the blood caused by the ferrets. In 1986, he tried to beat his record again in a crowd of 2500 people. After five hours, the crowd got bored and left. Mellor’s record was broken in 2010 by a retired headmaster, Frank Bartlett and Christine Farnsworth. They managed to keep the ferrets inside for 5 hours and 30 minutes, raising £1,000 for the Whittington Community First Responders. What a crazy sport Ferret legging is!

Source: http://www.topendsports.com/sport/unusual/ferret-legging.htm

Sumo Wrestling

For most people, when they hear the phrase "sumo wrestling" all they think is a fat Asian man with a diaper looking thing on. Sumo wrestling is much more than that. I'm going to go in depth about the rules of sumo wrestling and how cool of a sport it really is.

 

Sumo takes place in a ring that is 15 feet in diameter, raised about 2 1/2 feet off the ground on a dohyo. A dohyo is a very large block of clay. A new dohyo is made for every tournament. This block of clay is about a 17x17x2.5 foot square, about 725 feet squared of clay. This is 72,500 pounds. There is a small amount of sand for footing that the wrestlers (rikishi) also throw on the ground before the bout. The edge of the ring is made of tightly wound straw bands called tawara and rises up about 3 inches out of the dohyo. Five shinpan dressed in black kimono, a customary dress sit below the dohyo and around the ring. These judges must be former rikishi. A gyoji, dressed in an elaborate kimono stands at the edge of the ring and officiates the bout. At the end of the bout, the gyoji points to the winner. In a dispute between who’s the winner, they discuss. Any of the five judges can dispute the call made by the referee. In this case, a congregation called a mono-ii is held to discuss the match. In modern times, television instant replay is used to determine the actual outcome of a match when in dispute.

There are three basic types of rikishi. One, the very heavy 200+kg who uses brute force and use his size to bully the opponent out of the ring with straight charges. These bowling ball men are often very athletic for their size. Then, there is the less popular small sumos. Small Sumo wrestlers. Sounds like an oxymoron. These giant men can be all the way down to a mere 90kgs, or 200 pounds. These wrestlers use their mobility to their advantage, making the big wrestlers go into poor position, usually causing these big boys to be thrown out of the ring. It's a real David and Goliath story every time they wrestle the buildings that are the 500 pounders. Then, there is a hybrid. The best of both worlds. Heavy enough to not be picked up and eaten, but mobile enough to cause issue to their opponent.

There are very few rules in sumo.

1.       No hair pulling

2.       No hitting with closed fist

3.       Stay away from ears- no pulling

4.       No choking, but pushing at throat is legal

5.       No grabbing the mawashi (Diaper thing) in the crotchal region

How to win: push your opponent out of the ring, knock them off their feet, or make anything but the bottom of their feet touch the tawara.

How to lose: Break the rules or be forced out by one of the ways to win.