As a person who has competed in sports that really no one pays attention to his entire life (hammer throw, offensive line, powerlifting, and strongman), there is a very large soft spot in my heart for unrepresented/underrated sports. So today, we are going to break down the top 10 unrepresented sports, and to give you a little stats and info that you definitely did not know, but need to know.
*Disclaimer*, these sports are listed in no particular order; and, these sports deserve more people paying attention to and caring about.
Before I give this list, I’d like to throw out some honorable mentions:
Wood Chopping
Competitive Bass Fishing
Axe Throwing
Darts
Outhouse Racing
The following list consists of 10 sports that deserve your attention; because they are incredible!
1. Cornhole
Cornhole is a great American pastime. From barbeques, to camping cornhole livens up and adds a little competition to every occasion. There’s nothing quite like teaming up with your buddy to talk a little shit to your friends while throwing bags at a board. Much like bowling at your local alley and throwing your first gutter-ball, everyone is very competitive until the first time you throw and completely miss the board after your competition holes out on the proceeding throw. You probably didn’t know that there are actually two professional cornhole leagues called the American Cornhole League, or ACL, and the American Cornhole Organization, or ACO. Currently, the best cornhole athlete in the ACL is named Ryan Windsor from Illinois, and the best singles player in the ACO is Jeff Link, who earned a whopping $750 in prize money winning the ACO world singles championship.
2. Toe Wrestling
Toe wrestling is EXACTLY what you think it is; essentially thumb wrestling, but with your toes. I hate, HATE, feet, so I’m all out on trying to research this. BUT, if feet are your thing, maybe start watching a little toe wrestling on YouTube.
3. Extreme Ironing.
Another sport that is exactly what you think it is. Ironing in extreme places. Wikipedia defines extreme ironing as, “the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt.” The first world championships took place in 2002 and had 5 categories: urban, water, forest, lauda, and freestyle.
4. Chess Boxing
Nothing is better than 2 men who want to do nothing but beat the ever-loving shit out of each other stop in the middle of the fight and play what is arguably the most civilized board game ever made. Chess boxing involves 6 rounds of chess, and 5 rounds of boxing. Each round lasts 3 minutes and the competitors get a total of 9 minutes to play chess. Victory comes through knockout, checkmate, or the opponent exceeding the total 9-minute allotted play time.
5. Wife Carrying
Wife carrying is essentially a Spartan Race, but competitors are required to carry their wives the whole time. There are surprisingly a lot of rules, including a minimum weight for the wife (49 kilos), a requirement for the track to have 2 dry obstacles and a water obstacle, and everyone must have fun (soft rule but okay). The 2018 wife carrying champion team was Vytautas Kirkliauskas (Lithuania) and Neringa Kirkliauskiene (Lithuania), with a time of 65.1 seconds.
6. Beer Mile
I’m not entirely sure why anyone thinks this is a good idea. I hate chugging beer, I hate running; this literally makes no sense, but some psychos apparently enjoy pain. The beer mile requires runners to chug 4 beers while running a mile as fast as they can. The race starts with a beer chug, then competitors run a lap, stop, chug another beer, and so on until 4 laps are competed. Currently, the world record for a beer mile is 4:24.4 by Corey Bellemore. Please note, the current regular mile world record is 3:43.13 by Hicham El Guerrouj. Doing the math, that’s 40 seconds to stop, chug 4 beers, which are required to be out of a bottle, not shotgunned out of a can by the way, and start running again. Bonkers.
7. Professional Tag
Remember being a young buck, and being the baddest SOB on the playground because you could be tagged? Remember the old adage that if you’re the best in your neighborhood, there’s a kid in the next neighborhood who’s the best there? Put those two together, and boom, professional tag. World Chase Tag is the name of the professional organization, athletes compete on a field full of obstacles, where one chases and one is being chased, and the have 20 seconds to evade from or tag their opponent. The team Fade won the 2018 world championship.
8. Bo-Taoshi
Ever seen the movie 300? Bo-Taoshi is a combat sport where 75 defenders take on 75 attackers with the goal of knocking down the defender’s pole. You may have seen the viral video of Bo-Taoshi that went around on Facebook for a while. Bo-Taoshi is a Japanese sport, and teams consist of positions such as ninja, barrier, or scrum/scrum disabler. Interesting fact, the scrum literally vaults his body at the pole to knock it over, the disabler does whatever he can to stop him, and the ninja sits on top of the pole and acts as a counterweight. This sport is metal as hell, and really fun to watch, (and incredibly hard to find information on that isn’t in Japanese) so look it up.
9. Powerlifting
Shameless plug, using my bias here as a powerlifter, powerlifting is a sport where competitors try to have the highest cumulative weight lifted in the squat, bench, and deadlift. Less popular than its competitive lifting adjuncts like strongman or crossfit, powerlifting is an ultimate test of pure strength; it isn’t about how many oddly shaped objects you can lift, or how many times you can lift something, it’s about lifting one thing, once, that’s as heavy as possible. It isn’t as flashy as the other lifting sports which likely is why is doesn’t have the same popularity, but it’s really fun to watch 123 lb women deadlift 545 lbs (Shout out Stefi Cohen), or Daniella Melo bench 300+ (shout out to her too, Dani my DMs are always open @braydeneiland on insta and twitter)
10. Worm Charming
Whelp, I think it’s the only fitting to end this list with the most absurd thing I found in my investigation. Worm Charming is a sport where competitors try to attract the most earthworms out of the ground in 5 minutes, in an area of 3 square meters. The current world record is from 2009 held by 10-year-old Sophie Smith who attracted an absurd 567 worms. Hell of an interesting fact for now 20 year old Sophie to be able to put on her Tinder profile. Teams consist of 3 people, and no earthworms are harmed in this competition according to the rules of the British Association of Worm Length Supporters or BAWLS (the inner 9-year-old in me is dying right now).
That about wraps up this list. ESPN 8, The Ocho needs a reappearance, so we can get coverage on these sports, because I 100000000% would rather watch this than more LeBron or Steph Curry coverage.
What did I miss and/or should have covered? Let me know in the comments.
Written by: Brayden Eiland
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