# What's your favorite "trash sport"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 2, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163 "2006-05-02T22:37:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Can\_I\_change\_my\_answer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Can_I_change_my_answer)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/1 "2006-05-02T22:37:51Z")
Those are the goofy sports dreamed up to raise money or fill empty hours on the sports channel.
I like donkey basketball. Second would be that one where two guys bat at each other with gian q-tips to knock them off the platform.
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### Author:  [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2006, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/2 "2006-05-02T22:58:40Z")
The “World’s Strongest Man” competitions you see late at night on ESPN2. It’s all these 350 pound, huge chested, huge armed, huge bellied slobs competing. And they can’t just lift barbells, oh no. They have to do bizarre stunts like pulling tractor-trailers with their teeth, or carrying boulders on their heads. Watching this shit is surreal to me.
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [May 2, 2006, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/3 "2006-05-02T23:02:15Z")
Monster Trucks and Japanese Game show stuff.
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### Author:  [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/4 "2006-05-03T01:11:19Z")
Jerry Springer.
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### Author:  [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/5 "2006-05-03T01:48:16Z")
[Flugtag](http://www.redbullflugtagusa.com/). Followed very closely by [Dunk Tank](http://www.usip.edu/chemistry/students/dunktankextras.asp).
In fact, Flugtag ALWAYS ends in the Dunk Tank.
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### Author:  [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/6 "2006-05-03T01:57:12Z")
I have an odd affinity for lumberjack competitions.
To see how quickly a guy can make three cuts with a chainsaw in a large log is strangely compelling.
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### Author:  [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/7 "2006-05-03T01:58:18Z")
For fuck sakes… Golf, Curling and Bowling are not sports! :smack:
Oh… you didn’t mean talk trash about? 😛
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### Author:  [@T\_SQUARE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/T_SQUARE)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/8 "2006-05-03T02:26:41Z")
I saw on the ESPN 2 before I left the States some dude nailing a deer dummy with a bow at 50 yards. And the deer dummy was moving! Seriously, who sits around figuring out how to move a foam deer across a Branson convention center at a steady pace in order to make it fair for everyone?
And if you say monster trucks aren’t awesome, you aren’t human (Or you are my mother).
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### Author:  [@GrizzRich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrizzRich)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/9 "2006-05-03T04:09:50Z")
> [@OneCentStamp](#):
>
> The “World’s Strongest Man” competitions you see late at night on ESPN2. It’s all these 350 pound, huge chested, huge armed, huge bellied slobs competing. And they can’t just lift barbells, oh no. They have to do bizarre stunts like pulling tractor-trailers with their teeth, or carrying boulders on their heads. Watching this shit is surreal to me.
Ahem… I happen to BE one of those _slobs_.
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### Author:  [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/10 "2006-05-03T04:46:17Z")
> [@Can I change my answer?](#):
>
> Those are the goofy sports dreamed up to raise money or fill empty hours on the sports channel.
Oh, I don’t know…baseball, football, basketball, soccer, golf, hockey, tennis…you know, those goofy sports.
The only thing I don’t think falls in this category is motorsports. I loves me some auto racing. (Except NASCAR. That’s goofy, too.)
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### Author:  [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/11 "2006-05-03T14:46:15Z")
> [@GrizzRich](#):
>
> Ahem… I happen to BE one of those _slobs_.
My apologies if I offended you. 🙂
What I most often find myself thinking as I watch these guys with names like Magnus ver Magnusson toss empty beer kegs over a 20 foot wall is:
1. Good lord, these men are freakishly strong.
2. Most of these guys don’t look very athletic beyond their freakish strongness. What kind of cardiovascular condition are they in? Are they flexible at all? Coordinated?
I’m right on the first one. On the second, I may well be wrong. As a strongman, what’s your take on yourself and your fellow [del]slobs[/del] gentlemen who could rip my arms out of their sockets with minimal effort?
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### Author:  [@Cluricaun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cluricaun)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/12 "2006-05-03T15:06:46Z")
Nobody’s mentioned Pro Wrestling yet? I don’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was eight, but every once and a while if there’s nothing else on, I loves me some pro wrestling.
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### Author:  [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/13 "2006-05-03T15:10:11Z")
> [@Cluricaun](#):
>
> Nobody’s mentioned Pro Wrestling yet? I don’t enjoy it as much as I did when I was eight, but every once and a while if there’s nothing else on, I loves me some pro wrestling.
I used to like the British pro wrestling of the Seventies. The American stuff I occasionally saw just looked incredibly fake.
😃
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### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/14 "2006-05-03T15:15:08Z")
Are you **serious**? You’re really one of those World’s Strongest Man guys? What do you eat?!
And I too love lumberjack sports. I hate sports in general, would do without ESPN and such if I could, but when I flip through the channels and land on World’s Strongest Man, or lumberjack, or sumo wrestling… man. Sumo is particularly hypnotic, but I’m not sure it’s a “trash sport”, at least not in Japan.
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### Author:  [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/15 "2006-05-03T15:40:23Z")
There’s a show on every few Saturdays in Japan called “Muscle Ranking” that’s been on for years. Each show has a set of guys (sometimes it’s all pro athletes, sometimes a mix of amatuers, sometimes they bring in olympic athletes just to watch them thrash everyone in their specialty event) performing these different contests, like high-vaulting from a springboard, throwing a 10kg barrel, etc., with the guy with the highest overall score being the winner. I just can’t get enough of that dumb show.
Remember Sho Kosugi, who did all those ninja movies in the 70’s and 80’s? His kid Kane is the darling of the program, and was the all-time champ for several years in a row.
They also have a variant where they set up a huge obstacle course with some really tough sections (spider-walk between two walls for 10m, then hand-over-hand along a ledge just wide enough for your fingertips, then answer a math question, lift a 50kg gate and climb a 25m rope to the finish), with ordinary (i.e. not pro athletes) contestants. Firemen and delivery workers seemed to do the best.
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### Author:  [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/16 "2006-05-03T15:57:29Z")
There’s another I forgot. It’s not my favorite, but it’s so weird and on so frequently here that it deserves mention.
31-legged racing.
You know what a 3-legged race is, right? Well, do the same thing with 30 people strapped together instead of two. Elementary school kids, marching full tilt for 100m and slamming into giant crash pads because it’s impossible to stop together. For some reason, the networks regularly devote large chunks of Saturday and Sunday afternoon airtime to staging nationwide competitions of this between different schools. Lots of time also goes to showing how hard the kids train all year, special focus on the occasional personal tragedy, and never forgetting the close-ups of the losing teams collapsing into tears or giving dirty looks to the one member who tripped and fell.
What always makes me shake my head is how the whole concept of teachers spending all their time drilling kids to sprint in lockstep straight into a wall is such a perfect analogy for the rest of the Japanese school system.
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### Author:  [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/17 "2006-05-03T17:50:43Z")
Bring Back American Gladiators!! 😉
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### Author:  [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/18 "2006-05-03T18:02:51Z")
There is very little TV coverage, but I think [Chessboxing](http://site.wcbo.org/content/index_en.html) is a truly fascinating sport. It’s just like the name says - alternating rounds of boxing and chess.
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### Author:  [@Only\_Mostly\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Only_Mostly_Dead)
#### Post date: [May 3, 2006, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/19 "2006-05-03T18:19:40Z")
> [@GrizzRich](#):
>
> Ahem… I happen to BE one of those _slobs_.
I sense an “Ask the World’s Strongest Man (competitor)” thread in the making.
In addition to American Gladiators (which is freakin’ awesome camp!), I really like the Lumberjack and Fireman competitions. Nothing like those to make me feel more lazy about my white collar professional skillset.
Oh, and Spike’s MXC (aka overdubbed Takeshi’s Castle) is hilarious.
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### Author:  [@GrizzRich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrizzRich)
#### Post date: [May 4, 2006, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-your-favorite-trash-sport/355163/20 "2006-05-04T08:49:27Z")
> [@OneCentStamp](#):
>
> My apologies if I offended you. 🙂
>
> What I most often find myself thinking as I watch these guys with names like Magnus ver Magnusson toss empty beer kegs over a 20 foot wall is:
>
> 1. Good lord, these men are freakishly strong.
>
> 2. Most of these guys don’t look very athletic beyond their freakish strongness. What kind of cardiovascular condition are they in? Are they flexible at all? Coordinated?
>
> I’m right on the first one. On the second, I may well be wrong. As a strongman, what’s your take on yourself and your fellow [del]slobs[/del] gentlemen who could rip my arms out of their sockets with minimal effort?
No offense at all 🙂
Some strongman/highland athlete types are just that… strong.
As in _Jethro Bodine_ strong. They don’t work out either aerobically or anaerobically. They’re just BIG guys.
Other types are wannabe bodybuilders. They can’t get the definition to win a bodybuilding competition, but realize that, yes indeed, they’re freakishly strong.
And others have a good amount of CV conditioning.
It depends in what type of strength athletics one is participating.
Most highland games strength competitions have little need for aerobic conditioning as the events usually rely on explosive strength. Conversely, StrongMan-type events are (these days) designed to feature strength, flexibility and aerobic conditioning.
It’s my experience that most strength-athletes need more cardio training and flexibility. I’m a perfect example. In our minds, it’s COOL to be big and strong; it’s less cool to be able to run a marathon.
As far as general coordination is concerned, I think strength athletes have as much any other athlete. They just _appear_ to have less because their general appearance tends to be as a lumbering hulk; big hands, arms, legs, neck, etc…certainly less graceful than a gymnast or dancer.
On a side note, I’ve found that most of my fellows have a “trick” that they can perform for show. For instance, my brother always made a big deal that he could _tear_ a license plate in two. I’ve not been able to accomplish that.
My trick is that I’m able to bend a (US)penny with my bare hands. My brother could never do that.
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