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Some "sports" just not worth it
By Adam Czech
Published:
Monday, December 9, 2002
Adam Czech -- Staff Column
The gang on ESPN's Around the Horn (a relatively new sports talk program) raised an interesting question the other day: is Ultimate Fighting a real sport?
The proceeding debate proved quite interesting and, naturally, got me to ask the same question about several other "sports" in our society. Since it's fresh in our minds, let's discuss Ultimate Fighting first.
Ultimate Fighting: When I rented my first Ultimate Fighting tape when I was a youngster, the excitement to get back home from the video store and pop it in the VCR was almost unbearable. I had heard about the no holds barred style of fighting through a television expose and convinced my mom the next day to take me to the video store to rent one of these tapes. I wish she would have sent me to my room without dinner instead.
The first couple of fights on the tape were interesting but after that it was nap time. Every fight was the same. The two juiced-up competitors would dance around for a couple of minutes before one would pounce on the other, drag him to the ground and punch him in the face or in the junk until he tapped out. It was no different than what you might see at some backwoods bar after Billy Bob had one too many swigs from the moonshine jug and tried to make a move on Zebbadiah's little sister. The only thing missing was Hank Williams playing on the jukebox and the absence of foreign objects like bar stools and broken bottles of Grain Belt.
I have viewed Ultimate Fighting a few times since my initial bad experience and have come to the same conclusion every time: this ain't no sport. While the competitors involved seem to be good athletes and train hard, Ultimate Fighting is nothing more than a bar fight minus the bar.
NASCAR: If NASCAR is a sport then Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are going to heaven. Seriously, who declared that NASCAR should be considered a sport in the first place? Better yet, who took this person seriously and didn't have him or her institutionalized?
Driving around in circles at high rates of speed in cars with big fancy lettering is anything but a sport. New York City cab drivers do this every day and I don't see people flocking to call what they do a sport. Then again, maybe we should sanction a few cab driving events in New York City and call it a sport. Imagine rush hour being dubbed the "Middle Finger 400," or a midday traffic jam the "Get the @#$% Outta my Way! 500."
It'd be amusing. But not quite as amusing as folks who put Jeff Gordon on the same level as Michael Jordan.
Golf: Now putting Tiger Woods on the same level as Jordan is perfectly fine.
Not many people on this earth are good golfers. Golf takes a special kind of physical skill that leaves no doubt about whether it's a sport or not.
The knock on golf is that golfers themselves do not appear to be athletes. While Craig Stadler and Phil Mickelson may look more like overweight truck drivers, there's more to being a good athlete than how much you can bench press, how fast you run the 40-yard dash or how far you can throw a ball.
Those of us who play golf know just how hard and challenging it is. To see professional golfers shoot in the 60s and 70s on courses with bunkers deeper than Bill Gates' pockets and greens slicker than butter on a bowling lane is amazing. Golf is without a doubt a sport.
Ballroom dancing: It is unknown what drugs the Olympic gods were on when they declared ballroom dancing an Olympic sport. The only way they could make up for this travesty would be to institute yet another new Olympic sport: Olympic moshing. Here's the plan: get a bunch of metal heads and a couple trucks full of Budweiser. Have Slayer or Pantera perform for a couple hours and whoever is left standing at the end wins the gold medal.
Hey, it'd be better than NASCAR and not much different than Ultimate Fighting.
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