Boxing in the hockey ring seems dangerous enough, but the Chinese take it one step further.

Wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and sneakers, a group of winter swimmers entertained passers-by during a series of boxing matches performed on a block of floating ice. Held in Harbin City, the wacky competition had contestants punch each other with over sized boxing gloves while struggling to keep their balance on the slippery ice.

One of the ice boxers lost his temper when the referee tried to stop him from hitting his downed opponent and knocked the “official” in the ice-cold water surrounding the ring.

It’s a crazy event, but the Chinese don’t even come close to the neon-fighting Japanese.

via ImagineChina

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From the country that brought us rugby and soccer comes one of the oldest, hardest and weirdest ball games in the world, the Eton Wall Game.

It’s not clear when the Eton Wall Game was invented, but the first recording of a game dates back to 1766. Its rules were changed several times up to 1849, but have remained unchanged ever since. The game originated at Eton college, along a slightly crooked brick wall, built in 1717. The most important game is played on St. Andrew’s Day, between a team of Collegers and Oppidants.

People kicking a ball along a brick wall sounds a little like soccer, but the 5-meters wide, 110-meters-long pitch makes the Eton Wall Game special. Each ten-player team tries to get the ball to the far end of the opposite side and score a goal, without handling the ball, hold or hit their opponents or get caught offside. As you can imagine, scoring a goal under these conditions can be rather difficult. In fact, the last one was scored 100 years ago, in 1909.

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22-year-old Matthias Schlitte began practicing arm-wrestling when he was just 16 years old and since then has been training only his right arm muscles.

The first time I’ve seen photos of Matthias, I thought he had some sort of weird medical condition, but it turns out not only is the guy perfectly healthy, he’s also a young body-building champion. Sure’ he’s not the first one and I bet he won’t be the last, but what makes him stand up in a crowd is his incredibly large right arm.

Matthias’ right forearm measures almost 18 inches in circumference, while his left one is all skinny, just like the rest of the bodybuilder. That’s actually one of his hidden weapons, opponents see his slim figure and underestimate him. But when his Popeye arm does its thing, they look at him with a lot more respect.

via Daily Mail

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Fred Crzybowski, a 20-year-old from Los Angeles, is known as “the Tony Hawk of the pogo world” for the extreme pogo-stick jumps he can perform.

Fred, who started using a pogo-stick at the age of eight, is the current record holder for the most consecutive backflips, which stands at nine. He has appeared in motion pictures like Mister Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and hopes he will get new gigs in television and movies.

This young pogo-stick master‘s dream is to bring pogo-stick jumping at the same level as other extreme sports like skateboarding or rollerblading. He says technology has made significant improvements and pogo-sticks are no longer just toys, but powerful tools that can help jumpers perform serious stunts. He uses a Flybar pogo-stick, designed by SBI Enterprises, that can lift a 250-pound man five feet in the air, but he gets way more out of it.

Like all extreme performers he has had his share of accidents, including a split lip that took 30 stitches to repair. But that won’t stop him from jumping over cars, staircases or other obstacles, any time soon.

Photos by AUSTIN HARGRAVE/BARCROFT MEDIA

via Telegraph.co.uk

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If you’re a runner, you probably already know about the issue of nipple bleeding, but for people like me, who only run when they’re being chased, this is new.

I stumbled across this set of photos on Unknown Highway, one of  my favorite sites, and thought I’d investigate further to find out what exactly makes men’s nipples bleed during marathons. After a bit of reading I learned not to ever run for miles, dressed in a cotton shirt.

Apparently, cotton and sweat just don’t make a good team. After you run a few miles, you start to sweat a lot and the cotton absorbs the sweat and gets heavier and heavier. That’s when it starts to act like sandpaper against your sensitive nipples. So, if you want to run in a marathon make sure you’re wearing something made out of light-weight material, like a CoolMax t-shirt.

If you don’t have anything else but cotton t-shirts, run shirtless. It’s better for people to see your belly wiggling that to see your nipples bleeding, trust me. Also, I know this sounds a bit kinky, but you might want to rub a bit of Vaseline or other lubricant on your nipples, before a race.

More than one hundred belly surfers from all over the world gathered in Cornwall, Britain, for the annual World Belly Board Championships.

You might be surprised to know surfing wasn’t always about standing up on the board and riding the waves. British surfers practiced the sport on their bellies, using short wooden planks, over one century ago. On September 6, 2009 belly surfers from as far as Australia and America gathered in Cornwall for the annual charity event for the National Trust and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). The World Belly Board Championships began back in 2002 as a way to commemorate the beginnings of British surfing.

Cornwall has been the main surfing area in Britain and it’s recognized as the first place where a British surfer actually stood up on a surf board. The first photographic evidence of this dates back to 1929.

Photos by Matt Cardy/Getty Images Europe

via Zimbio

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Yes, believe it or not, there is such a competition as Sauna World Championship.

Held in Heinola, Finland, the Sauna World Championship brings together around 200 competitors from all around the world. These hot heads can withstand sauna temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius.

Inaugurated in 1999, this crazy competition has both a men’s and women’s challenge. The Finish men have proven unbeatable every year since the 1999, while women from Belarus and Russia managed to steal the trophy on a number of occasions.

The rules of the Sauna World Championship are simple. Contestants, dressed in just their bathing suits, go inside a steaming sauna and have to stay there for as long as they can. As water is thrown over the stove, temperatures reach 110 degrees Celsius. The last contestant to leave the sauna, on his own two feet, is declared the winner.

This year the men’s title went to veteran Timo Kaukonen, and the women’s trophy was snatched by Russian Tatyana Arkhipenko.

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Bord of just swimming and diving for no reason, the Germans came up with a sport that spices things up, underwater rugby.

Never thought a game like rugby could be played underwater, did you? To tell you the truth I didn’t imagine it either, but this goes to show you anything is possible. Underwater rugby is pretty simple, teams of 12 (of which 6 can be in the water at a time) battle to get a ball into two metal baskets, set at opposite sides of the pool.

The ball is filled with a saline solution, which makes it heavier than normal water and slowly sinks instead of rising to the surface. This allows strong players to throw and pass it for a few meters, despite the drag of the water. There aren’t many rules in this sport, players have to stop opponents from scoring, at any costs. It’s even permitted to sit in the basket to block a player from scoring, but if you can’t hold your breath long enough, you’ll have to go up for air and leave the “goal” exposed.

Check out the short video at the bottom, to get an idea of how underwater rugby is played and head over to uwsport.de, for more details on the sport.

via Yofavo

At just six years of age, Miko Andres can proudly call himself the youngest gun in the west…although he lives in the Philippines.

Miko handles his Colt 1911 handgun with impressive ease, loading, aiming at shooting it like this is what he was born to do. The six year-old took-up practical shooting at the beginning of 2009 and now he travels the country, participating in competition against 9-17 year-olds.

Miko’s father says he is aware of the dangers his young sun is facing by handling a gun loaded with live ammo, but says the boy’s safety is his primary concern. He also wants to introduce the world to Miko’s talent by bringing him to America to compete in international shooting events.

via Telegraph.co.uk

I’ve seen rubber dolls used in many ways, most of them for adult eyes only, but using them as flotation devices makes much more sense.

Hundreds of crazy Russian swimmers gathered in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city, for the annual Bubble Baba Challenge (Bubble Woman Chalenge). They plunged into the cold waters of the Ob River and had to swim for 100 meters with a rubber doll. The dolls helped keep them afloat, but were quite difficult to maneuver.

The first five swimmers to complete the Bubble Baba Challenge received prizes and diplomas.But what’s important is, everybody, including the 1,000 spectators, had fun. Read More »

They’ve only been born for a year and they’re already competing in sporting events. No wonder they’re called Olympic Babies.

Babies born on August 8, known as Olympic Babies, take part in a sporting competition that fits them like a diaper, a crawling race.  The race took place on August 6, 2009 in Beijing, to commemorate a 1 year anniversary since the Olympic Games held in the Chinese Capital.

via China.org

Just because they’re short doesn’t mean little people shouldn’t have the chance to compete in sporting events, at an international level. That’s why the World Dwarf Games were created.

Similar to the Paralympics, the World Dwarf Games gives athletes suffering from dwarfism the chance to prove themselves. The games are held every four years, in locations all across the world. The 5th edition of the games was held in Belfast, Northern Ireland, from July 24 until August 2nd. Competitors from all around the world tried their best to win and qualify for the 2012 Paralympics.

Photos by Reuters

To celebrate Michael Jordan‘s induction into the Naismith Memorial, Gatorade teamed-up with an advertising company to create one of the oddest mosaics ever.

Using an image of “His Airness” leaping towards the basket, 14, 641 Gatorade Limited Edition Jordan bottles and 200 lightboxes, a giant drinkable mosaic was created. The unusual creation was first tested in an enclosed space, before being transported to an outdoor basketball court, in Chicago’s South Side, where hundreds of curious Michael Jordan fans awaited to see their idol recreated from Gatorade bottles.

via: Total Pro Sports

Check out the video at the bottom:

Although I wasn’t able to find much info about this spitball competition, I know it was held somewhere in Britain and it’s sort of like the Spitball World Championship. I really liked some of the fancy spitball launchers some of the contestants displayed. They show just how passionate some people can be about a…sport other people find silly.

via Ochevidec

The smartest autonomous robots in the world prepare for one of the most important robot competitions in the world, the World Cup of RoboCup.

Brilliant minds from all round the globe build soccer-playing-robots and compete in the RoboCup, to promote the development of artificial intelligence. This year, the weekend-long contest was held in the Austrian city of Graz and the protagonists tried to put on a show worth watching.

The Soccer World Cup for robots is not as young an event as you might think. It dates back to 1993 and, across the years, it took place in countries like Japan, Italy and USA. There are different league matches, from the standard to the smaller than 180 mm league.

In one of the leagues, teams use identical robots, and have the task of developing a software that can allow the machines to move autonomously. The dream of the developers is to one day create an entire team of autonomous robots that can defeat the human winners of the Soccer World Cup.

Photos by Reuters

via Telegraph.co.uk