Posted on 10/16/2009 11:22:30 PM PDT by WesternCulture
Actually, I'll refrain from watering down the spirit of my headline (like a Liberal writer would've) - and turbo-charge it instead:
I'm European and regardless of the fact that American football is an extremely physical game, it still isn't a true contact sport like Australian football or soccer is and compared to soccer, it is often pretty safe. Period.
Which part of the world houses the toughest sport on Earth?
The Far East?
Karate, Kung Fu and such hobbies are widely regarded as "true contact".
But, provided you really wish to injure an opponent, the runway is longer and the ref is more absent in soccer.
My position is this:
The two toughest people on Earth probably are the Japanese and the Scandinavians.
However, an average Japanese weighs something like 36% of an average Viking.
Therefore, no one ought to be impressed if a Japanese karate black belter knocks down another Japanese black smurf.
Instead, what we all should bow down to, IM(humble)O, is someone like this;
A young kid, having the words of "-Get off the field, you're too weak, you don't belong" ringing in his head while trying to fall asleep each evening, before surrendering to dreams of becoming a soccer legend, a kid who remains "tiny", but manages to beat the odds, yet somehow gets signed by a major club (thinking of Celtic F.C.) in one of the nastiest leagues of the game (that of brutish Scotland), gets assaulted from behind suffering an injury (clip below) that, literally, would cripple most men for good but still rises from the dead and among other things, manages to decide a CL final, score more league goals than any other presently active player of today and score THE most appraised goal of the most/second most prestigeous tournament of the sport.
Henrik Larsson isn't the toughest man I know of, but he's by far the toughest sportsman known to me.
Perhaps his accomplishments doesn't settle the initial question, but Larsson still drives a nicer car than those people who once counted him out of the game and the vast majority of people who refuses to acknowledge what a noble game soccer actually is.
Anyhow;
Some years ago, immediately after having explored the excavagations of Pomeji, I, rather deliberately, rested myself on the stairs of a primary school of Naples.
And yes, suddently, I was surrounded by young boys tearing me to pieces with questions of what I was was up to in their "quartiere", where I was from and what I knew about them and their home.
Upon telling them I was from Svezia, Thule, thirty young Napoletane throats began shouting something, in perfect chorus, I first could't make any sense of. But then, the leader of the pack began to, demonstratively, kick a ball that simply wasn't there in front of him and I understood they were all trying to speak Swedish to me in Nnapulitano;
"- LARSSON! LARSSON! LARSSON!"
Skål from Sweden to everyone who believes in self-reliance and dares to embrace challenges in life!
You wrote:
“In the end, Charles XII wasn’t victorious, but he stood up to the situation which is more than you could say of any leader of our big Eastern neighbor throughout History.”
Peter the Great? Ivan the Terrible? Grand Duke Vladimir?
I don’t know why you keep exposing your ignorance about Russian history. You’re just embarrassing yourself.
I’m and Aussie and have played American Football. Aussie Fotball is fast and tough on the body but I would rather be hit by the biggest Aussie Rules player than any on field player in NFL (obvioulsy I’m leaving out kickers) as you guys are trained to knock the stuffing out of someone else while it is more incidental in Aussie rules! So unless this guy has played both I don’t think he knows what he is talking about!
Mel
Boxing...
“Hockey is pretty good.”
Hockey is DAMN good. Those guys are very tough and very physical and in GREAT shape!
I agree. I was wondering if anyone would get around to naming the sport where injuring your opponent is the primary goal of the sport and not incidental to it.
I would break the discussion down into team vs. individual sports.
For individual sports, martial arts followed by rodeo or perhaps rodeo followed by marial arts. And I am not limiting marial arts to the forms from the far east. Just about every culture, from the depts of the Amazon to the deepest parts of Africa have developed some form of martial arts and they are brutal.
For team sports, soccer really shouldn’t be mentioned in the same sentence as American football, but even American football seems tame compared to (in no particular order) rugby, hurling, Austrailian Rules Football, lacrosse, and Gaelic football.
The toughest sport on earth is either The Toure de France or that Australian cross-country mountain bike race of over a hundred miles.
There are also a 100-mile footrace and a 100-mile mountain-bike race out of Leadville, CO.
“The two toughest people on Earth probably are the Japanese and the Scandinavians.”
I lightly armed Finn army of about 250,000 took on the Russian army in the 1939 Winter War and inflicted over 1 million casualties.
That’s tough.
Judo is a competitive Olympic sport.
It may be a competitive event, but I know a lot of martial artists who will tell you that MA is not a sport.
There are myriad ways to define toughest sport, but I’m convinced the toughest nine minutes in sport is collegiate wrestling. Of course that would be hard to refute or confirm if you haven’t done it.
Judo is the exception. Partipants must compete.
word
There’s a group of life guard/surfers in Hawaii that routinely drop 50lb. rocks in water 10-15ft. deep. Then they swim down to them, pick them up, and try to run with them along the floor of the ocean. They do it to build strength, lung capacity, and tolerance to stress. It was crazy to watch as they filmed them do it.
The stoppages and the weight are what make football tough. Continuous play means you jog. Starts and stops mean you sprint. Football generates higher speeds at the point of impact. Higher speeds and heavier players (kinetic energy = 1/2 x mass x velocity ^ 2) means more damage to their bodies, and more danger of concussion.
Rugby?.
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