Sport Jim but not as we know it

Imagine, if you can, the commentator of a sports programme saying something along the lines of " what an incredible performance, this guy is really on top of his game right now, he could be the best there is." To me, and you I should think, that would conj our up a vision of health and fitness, toned and muscular possibly a vision of a really well developed young man, or me, now I am in the gym every night!

Imagine my surprise when I turned to see this vision of health and fitness and was greeted by a fat slob, with a beard that had never seen any grooming, ripped jeans, lumberjack shirt, straining to get out of a welded shut car door window.

The"World Championship" he had just won was a kind of demolition car race. The main skill required was to weld stuff to your car and avoid getting hammered by your rivals. Ah but this would be a unique niche sport I hear you say, but no, this is on Sky Sports 1 (or ESPN the US equivalent) and it was repeated over two or three nights, just in case you missed it!

Gladiators, the UK entertainment show, is bordering on being a serious sport with analysis and all sorts of helpful insights into the whole process. Gladiators!!!

If you accept the three main sports, Baseball, Basketball and American Football or "Rugby for girls" as as I jokingly called it and was verbally lynched, are just that, sports, there is also some real bizarre stuff going on.

Looking at the schedule there is the quite thrilling "sports" programme that is basically a car auction, very nice cars to be fair, but an auction. Just to make the point it is on for HOURS, and I, naively thinking this was an annual event, was very surprised when I was asked to tune in next week to see it again. It's not just the actual programmes, the ubiquitous adverts as well have to be included every couple of minutes, and the endless analysis, on and on and on, it's drivel.

Also, we should not ignore world championship Bass fishing, and every morning there is a sports programme on how to kill stuff, this morning it was bears. The gopher shooting was hysterical if you ignore the cruelty element of shooting the equivalent of your pet hamster. I am not joking the list is endless.

Then there is wrestling. I am almost ashamed to admit that my son is a big fan, I can use the excuse he is young and I can beat it out of him (joke), but loads of people here think it is:

a) real
b) a sport, and even more puzzling
c) not fixed!

I could weep, if being gullible were a sport these folks would be world champions like our overweight car driver. When you consider the list of world titles the US lay claim to it is generally because no one else takes part. They just seem to make up stuff to do and make themselves world champs. The areas where they do compete on a world stage in team sports, like "soccer," they are ranked a tad above Trinidad and Tobago and are quite frankly, crap.