Gladiators (395 hits)
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Submitted by cat_head (View user info) at 2004-04-30 10:28:15 EDT
No, not American Gladiators (though I love that too).
I'm not really a huge sports fan, but I always check out the Snooker World Championships. This game is truly a game of kings. To begin with, if you've ever played then you realise just how difficult it is, and that the level of skill of the top players is quite extraordinary. And then there's the psychological aspect. This is what attracts me most as a spectator - you get to witness epic battles of concentration and nerve. People losing it, getting it back, losing it again, heroically coming back from a huge deficit only to ultimately choke at the very last moment.
There's a fuckload of prize money and the levels of pressure can be quite phenomenal. It's easy to look at some of the pale, skinny dudes playing and see them as rather wimpy men. But inside every pair of those black slacks hangs a pair of stainless steel swingers.
Because it's a one-on-one sport, it allows you to get right into individuals. Do you prefer the awesome natural talent and hot-headedness of Rocket Ronnie, or do you respect the consistently towering abilities of Hendry? Watch as players fall apart and start doing crazy things like when Peter Ebdon lost the plot and began shouting "Come on!!" and complimenting himself on his own shots. In previous times it was even more fun with more "characters" in the game. Bill Werbeniuk would reportedly drink 20 pints of beer during a game. And who could forget Kirk Stevens, dressed in white tux, popping to the toilet between frames to consume copious amounts of nose-candy? And the mack-daddy of all snooker nutters - Alex (Hurricane) Higgins. A walking maelstrom of bad behaviour. Head-butting referees, kicking the shit out of his girlfriend and plumbing the depths of addiction and despair, yet still manages to win the championship. What a fucking stone cold playa.
Ah, all I plan to do tonight when I get home is crack open some liquor and watch it all night.
I urge anyone not already doing so to check it out. They even have a tasty new female referee now. And sometimes you get to hear Cliff Thorburn say "snooker" - he pronounces it to rhyme with "hooker".
User Reviews
Submitted by transcendent (user info) at 2004-04-30 11:00:14 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I didn't read this but it made me think of Airplane..
"Do you like Gladiator movies, Joey?"