Hot Sport Newz~! 26/07/15

In this edition:

• Blame It On The Nicky
• FIFA PUNK'D
• Sport for Nerds
• The Intolerant Hulk

Blame It On The Nicky

The most interesting thing to occur in Australian tennis for at least ten years is the national moral outrage about Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic.

I already wrote on this regarding Kyrgios, about halfway down this link. At the end of that piece, I thought I was being quite provocative when I suggested an unconscious element of the criticism of Kyrgios has to do with race, or in the very least mainstream Australian discomfort with diversity.

Then a few days later, Dawn Fraser was interviewed.

Fraser suggested Kyrgios "go back to where his parents came from". So Kyrgios would return to a centre of democracy ruined by politicians promoting austerity. He would then have to pack his bags and leave his home town Canberra to return to his fathers homeland of Greece.

Since then Tomic has become the inaugural entrant into the Tennis Hall of Shame. This was before he was arrested for a noise complaint, which sounds serious, except it was in America where the cops shoot and Taser people for fun, so it was probably not serious at all. This didn't stop people treating it like Tomic had committed high treason.

It all escalated further when Nick Kyrgios lost at the Davis Cup, and didn't handle his frustration to the high standard expected from people who lack the skill and determination to be in his shoes. This incoherent Facebook rant republished on Australia's largest media website as legitimate journalism was the hysteria cherry on the overreaction cake.

In the "article", the coach seems to be upset because Kyrgios has made his job as a tennis coach harder, mostly because his coaching philosophy is based on an idealised romanticism about what sport represents.

Along the way, Nick has apparently disrespected the following people:

• Every former player to represent Australia, male or female.
• Every tennis player to not represent Australia, junior or senior.
• Every athlete in any sport - from swimmers to footy players.
• His sponsors.
• His equipment, which is inanimate but nonetheless apparently capable of being disrespected.
• The world and national tennis associations.
• The fans in attendance, especially the elderly, disabled and infirmed. Oh, and the authors mother (!). Thankfully there were no defence personnel in attendance to also offend.
• The entire city of Canberra.
• His mother and family.
• All the kids this guy coaches. Even though Kyrgios volunteered 30 minutes to play basketball with them after his entertaining meltdown of a loss, it still wasn't enough to make it up to them or even enough to stop this viral rant.

I think dogs still like him though. Cats are ambivalent, but they always are.


FIFA PUNK'D

It's a very impressive stunt to crash a FIFA press conference and make it rain on Sepp Blatter. But it's not actually that funny, until two things happen:

1. One person starts applauding when Blatter is showered with money, then awkwardly stops a few seconds later upon realising none of the other cronies and sycophants have done the same.
2. Blatter says "this has nothing to do with football". You couldn't write a better line if you were paid to satirise FIFA.

The stunt clearly upset Blatter. Because he prefers his money in brown paper bags.


Sport for Nerds

The French language Scrabble championships have been won by a guy from New Zealand who doesn't speak French.

This guy:

I don't know why you don't see the Amish beard with bowlcut combination more often. It's very cost effective and it only makes you look slightly like a serial killer.

Nigel Richards has been referred to as "the Tiger Woods of Scrabble", although I don't think he shares the same dalliances outside scrabble as Woods does outside golf.

Anyway, Richards won by playing the same way he would in English. Firstly, he memorised as many words as possible in official scrabble dictionary, which in his case was every single one because of his mega memory. Secondly, he used this to treat Scrabble like a mathematical puzzle, playing words based on the number values on the tiles and the multiplier values on the board.

Scrabble actually has nothing to do with language. If you replaced the letters with something else like 26 shapes, which could only be played in a few hundred thousand combinations, the game still works.


The Intolerant Hulk

Professional wrestling isn't usually considered a sport, because it is fixed, but not in a believable way like boxing. But given I've just covered scrabble, I think the floodgates are open.

This is a truly remarkable story.

Basically Hulk Hogan, still probably the most famous wrestler ever, had a sex tape.

Somehow only the second most ridiculous looking person picture in this blogpost

The sex tape was released by his former best friend, who apparently didn't mind Hulkmania running wild with his wife, but also wanted to make a buck out of it. Hulk sued his friend for making the recording, settled out of court, and then sued gossip site Gawker to prevent the full tape from being released.

Now it's been leaked, and it makes Hogan look very racist. That is because he is very racist. On a scale of Dawn Fraser to Adolf Hitler, I would say Hulk is somewhere around Mel Gibson.

World Wrestling Entertainment has responded by firing the Hulkster and removing him from its Hall of Fame. This is a dramatic step - the equivalent of removing Don Bradman from a cricket hall of fame. If cricket was a ridiculous pantomime with serious homoerotic overtones.

The WWE really had no choice though. They couldn't have Hogan as part of a group of people that includes convicted rapist Mike Tyson, convicted wife-beater "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, and Donald Trump.

Yet any fan of wrestling should've seen this coming. Hulk made his millions predominantly by beating up foreigners, mostly for no other reason than not being American - from the Iranian Iron Shiek, to the "Ugandan Giant" Kamala, Killer Khan from Japan, Nikolai Volkoff of the former Soviet Union, "Canadian Earthquake", and Andre the Giant from Grenoble in France.

I actually once won an early morning radio quiz on ABC 702 by knowing a soundbyte was commentary from Hulk v Andre from Wrestlemania 3. I got the typical ABC radio prize - a choice from whatever DVDs are lying about the studio. I chose Shameless Series One. We couldn't watch it because my wife couldn't understand the accents and it didn't have subtitles.

Thanks, Hulk.