Given my longstanding fascination with North-East India, one of the primary settings for my 386-page labor o’ love, I’ve been following Mary Kom’s boxing career for a good while now. The 27-year-old mother of twins just won her fifth world championship, a feat that earned her a true hero’s welcome in her native state of […]
Of the many death-defying sports that I’ve grown to admire over the years, few astound quite like elite ski jumping. Perhaps it’s not until you witness the sport in person that you really get a sense of just how bananas it is: TV can’t do justice to the true height of those hills, nor the […]
Tags:crime·Finland·Matti Nykänen·music·psychology·ski jumping·sports
To ardent fans of arm wrestling, there is no greater hero than the famous Mac Batchelor, a Los Angeles bartender who never lost a single match over his twenty-five year professional career. Even more impressively, he won a fair share of those matches while blasted out of his skull on whiskey and beer—his tolerance for […]
Tags:arm wrestlings·Mac Batchelor·Oscar Nygren·sports·Sweden
(Cross-posted from Ta-Nehisi Coates) There’s controversy brewing in southern Mississippi, where Jackson County recently approved a hog-dog bay. That’s an event in which a hunting dog corners a boar in a pen, to the ostensible delight of onlookers. To those who oppose the practice, it comes perilously close to an interspecies take on dogfighting; to […]
Tags:animals·dogs·Mississippi·pigs·sports
It would take a rock-hard heart not to be moved by the plight of the Iroquois national lacrosse team, which has been frustrated in its efforts to attend the world championships in England. The team’s members hoped to travel on passports issued by their tribal government, but the British have refused to recognize the documents—despite […]
Tags:diplomacy·Iroquois·lacrosse·Native Americans·sports·State Department·travel
We’ve been doing our best to work up a healthy antipathy toward Algeria, whose national team we face tomorrow in a must-win World Cup match. As big fans of The Battle of Algiers and longtime observers of the country’s ruinous civil war, our hearts go out to the Algerian generations that have endured so much […]
In response to the previous post regarding a biker gang’s seemingly childish obsession with stealing their rivals’ sew-on patches, a few sharp readers pointed out that this game was once the essence of warfare. One, in particular, mentioned the following: I’m definitely no Civil War expert, but I believe more medals were awarded during the […]
To our tremendous relief, the 65-day blockade of Manipur appears to be over, thereby allowing much-needed food and medicine to flow into the Indian state. (Microkhan’s backgrounder on the crisis can be found here.) Now, perhaps, the local government can focus on what strikes us a problem of only slightly lesser importance: the long decline […]
While researching a post about the ever-popular sport of wild cow milking, we came across a paper on the history of Native Canadian cowboys. A healthy chunk of the work is dedicated to the development of rodeo culture among Canada’s First Nations, who were often encouraged to engage in calf roping and bronco riding in […]
In the latest account of NBA big man Eddy Curry’s never-ending money woes, this passage jumped out at us: On Friday, a Manhattan court ordered Curry to pay $75,000 a month to lender Allstar Capital Inc. to resolve a debt that swelled to $1.2 million with interest. The court also has issued an order letting […]
Tags:basketball·crime·economics·Eddy Curry·loan sharking·Nevada·sports
In what must certainly rank as the least surprising athletic triumph ever, bodybuilder Tshering Dorji has been named the first-ever Mr. Bhutan. Though his victory is just days old, Dorji has obviously been expecting this title for years—something we assume based on the fact that his three-year-old charitable foundation is called Mr. Bhutan. Also, going […]
Back in the 1930s, a New York subway conductor named Manuel Velazquez befriended a middling boxer named Pete “Kid Indian” Nebo. Like many pugilists of the era, Nebo fought two to three times per week in order to make ends meet. As a result of his athletic pursuit, Nebo suffered terrible brain damage, and was […]
Tags:boxing·public health·sports
Crazy morning ’round here, as we once again find ourselves butting up against a brutal WIRED deadline. But seeing as how this is an especially dreary Monday, at least here in this rainy metropolis where incompetent bombers run amok, we couldn’t just start your week with pure laziness. So let us spend a few moments […]
Tags:Georgia·Man Mountain Dean·New York City·politics·sports·wrestling
Upon bumping into this list of famous Mormon wrestlers last night, we were immediately intrigued by the story of Don Leo Jonathan, who grappled under thenom de sport “The Mormon Mauler.” Yet as we hacked our way into Jonathan’s sweaty tale, we came to realize there was a more intriguing narrative thread to explore—namely, the […]
The hero of the criminally underseen documentary Sliding Liberia is one Alfred Lomax, a young Liberian whose life was turned upside down by his nation’s brutal civil war. After fleeing his hometown of Robertsport in 2003, Lomax landed in the capital city of Monrovia, where daily foraging trips brought him in contact with the sport […]
Tags:Alfred Lomax·Liberia·movies·Sliding Liberia·sports·surfing
In the midst of researching a forthcoming post on the economics of sports bribery, we’ve been learning a heckuva lot about the backstory on Shoeless Joe Jackson, the baseball great whose legacy is tarnished by the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. We dig the fact that Jackson was a linthead who spent his childhood working […]
Look, we’re as excited as the next khan about the forthcoming FIFA World Cup—if Paraguay wins it all, we stand to make a pretty penny. But our enthusiasm for soccer’s top tournament pales in comparison to the love we feel for the Kabaddi World Cup 2010, currently taking place in Punjab, India. Longtime readers already […]
Until their 2010 first-round draft choice inevitably blows out his ACL before scoring a single point, we will not blog about our beloved Los Angeles Clippers again. But we couldn’t let this dismal season pass without dredging up an anecdote that sums up the franchise’s eternal woes in about as concise a package imaginable. It […]
Tags:basketball·Donald T. Sterling·Los Angeles Clippers·sports
Staying on the ancient sports theme, we’d like to call your attention to the clip above, which depicts the not-so-delicate art of bull leaping. (We’ve got it cued up to the good stuff, so click away in the knowledge that you’ll be wasting zero time.) What fascinates us about this sport is not so much […]
Another lost season for our beloved Los Angeles Clippers has got us thinking about what fate our team would have faced in a less forgiving age. It’s easy to forget that sportsmanship is a rather recent innovation, and that athletes in the ancient world often faced dire consequences should they lose a single contest. We’re […]
Though this seems obvious when you really think about it, there’s nothing like an objective report to drive the harsh reality home: modern horse racing makes NASCAR seem like knitting: Based upon a year’s worth of data beginning November 1, 2008, from 378,864 total starts in Thoroughbred flat races at 73 racetracks participating in the […]
Tags:animals·dog sledding·horse racing·horses·Roman Empire·sports·statistics
Big doings up in the Yukon yesterday, as Austrian dog-sledding superstar Hans Gatt captured his fourth Yukon Quest title. If you’ve ever been curious about the strategies employed by professional mushers during their competitive odysseys, we highly recommend the invaluable “Check Point” blog, which is sort of the ESPN.com of dog sledding. We especially enjoyed […]
Tags:Alaska·Canada·dog sledding·Hans Gatt·sports·Yukon·Yukon Quest
Despite our longtime enthusiasm for ski jumping, we just can’t seem to drum up much interest in this edition of the Winter Olympics. Perhaps that’s because we currently find ourselves smitten with an entirely different set of cold-weather games—those which comprise the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics, held annually in Fairbanks, Alaska. Most are simple tests of […]
Tags:Alaska·Drop the Bomb·Native Americans·sports·Winter Olympics·World Eskimo-Indian Olympics
Our affection for the Indian sport of kabaddi is well-known around these parts. But our taste in the athletics of the subcontinent doesn’t always run toward the brutal, as proven by the soft spot we’ve recently developed for kho-kho, which can perhaps be best described as a formalized version of freeze tag. We won’t pretend […]
Last night, a certain sporting event didn’t go the way we had hoped, leaving us questioning why we invest so much of ourselves in supporting certain teams. Even under the best of circumstances, such fandom leads to nothing but heartache most years, as seasons inevitably end on sour notes. Is it time, perhaps, to give […]
Tags:ancient history·Byzantine Empire·football·Indianapolis Colts·Nika riots·sports
We fully acknowledge that this wasn’t a red-letter week at Microkhan, at least in terms of posting frequency. Paying gigs got in the way, as did Microkhan Jr.—the parenting equation has changed dramatically now that he’s figured out how to open the front door. Worry not, though, we’ll be back to full strength next week—though […]
Apologies for being late with this year’s obligatory Australia Day post. Though we’ve never had the pleasure of visiting the island continent ourselves, we’ve long enjoyed the company of Aussie compatriots—especially those we’ve encountered while roaming the far corners of the globe, since the Aussies always seem to know where the bar is. More importantly, […]
Tags:animal cruelty·animals·Australia·boxing·kangaroos·marsupials·Primo Carnera·sports·Woody Allen
With the possible exception of Texas A&M’s poultry judging squad, no college team is as dominant right now as University of Maryland-Baltimore County’s chess club. The school recently earned yet another national title, its ninth in the past 14 years. It has done so by recruiting a United Nations’ worth of grandmasters, including such notables […]
If you’ve heard of the traditional Indian sport of mallakhamb, it’s likely in relation to its supposed role in the creation of modern pole dancing. But there’s an offshoot of the sport that involves rope tricks rather than pole stands, and it’s quite a sight to behold (see above). While mallakhamb may be little know […]
Tags:Germany·India·mallakhamb·sports
We here at Microkhan headquarters have been been shy about expressing our love for modern pentathlon, by far the most underrated sport in the Summer Olympics. And so we were recently overjoyed to discover that none other than Dolph Lundgren, one of the finest actors of the past half century, shares our affinity for the […]
Tags:Bad Movie Friday·Dolph Lundgren·Hard Ticket to Hawaii·Invasion U.S.A.·modern pentathlon·movies·Olympics·Pentathlon·sports
