This game is like a giant game of hot potato, and the ball is the potato.  I had never witnessed a rugby game before covering the USA Sevens World Cup.  Now I can’t imagine missing a game!  The World Cup had 44 matches with teams from 16 countries all playing two 7 minute halves.  Its a very intense 7 minutes.  These guys take the field with no protective gear and beat the living daylights out of each other.

They make running tackles, gang up on who ever has the ball, regardless of team alliances.  Its crazy, barbaric, and very fun!  There doesn’t seem to be any rules when it comes to player contact.  Just about anything goes, and the more brutal the more the fans love it.  These guys are tough too.  They take the hits and just keep right on going.  Nothing seems to stop them.  Its like a field full of Supermen!

Before last weekend I had no idea how popular Rugby was.  The fans are rabid!  They love their team of choice and anyone who says different is in for a brawl.  The fans dress in costumes and wave flags and banners all day long.  Everyone is there for the action and to be a part of the teams success.  We saw more fans dressed for the occasion than not, talk about some premo people watching!

Just for the ladies… if you think this sport is too ruff for you let me be the one to remind you… all muscles, brawn, and yummy man-ness dressed in shorts and tight shirts!  Its never a bad combination!

Las Vegas will be hosting this event for the next three years.  I suspect we will see the crowds grow even larger as the years move on.  I for one will not miss it!  You can see more photos from this event at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thevegastourist/sets/72157623464048722/

Friday night I had the opportunity to be at Lagasse’s Stadium at the Palazzo for Smokin Joe Fraziers birthday party.  Lagasse’s presented Joe with the first “Legends” award.  Part of the presentation included clips from the film “Thrilla in Manilla”.  Joe Frazier is best known for his fights with Muhammed Ali, and the rivalry between the two of them.  Frazier first fought Ali in 1971 and that fight was the only fight he won agianst Ali.  The two would meet a couple of more times with the most memorable fight being the fight in Manilla.  This fight was one that would go down in the history books as one of the most exciting fights ever.  It went for an astonishing 14 rounds!

What was most interesting about this evening with Joe was to see how passionate he still is about the sport of boxing.  He still loves the sport, and my guess is if his body had held up he would still be in the ring at 66.  He sat and watched the footage of “Thrilla in Manilla” with us and then added his two cents.  It was great to hear some insider facts from back in the day.  That last fight with Ali, Joe confirmed that he was blind the last three rounds.  He had had a prior training accident that had left him blind in one eye, and Ali had beaten the other eye to the point he could no longer see.  The MC of the event asked how Joe kept going and he said pure instinct.  It was apparent from the movie that these two fighters were willing and able to fight to the death, literally.  Thankfully Joe’s cornerman eventually called the fight, just as the Ali team was getting ready to do the same.

The Legends award was well recieved and in my humble opinion couldn’t have gone to a better man.

You read that right.  That fun game you played in high school and college;  The one you jokingly said should be an Olympic Event…  yea, that game… is not yet an Olympic event, but it is a full fledged competitive sport with teams, rankings and serious prize money. The 2010 World Series of Beer Pong started today at the Flamingo Resort in Las Vegas.

The world Series started in Mesquite, NV in 2006,  and is now hosted in the town made for the sport, Las Vegas.   We saw thousands of people from almost all walks of life and several countries enter for four days of intense competition.  With the winning team walking away with $50,000.  They are THAT serious about it.

The interesting thing is the people.  Almost like the other “world series of..”  these people come from almost all walks of life and all income brackets.  The one thing that they have in common is the passion for the game and the new found friendships forged from playing it in a structured format. You have men, women, couples, friends and co-workers and probably a couple of enemies making up the teams.

We interviewed Billy Gaines, one of the three founders of BPong.com, the website behind the competition and will edit it and have it up shortly.  His take is that it is competitive, it is serious, but most players also understand its a friendly rivalry. Everyone here is here to have fun, meet some new friends and hopefully walk away a winner.

Unlike other sports, Beer Pong does not follow the general attitude of other sports.  That is, they are not politically correct. “Boats n Hoes” “Two Hot Cabooses” (two lady’s)  “Deep Groat” were just some of the more colorful team names.  Than my favorite for the parents: “Quiet While The Teachers R Pong’ing” !  Yes, the creativeness of most was amazing. 

The first two days are just preliminaries.  Every team plays several rounds to determine their averages and scores.  The real competition happens on the final two days.  That’s when they get ranked and matched against similar ranked teams.  Start to compete for real.  We will be there to bring you some of the highlights and meet some of the players.  See what team walks away with the check and the trophy.

World Series of Beer Pong

The funny thing is that for a “professional” football team, they are anything but professional or hometown. They are, in fact, just another traveling act that wants to come to Las Vegas.

The league and the “hometown” team kicked off the inaguarlal season here in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Locomotives went against the California Redwoods with the Vegas team winning 30-17.

Here is the rub. Nothing about the team is hometown and nothing about the league is location based either. It is one traveling circus with piss poor marketing and even worse media coverage.

The leaugue is currently at a whopping four teams based out of either Florida or New York.  This is to save money, they say. The media coverage is imported as well. The local sports people are not allowed in unless they buy a ticket or get one of the alleged 14,000 tickets they gave away to locals.

Maybe this is the wave of the future, teams not having a true home town… but it ain’t pretty. You can’t have a local team when nothing about it is local. You can’t get a fan base when there is nothing local to grasp, see or feel.

And you arent going to get the locals into it if you block out the local media… You need us to promote you!

This is especially true in Las Vegas. Our track record for sports teams reads like the many marriages of Elizabeth Taylor… You need to involve the local people and local media if you want our support.

Time will tell, but I don’t see this team or the league going beyond this season. Even with the strong financial backing. Nobody supports a losing team for very long…

Mark Anthony