When it comes to sports I have a rather extensive list I follow, the majority being team sports.
In fact, there are only a handful of team sports I don’t like; field soccer, water polo and a couple of others coming to mind. There are of course others rarely watched because there is no league on this continent, or no team in Canada that I can become truly invested in following.
However, when it comes to individual sports, the list of those I will spend time watching is far shorter, and is generally populated by sports a bit off the beaten path as they say. I tend to gravitate to the fringe when it comes to such sports; equestrian, bull riding, badminton among my favourites.
But I am always looking for something new to interest me as well, and I have found a trio of note recently.
So when I something called Drone Racing League on the television listings a while back I naturally had to tune in.
The Drone Racing League (DRL) is a professional drone racing league that operates internationally. DRL pilots race first-person view with identical, custom-built drones at speeds above 80 MPH through three-dimensional courses.
It intrigued, although I admit rarely does anything racing hold my attention.
In the case of the DRL I have to say the international courses are awesome, from old warehouses to underground caverns to the snowy tops of a mountain.
And the idea of remotely piloting drone races, the pilots wearing those funky 3D goggles, was pretty cool as well.
But once they were racing the little buzz-bomb drones were moving so quickly it was hard to follow who was ahead, and who had just crashed and burned on the last corner.
The sites, background pieces on the sport, and production were all great, but in the end the racing lost me, although I suspect if you like racing it is worth checking out.
The same channel on the TV dial also had World Arm-wrestling League. I could recall watching the sport years ago and not being very impressed, but things change over time, so I gave it another look.
As in most things sports the production is of course superior today, so you get some great camera angles of the faces of competitors, and of what they are trying to do during set up and the actual pulls.
The league is also producing some entertaining background features on its roster, a roster that is international in scope.
This one caught my attention in a big way. The stuff on GameTV is a bit old in terms of when the competitions took place, but they are new to me, so I am DVRing to catch up.
It also so happens WAL is on BR Live, which is home to the National Lacrosse League so that works out nicely as a new fan.
I should also put in a quick little plug for Glory Kickboxing. I’ve always sort of liked boxing, at least when fights are competitive, which is something of a rarity as so often up and coming fighters are matched against something they can learn from but not lose too.
Glory seems to put more competitive pairings together more often, at least in the events I’ve watched in the last few months since discovering it. Since they use feet and knees too, clinches are not effective to slow things down either, so action is better too.
Fight sports are not for all, but if you are into them Glory should be checked out.
