This Week in Weird Sports: Camel Wrestling

Insert your own ‘hump’ or ‘camel toe’ joke here. Or don’t.

Insert your own ‘hump’ or ‘camel toe’ joke here. Or don’t.

Wrestling – while derided by many as being fake (which is sort of like criticizing Die Hard for having an unrealistic view of police procedure), it’s a lot of fun. But could it be improved? Most certainly. And how, you ask (if you somehow missed the headline of this piece or are, sadly, a little bit slow)? Why, by adding the one element guaranteed to improve any scenario except possibly a camel-phobics support group: camels!


As with naked, oiled pummeling, Turkey are way ahead of us on this front, and have been avid camel wrestling fans for nearly 2,500 years. The sport consists of two beefed-up, angry male camels fighting for the right to stick their camel-junk into a nearby lady-camel. They attempt to knock each other down by any means available: kicking, head-butting, charging, spitting – it’s kind of like an average episode of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, but with moderately more attractive competitors. For a more detailed look at the sport, read this article in hilariously mangled English that, as well as describing camels as “well-formed martial artists”, also refers to them as “sharks of the deserts”. Insane Turkish people: we salute you. From a safe distance.