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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   1810 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 29, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It's the UK Snooker Championship, the first of the snooker season's Triple Crown Series, the sport's three longest-running and most prestigious tournaments. Typically the players are introduced with a nickname, some of which are earned and some of which are plainly forced and corny. An example of an earned nickname would be Ronnie 'The Rocket' O'Sullivan (world record for fastest maximum break in competitive play) or Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, who once headbutted a match official and threatened to have his opponent shot.

Out of curiosity I went looking for a list of all the nicknames and found https://wikimili.com/en/List_of_snooker_player_nicknames

Some of them only make sense if you know the player, like Steve 'Interesting' Davis, some are phenomenally generic like Joe 'Mr Snooker' Davis, but there's some good puns too like Hong Kong player Marco 'Cue-Man'-Fu, or Chinese player Ding 'Pot Noodle' Junhui, named after the notoriously downmarket British instant noodles (available in Doner Kebab flavour, Bombay Bad Boy flavour, and Christmas Dinner flavour, all being variations on the just-add-water formula of a plastic cup containing dried noodles with dried peas and a packet of flavoured salt).

Coming back to this, I've just looked up who made the first ever (ratified) 147 break and it was none other than Joe 'Mr Snooker' Davis way back in 1955! Not such a generic name after all. His namesake Steve Davis was the first to achieve a televised 147 break.

Apparently darts players have a similar tradition of nicknames. Any other sports? I guess boxing would count, it seems to be single competitor sports that are prone to using nicknames. Wrestling too of course. Snooker, darts, boxing, wrestling... sounds more like a night down the pub than a sporting curriculum.

Any other memorable or funny sporting nicknames?

Here is an online comic book about Snooker, titled "Giant Days: Snooker Could Be Better". It is a crossover between a comic about young women attending university called Giant Days and a comic about a man who dresses up like a bat and fights crime. I am fond of it.

https://scarygoround.com/giantdays/index.html?pg=91#showComic

Also: 'Cue-Man'-Fu is a brilliant nickname.

Thanks, kind of reminds me of those oddly mundane anime/manga concepts and characters like Bicycle Rider in One Punch Man.

Well, it all flows back from western superhero comics. Batman has fought villains who were obsessed with wheels, pennies, hats, sports, aesop's fables, basically everything.

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