* . *
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact
Monday, June 30, 2025
Earth-News
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Susquehanna Raises Penn Entertainment Inc. (PENN) Price Target. – Yahoo Finance

    Susquehanna Raises Price Target for Penn Entertainment Inc. (PENN)

    George Lopez is coming to Spokane – KXLY.com

    George Lopez is coming to Spokane – KXLY.com

    Netflix unveils Dallas immersive venue for fans of hit shows like ‘Squid Game,’ ‘Stranger Things’ – Houston Chronicle

    Step Inside Netflix’s New Dallas Immersive Experience Featuring Hits Like ‘Squid Game’ and ‘Stranger Things

    ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’: Civic Players bring ‘Young Frankenstein’ to life – Yahoo

    Civic Players Deliver a Hilarious and Unforgettable Performance of ‘Young Frankenstein

    ‘Wheel of Fortune’: Amputee Wins $60,000 After Breaking Incredible ‘Curse’ – Hastings Tribune

    Wheel of Fortune’ Amputee Breaks Incredible ‘Curse’ to Win $60,000!

    North Star Sports & Entertainment Network: Coming soon – KTTC News

    North Star Sports & Entertainment Network: Coming soon – KTTC News

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Mirrors in space and underwater curtains: can technology buy us enough time to save the Arctic ice caps? – The Guardian

    Can Technology Like Space Mirrors and Underwater Curtains Buy Us Time to Save the Arctic Ice Caps?

    Naples restaurant owner prepares for hurricane season with new flood technology – Fox4Now.com

    Naples restaurant owner prepares for hurricane season with new flood technology – Fox4Now.com

    Emerging Memory and Storage Technology Market Analysis Report 2025-2034 | AI and HPC Boom Fuels Surging Demand for Fast, Low-Power Memory Devices – Yahoo Finance

    How AI and HPC Are Driving Explosive Growth in Fast, Low-Power Memory Technologies Through 2034

    Ostin Technology (OST): Volatility’s Warning or Contrarian Opportunity? – AInvest

    Ostin Technology (OST): Navigating Market Volatility – Red Flag or Hidden Opportunity?

    St. Francis Medical Center brings advanced robotic surgery technology to Northeast Louisiana – KNOE

    St. Francis Medical Center brings advanced robotic surgery technology to Northeast Louisiana – KNOE

    Wayve Expands Engineering Leadership to Power Next-Gen Autonomous Driving Technology – Silicon Canals

    Wayve Boosts Engineering Leadership to Accelerate Next-Gen Autonomous Driving Innovation

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Entertainment
    Susquehanna Raises Penn Entertainment Inc. (PENN) Price Target. – Yahoo Finance

    Susquehanna Raises Price Target for Penn Entertainment Inc. (PENN)

    George Lopez is coming to Spokane – KXLY.com

    George Lopez is coming to Spokane – KXLY.com

    Netflix unveils Dallas immersive venue for fans of hit shows like ‘Squid Game,’ ‘Stranger Things’ – Houston Chronicle

    Step Inside Netflix’s New Dallas Immersive Experience Featuring Hits Like ‘Squid Game’ and ‘Stranger Things

    ‘Puttin’ on the Ritz’: Civic Players bring ‘Young Frankenstein’ to life – Yahoo

    Civic Players Deliver a Hilarious and Unforgettable Performance of ‘Young Frankenstein

    ‘Wheel of Fortune’: Amputee Wins $60,000 After Breaking Incredible ‘Curse’ – Hastings Tribune

    Wheel of Fortune’ Amputee Breaks Incredible ‘Curse’ to Win $60,000!

    North Star Sports & Entertainment Network: Coming soon – KTTC News

    North Star Sports & Entertainment Network: Coming soon – KTTC News

  • General
  • Health
  • News

    Cracking the Code: Why China’s Economic Challenges Aren’t Shaking Markets, Unlike America’s” – Bloomberg

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Trump’s Narrow Window to Spread the Truth About Harris

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    Israel-Gaza war live updates: Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh assassinated in Iran, group says

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    PAP Boss to Niger Delta Youths, Stay Away from the Protest

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Court Restricts Protests In Lagos To Freedom, Peace Park

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Fans React to Jazz Jennings’ Inspiring Weight Loss Journey

    Trending Tags

    • Trump Inauguration
    • United Stated
    • White House
    • Market Stories
    • Election Results
  • Science
  • Sports
  • Technology
    Mirrors in space and underwater curtains: can technology buy us enough time to save the Arctic ice caps? – The Guardian

    Can Technology Like Space Mirrors and Underwater Curtains Buy Us Time to Save the Arctic Ice Caps?

    Naples restaurant owner prepares for hurricane season with new flood technology – Fox4Now.com

    Naples restaurant owner prepares for hurricane season with new flood technology – Fox4Now.com

    Emerging Memory and Storage Technology Market Analysis Report 2025-2034 | AI and HPC Boom Fuels Surging Demand for Fast, Low-Power Memory Devices – Yahoo Finance

    How AI and HPC Are Driving Explosive Growth in Fast, Low-Power Memory Technologies Through 2034

    Ostin Technology (OST): Volatility’s Warning or Contrarian Opportunity? – AInvest

    Ostin Technology (OST): Navigating Market Volatility – Red Flag or Hidden Opportunity?

    St. Francis Medical Center brings advanced robotic surgery technology to Northeast Louisiana – KNOE

    St. Francis Medical Center brings advanced robotic surgery technology to Northeast Louisiana – KNOE

    Wayve Expands Engineering Leadership to Power Next-Gen Autonomous Driving Technology – Silicon Canals

    Wayve Boosts Engineering Leadership to Accelerate Next-Gen Autonomous Driving Innovation

    Trending Tags

    • Nintendo Switch
    • CES 2017
    • Playstation 4 Pro
    • Mark Zuckerberg
No Result
View All Result
Earth-News
No Result
View All Result
Home General

I Went to the World Gravy Wrestling Championships. It Was Chaos

September 20, 2023
in General
I Went to the World Gravy Wrestling Championships. It Was Chaos
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

“If you like gravy, give me a wavy!” This is bellowed by a competitor going by the name of Pyrexeler (like the, um, cooking dish), dressed up as a red tub of Bisto gravy granules. He’s wearing a headpiece which opens up to reveal actual granules which he proceeds to sprinkle over the audience, like a flower girl walking down the aisle. 

I’m here – up north in a Lancashire village – for the World Gravy Wrestling Championships, which was nothing short of a miracle as I’m a Londoner who doesn’t drive, but still managed to find a way to travel the five hour journey during a bank holiday and national rail trike. No one can doubt my dedication to reporting a ridiculous event and no one can dispute the fact that this event was, indeed, ridiculous. 

world gravy championships - a photo of a man in budgy smugglers getting covered in gravy.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

You might be used to slathering your roast dinner in the juicy brown goodness, but there’s no time for that here. In the back garden of The Rose N’ Bowl pub in Stacksteads, 1,500 litres of warm gravy is poured into a wrestling ring where 16 men and eight women compete in two minutes of wrestling mayhem. (It can only be assumed that the reason for this uneven split is because silliness might be a hard sell.) Competitors must wear fancy dress and all proceeds go to East Lancashire Hospice charity – apart from the £50 prize pot money for first place male and female.  

The pub itself is crammed fuller than the six barrels of gravy waiting by the side of the inflatable pool-like ring, but I battle my way to the back garden in time for the fancy dress parade. Wrestlers prance round the ring reacting to raucous applause from the audience and chaotic commentary from a man with a microphone. “Boobs, bollocks, bums, and they will be seen,” he booms into his handheld mic. One man parades around in wrestling Y-fronts with Bisto written on them. “It looks like a TicTac!” screams the commentator at this supposedly family event. There’s no warm up, but for a chillingly awkward rendition of “YMCA”.

world gravy championships - a portrait of a man in a beret with joke false teeth covered in mud.

Organiser Andrew Holt. Photo: Bekky Calver​

About 15 years ago, this annual event started in a car park as a “publicity stunt for a food festival that fell by the wayside”, explains event organiser Andrew Holt. Wearing tiny glasses covered in gravy and a beret, he pops out his false teeth to chat properly. My heart dropped at first, thinking it was an accidental denture emergency, but I was relieved to find out they were just a fun prop. Back to the championship history, and after a successful first gravy wrestle, it was brought back year after year and moved to the back garden of the pub, deemed a fun way to make money for charity. 

The gravy itself is made in Holt’s black pudding factory and transported in six drums of 55 gallons. “You can’t take this job seriously, you have to take it with a pinch of salt,” he laughs. I finished with the world’s most boring cleanliness question: “How on earth do you clean all this up?” The local fire department has that covered, it turns out. 

The wrestling itself was more chaotic than a day out in Oxford Street during a Black Friday sale. Or as the commentator put it: “There’s more skin on show than Conservative MPs resigning.” It was a mixture of total slapstick and something you might see on WWE. Two names were called out and the wrestlers would hype up the audience before the fight began. Most of them seemed to have almost choreographed routines, but were adamant none of this was practised before. Music ranged from “Yakety Sax” (you know, the classic chase scene song) to “Eye of the Tiger”. The true hero was the referee who was often the butt of everyone’s jokes and was flung into a lot of fights. Thankfully, he managed to survive all three and a half hours of wrestling in that slippery ring. 

world gravy championships - a photo of two men wrestling in a gravy filled wrestling ring.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

“I’m doing 40 crazy things this year because I’m turning 40,”  explains finalist Lauren Bricknall. “I promise that if I win, I’ll do an official cage fight. I won’t go back on a deal.” Her wrestling name is Ocean Fury and in the week, she works with people with special needs. Today she’s fighting to support a charity for autism. “I’m not a fighting person, but once I got in the ring I was like let’s go,” she adds.

The rules of how the competitors are deemed winners were more unclear than why the wildly inappropriate host was picked. I’m surprised someone didn’t try to knock him out after making comments such as “You haven’t done this before have you? ‘Cos I’d remember you” to one of the women, before saying he’d fight her husband for her. A good old spot of body shaming was up next for a woman who used to be Angelina Jolie’s body double (“believe it or not”), but that’s enough airtime for him. 

world gravy championships - a photo of two men wrestling in a gravy filled wrestling ring.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

Some of the rules seemed to be made up on the spot, like when competitor Moody Cow got disqualified for dragging the ref in with her. Strangely, others went through to the next round despite doing the same thing. As the day went on, it became clear you were awarded higher points if you provided more entertainment factor. One wrestler was introduced as The Cranberry King. “He once found the world’s longest nipple hair,” the host added as the king himself ran round the ring beaming with pride. The flexibility of some of the competitors was impressive, too – backward flips, forward flips and quite a few front dives from above, straight onto their cowering opponent. Chaos really ensued when the wrestlers failed to contain their fight within the ring. They’d be found sliding around like slugs trying to slip back in to finish the battle. 

world gravy championships - a photo of the crowd watching people wrestling in a gravy filled wrestling ring.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

Gravy got in places I didn’t want gravy to get in. It’s still not out of my jeans. As I tried to interview the contestants, I was repeatedly drenched in drips of sweaty gravy, as they all tried to rush off as fast as possible in order to get hosed down by the local fire brigade. Most could be described as almost delirious when trying to speak. 

“We signed up for a joke, but now I’ve got 52 weeks to bulk up for the next one,” said one competitor, just as his mate dressed in a Mexican flag bounded over. “I’m a very happy man, I ran away from Tijuana!” he screamed in a strange, presumably Mexican-meaning accent. As if in reply, the original interviewee started repeatedly chanting “USA” until his mate bolted from the interview saying he couldn’t breathe. He ended up having to get cut out of the flag, which was wound too tightly around his neck, by a medic. In the chaos of the moment, I wasn’t able to grab either of their names. 

world gravy championships - a photo of two men wrestling in a gravy filled wrestling ring.

The chaotic duo El Bisto and Gravy Seal. Photo: Bekky Calver​

All good days must come to an end, though – even ones filled with more laughter than a street of kids in Shoreditch doing NOS. By the end, Ravin Gravy (Nathan Kendall) and The Bacup Bavarian (Patina Bury) were declared the rightful winners and an incredible £5,444 was raised for East Lancashire Hospice. Sadly, so much gravy and chips were consumed on site that there was nothing left for my dinner – luckily, I had enough on my jeans.

@ElizabethMcCaf

world gravy championships - a photo of two people wrestling in a gravy filled wrestling ring.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

world gravy championships - a photo of two people wrestling in a gravy filled wrestling ring.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

world gravy championships - a portrait of a man topless covered in gravy wearing a mexican wrestling mask.

Photo: Bekky Calver​

ORIGINAL REPORTING ON EVERYTHING THAT MATTERS IN YOUR INBOX.

By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from Vice Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content.

>>> Read full article>>>
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source : Vice News – https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/y3w5k7/world-gravy-wrestling-championship

Previous Post

I Bought a Burrow Loveseat, and It’s the Perfect Sofa for Small Spaces

Next Post

How Often Should You Wash Your Bed Sheets?

Scientists Retrace 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log – The New York Times

Scientists Recreate Epic 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage Using a Hollowed-Out Log

June 30, 2025
Tom Brady Ditches Sneakers Lifestyle For Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sánchez’s Wedding – Yahoo

Tom Brady Swaps Sneakers Lifestyle for Glamorous Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Wedding Celebration

June 30, 2025
Chivu Confirms France Star Fit For Inter Milan Vs Fluminense Club World Cup Clash – Yahoo Sports

Chivu Confirms France Star Ready for Inter Milan’s Club World Cup Showdown Against Fluminense

June 30, 2025
Trump’s tariffs damage the US economy more if they drive investors away from American assets – Peterson Institute for International Economics

How Trump’s Tariffs Could Backfire by Driving Investors Away from American Assets

June 30, 2025
Surprising New Study Links Daytime Napping to Hidden Health Risks – Prevention

Surprising New Research Uncovers Hidden Health Risks of Daytime Napping

June 30, 2025
The 1975’s Matty Healy Says ‘We Don’t Need More Politics’ at Glastonbury – Variety

The 1975’s Matty Healy Declares “We Don’t Need More Politics” at Glastonbury

June 30, 2025
Mirrors in space and underwater curtains: can technology buy us enough time to save the Arctic ice caps? – The Guardian

Can Technology Like Space Mirrors and Underwater Curtains Buy Us Time to Save the Arctic Ice Caps?

June 29, 2025
Guirassy latest candidate for Milan attack with 70m price tag – Yahoo Sports

Guirassy Emerges as Milan’s Top Striker Target with €70 Million Price Tag

June 29, 2025
‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects – The Guardian

Half the Tree of Life at Risk: Ecologists Warn as Insect Populations Plummet in Nature Reserves

June 29, 2025
Health, science cuts affect future jobs – The Acorn

Health, science cuts affect future jobs – The Acorn

June 29, 2025

Categories

Archives

June 2025
MTWTFSS
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
30 
« May    
Earth-News.info

The Earth News is an independent English-language daily published Website from all around the World News

Browse by Category

  • Business (20,132)
  • Ecology (700)
  • Economy (724)
  • Entertainment (21,613)
  • General (15,628)
  • Health (9,763)
  • Lifestyle (729)
  • News (22,149)
  • People (725)
  • Politics (730)
  • Science (15,941)
  • Sports (21,220)
  • Technology (15,708)
  • World (704)

Recent News

Scientists Retrace 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage, in a Hollowed-Out Log – The New York Times

Scientists Recreate Epic 30,000-Year-Old Sea Voyage Using a Hollowed-Out Log

June 30, 2025
Tom Brady Ditches Sneakers Lifestyle For Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sánchez’s Wedding – Yahoo

Tom Brady Swaps Sneakers Lifestyle for Glamorous Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Wedding Celebration

June 30, 2025
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Privacy & Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

No Result
View All Result

© 2023 earth-news.info

Go to mobile version