Bizarre with Mick Molloy and Titus O’Reily
Episodes
Dodgy Denny McLain – Sports Bizarre
28 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Few players have burned so bright and fallen so far as Detroit Tigers Denny McLain. In 1968, 'The Year of the Pitcher', Denny would win 30 games, a Wo...
Weirdest Sport Injuries Ever – Sports Bizarre
21 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Athletes get injured; it comes with the territory, but a lot of them get injured in weird ways. From damaging a tooth eating a microwaved chocolate do...
James Hunt vs Niki Lauda – Sports Bizarre
14 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the final of our series on James Hunt, we look at his 1976 battle with close friend Niki Lauda for the World Championship, the greatest season of F...
James Hunt and Hesketh Racing – Sports Bizarre
07 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Lord Hesketh started Hesketh Racing team, he needed a driver, and he found the perfect one, James Hunt. Everything about Hesketh Racing was fun. ...
Superstar James Hunt – Sports Bizarre
30 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Perhaps no other Formula One Driver has captured the imagination of racing fans as much as James Hunt. For a man who said, “my first priority is to ...
The World's Greatest Pedestrian – Sports Bizarre
23 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 19th century, one sport stood above all others in terms of popularity, pedestrianism. That's right, walking. Tens of thousands of people...
Shadow Games – Sports Bizarre
16 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Sport is fun, but it's a lot of effort to organise, run a whole competition, and then fix the result so you can win a lot of money through betting. Th...
The Voyage of the 1932 Brazilian Olympic team – Sports Bizarre
09 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1932, with the world going through the Great Depression, Brazil had no money to send its Olympic team to Los Angeles. Then a government official ha...
Jese Rodriguez – Sports Bizarre
02 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Jese Rodriguez was a future star in the soccer world, but things like a music career and discovering he was a father via Instagram sent things sideway...
The Dangerous World of Speed Gluing – Sports Bizarre
26 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the final of our series on Table Tennis, we look at the use of glue to cheat in table tennis. When Hungarian player Tibor Klampár discovered volat...
Mao and Nixon play Ping Pong – Sports Bizarre
19 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1970s, with China and the United States locked in a Cold War struggle, it took Ping Pong to save the world. With diplomatic ties severed ...
Stalin, Hitchcock and table tennis – Sports Bizarre
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The sport of table tennis or ping pong, or as it was once known, Whiff Waff, has arguably had a more significant impact on world history than any oth...
Jimmy "The Whirlwind" White – Sports Bizarre
05 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
By the time Jimmy White was 13, he was skipping school and travelling around England in a black cab to play snooker and hustle adults out of their mon...
The very odd Marquis of Queensbury – Sports Bizarre
26 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Completing our look at the early days of boxing, we pick up where the sport moves from having no rules whatsoever to having at least three of them. It...
The unruly early days of boxing – Sports Bizarre
19 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In the seventeenth century in England, the earliest form of modern boxing emerged, a wild free for all style of fighting that included eye gouging, h...
Chaos Agent John Daly- Part Two – Sports Bizarre
12 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
If you thought Part One was crazy, Part Two is looser than a night out with John Daly. We pick up just after Daly had signed a sponsorship contract wi...
Chaos Agent John Daly- Part One – Sports Bizarre
05 Feb 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Golfer John Daly may be one of the most relatable sportspeople ever, having once said, “I don’t think I’ve ever stepped in the gym – they won’...
Somewhat important announcement
26 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Despite a valiant effort to stay on holiday forever, Mick and Titus will return in 2023, with the first episode going out on the 6th of February. Titu...
The dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup: Part 6 – Sports Bizarre
11 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the final episode in our dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup series and our final show of 2022. Don’t worry, we’re back early in the new year...
The dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup: Part 5 – Sports Bizarre
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It's part of five of our look at the beautiful corruption that is FIFA; we pick up with Sepp Blatter still ascendant, but the cracks are starting to a...
The dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup: Part 4 – Sports Bizarre
27 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s part four of our look at the history of FIFA, which means it's time to introduce two new fun characters to our story, Chuck Blazer and Fred War...
The dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup: Part 3 – Sports Bizarre
20 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s part three of our look at the history of FIFA, and in this episode, we introduce a young man with a sparkle in his eye, Sepp Blatter. Part Bond...
The dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup Part 2 – Sports Bizarre
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It’s part two of our look at the history of FIFA, and its somewhat eccentric accounting practices. In this episode, we look at João Havelange, Pres...
The dodgy road to the Qatar World Cup Part 1 – Sports Bizarre
13 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With the FIFA World Cup in Qatar fast approaching, we begin a multi-episode dive into the corruption that led to FIFA thinking a country the size of t...
Beer Plus Fans Equals Chaos – Sports Bizarre
06 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On 4 June 1974, the Cleveland Indians decided to host a ten-cent beer night to attract fans; beer at the stadium normally cost 65 cents, so ten cents ...
The man who invented the Melbourne Cup – Sports Bizarre
30 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Frederick Charles Standish left England in 1852 under a false name and fleeing moneylenders. Landing in Melbourne, he was forced to live on the goldfi...
The Philadelphia Eagles wild man – Sports Bizarre
23 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Timothy John Rossovich was a star defensive end and linebacker at the University of Southern California and the Philadelphia Eagles, but it was off th...
Good Old Bob – Sports Bizarre
16 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Standish Sievier was one of the most colourful personalities of the Victorian and Edwardian eras, a man who revolutionised bookmaking in Austra...
The Weirdest Contracts in Sport – Sports Bizarre
09 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Contracts in sports contain clauses so weird they are scarcely believable. There are clauses banning players from going to nightclubs, but there's als...
Dock Ellis, LSD and other adventures – Sports Bizarre
02 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In an All-Star career, Dock Ellis managed to win a World Series, pitch a no-hitter on LSD, hit every batter that came to the plate in a game and set a...
The 2000 Spanish Paralympic team – Sports Bizarre
25 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
At the 2000 Paralympic games, a new category, Basketball for the Intellectually Disabled, was to be included in the games. It got the head of the Span...
The 1900 Paris Olympics – Sports Bizarre
18 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The 1900 Paris Olympics were a disaster of planning and execution, to the point many athletes never even knew they’d participated in an Olympics. So...
The Monkey Testicle Doping Scandal – Sports Bizarre
11 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1930s, several English football clubs experimented with a new treatment sweeping the globe, ingesting, injecting or transplanting testicular ti...
Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un – Sports Bizarre
04 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Former Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman has recently offered to go to Russia to talk to President Vladimir Putin about the imprisoned WNBA star Brittney Gri...
The Curse of Colonel Sanders – Sports Bizarre
28 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sporting curses are always strange, but perhaps none is stranger than the Curse of Colonel Sanders, which has seen the Japanese baseball team, the Han...
The Rise of John Wren – Sports Bizarre
21 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1893, John Wren, unemployed and from a poor family, set up the Collingwood Tote, an illegal betting shop that would achieve mythical status, depend...
The Battle of Montevideo – Sports Bizarre
15 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The 1967 Intercontinental Cup saw Scottish club Celtic and Argentinian side Racing Club face off across three brutal matches. In one match, the Celtic...
Young Griffo – Sports Bizarre
08 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Albert Griffiths, or ‘Young Griffo’ began life in the slums of Sydney as the leader of a local street gang. This proved to be the perfect training...
The Worst Event in Olympic History – Sports Bizarre
31 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The 1904 Olympics in St Louis, Missouri, were a disaster in every way possible. Held over six months alongside the World’s Fair, it had a human zoo ...
Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding – Sports Bizarre
24 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Days out from the 1994 US Figure Skating Championships, Nancy Kerrigan had just finished training at the Cobo Arena in Detroit when a man approached a...
Doping in the Tour De France – Sports Bizarre
17 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From the first Tour De France, riders were putting all kinds of things in their bodies, caffeine, strychnine, cocaine and alcohol. Drugs were so much ...
Tour De France, the Early Years – Sports Bizarre
13 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The early years of the Tour De France were a hot mess, with a spiked bottle of lemonade, itching powder put in cyclists’ shorts, riders taking rides...
The Strangest Trade in the History of Sport – Sports Bizarre
11 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On March 4, 1973, it was announced New York Yankees pitchers Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson would be holding separate press conferences that day. Both...
Sports Bizarre Coming Soon
06 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Titus O’Reily and Mick Molloy are on the hunt for the most bizarre stories to ever occur in the world of sport. Sports Bizarre delves into the histo...