ESPN is bringing back The Ocho this Sunday, March 22nd

Unless you’ve been on some kind of silent desert meditation retreat like Jared Leto, you’re probably all too aware that the world’s major sports are currently on hold.

ESPN, though, has an annual tradition of broadcasting some decidedly non-major sports every year on August 8th when they bring back ESPN8: The Ocho. Honoring a joke from Dodgeball, ESPN2 turns into ESPN8, airing a wide variety of sports that otherwise would never see that kind of exposure. August feels like a long time from now (although to be honest, at this rate next Wednesday feels like a long time from now) but this morning ESPN announced they’d be bringing back The Ocho this Sunday, March 22nd.

Via ESPN PR:

No, it’s not the eighth of August, or the eighth of anything or even August at all. That is the magic ESPN8: The Ocho. There is always a place for a full 24-hours of seldom seen sports so Sunday, March 22 on ESPN2 will be just that, a full day of exciting content from Ocho stunts past.

This will be the fourth edition of ESPN8: The Ocho since the initiative began in the summer of 2017, inspired by the 2004 hit movie “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story” featuring Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor and Ben Stiller.

The line-up includes:

• Stupid Robot Fighting League: Created in New Zealand by John Espin (Yes, that is his actual name.), Stupid Robot Fighting is a rather unique form of fighting that pits two life-sized hanging puppets controlled by an operator sitting behind each Stupid Robot.

• 2019 Jelle’s Marble Runs: Races in which both participants and spectators are marbles.

• Cherry Pit Spitting: The 46th Annual Cherry Pit-Spitting Competition is held each year in Eau Claire, Mich., with one goal for competitors—to spit the farthest cherry pit.

• Sign Spinning: The 12th Annual World Sign Spinning Championship, held in Las Vegas, brought together AArrow Sign Spinners from more than 50 cities and a dozen countries to asses style, execution, and technical sign spinning ability.

• 2007 World Sport Stacking Championships: Sport stacking can be an individual or team sport where participants stack specially designed cups in predetermined sequences as fast as possible.

• 2019 Death Diving World Championship: An amateur diving sport performed from a 10m platform with separate competitions for Classic and Freestyle.

From a programming perspective, it also makes a lot of sense. These are events ESPN surely has re-broadcast rights for, and filling up a day of the schedule can’t be easy right now. You can find the entire day’s schedule at the bottom of ESPN’s release if you want to plan your day around the 2019 Golden Tee World Championship broadcast at 4:30 PM.

That’s not snarky. I might do just that.

[ESPN]