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'Incredulously stupid': Run It Straight idiocy sets new low for society
Guy Heveldt • May 20th, 2025 9:40 am
Photo: RunIt Championship League
Whoever is responsible for backing or allowing 'Run It Straight' to come to Auckland needs their head read, like many of the participants who will take part in this ludicrous event.
For those unaware, 'Run It Straight' is a new sport, and I use that term as loosely as it could imaginably be used. Where athletes, again used outrageously loosely, run straight at each other. It's all in the name really - one is the defender, the other is essentially trying to cause as much of a collision as possible in a 20 metre distance.
It describes the winner as a person who "dominates the collision".
This incredulously stupid event, known as the RUNIT Championship League, began this week in Auckland with trials before a final in June if any of these athletes still have a brain at the end of it all.
It's no wonder it's come to New Zealand. It's a craze on social media made to suit the millions with the shortest possible attention spans that can only be satisfied in videos of less than 10 seconds. It's believed to have had more than 50 million views of various competitions in a matter of weeks. So of course it's already worth a decent chunk of money.
How utterly pathetic has society become where people are encouraging an activity which involves precisely zero skill with the pure aim to effectively knock someone out. Unfathomably pathetic it seems.
I know there will be the usual questions from the defenders of this. Well, why don't you say this about boxing or MMA?
I will say I'm not an enormous MMA fan, commonly referred to by many as the competition UFC, for similar reasons. But to compare this to MMA is grossly unfair on MMA. The athletes in that sport are incredible, the rules are so definitive and there is a science to winning a fight - either through the brutal knockouts that take place or by submission.
I for one do cringe at times at how far fighters are allowed to go before a contest is stopped, but there is absolutely no comparison between that and this new craze sweeping the social media world.
Rugby and rugby league, even football, are finally taking the issue of concussion and CTE seriously. Are they doing enough? Well, personally I still think there's enormous room for measures, and even ownership of the problem, but at least there's movement.
Here we have the complete opposite. I've tried to find rules around stand down periods for knockouts and the like for 'Run It Straight' - even basic rules around safety precautions, alas they don't seem to care.
I can't say I'm shocked. Under terms and conditions on their official website there are six terms of service and not a single one of them relates at all to safety, even in the sign up page. Nothing.
I'll give them the slight benefit of the doubt here that at some stage I'm sure they ask some sort of questions about permission. I don't think this would legally cut the mustard if there weren't, but even if there is a stringent stand down period for those who suffer concussion, what measures are being taken for those who don't show immediate signs?
Those who win their first round, their second round, all the way through to the final - have they just been excused from the effects of a head knock because they've won?
You barely have to look far at all to find research these days that is revealing the impacts of what seems like a small knock in the likes of rugby. Here these knocks aren't small and again the athlete, loose use, who goes on to win an event like this is not just suffering one or two knocks.
Have your pathetically stupid event, run it straight all you want. Just don't come running straight to the courts or the doctors when it's found you have a brain the size of a pea in a few decades time. You made your bed, you can lie in it.
Or even worse, you'll likely be lying in a coffin far earlier than you'd like.
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The stupidity of Run It Straight competitions | Beaver & Guy
