5 Real Sports So Brutal You’ll Think We Made Them Up

2. In Venice, Fighters Participated In Massive Bridge Battles

For over a century, rival Venetian clans would gather on small, railless bridges and literally fight to throw each other into the sewage-filled canals below . The tradition started with sharpened sticks but eventually switched to fistfights, which somehow passed for progress. Marble footprints still mark the bridges where fighters once stood.