Hulk Hogan, Muhammad Ali and the 10 Weirdest Sports Cartoons

LeBron James, in an attempt to further his global icon status recently signed off on The LeBrons, an internet cartoon series.  While the King's foray into the animated may be one of the worst, it certainly isn't the weirdest.

The following cartoons tried to make ping pong exciting, to profit off the popularity of the Harlem Globetrotters and to inject sports with zaniness.

They range from pure insanity to utter confusion.  Many are from (no surprise) the '70s, and many (even less of a surprise) come to us from Japan. 

Let's take a look at the failures, flops, misuses of icons like Ali and the surprisingly entertaining. 

Honorable Mentions

Ultimate Muscle was a superhero wrestling cartoon based on a Japanese manga comic.

Wacky Races was a racing cartoon from the 60s and 70s featuring vehicles like the Arkansas Chuggabug and the Crimson Haybailer.

Laff-A-Lympics featured off-beat versions of Olympic sports starring Hong Kong Phooey and Scooby Doo, among others.

Slam Dunk is a Japanese basketball cartoon with romance and action in spades.

Shippu! Iron Leaguer has to be seen to be believed.

Pro-Stars featured Michael Jordan wearing rocket shoes, Wayne Gretsky wearing rocket skates and Bo Jackson looking like the Hulk in the biceps area.

I Am the Greatest: The Adventures of Muhammad Ali

The makers of this 1978 cartoon focused far too heavily on the "adventures" part of the title and not enough on the dude the show centered around.

Taking the gloves off Ali and sticking him in a jungle, on an island or in space in a cookie cutter adventure cartoon was a waste. 

Compared to the cartoons on this list, it's rather tame in terms of weirdness.  But certainly going to the trouble of securing the rights to animate Muhammad Ali just to give us some generic borefest is an odd choice.

The Prince of Tennis

Tennis and anime combine to bring you a one-of-a-kind experience in The Prince of Tennis.

Follow Ryoma Echizen as he gets super intense before, during and after his tennis matches.  Music that you’d hear on many a Super NES game plays throughout the episodes.

A drama that may remind Americans of shows like Gossip Girl in terms of emotional outbursts, began in 2001 and has since grown in popularity in many countries.

The Prince of Tennis has inspired video games of the same name and of all things, musicals.

NFL Rush Zone: Guardians of the Core

"Nobody messes with Super Bowl Sunday!"

A young boy named Ish must find and protect shards of a power source named "The Core."  Where are they?  They're all hidden in NFL stadiums around the country.

John Madden, Eli Manning and Jerry Jones all make appearances.

Luckily Ish is not alone, every NFL team has an alien being that resembles its logo who will help him along the way.  A falcon-like alien wearing a helmet will help him in Atlanta.  An eagle-like alien wearing a helmet will help in Philly.

You get the idea.

Considering this is one of the most recent cartoons on this list, it's surprising that it is one of the most poorly animated.  I suppose the makers of NFL Rush Zone spend far more time working on the awesome script.

Buzzer Beater

Buzzer Beater is a basketball anime series where a team from Earth participates in an intergalactic competition.

DT, the team's point guard is a former Goran who tore his horns off to hide his true identity.  Lazli is a brawling small forward who turns out to be a woman. 

Blue-haired humans, blue-skinned aliens all play a superhero style of basketball with excessively dramatic music in the background. 

The writer of Slam Dunk and Real brought us his weirdest version of basketball yet. 

Mucha Lucha!

When the first episode of a cartoon opens with a child in a Mexican wrestling mask awakening in a wrestling ring bed before elbow dropping his alarm clock, you know you're in for something special.

Rikochet, the Flea and Buena Girl must learn all there is to know about Lucha Libre-style wrestling at the Foremost World-Renowned International School of Lucha in this frantically paced series. 

Sure, it’s silly.  With episodes like "Revenge of the Masked Toilet" and "I was a Pre-Teenage Chupacabra" that doesn't come as a surprise. 

But it's often clever and funny.  Potty jokes and over-the-top Mexican accents await you. 

The Super Globetrotters

The Harlem Globetrotters are great showmen on the basketball court, according to this cartoon series from 1979, they're also undercover superheroes.

After changing in their lockers, they put on their costumes and rid the world of evil villains like Museum Man, Facelift and Attila the Hun.  Of course, most of their battles end with the Globetrotters challenging the baddies to a game of hoops.

Why would these villains accept a challenge to play basketball against the Globetrotters? 

Their powers are a lot like those of the Impossibles and the animation looks a lot like the old Scooby Doo cartoons.  Imitation is flattery, right? 

Tiger Mask 2

When he's not battling vampires, monsters and yetis in the wrestling ring, the heroic Tiger Mask is out having a high-speed chase.

Not to be confused with Japanese pro wrestling great, Mitsuhara Misawa aka Tiger Mask, this long-running anime series began in the 80s.  It enjoyed a long run in the 90s in an Arabic dubbed version.

If you watch it thinking that Tiger Mask's German suplex of the maniacal vampire wrestler looks awfully authentic, then you can thank real life wrestling legend Antonio Inoki for consulting on the show. 

Hulk Hogan’s Rock ‘n’ Wrestling

Say your prayers, eat your vitamins and watch your cartoons.

Rock 'n' Wrestling was your typical wacky 80s cartoon with good guys trouncing bad guys but with all your favorite wrestlers.  Jimmy Snuka, Roddy Piper, The Iron Sheik and Andre the Giant all appear regularly.

Everybody Loves Raymond's Brad Garrett voices the Hulkster.

Not a lot of wrestling going on here, the wrestlers have just been inserted in a generic cartoon.

Cut in some live-action segments, throw together some stale scripts and you got yourself a short-lived cartoon series.

Ping Pong Club

This insane anime from the 90s is supposed to be about a middle school ping-pong club but ends up being a series of awkward perverted moments.

It's over the top, dramatic in the silliest way possible and features an inordinate amount of cross dressing.

The club consists of one token smelly American, some long-haired playboys and its leader, Maeno who is extremely proud of his own backside.

Too busy trying to get girls or watch a man in a turtle suit lay ping-ping balls for eggs, the club never really does a whole lot of playing ping-pong.

Sport Billy

Forget what movies like Independence Day and War of the Worlds have told you about aliens.  Sport Billy presents an alien who has come to Earth to promote teamwork and friendship.

Armed with his magic gym bag, the Omni-Sack, superhuman sports skills and his talking dog, Willy, Sport Billy travels through time to save sports from the fairness-hating Queen Vanda.

Is it me or is Queen Vanda, despite her green skin and evil ways, pretty hot?

The 1979 cartoon can be seen in Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish and various other languages.  Gladly, nearly every child with a tolerance for cheesy music and hackneyed script writing can be told how to play fair by a little alien boy.