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Welcome to “Question of the Week,” a (sometimes) weekly debate amongst the MetalSucks staff regarding a recent hot button issue.

This week, in honor of “Unnecessary Roughness,”  The Red Chord bassist Greg Weeks’ new NFL-themed MetalSucks column, we asked our writers:

WHICH SPORT IS THE MOST METAL AND WHY?

The MS staff’s answers after the jump.

Hockey. As Papa Neilstein used to say, “We want to the Garden to see the fights and some hockey broke out.” In what other sport is it completely normal and acceptable to body-check someone as hard as possible and then beat the shit out of each other… whilst standing on ice?? Manly men play hockey. In a bear vs. shark-type matching that saw the baddest hockey player square off vs. the baddest NFL player, I’d chose the hockey player every single time. Motherfuckers are dirty.

-Vince Neilstein

Water polo. Because, like metal, it is super-butch and not at all homoerotic.

-Axl Rosenberg

Golf.

-Gary Suarez

Gymnastics. Both gymnasts and metal musicians practice for years in order to perfect a craft that is either unappreciated or appreciated for all the wrong reasons and leaves its practitioners stunted and grotesque for the rest of their lives.

-Satan Rosenbloom

In real life, I’m a baseball and admittedly fairweather basketball fan (the answer is Boston to both), but I’ll admit that neither of those sports are particularly metal. I’ve always associated football with Bob Seger constipatedly belting out slogans for American trucks, which is totally not metal, either. The most metal of sports, in a walk, is hockey. It’s played in frigid temperatures on solid ice (grim as fvck) on SHARPENED BLADES. Though it doesn’t happen often, there’s always the potential for someone to get sliced the fuck open. And occasionally, for no reason other than an uptick in testosterone, FIGHTING! (I don’t count UFC as metal, as that seems like more of a anything -core sport.) Some would argue that Pantera writing a song for the Dallas Stars would have influenced my decision, but I argue that hockey’s inherent metalness practically begged for it.

-Sammy O’Hagar

Football (soccer). In my household, you picked a team when you were barely old enough to walk, and were stuck with them for the rest of your life. Through bad seasons and worse, you rooted for them, and that was that. Nobody really cared about any other sport.  So that’s kind of the metal mindset right? Metal > all other music, and you’re a fan for life. I don’t know, I hate sports.

-Leyla Ford

The obvious answer is MMA or its evolutionary ancestor, boxing. That being said, I’m going to get a little highbrow and acquiesce to Hemingway: “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” Of those three, bullfighting is the clear frontrunner. What’s more metal than wearing skintight pants and fucking with a 2000lb monster with balls the size of coconuts whose only ambition in life is to trample your dumb ass? Plus they pull tons of ass.

-Urbandale Grimes

Definitely girls’s lacrosse. Metalheads care for each other in the pit the same way that the girls care for each other on the lacrosse field. Yeah, it’s a no-contact sport, but that’s a small part of it – every girls’ lacrosse game I’ve watched has had tons of secretly ferocious athletes expending their energy into excellent playing rather than into violence.

-Dave Mustein

NBA basketball. Even though American football and ice hockey more closely resemble the pace and intensity of metal, pro-level basketball (the game) shares the intricacy and headiness of good metal. And even though hip hop is the default genre of the sport, what’s more metal than a bunch of loudly tattooed miscreants who may or may not hurdle a few rows of seats to whomp ticketholders? Sounds like a stage dive to me! And hip hop seldom represents the rage and fury of, say, a screaming slam dunk. Metal does. Shit, the painted area of the court at is often home to a virtual mosh pit. Think of Lakers F Ron Artest as the sport’s Axl Rose, a volatile, usually tardy, and musically bankrupt uber-personality. Likewise, metal’s Kobe Bryant is Mike Patton, along with Steve Nash/Devin Townsend, Lebron James/Mike Portnoy, and Kwame Brown/Lars Ulrich. P.S. Lakers rule.

-Anso DF

Okay, kiddies, now it’s your turn! Weigh in with your answer to the question of the week below.