One of the biggest live streamers on the planet has gatecrashed GWS Giants training, challenging players to races and showing off surprisingly solid footy skills.
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American 19-year-old Darren Watkins Jr., much better known as IShowSpeed, has over 33 million subscribers on YouTube with much of his content involving ‘IRL streams’, where he simply explores a country as his many thousands of fans watch live.
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His popularity has persisted despite several controversial incidents including alleged misogynistic behaviour, with wild stunts and high-energy behaviour creating a massive, young base.
Those fans flocked around Speed after he made his appearance at Giants HQ on Friday afternoon.
He was guided around the training base by Connor Idun and Josh Kelly, and given his own Giants guernsey before being introduced to the rest of the playing group.
Speed took the opportunity to challenge several Giants players to 50-metre races, much like he raced Olympic gold medallist Noah Lyles earlier this month – unsurprisingly losing.
He had a much better time against GWS forward Callum Brown, ‘betting’ $10,000 that he could beat Brown and doing so.
“That was me going 60 percent,” Speed claimed, telling his chat: “y’all know how fast I can really run”.
However he went double-or-nothing and allowed the much bigger Brown to race his bodyguard, with Brown winning.
Then came a tougher opponent in ‘The Kid With The Lid’ Darcy Jones, who didn’t need his trademark helmet to show his trademark pace.
Jones beat Speed in their first race prompting a huge celebration from his Giants teammates.
But the streamer claimed his opponent had false-started, with a second race effectively a dead heat, after which Jones decided not to race him a third time for fear of getting injured.
