The Most Ironic Sports Stars’ Middle Names

Kurt Happy Zouma – The average centre-back and professional foot-cat player, Kurt Zouma’s recent, umm, “incident” is made much funnier by the fact that his actual middle name at birth was “Happy”. Something that poor cat probably wasn’t. It does also make him potentially the perfect person to cast in the upcoming live-action “Snow White” movie, despite his 6’3 stature.

Novak Astra Djokovic – Tennis’s newest bad boy and one of the greatest players of all time, the Serb’s recent deportation from Australia is made interesting by the fact that he was born Novak Astra Djokovic – with Astra both referring to the Latin word for “the stars”, and one of the predecessors of probably his least favourite pharmaceutical company. Probably. We’ll never know.

David Bobby de Gea Quintana – The Spanish goalkeeping maestro made headlines shortly following his transfer to Manchester United after he was reported to have stolen a Krispy Kreme from a Tesco in Altrincham back in 2011. No further action was taken against the then-20-year-old, although it is still funny that the lad’s middle name seemed to foreshadow his dealings with the law as a young adult living in England.

Michael Lewis Masi – While not strictly a “sports star” per se, Formula One’s race director and public enemy number one is still worthy of a mention, given that his middle name is, surprisingly, Lewis. Could it be that he intentionally caused the other, actually talented Lewis to lose the 2021 Formula One World Drivers’ Championship so as to deflect accusations of favouritism towards a driver with the same name? Probably not, but it makes you wonder. (I’m legally obliged to mention that we at The Lemon Press are not suggesting that Michael Masi is corrupt. Much.)

Eldrick Tont Hammond “Tiger” Woods – that one was a mouthful. Tiger is known for two things – his golfing ability and his driving ability. One of them is very good, and one of them is very poor, just like his namesake – former Top Gear presenter and human crash test dummy Richard Hammond. Although, in fairness, with Richard’s recent appearances on  the fairway, maybe the two are total opposites? No, of course not, so long as they both possess the title of Sir Crashalot.

Ronnie Young