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The Bottle Cap Challenge that's spin kicking its way to viral fame

It was literally kickstarted by UFC fighter Max Holloway, but now John Mayer, Jason Statham and Conor McGregor are getting in on the action.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
2 min read
UFC 236: Holloway v Poirier 2

Dustin Poirier punches Max Holloway in their interim lightweight championship bout during the UFC 236 event at State Farm Arena on April 13, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.

 Josh Hedges/Zuffa LLC

Meet your latest viral internet obsession: The Bottle Cap Challenge.

Max Holloway, current UFC Featherweight champion, kicked things off, literally, after being challenged by Errolson Hugh who was, in turn, initially challenged by Farabi Davletchin. On Friday, Holloway shared a video where he performs a spinning back kick and by doing so, opens a capped bottle.

"Passing this on to our guy John Mayer," Holloway wrote in a tweet.

And guess what? The singer-songwriter showed his own MMA-like skills in a video he shared on Saturday, delivering a kick that not only spun the cap, but took it clean off.

This challenge is a lot more technically complex than the ALS ice bucket challenge that was all the rage in 2014. Most everyone can shiver through a bucket of ice water, but not everyone can successfully aim a kick at a tiny bottle cap with the right kind of angle and force.

That doesn't stop people from trying -- and some from succeeding -- whether famous or not.

Actor Jason Statham managed to send the cap spinning off like a little UFO.

Fighter Conor McGregor executed it beautifully. As people did with the ice bucket challenge, he challenged another person to complete the challenge -- in his case, boxer Floyd Mayweather. This is almost certainly a stab at McGregor's superiority as a "complete" fighter after he lost to Mayweather in a boxing match in August 2017.

Kids can do it, too, at least 11-year-old Lennon Thompson.

Not to mention Holloway's own son, Rush, who's just 6, but apparently a chip off the MMA block.

But some of us know from the start this challenge requires more grace and skill than we will ever acquire, so why not have fun with the concept?

Some on social media are also arguing about how exactly it should be executed -- that's how you know it's now a thing.

It might be a good thing that this challenge hit when US schools are mostly out for summer vacation. Teachers have already suffered through the water bottle flipping trend, and this one looks like it could lead to some toe-tally serious injuries.