The Florida Man Games are on and only the wildest and beefiest gator-loving dudes will win

• People in Florida have come up with a contest to find who best fits the "Florida Man" meme.
• The Florida Man Games pits 16 teams of five people in various wild Florida-style challenges.

A new competition is going all out to embrace the "Florida Man" meme, pitting contestants in a flurry of wild challenges that include evading arrest from mock police officers and duking it out in pool noodle duels.

The inaugural "Florida Man Games" are to be held in February in St. Augustine, on the east coast of the Sunshine State.

The contest is the brainchild of Pete Melfi, a St. Augustine resident who owns a media outlet covering local news called The904Now, per The Orlando Sentinel.

Melfi told the newspaper that he initially planned to hold a "0.5K Beer Run," but started adding more events to form a tournament of sorts.

"The games were inspired by the wild Florida Man headlines that we see so often," Melfi told Insider in an email. "I thought: 'How do we let people live these Florida Man headlines, without the part about being arrested?'"

The Games are planned as an annual event, and winners can clinch cash or prizes worth a total $3,000 this time, he added.

"Athletic ability, or sanity for that matter, is not a requirement for the Florida Man Games," Melfi said.

According to the games' website, 16 teams of five will duke it out over a "beer belly Florida sumo" competition, pool noodle duels in the mud, a race involving a "catalytic converter, two bikes, and a handful of copper pipes," and other roughhouse activities.

Prospective teams have to send in a promo video of themselves for selection, with one man even sending a clip of him pulling a live alligator out of a lake, said Melfi.

"We definitely don't want people to risk their lives to enter the games," Melfi said.

A giant melee between police officers and firefighters called "Brawl of the Badges" is also planned.

Attendees can also attempt a mechanical gator rodeo or try to jump over an inflatable spinning log.

The "Florida Man" meme has come to describe a constant stream of headlines detailing bizarre crimes committed by men from Florida. It gained mass traction online when the Twitter account @_FloridaMan started collating such articles in 2013.

October 26, 2023: This story was updated to reflect a response from Pete Melfi.