Many physical activities, from traditional games to emerging practices, have been and still are confronted with the "sportification" process. Sports historians and sociologists have produced numerous isolated monographs to try and comprehend this development. Through the compared analysis of three activities - break-dancing, speleology and mixed martial arts - this study prolongs the modeling effort initiated by Renson (1998) to understand the fundamental elements which simultaneously encourage and slow down this process. It shows that this conflict crystallizes around the degree of standardization of a practice and its institutional recognition. To protect the original identity of these activities, their sportification process cannot be completed.