Olympic Wrestling Returns and Money Mayweather Wins Again

This past February, the Olympic Executive Board voted to drop wrestling from the list of 25 Olympic events under the abysmal one-in, on-out policy.  Just think about that for a moment. Wrestling.  Not shooting, which lacks a certain athleticism, not water polo, which is a bit of a strange sport to begin with, and not badminton, which is barely a sport at all, but wrestling.  Wrestling, which is one of the purest and most important events in the games.  Wrestling, which has been the bedrock of both ancient and modern games, and one of humanity's oldest sports. You lose wrestling, and you lose part of that connection to the ancient games, part of what makes the modern games special.



Well folks, disaster was averted and injustice undone last week in Buenos Aires when the IOC voted to return wrestling to the modern Olympic games in the first round of balloting.  Also on the ballot were baseball/softball and squash.



FILA and other advocates of the sport did a great job keeping this issues visible, and successfully made the case to the IOC for the retention of wrestling in the 2020 games.  It’s now up to them to make sure that the sport remains relevant, and can avoid a similar crisis in the future.  Newly elected FILA president Nenad Lalovic has promised big changes which are designed to do just this, including new uniforms, and a revised, more gender-equitable weight class system.

The "one in, one out" rule was a mistake from the beginning, and I hope that the IOC can come to this realization.  While the policy does prevent the games from being overrun with the likes of sport climbing, softball, and wushu, I think that we can find a way to allow the games to expand when appropriate without diluting the stream.

My personal preference for changes to the games?  Taekwando out, karate in.  Roller sports or wakeboarding could be cool, but not at the expense of something like wrestling. Kick out badminton for one of those.  Or horse dancing.  Definitely horse dancing.


Elsewhere in the world of combat sport, Money Mayweather sailed easily to a majority decision last night against Canelo Alvarez.  I really don’t see who they can set up to beat this guy, so I guess they just keep feeding him contenders until someone stronger emerges, or he retires.  I mean, they can’t just let this kid sit on a shelf, last night’s fight set a Nevada state record with $20m in gate sales, and appears on course to break 2.5m ppv buys.  For reference, UFC 162 where Chris Weidman knocked out undisputed champ Anderson Silva only pulled about 500,000.

Until next time, keep your hands up and defend yourself at all times.  This had been the Rabbit Punch!