Where does wrestling stand?

[npope 174]

the marketing I think too benefits from athletes being able to compete in multi events, not only our appreciation of (potential for) multiple gold medals, but also once the Olympics are on....stars on featured for a few weeks vs our one day and gone set up.   

 

A very good observation - a high profile guy like Michael Phelps is in the news for a week or more when swimming is the "sport du jour" - it is sufficiently long that people begin to care about his results - wrestling doesn't allow for that - especially now that the system makes a guy start and stop his competition within two days.

[pamela 1,334]

Try a swimming practice and then come back and talk about how tough wrestling is.

 

Head to head is something a lot worry about when trying the sport. Not everyone is cut out for one on one competition - hands on competition. Running and other "individual" sports don't really involve contact. Boxing even has it easier in many ways as a lot think "I could do that". They watch a wrestling match and say "I'd get my arms ripped off".

 

Yes, a small sport that won't grow much no matter what we do. No reason to stop trying. J Robinson was a promoter. A few others are. It is the fans that need to recruit others to watch. It is true few former wrestlers ever go to a dual again. How to get more of them attending - at least their local venues?

 

Hmmm, I think younger fans these days would love to watch a sport where someone's arms could get ripped right off (though maybe not participate in it). 

 

I agree with the feedback about wrestling being too difficult but still believe it also has a lot to do with its image and not the sport itself. My sister-in-law has a son who just finished his first year at a big university in CA. Over the holidays, my husband was asking him about school and whatnot and one of the things he mentioned was that being a former wrestler doesn't really earn him much cred amongst his friends. Like, the guys in his frat loved that he played a little football but were kind of meh about him being a varsity wrestler. He didn't explain it very well but the impression I got was that wrestlers are seen as the weird scary tough guys that people don't want to mess with, so they're neither loved nor hated, just kind of left alone to do their own thing.

 

Even stranger, golf seems to be popular (he's trying to learn it) along with video games as sports?  I guess it kind of goes with the whole teenage mindset of not wanting to be so extra or look like you're trying too hard, but on the other hand his frat is known for posting video clips of members fighting each other bare fisted! Makes no sense at all. Â¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[TobusRex 2,108]

@pamela:

 

Your son's wrestling expertise will come in quite handy if his friends get him involved in a fight of some sort :D

[rstrong 75]

Try a swimming practice and then come back and talk about how tough wrestling is.

 

Good one... "LOL"

 

[russelscout 1,573]

Good one... "LOL"

 

swimming practice is super tough and damn near impossible if youre not a seasoned swimmer.

[rstrong 75]

swimming practice is super tough and damn near impossible if youre not a seasoned swimmer.

 

The same can easily be said for track practice for sprinters or middle distance - and for cross-country practice - or for marathon runners training, running 20 miles for a training run without stopping is damn near impossible for most everyone.

 

I'm sure the same can be said for many sports - but I only include those I have personal experience with.

 

Per the original post "Try a swimming practice and then come back and talk about how tough wrestling is." I'm back to talk about how tough wrestling is - and it's tougher for a number of reasons on a number of levels.

[cjc007 774]

swimming practice is super tough and damn near impossible if youre not a seasoned swimmer.

I never played it, but water polo looks brutal.

 

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[GockeS 548]

swimming practice is super tough and damn near impossible if youre not a seasoned swimmer.

wrestling practice is super tough and damn near impossible if you're not a seasoned wrestler

 

#FIFY

[GockeS 548]

The same can easily be said for track practice for sprinters or middle distance - and for cross-country practice - or for marathon runners training, running 20 miles for a training run without stopping is damn near impossible for most everyone.

 

I'm sure the same can be said for many sports - but I only include those I have personal experience with.

 

Per the original post "Try a swimming practice and then come back and talk about how tough wrestling is." I'm back to talk about how tough wrestling is - and it's tougher for a number of reasons on a number of levels.

I agree, our XC team had a shirt that says our sport is the punishment for your sport.

[nyum 241]

I agree, our XC team had a shirt that says our sport is the punishment for your sport.

They had that at my school too.

 

I’d tell them that their sport was the warm up for my sport.

[gowrestle 697]

I never played it, but water polo looks brutal.

 

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Played water polo as part of a swimming class in college. Happened in the middle of wrestling season when I was in peak shape. It was exhausting and I only played for 10 minutes!

[KTG119 820]

wrestling is damn tough but yeah much respect for water polo. crew is another tough one. 

[gimpeltf 2,085]

I believe the Seals consider wrestling and water polo as among the best sports to recruit from. I help out at the NHSCAs and for several years they had a booth there to recruit.

[TobusRex 2,108]

Played water polo as part of a swimming class in college. Happened in the middle of wrestling season when I was in peak shape. It was exhausting and I only played for 10 minutes!

 

The swimmers would've probably felt the same after 10 minutes of wrestling somebody!

[Missourimatman 52]

In the combat sports universe, MMA is king and everything else short of boxing (for now, thanks only to its long legacy) is small potatoes. The average Joe doesn't care about who has the best double leg, the best kimura, the best jab-cross combination or the best leg strikes, all by themselves. Blend all of those things together and people start paying attention because they want to know who the single biggest bad @$$ around is, not who can score the most nearfall points from a roll through tilt.

 

While the backgrounds/martial arts bases of the competitors might be interesting to some fans, I'm willing to bet that jiu jitsu and muay thai have seen more growth in the last 10 years, because their skills (submissions and strikes, respectively) are more practical than scoring two for a takedown. I wish it weren't so, but I do suspect as much.

Almost everything I hear and read indicates boxing is healthier than it has been in a while and it is MMA that has hit a wall and is declining.

[TobusRex 2,108]

Almost everything I hear and read indicates boxing is healthier than it has been in a while and it is MMA that has hit a wall and is declining.

 

I'll kinda be surprised if sports with endemic head injury issues, like boxing, MMA, football, hockey, etc are still around in a decade or two. CTE will be the end of many sports I betcha. Could be good for wrestling. Imagine all the schollies freed up when colleges have to end their football programs?

[BigTenFanboy 1,790]

I'll kinda be surprised if sports with endemic head injury issues, like boxing, MMA, football, hockey, etc are still around in a decade or two. CTE will be the end of many sports I betcha. Could be good for wrestling. Imagine all the schollies freed up when colleges have to end their football programs?

With the amount of money that collegiate football generates I see the demise of football programs equating to the demise of many athletic programs as a whole.

Edited June 29, 2018 by BigTenFanboy

[cjc007 774]

The swimmers would've probably felt the same after 10 minutes of wrestling somebody!

Water polo is essentially wrestling while swimming.

 

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[scribe 1,845]

Wrestling is far too nuanced to ever appeal to anyone who has never wrestled or isn’t directly related to a wrestler.

[unbiased 516]

 

Wrestling is far too nuanced to ever appeal to anyone who has never wrestled or isn’t directly related to a wrestler.

 

 

Everyone is directly related to a wrestler.

[Ray_Brinzer 70]

muay thai and jui jitsu have seen more growth not because it is easier to digest for a noob, but because it is more accessible. Go check out an mma training forum and you will find countless people looking to learn how to wrestle in their 20's and 30's, but there is nothing for them. On the other hand there is no shortage of jui jitsu and muy thai gyms.

 

"Accessibility" is one aspect of this.  "Being welcome" is another.  It's not just that we don't have programs geared toward adults who want to learn wrestling; we send a clear message of "WTF are you doing here?" when they walk in the door.

 

This is like the controversy over girls' wrestling, where we puzzle over the problem, "Should we exclude half our potential customers right off the bat?"

[TobusRex 2,108]

With the amount of money that collegiate football generates I see the demise of football programs equating to the demise of many athletic programs as a whole.

 

Unfortunately true.