IGX

http://espn.go.com/olympics/story/_/id/ ... 0-olympics

"LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- IOC leaders dropped wrestling from the Olympic program on Tuesday, a surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from the 2020 Games."

What a joke. US should organize a boycott with Iran, Russia, and the other former Soviet nations. Of course GE, McDonalds, etc would never allow that $$$

Serious WTF. A sport with no real professional venue, unlike basketball, volleyball, boxing, tennis, bike racing, sailing, etc. The Olympics was the pinnacle.

They kept the "modern pentathlon" and tae kwan do over wrestling? I am disappoint.

Wrestling out...Team Handball still in...wow.

Wonder how long weightlifting will last.

Well, I would make the case for baseball and softball to be in there...they are infinitely more popular and more widely played across the globe with much more widespread interest.

The times they are a changing, and wrestling has been under siege for 20 years now because of Title 9...colleges dropping men's wrestling programs so that they can add women's rowing and dyke LaCrosse. MMA in all it's douchebaggery glory will come to be the combat sport of choice for most young men, and continue to put a strain on the grassroots participation in both wrestling and boxing.

The modern pentathlon is as archaic as one can get, and that team handball bullshit is just...bullshit. Westpoint wins the "US Championship" in team handball about every year, which is a kind way of pointing out that it's a hyper niche sport that they concentrate on in order to open their trophy case for something more than dusting their real sports trophies from the 1940's.

It looks like they're keeping all of the "sports" that involve completely subjective judging and wearing makeup.

Wrestling is a global sport that requires practically no equipment and costs very little to nothing to participate, not to mention it is the oldest sport. Ridiculous that it would be cut.

29 different countries won a medal in wrestling at the last Olympics. Number of countries that won a medal in ALL Track and Field events combined? 35

What were the TV ratings? Follow the money.

Money talks, and golf has way more money than wrestling.

Kazuya Mishima wrote:What were the TV ratings? Follow the money.

Well no shit, Captain Obvious

This book was written in 1992.

This book details how the Corinthian ideals of the Olympic Games have been destroyed by corruption, greed, politics and turning a bureaucratic blind eye to drugs. In collaboration with Patrick Nally, an important name in sports sponsorship, the authors expose the dubious Olympics organization - the way the International Olympics Committee functions, the way millions are raised ans spent, the lifestyles of the senior sports administrators - in short, the way the face of sport has been changed over the last few decades, fuelled by huge sums of money from some of the world's best-known companies.

If anything, it's gotten worse since then.

Got this from a wrestler on another board

Lots of backroom bullshit going on with the IOC. A friend of mine is the former head of Canada Wrestling and he broke it down for me.

The IOC wanted equal women's and men's wrestling weight divisions, even though the talent pool in higher weight classes was very sparse for the ladies. They wanted to drop one of the men's styles to make room, which made the wrestling reps (who are pretty much the biggest and most powerful sport in the world due to political and financial backing) basically tell the IOC to go f--- themselves. There was a lot of malicious back and forth between the two sides. When they wouldn't agree and refused to be bullied into accepting IOC demands, which made no sense, they made this decision and announcement. It's likely that we'll see them come to a compromise and that money will have to exchange hands since the IOC is known to accept donations.

Kazuya Mishima wrote:What were the TV ratings? Follow the money.

An easy fix

They should get rid of the torch while they're at it. And the medals too! Just hand out participation ribbons and fruit baskets.

Croatoa wrote:They should get rid of the torch while they're at it. And the medals too! Just hand out participation ribbons and fruit baskets.

And stop wagging their high-fallutin' fingers at PED's

Herv100 wrote:

Kazuya Mishima wrote:What were the TV ratings? Follow the money.

Well no shit, Captain Obvious

So you admit that nobody watches wrestling except for the family of the participants, and gay fetishists.

Pretty sure wrestling sells more tickets and gets better ratings than many of the included events.
I agree its follow the money, but nothing to do with ratings IMO.

Baseball is popular on television, played at a high level in North America, South America, Latin America and Asia and even had a direct equivalent for women, in softball. However, the reasoning was that Europe and Africa didn't play it so it was gone.

Wrestling perhaps makes even less sense. 29 countries won medals, from every part of the globe. Small countries are able to compete with the superpowers. It requires virtually no equipment and the summer games were the pinnacle of the sport. No idea what television ratings were but it would either be that or "gender equality" though far more likely that some backdoor deal took place.

However, no sense in being upset about it.

Let's be positive and reflect on the fantastic sporting events that remain.

Terry B. wrote:Let's be positive and reflect on the fantastic sporting events that remain.

Gay men got to have something to do in the summer.

I am too shocked to say anything. It's like there's no such thing as the tooth fairy.

It did get a bit boring when they changed the rules.I prefered wrestling in the early ninties.

Pinky wrote:It looks like they're keeping all of the "sports" that involve completely subjective judging and wearing makeup.

In addition to what's been said, is there something to this? IIRC, the Olympics (particularly the Winter Olympics) in the US are watched by more women than men. Men have top-flight sports on television every day with the NFL/MLB/NBA. Wouldn't be surprised if this was the case in Europe as well, at least, with men sated largely by top-level soccer.

cheer up bitches..it's Mardi Gras.