Treating wrestling second
rate
This comes in two forms. The first being, “I went out for wrestling because I wasn’t tall enough/good enough to make the basketball team.” Or “I went out for wrestling to as a means to stay in shape for football.” In some ways I have to admit that this has actually helped to grow the sport. I think the catalyst to wrestling’s growth in places like Texas and Arkansas has been primarily the appeal of wrestling being a great tool to improve one’s football talents and abilities. However by doing so it still illustrates that wrestling to many is second rate. I don’t want wrestling to be second rate. I don’t want people stepping onto the mat, only because they were cut from the basketball team or only because they need something useful to do while waiting for next football season. I want kids going out for wrestling, because the appeal of being a great wrestler intrigues and excites them.
Are we utilizing our resources to full capacity in order to do this? Are we letting kids know that there is potential to wrestle live in front of 19,000 people for an NCAA championship? That they have an opportunity to be seen live on television as ESPN brings the championships to individuals all over the United States? We don’t have the luxury of telling kids that they could potentially turn pro and go to the NBA or the NFL to potentially make millions of dollars. We don’t have that, but what do we have? UFC/MMA and WWE. Maybe you’re not a fan of one of them or not a fan of either, but they are both immensely popular in this country whether you want to admit it or not. They are also both full of successful individuals who wrestled in high school and/or college. Maybe you don’t care for MMA/UFC and maybe you don’t care for WWE. In my opinion if a young man joins the wrestling team in seventh grade because his hero MMA superstar Johny Hendricks said that wrestling is what makes him successful in the fighting world or because he wants to be a WWE superstar like Dolph Ziggler who preaches how his amateur wrestling background lead to his success, then I embrace that. Glamour, fame, recognition and money excites young people and until we get a professional circuit for scholastic/freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling off the ground, we don’t have the appeal that other sports do with professional levels like the NBA and NFL. Therefore I say make the most of what we do have to work with.
This leads me to the second half of this problem, people who wrestled in high school that stop following the sport the day after the season ends their senior year. There are a lot of people that exist in this country that follow the NCAA basketball tournament, the players and the scores of each game, that wrestled in high school, that couldn’t tell you the name of one current NCAA wrestler. Does that not disturb you like it does me? Guys that never played basketball, they wrestled, yet later in life they follow basketball and they do not follow wrestling. There is something wrong with this picture and I have to ask why. Here we are trying to draw outsiders in as fans, and some of our insiders aren’t even fans. Why not? Why are former wrestlers, even ones who were relatively good that qualified for the state tournament, following football and basketball later in life, but not following wrestling? What can we do as a wrestling community to fix this?
Anyone
can be great at this sportThis comes in two forms. The first being, “I went out for wrestling because I wasn’t tall enough/good enough to make the basketball team.” Or “I went out for wrestling to as a means to stay in shape for football.” In some ways I have to admit that this has actually helped to grow the sport. I think the catalyst to wrestling’s growth in places like Texas and Arkansas has been primarily the appeal of wrestling being a great tool to improve one’s football talents and abilities. However by doing so it still illustrates that wrestling to many is second rate. I don’t want wrestling to be second rate. I don’t want people stepping onto the mat, only because they were cut from the basketball team or only because they need something useful to do while waiting for next football season. I want kids going out for wrestling, because the appeal of being a great wrestler intrigues and excites them.
Are we utilizing our resources to full capacity in order to do this? Are we letting kids know that there is potential to wrestle live in front of 19,000 people for an NCAA championship? That they have an opportunity to be seen live on television as ESPN brings the championships to individuals all over the United States? We don’t have the luxury of telling kids that they could potentially turn pro and go to the NBA or the NFL to potentially make millions of dollars. We don’t have that, but what do we have? UFC/MMA and WWE. Maybe you’re not a fan of one of them or not a fan of either, but they are both immensely popular in this country whether you want to admit it or not. They are also both full of successful individuals who wrestled in high school and/or college. Maybe you don’t care for MMA/UFC and maybe you don’t care for WWE. In my opinion if a young man joins the wrestling team in seventh grade because his hero MMA superstar Johny Hendricks said that wrestling is what makes him successful in the fighting world or because he wants to be a WWE superstar like Dolph Ziggler who preaches how his amateur wrestling background lead to his success, then I embrace that. Glamour, fame, recognition and money excites young people and until we get a professional circuit for scholastic/freestyle/Greco-Roman wrestling off the ground, we don’t have the appeal that other sports do with professional levels like the NBA and NFL. Therefore I say make the most of what we do have to work with.
This leads me to the second half of this problem, people who wrestled in high school that stop following the sport the day after the season ends their senior year. There are a lot of people that exist in this country that follow the NCAA basketball tournament, the players and the scores of each game, that wrestled in high school, that couldn’t tell you the name of one current NCAA wrestler. Does that not disturb you like it does me? Guys that never played basketball, they wrestled, yet later in life they follow basketball and they do not follow wrestling. There is something wrong with this picture and I have to ask why. Here we are trying to draw outsiders in as fans, and some of our insiders aren’t even fans. Why not? Why are former wrestlers, even ones who were relatively good that qualified for the state tournament, following football and basketball later in life, but not following wrestling? What can we do as a wrestling community to fix this?
“You wanted to be one of the best basketball players of all time, but not everyone can be Michael Jordan.”
“You wanted to be one of the best football players of all time, but not everyone can be Bo Jackson.”
“You wanted to be one of the best wrestlers of all time, and you would have been because had you worked hard enough you would have been the next Cael Sanderson.”
Does anyone besides me see the problem here? Why are athletes from other sports granted the grace that their sport takes a certain level of talent and ability, yet wrestlers aren’t? All sports require a tremendous amount of hard work to be successful, but why do we treat wrestling as the one sport that also doesn’t require an ample amount of talent and ability? I’ve been watching and studying wrestling for 23 years and Bruce Baumgartner is the only individual I can think of that has a true understanding of the problem here. If you give it your all to be a star football athlete and you come up short of the goal, all sorts of factors go into play for why that didn’t work out for you. If you give it your all to be a star wrestler and you come up short of your goal, it is always because you didn’t work hard enough. That is a mentality that we have got to get rid of. It is severely detrimental to our sport, and I’ll tell you why.
For one, it degrades how difficult it is to be great at wrestling. Not everyone can be great at football, not everyone can be great at basketball, but anyone can be great at wrestling? Who wants to be great at something that anyone can be great at? What makes you stand out? What makes you special? One of the greatest appeals of wrestling, is that anyone can participate. You don’t have to be tall, you don’t have to be small, you don’t have to be little, you don’t have to be huge. It doesn’t matter what size you are, you can participate. It’s also one of the only sports that allows those with physical handicaps to participate on a top level. You’ll never see a one legged basketball player playing DI basketball, but you will see a one legged wrestler wrestling Division I. However, even though anyone can participate, it doesn’t mean that anyone and everyone can be spectacular at this sport. It doesn’t mean that you can take anyone and make them into a Dan Gable, in spite of their deficiencies.
Why is this such a problem? Because it feeds an atmosphere than anything less than the absolute best, isn’t good enough. Anything less than the absolute best isn’t worthy of praise or recognition. That’s ridiculous, detrimental and depressing. No other sport demands impeccability the way wrestling does. In football you don’t have to be the national champions to be loved and recognized. You can be 4-7, lose in the Toilet Bowl and still come out bragging. In wrestling, you place second in the nation, “you suck.” Only 10 guys are crowned individual national champions at the end of the year and only one team is crowned the team champions. Seventy something teams and approximately 770 wrestlers and we only want to recognize the elite? We only want to pay attention to the very best of the best? Why is that? Is it because we believe that it is easier than what it is to be the very best? Because we believe that all it takes to be the very best is simply working harder than everyone else?
I realize that I’ve gone off on quite a rant here, but I’m very passionate about wrestling and I want it to not only survive but thrive in the years ahead. Maybe I’m off my hinges and if I am, I apologize for that, but I do think I make some very valid points that aren’t being addressed at the level that they should be. I appreciate all comments and thoughts. Agree or disagree, let’s discuss.
