IOC drops wrestling from 2020 Olympics

I'm so very tired of the continued bad news for the wrestling community. Starting with the dropping of all the wrestling programs to now the demise of wrestling as an Olympic sport! It's time to do something about it. Therefore I've started a petition on Change.org to "Reinstate wrestling as an Olympic sport". Please sign...www.change.org/petitions/international-olympic-committee-ioc-reinstate-wrestling-to-the-olympics

Time to forget the Olympics and move on to a more indepent venue for the sport. The Olympics are becoming less and less interesting and relevant anyhow. Do we as a community really want to compete along side "horseback riding, shooting, and field hockey" What's next ping-pong? Oh wait... they already do that too. The Olympics are a boring joke with the exception of wrestling/track/swiming/gymnastics (ie real sports). Sorry, gum-chewing and nose pinching aren't real sports, but I'm sure they'll be added to the Olympics in due course. Let wrestling stand proudly on it's own, growing the World Championship annual event into a much more important competition.

Absaroka27: Respectfully you are wrong. Colleges are always looking for a reason to cut athletic budgets. If wrestling is no longer an Olympic sport, that will give Colleges justification for cutting the sport. When that starts happening the sport you think can stand on its own will die in this country, and none of us want that. By the way FILA already has World Championships every non-Olympic year. How many of those matches do you see on television?

Absolutely absurd!!! Intermat, maybe you guys can help us put together some sort of petition or something we can all sign and send to IOC?

Wrestling is a sport that absolutely deserves a place in the olympics, but I agree with Absaroka that absurd sports like ping-pong (and I saw wakeboarding is up for consideration) have a place and fan base that can thrive outside the olympics. Real-Pro Wrestling was a silly approach to gain popularity I believe, but college wrestling is gaining more and more attention as well. Perhaps partnerships and advertising with mixed-martial arts is the ultimate solution. Its a very similar fan-base of another combat sport.

We need to build a bridge out of our close-knit community to appeal to others. Perhaps building up youth and high school wrestling and making an effort to gain interest from local communities.

I know these solutions have been talked about to death, this cutting from the olympics just has me steamed. What other outlet do wrestlers have??

And its not getting cut until 2020.

I say wrestlers around the world need to flood that venue in 2016. How can they argue wrestlings popularity after that??

UFC may be the savior of wrestling in the future. We need a big time sponsor with huge pockets to help save college and HS wrestling. Wrestling is a key component in the development of future UFC stars.

I agree with Absaroka and also with jtfalcon. The most popular sport in the US is football, non-olympic sport. Basketball, before the dream team, was doing great without pros in the Olympics. I say the wrestling community needs to embrace UFC as our "Pro" Sport along with USA Wrestling. Let's face it, the casual fan isn't tuning into wrestling during the Olympics, because there is so much more on. I think we make the World's a huge event, even pair it with a UFC card and make it pay-per-view. Those events attract huge numbers and they actually pay for it! Even have wrestling undercards for a UFC event. We as a wrestling community need to better with change. Everytime a program shuts down, we just whine and go on. We can youth clubs, and so on, but the end of the day, kids do things that are cool. People watch things that are cool. Olympic wrestling is boring to the casual fan. UFC is exciting. Let's embrace that use that to our advantage in promoting wrestling.

This decision is about money. The IOC are greedy jerks who don't care about anything else.

I'm not sure how wrestling would partner with MMA. It may be true that MMA is best served by the continuation of collegiate wrestling programs, but I'm not so sure "they" (MMA is not one monolithic organization) would foot the bill to keep the programs. Undercards? People will head for the concession stands ... wrestling has a devoted, but VERY limited following. It will not appeal to casual MMA fans who pay to see sudden stopages. They going to pay to see someone earn a Riding time point?? Lots of Moms and Dads and siblings have gone to watch HS wrestling matches; how many of them keep going after Junior has graduated?

Without the Olympics, there is no "Olympic sport" argument to persuade college administrations to keep the sport around. Looks bleek. Terrible decision and a sad day for a great sport.

Please send your email complaints to the following email addresses:

IOC Communications Office
pressoffice@olympic.org

Association of National Olympic Committees
info@acnolympic.org

Sign the petition to SAVE OLYMPIC WRESTLING @ WhiteHouse.gov:

petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/put-pressure-ioc-overturn-their-decision-drop-wrestling-olympics-2020/ClDPYshl

There are a few online petitions the one below posted by jduque1234 and another I found is at

wh.gov/d20I

Everyone must make the IOC realize how stupid this decision is. Wrestling has been part of the olympics since ancient times. It wont be the olympics without wrestling.

I am beyond baffled at this decision, there has to be more than they're letting on behind this decision, even the members of the IOC were shocked that it came to this! There's more to this story!