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Is Fila to blame???


AJ

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Does Fila take any blame for the IOC dropping wrestling from the Olympics?  Here is a quote from an Channelnewsasia.com article:

 

"Wrestling was not on the radar," the source said. "It was a very close vote between wrestling and modern pentathlon, maybe one or two votes separating them.

 

"The trouble was while modern pentathlon and taekwondo did effective lobbying, wrestling thought they were safe and did none at all."

 

Was this arrogance or laziness on the part of FILA and other wrestling organizations?

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The more i read in to it the more corruption and "boys club" this whole situation seems to have...

 

Are the olyimpics worth it? If this is what it has become do we want to involve ourselves with such a corrupt system? The olyimpics use to be an event for which compete for national pride. Now it seems its about how much money can we get McDonalds to give us so that they have the official resturant in the olympic village. How can we get RIO2016 trending on twitter?

 

Im not saying give up, but will getting wrestling back in really make the olyimpics less of a "joke" the corruption will still exist. It will just put a band-aid over a very obvious problem.

Maybe there is nothing we can do about that and we have to turn a blind eye to it but i feel it could make an interesting discussion.

 

Again this is hard to discuss whithout sounding like we should let it go. But we should look in to WHY this Happend and HOW to not let it happen again.

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Does Fila take any blame for the IOC dropping wrestling from the Olympics?  Here is a quote from an Channelnewsasia.com article:

 

"Wrestling was not on the radar," the source said. "It was a very close vote between wrestling and modern pentathlon, maybe one or two votes separating them.

 

"The trouble was while modern pentathlon and taekwondo did effective lobbying, wrestling thought they were safe and did none at all."

 

Was this arrogance or laziness on the part of FILA and other wrestling organizations?

 

Definitely.    Wrestling was sleeping at the wheel.  Compound it with the Vice president of Modern Pentathlon is on the 15 member board.  This guy made wrestling his scapegoat to save his obscure little sport.  I expect to see some heads to roll at FILA.

 

Here's the real question-  Why is there no American representation on the board?  We've haven't lost the medal count since the fall of the soviet Bloc.  And why is there no Russion representation?  They've dominated also.

 

Here's the question to answer and John Smith brought this up on his interview with Flowrestling.  Look at the last 3 sports that have been dropped from the Olympics.  Baseball, Softball and now Wrestling.  These are 3 sports that the USA has dominated.    This is not coincidence.  There is an agenda against the United States,  and wrestling is the latest victim. 

 

 

 

 

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  Maybe this is an indicator that our sport still has morals.

 

The reason for the ball grab, out of a bag in which the ball is in another bag, was brought about because of corruption....

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The more i read in to it the more corruption and "boys club" this whole situation seems to have...

 

Are the olyimpics worth it? If this is what it has become do we want to involve ourselves with such a corrupt system? The olyimpics use to be an event for which compete for national pride. Now it seems its about how much money can we get McDonalds to give us so that they have the official resturant in the olympic village. How can we get RIO2016 trending on twitter?

 

These were my thoughts exactly when I heard the news... next they will be changing the "Olyimpics" to the Verison wireless sports fest... or some such thing. In order to "appeal to a younger crowd". What a joke.....

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FILA began killing Freestyle/Greco wrestling about 15 years ago when they started making rule changes each year to supposedly make wrestling more entertaining.  What we are left with now is some form of Sumo wrestling, where the only way to score a point is to push your opponent out of the circle.

 

I really enjoyed wrestling and officiating Freestyle until around 1998, and then the drastic changes started to be enforced by the higher ranking officials.  I wasn't a fan of how the rules were changed to give referees more judgement calls.  If anything, wrestling should be less judgement, and left up to the athletes competing.

 

The only way to save Freestyle and Greco are to pull a rule book out of the dusty box from 20 years ago, and start over with that.

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I agree with Fabio, I think that this just brings to light how corrupt the olympics really are now. I mean by taking out such a great sport based on having to lobby for it and begging to keep it by a committee of people when the sport itself should stand alone is crazy to me. The people here have it right, one of the oldest sports if not original sport. Spoke about in sacred documents (THE BIBLE) and we are going to take it away because we have to beg to keep it in. I hear from friends that it is always sold out when going to the olympic events. So what is the problem. I made the trip to the holy land of IOWA to watch the trials and it was a packed house both days, and that was just the trials to make it to the olympics. What I am trying to say is this is making me not want to watch the olympics at all now, because who cares that the pentathlon committee sucked up a little more to get there sport when it was just a sport created to see who would be the best soldier back in the day.

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FILA began killing Freestyle/Greco wrestling about 15 years ago when they started making rule changes each year to supposedly make wrestling more entertaining.  What we are left with now is some form of Sumo wrestling, where the only way to score a point is to push your opponent out of the circle.

 

I really enjoyed wrestling and officiating Freestyle until around 1998, and then the drastic changes started to be enforced by the higher ranking officials.  I wasn't a fan of how the rules were changed to give referees more judgement calls. If anything, wrestling should be less judgement, and left up to the athletes competing.

 

The only way to save Freestyle and Greco are to pull a rule book out of the dusty box from 20 years ago, and start over with that.

 

change it to folkstyle then.......less judgement then in freestyle by far, and more entertaining.......easier for the fan to understand scoring......and i would implement much more stringent stalling calls to help keep the wrestlers moving forward and being on the attack......that is what keeps wrestling entertaining - the guys that are on the offense......

 

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change it to folkstyle then.......less judgement then in freestyle by far, and more entertaining.......easier for the fan to understand scoring......and i would implement much more stringent stalling calls to help keep the wrestlers moving forward and being on the attack......that is what keeps wrestling entertaining - the guys that are on the offense......

+1  The IOC also stated the need to cut wrestling was due to ratings. As a young child, I looked forward to seeing wrestling on the Olypmics. It has since been faded out over the years due to the "sumo" style of the sport. I say we introduce freestlye and liven things up a bit to bring the sport as we love back around.
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I dont see that ever happening...we have shown that US dominance is a common factor over the last few eliminated sports...so the solution is to introduce the US only style?

So are you saying that the IOC is out to get us, by eliminating our strongholds. I only ask this as I seen another website poster state the same thing. DO you think that the IOC just want to level the playing field(medal counts) to make it more intriguing to watch as to say, get the ratings back up($$$$$)
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I have no solid proof of that was just reiterating a point someone made earlier...i just dont understand how forcing the rest of world to adapt to the US style will solve anything if anything it will make us look we are trying to "set it up" for more US success...trust me im all for folkstyle to be the main style in wrestling but im also a realist....it wont happen

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I understand giving up baseball and softball as those are not sports played around the world. Access to eqipment is limited. Yet wrestling is a sport that takes very little investment from, smaller poorer countries. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia you can see kids wrestle where there is a patch of ground. Now America has the resources to train our athletes and it does point to us winning the medal count. Yet the opportunity for others countries in wrestling is far greater than baseball, softball, or in-line skating for goodness sake! how many countries are really going to be competetive in that!

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change it to folkstyle then.......less judgement then in freestyle by far, and more entertaining.......easier for the fan to understand scoring......and i would implement much more stringent stalling calls to help keep the wrestlers moving forward and being on the attack......that is what keeps wrestling entertaining - the guys that are on the offense......

 

The international wrestling community is very confused by American folkstyle, so I don't think easier to understand if you've never seen it.    I wouldn't say there is less judgement,  see the posts about the subjectivity variance on stalling calls.

 

And the last thing thing the worlld wrestling community wants to watch the top guy put the legs in and watch him ride a guy for two minutes.  IMO, we need to spice some things up in Folkstyle to make it more appealing to the fan.

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So are you saying that the IOC is out to get us, by eliminating our strongholds. I only ask this as I seen another website poster state the same thing. DO you think that the IOC just want to level the playing field(medal counts) to make it more intriguing to watch as to say, get the ratings back up($$$$$)

 

I don't think the IOC is out to get American strongholds,  I think there are members on the board that have a bias and jealousy against American sports, and their actions are being reflected.    It's also reflected in the IOC membership vote, as no Americans have been voted to the board,  but there are 10 Europeans.  Note the US has the most US Freestyle medals in the history of the Olympics.    John Smith made the same accusation with his interview on flowrestling.  There is no American representation and their cuttting American sports.

 

Here's what I say about the ratings.  Wrestling doesn't draw an audience just like 20 of the 25 olympic sports,  but it does a lot better than Modern Pentathlon or Taekwon Do or field hockey.    I bet you in the last 25 years, there's probably  been less than a 1/2 hour of wrestling on in prime time on the Olympics.      So were do they get their ratings, because its not on unless you find it on ESPN7.  Do they basing their ratings on ESPN7???  The internet is the only way to watch the Olympics. 

 

Its not about ratings, and never has been.

 

 

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Its not about ratings, and never has been.

 

It may not be the sole reason for the final decision--but it is absolutely the biggest reason it was up for a vote with these other sports.  It's all about money and virtually nothing else.

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FILA has a lot of issues and they are hugely at fault in this whole situation. FILA's rulechanges, however, were from directives from the IOC to make the sport more TV, fan-friendly, etc. So FILA, in their anointed arrogance and ineptness, made the changes they made.

 

Basically, you have the blind leading the blind internationally.

 

I have no love for FILA and its brazenly posh, arrogant, smug attitudes towards anyone outside of their wine-drinking selves.

 

FILA is heavily to blame, but not totally. Mostly, but not all. MOSTLY!

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FILA has a lot of issues and they are hugely at fault in this whole situation. FILA's rulechanges, however, were from directives from the IOC to make the sport more TV, fan-friendly, etc. So FILA, in their anointed arrogance and ineptness, made the changes they made.

 

Basically, you have the blind leading the blind internationally.

 

I have no love for FILA and its brazenly posh, arrogant, smug attitudes towards anyone outside of their wine-drinking selves.

 

FILA is heavily to blame, but not totally. Mostly, but not all. MOSTLY!

 

Deem wine drinking frenchman think a single is a amputee - lots hope budwiser heads prevail and puts us back in the mix

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FILA should have made more noise - and let the wrestling community know this may be a possibility. The publicity and public outcry may have helped prevent this rather than everyone trying to save a sinking ship on its way down.

 

I have to agree with Andy F. The rules changes killed freestyle and greco, but the reason for many of these changes appeared to be, again, American dominance. If you'll notice every time the Americans began to succeed, the rules were changed to suit Europeans.

 

"lets hope budweiser heads prevail" I'm making the signature on my work emails.

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FILA needs to send some guys from the region out to lobby with the IOC. Guys like Region Rat know how to get things done behind closed doors. Very simple, problem solved

 

 

I don't know if da region method would work as these IOC guys would consider da approach uncouth.  We need the country club approach.  We should send Gable but shine him up a little bit.  Get him an Armani,  give him some yachting and golf lessons,  rent him an Audi,  send him to a wine tasting class,  change his mustard to Grey Poupon and  make something up about his royal ancestory.  And in just in case, give him a little extra cash for some under the table money.  Then we could make some progress.

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sinceAmerica is where the most money is (TV dollars)wouldn't they want  to appease us not piss us off? and I thought the same thing about the pinacle of other sports the Olympics are the pinnacle of this sport and always have been.

 

The global economy has changed as we are no longer the super power economically that we once were.  Money talks, and we don't have any!  Other countries are advancing while we decline.  And their voice has begun to carry some weight.

Unfortunately, the "lobbying" aka "bribery" has cost us wrestling. 

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