Wrestling at the Olympics

riffmongous

Anyone else watching it (the greco)? Considering how it was almost recently thrown out of the Olympics and needs a bit of a popularity boost, it is sadly brutal to watch. Nothing but hand fighting and penalties

cletus

Freestyle starts in a day or two. Tends to be better to watch, as they are allowed to attack the legs, Greco can't be penalised just for putting tour pegs in position for them to be contacted by your opponent

riffmongous

cletus wrote: »

Freestyle starts in a day or two. Tends to be better to watch, as they are allowed to attack the legs, Greco can't be penalised just for putting tour pegs in position for them to be contacted by your opponent

Yeah no doubt freestyle is better to watch, but since they seem to be considered one sport their fate at the Games is linked I think and Greco at the moment is very tough to watch for the neutral viewer, I can see another review of the place of wrestling at the Olympics happening in the future..

Personally when it comes to highlights I prefer to watch Greco, I like the upper body throws a lot, but you just don't see them much at the Olympic level. I guess my line of thought would be should the rules be changed to encourage more throws and a visually better sport? Or is the sport fine as it is for the people that are really involved?

Mellor

I'm not sure there is much they could do to make greco more viewer friendly. It's really a game of inches at that level. Unless another Alexander Karalin comes back, it's not going to be highlight reel stuff.
I prefer to freestyle, to watch and to train. When ever we do Greco rounds, I instinctive attack the legs at times. I remember not to grab them, but trips and sweeps just sneak into my set up.


Kinda interesting that went through a similar evolution 100 years later.

cletus

What evolution was that Mellor

Mellor

cletus wrote: »

What evolution was that Mellor

Sorry, reading back on that, it wasn't too clear what I was talking about. I was referring to changing/developing rules regarding leg grabs.


Before the development of the olympic sports of Greco-Roman and Freestyle, wrestling existing in its various folkstyles. Catch-as-catch-can wrestling from northern England, Backhold in Scotland, etc. There was even a native Irish style called Collar and Elbow (a type of Jacket wrestling similar to Judo).

Greco was developed from Catch in the mid 1800s. They basically disallowed submissions and all holds below the waist. The logic behind the submissions is obvious, but I'm not sure why the leg holds were removed though. In a way this was, at the time, the difference between sports-wrestling and wrestling generally .

I was just commenting that the 2010 rule changes to judo, were a similar development. Separating sports-judo from full judo (kodokan?).
I jsut thought it was interesting as it had never occurred to me before.

I'm aware that the specifics of the rules are different. Judo bans grabbing below the belt only where as greco also excludes trips and reaps.

cletus

Ah, get you now, I thought that Greco itself had gone through some form of evolution I wasn't aware of.

riffmongous

Mellor wrote: »

I'm not sure there is much they could do to make greco more viewer friendly. It's really a game of inches at that level. Unless another Alexander Karalin comes back, it's not going to be highlight reel stuff.
I prefer to freestyle, to watch and to train. When ever we do Greco rounds, I instinctive attack the legs at times. I remember not to grab them, but trips and sweeps just sneak into my set up.


Kinda interesting that went through a similar evolution 100 years later.

But will it be continued as an olympic sport if nothing changes? I mean at the moment it's pretty much just there on pedigree and a promise to make it more interesting

In February 2011, the IOC unveiled a list of seven sports that wanted to follow in the footsteps of golf and rugby sevens, which had been added to the programme for the 2016 Olympics.

Two years later, wrestling was cast from the programme in a shock vote by the IOC executive board but the 104-strong IOC chose to reinstate it after a seven-month drive by the new federation president, Nenad Lalovic, to modernise the arcane rules and make it more attractive to casual fans. "Wrestling is not a new sport but the wrestling we are presenting now is a new wrestling. What we tried to do is update our sport to make it more spectacular, more watchable and understandable," a triumphant Lalovic said.

My interest in wrestling came originally from the aesthetics of the throws rather than anything based on practicality so I've always preferred the big shoulder throws and suplexes of greco (even though of course you can do them in freestyle too).

In the women's freestyle Kaori Icho is on course for a fourth gold at the moment

riffmongous

Women's freestyle today has been very good actually

Not sure about this 'shot clock' though, it's too easy for the other wrestler to just tie you up for the 30s

Mellor

riffmongous wrote: »

But will it be continued as an olympic sport if nothing changes? I mean at the moment it's pretty much just there on pedigree and a promise to make it more interesting

I'm not sure how they did to make it better. Judo has the same issue, outsiders find it boring and have no clue whats happening.
Same with high level BJJ (obvious not an Olympic spot) lots of flashy moves are lower levels, but elite level is harder to watch for lay people.

My interest in wrestling came originally from the aesthetics of the throws rather than anything based on practicality so I've always preferred the big shoulder throws and suplexes of greco (even though of course you can do them in freestyle too).

I prefer those throws too. Not sure why they don't feature more in freestyle as they've more ways to set them up.

arybvtcw0eolkf

Mellor wrote: »

I'm not sure how they did to make it better. Judo has the same issue, outsiders find it boring and have no clue whats happening.
Same with high level BJJ (obvious not an Olympic spot) lots of flashy moves are lower levels, but elite level is harder to watch for lay people.
.

IMO the exclusion of leg grabs in Judo has been a good thing for the viewer, bad for the Judoka.

I'd like to see leg grabs, or at least some leg grabs being allowed back in. And for the viewer I'd like to see one less shido (penalty) before a DQ. I hated seeing competitors fighting to the edge of passivity to win fights by shido.

I'm really not sure what you could do to make BJJ exciting for the viewer, maybe make pulling guard illegal until you've broken your opponents balance to the front?.