Posted by Tom, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Feb 13, 2013 at 11:29 am

This story would benefited immensely from some account of the IOC's reasoning in cutting wrestling; there are many sources for that available. As I understand it, they looked at TV ratings and ticket sales, that sort of thing. Outside of the Olympics, most people don't see it or hear about it at all, and so probably associate it with something as violent as Ultimate Fighting Championship or as inane as WWF. Perhaps more than anything this is a failure to market the sport effectively. It's an outstanding sport, tremendous for conditioning athletes who want to do any other sport as well. It would be sad to see it go.

Posted by Uh oh, a resident of the College Terrace neighborhood, on Feb 13, 2013 at 11:47 am

Did they not explain why they are cutting wrestling? Is it that unpopular? Why not cut boxing, it is not very popular.

Posted by It's A Shame, a member of the Gunn High School community, on Feb 13, 2013 at 3:29 pm

The problem is that the IOC is not accountable to anyone and does not have to explain its decision, as this was a "secret" vote by members of a committee that does not even include representatives from the larger nations such as the US, including a committee member who is vice president of the association governing one of the sports that was on the chopping block (modern pentathlon). Talk about a conflict of interest! The 39 criteria that were apparently used to make the recommendation to drop wrestling supposedly included items such as ticket sales and viewer interest. Granted, using these metrics, wrestling is not nearly as popular as football or basketball, yet I don't think it can be argued that some of the more obscure sanctioned sports have any greater mass appeal than wrestling. To quote a song, "I can see no reasons cuz there are no reasons..."