Real Talk Co.

Today I’ll be explaining why isn’t Folkstyle wrestling in the Olympics.

why isn’t folkstyle wrestling in the olympics?

Folkstyle isn’t in the Olympics for a few different reasons. First of all it’s unique to the U.S. only. Also, to the hand of the international styles it’s actually tight ID to be more boring. If it was Olympic, the U.S. would dominate for a while by default. And it’s unofficially considered the little brother of the other two styles.

Unique to a certain part of the world

Folkstyle is American wrestling.

It’s considered unique only to America, it’s a fact.

Right after the NCAA championships, we get the rest of our prospects for our National and world level teams.

It gets questioned about if keeping the style is a good idea.

But let me tell you now, it’ll be a bad idea to get rid of it.

American Wrestling

Yes, folkstyle is considered American wrestling because it’s exclusive only to the states.

If it’s only one country that participated in a sport, it’s gonna be hard to compete with other countries.

NCAA Championships

It was mentioned before on the folkstyle guide how the NCAA’s are the pinnacle of this particular style of wrestling.

We (the U.S.) typically hold our wrestle offs for our world team after the NCAA Championships.

It shows to pay off because we average at least one college wrestler that makes the team (who participated in the event).

“Should we move on?”

In a article written by the flowrestling team, they posed the question on if we should move on from Folkstyle.

I’m going to be opinionated clearly and say that it would be a bad idea.

The more wrestling we can do, the better we’ll do in the international styles.

Appreciated Internationally

There was a Reddit user that shared their experience about traveling to Mongolia to compete.

To make the long story short, they were able to interact with other wrestlers and they were welcoming of learning folkstyle moves.

It goes back to my previous point, all wrestling can be useful.

You’ll find creative wrestlers who find ways to use it in their freestyle and Greco.

It’s more “boring”

It makes me laugh at the fact people think this because you could say the same about freestyle.

Other Americans that like it love it.

The scrambles make it fun, overtime adds another element to make it interesting.

The only thing we could consider adjusting is our emphasis of folkstyle at the high school level.

Maybe we can combine folk style and freestyle at some point.

But simply put, if you wanna share our excitement, the sport is going to need more TV coverage.

U.S. might have an advantage

The U.S. would undeniably have an advantage over other teams if folkstyle were to be made an Olympic sport.

We’re going to use what I like to call pseudo logic (feel free to just call it critical thinking if you want).

If only one country was practicing a specific style for just short of a century, they would be superior.

And that would be if another country even wanted to try and challenge them as competitors.

Think about it, who do you think would be the most successful for the first few cycles of competition?

It’s possible to have other countries learn folkstyle.

But it would just be too big of a difference in skill at the beginning.

It’s comparable to learning how to walk again against someone that challenges you to a race.

The U.S. would just have too big of a difference at the beginning.

The best thing I would suggest is to have a smaller stakes competition with other countries that desire to learn.

And from there, continue, until there’s a spread of challenge that would get fans interested in watching.

Unofficial “little brother”

Folkstyle can be considered the little brother of the two international styles because of it’s place in the sport.

Terry Style Wrestling put it pretty well in calling it a transition.

Okay, well it specifically does what it can in addressing the issue of making the move from folkstyle to freestyle.

If we use that pseudo logic we can see that it gets emphasized at the early ages until they decide to compete at an international level.

It’s lower on the pedestal of the entire sport in comparison to freestyle and Greco.

“Why’s that,” you may ask.

It’s because it’s highest participation rate comes at the younger ages. Plain and simple.

Final Thoughts

These points should sum up why folkstyle isn’t an Olympic level sport, yet.

The U.S. is the only country that competes in this style.

With that, they would be the most dominant country for a very long time.

The other countries would have to see it as equally exciting as freestyle or Greco.

Also, the sport is highly emphasized at the younger levels to just introduce them to the sport.