Greco is the most popular international style

[alex1fly]

1 hour ago, Scouts Honor said:

no one has discussed reasons for greco being more popular

... maybe there are more entrants b/c its wide open?

i dont follow greco... are there clear favorites?

zero evidence to back it up. Folks are citing a couple of weak metrics and claiming they’re legit just because a real analysis hasn’t been done. As a data guy this bugs me but hey what can you do. I’m certainly not going to go gather participation data, look at trends over time, geographical spread, etc in order to settle a forum debate. 

[alliseeisgold]

Greco at high level is damn tough to beat

I watched one match this year. The bulgerian middleweight for gold was absolutely electric. 

More exciting then most freestyle matches

How much is the fact that us greco sucks and is boring so we aren't exposed to elite aesthetic greco ?

I watched that one match and said WTH is wrong with people hating on greco 

That bulgerian middleweight is athletic and spry too not just some guy shoving his body weight.  Insane hips 

[Hammerlock3]

4 hours ago, Scouts Honor said:

no one has discussed reasons for greco being more popular

... maybe there are more entrants b/c its wide open?

i dont follow greco... are there clear favorites?

The fact that we have such a bizarre metric (entrees at worlds) for "popularity" makes me think there is some other factor at play.

If it was true we would have suspicions of it ourselves, as opposed to it being some sort of unfalsifiable trump card we've all heard the resident greco guy crowbar in ad nauseam.

[Jason Bryant]

Let’s find something more concrete then … I cite it because it’s the only thing I can find and I’ve been at the Worlds every year since ‘07. I first noticed it in 2009 when the Greco brackets were just so much bigger causing those days to just go on forever.

Like another poster said above though, I’m not going to spend the time on it to prove a forum argument true or false - I do that too much as it is.

Problem is our general ignorance on how other countries actually operate their wrestling associations really prevent us from being able to speak on it informatively or with numbers that can validate a position.

I’d love for us to have stats on everything …

[ionel]

22 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

I knew I was on shaky ground as I typed that.

The backspace key can be your friend. 

[Wrestleknownothing]

2 minutes ago, ionel said:

The backspace key can be your friend. 

Admitting I have a problem is the first step...

[ionel]

22 hours ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Another way to think about it is that the women, who had no historical basis to favor one style over the other, chose freestyle, suggesting that free is on the up swing while greco is stagnant.

Another better way to look at it:  1) freestyle adopted the pushout (they really want greco), 2) how many titles & duals did Iowa win with their push shove stall approach in folk & 16,000 CHA fans loved this greco approach, 3) half the posters on these here boards want a greco pushout rule in folk, 4) the women are just as good as men in the pushout.  I rest my case.  Greco.

[Scouts Honor]

16 hours ago, alliseeisgold said:

 

How much is the fact that us greco sucks and is boring so we aren't exposed to elite aesthetic greco ?

 

good point

[ionel]

4 minutes ago, Wrestleknownothing said:

Admitting I have a problem is the first step...

Get on it! 

[MPhillips]

18 hours ago, alex1fly said:

As a data guy this bugs me but hey what can you do. I’m certainly not going to go gather participation data, look at trends over time, geographical spread, etc in order to settle a forum debate. 

So you're not a, "data" guy... 

No worries. We have a couple data folks already.

Edited August 24 by MPhillips

[boconnell]

On 8/22/2024 at 8:27 PM, Jason Bryant said:

Let's make this an apples-to-apples comparison in its simplest form. 

Among women, freestyle is the most popular style worldwide.

Among men, Greco is the most popular style worldwide. 
 

Among men Greco is the most widespread style worldwide.  That is not the same as being the most popular.  More countries entering a wrestler does not mean there are more people doing Greco worldwide than there are doing FS.  If you looked at participation numbers in each nation, I'd be very surprised if there were more worldwide participants in Greco.

[Jason Bryant]

1 hour ago, boconnell said:

  If you looked at participation numbers in each nation, I'd be very surprised if there were more worldwide participants in Greco.

We don't have that information, which is why we can't look at it. 

[ionel]

4 hours ago, Jason Bryant said:

We don't have that information, which is why we can't look at it. 

I bet Wkn has a table.   

[ILLINIWrestlingBlog]

When you look at the kinds of early folk wrestling from around the world, you don't find leglaces anywhere. Leglaces look like two fish flopping on the deck of a trawler. Where did that come from? 

In other countries, there was a lot of upper body, with some regions also allowing tripping, but leg attacks are not common. Take Sumo or Mongolian Bökh wrestling as examples. You can do a leg attack in Sumo now, but you are likely to be crushed to the ground.

Some countries like Turkie developed belt wrestling, and others, like the Swiss had special pants. No leg attacks, grab the belt or special pants to throw your opponent or throw him off balance. 

Leg attacks are mostly an American thing. I blame Dan Gable, mostly. Abraham Lincoln was old school using throws. Abe was the OG. 

The most famous image of wrestling in the history of history, at least in the Western Hemisphere, which is the greatest Hemisphere in the history of history, is Hercules holding Antaeus off the ground so his strength couldn't be replenished by touching his mother: Earth. There are more statues and etchings and paintings of this single wrestling hold--a Greco hold--than there are pictures of Kim Kardashian on the internet. 

Okay. That's probably not true. But in the spirit of this thread, I refuse to do my own research! Screw it! 

As Genghis Khan used to say, but in an entirely different language, and usually with a goat leg in his mouth: "Are you the Greco guy, or are you afraid of the Greco guy?" 

[ionel]

12 minutes ago, ILLINIWrestlingBlog said:

Leg attacks are mostly an American thing. I blame Dan Gable, mostly. Abraham Lincoln was old school using throws. Abe was the OG. 

 

Little known fact: Abe never accepted a point for a pushout.  This is I'm sure disappointing news for @flyingcement but if our greatest President didn't approve of the pushout rule ...  He also never wrestled on horse hair, Resilite or astro turf.

[WrestlingRasta]

On 8/23/2024 at 9:31 AM, Jim L said:

I looked for this evidence and never found it.

Numbers of entries does not equate to world wide popularity. I am not sure what would be a better metric, but that does not mean we should rely on a meaningless one. I think You Tube view numbers might be more reasonable.

 For instance,  there are three countries in the Baltics with a combined population of ~6 million, where I believe GR is the most popular style (but still  probably not widely popular) and if they all send complete teams to the World GR championship that means GR is 3X more popular than FS is in Iran with a population of 88 million and a passionate fan base.

You literally are saying we should discount solid numbers and data for a bunch of probably’s and maybe’s and I’m not sure what’s. 
 

We should rely on YouTube views?  This shows a complete non understand of the world beyond ours here in the states.  There are places, many places, where Greco Roman wrestling, and/or activities very related, are very popular…..and YouTube is not available. 

[ILLINIWrestlingBlog]

2 hours ago, ionel said:

Little known fact: Abe never accepted a point for a pushout.  This is I'm sure disappointing news for @flyingcement but if our greatest President didn't approve of the pushout rule ...  He also never wrestled on horse hair, Resilite or astro turf.

 

I wanted to stick up for Greco and the ever-exciting Kamal Bey here, ionel, and I also wanted to add a little entertainment value, but I did not have as a sub-motivation any attempt to inject the fear of ILLINI and ILLINOIS high school kids' Greco abilities into the minds of their opponents.

That was not part of the plan. 

In fact, that psychological ship has sailed. Everybody knows by now that if you are wrestling an ILLINI or a kid from ILLINOIS there is the chance that he will throw you, and there is a chance that it will be so spectacular that the newspaper headlines in Champaign the next day will read: "VIOLENT ASSAULT UP 50% IN ILLINOIS LAST NIGHT." 

But, I don't need to beat that dead horse. 

 

 

[Eagle26]

16 hours ago, boconnell said:

Among men Greco is the most widespread style worldwide.  That is not the same as being the most popular.  More countries entering a wrestler does not mean there are more people doing Greco worldwide than there are doing FS.  If you looked at participation numbers in each nation, I'd be very surprised if there were more worldwide participants in Greco.

 

15 hours ago, Jason Bryant said:

We don't have that information, which is why we can't look at it. 

These are both correct in a way. As others have mentioned, world entry’s don’t tell us how popular it is world wide, but it should help us realize it is more widespread and it’s popularity is probably more than we give it credit for in the US. However, when you look at countries that have high populations, freestyle tends to be more popular, which would lead to the conclusion that freestyle is more popular. Yes, we don’t have the exact data, but it’s pretty easy to draw conclusions from the data we do have.  Look at the population for countries such as USA, Russia, Iran, China, Japan, India, and all prefer freestyle… that’s probably the majority of the worlds wrestling population right there

[alex1fly]

On 8/24/2024 at 10:31 AM, MPhillips said:

So you're not a, "data" guy... 

No worries. We have a couple data folks already.

Lol. It’s my job not my hobby. Just get Jimmy in here to make a headline and call it good. 

[Takuto_Otoguro]

Go on wikipedia and check the 60kg bracket for Greco at the Tokyo olympics, specifcally the route the Chinese wrestler had to bronze. 1 - 1 every single match to a olympic bronze. And this is at the lightest weight. I get that it's an outlier but I don't think this would ever happen in free. At the heavier weight classes most of the matches are unwatchable. I'm impressed greco has survived as long as it has considering its not a major draw and has no women's participation. There is a lot of rumblings it will be replaced with beach, which also sucks. 

[Scouts Honor]

17 hours ago, ILLINIWrestlingBlog said:

 

The most famous image of wrestling in the history of history, at least in the Western Hemisphere, which is the greatest Hemisphere in the history of history, is Hercules holding Antaeus off the ground so his strength couldn't be replenished by touching his mother: Earth. There are more statues and etchings and paintings of this single wrestling hold--a Greco hold--than there are pictures of Kim Kardashian on the internet. 

 

 

i thought you were going to say this photo... you almost described it as well

[maligned]

One theory could be that winning medals indicates a level of "seriousness", and perhaps in-country popularity of a given style. And the fact that a given style's medals are won by higher population nations could be construed as one statistical indicator of overall global popularity.

Median population (not mean) of Olympic medal-winning nations by style:

Women's freestyle: 125 million

Men's freestyle: 65 million

Greco: 19.5 million

Average/mean population per medal would skew even much more strongly toward freestyle.

Edited August 25 by maligned

[ILLINIWrestlingBlog]

2 hours ago, Scouts Honor said:

i thought you were going to say this photo... you almost described it as well

Excellent! Love the backstory as well. Cheers! 

[Eagle26]

Here’s a good analogy… from this picture, more voting districts voted red, but blue actually got more votes. Therefore, blue was actually more popular. I think there’s very good evidence to suggest this would hold true in the popularity of freestyle vs Greco

[Jim L]

12 hours ago, Eagle26 said:

 

These are both correct in a way. As others have mentioned, world entry’s don’t tell us how popular it is world wide, but it should help us realize it is more widespread and it’s popularity is probably more than we give it credit for in the US. However, when you look at countries that have high populations, freestyle tends to be more popular, which would lead to the conclusion that freestyle is more popular. Yes, we don’t have the exact data, but it’s pretty easy to draw conclusions from the data we do have.  Look at the population for countries such as USA, Russia, Iran, China, Japan, India, and all prefer freestyle… that’s probably the majority of the worlds wrestling population right there

I suspect in the most populous countries especially India and China neither FS or GR is widely popular. 

I have read that even in Russia wrestling is a niche sport and wrestlers are mostly unknown except in the Caucus regions.