I think a lot of people don’t really understand the intricacies of it, so they don’t appreciate enough of what should be appreciated, to a spectator off the street it’s just two guys flopping around on a mat trying to pin each other. American football is very popular, but people who don’t like it have a very simplistic view of it. “It’s just two teams of guys in tight pants throwing a ball around and crashing into each other.” But they probably couldn’t tell you how to run a Tampa-2 defense, and if they were in an offensive huddle they’d probably think the quarterback was speaking Sanskrit...
But yeah, I think football has a more easily understandable base-level game, particularly in the scoring, for a casual fan. This team is going one way, the other team goes the opposite way, and you’re trying to move through the green area and get the ball into the box that’s painted in the home team’s colors. Simple enough to enjoy your first game and learn from there. I have no clue how wrestling is scored lmao. I know you’re supposed to stay inside a circle, you ultimately want to try to pin the guy before the time runs out, and on the way you score or give up points for various actions, like I think there’s something where if you reverse yourself out of a hold and get yourself into the dominant position, you get points for that. Or you can lose points for illegal infractions. So maybe you can win on points if nobody gets pinned? I’m only medium-sure about any of this, haha. But the point is that I’m a big sports guy, albeit not a wrestler, but I wasn’t hanging out with the drama club in high school, one of my best friends was a wrestler. So you’d think maybe I’d at least know a little something, like I’m ok with understanding basketball despite never playing on a team myself. But I’ve seen so many games on TV, I have at least a casual fan’s understanding. I don’t know what the triangle offense actually is, but I know the basic rules and gameplay. Wrestling, not so much. Depending on the accuracy of my previous guesstimation about what I think I know about it, I might know just a little, and that’s probably a lot more than most people know, and what I know is nowhere near enough to watch a wrestling match and know what the hell is going on, haha. And I think it’s just an exposure thing. Other the Olympics every four years, or maybe on one of the deep ESPN channels, like ESPN-17 or something, lmao, maybe they’d have college wrestling occasionally. I do know it’s big in the Midwest, especially Iowa, so I might also be regionally ignorant and there are more fans than I know. But football, baseball, hockey, basketball, and I guess soccer (original recipe football), those are the sports I could reasonably learn without playing because collegiate and/or professional leagues have enough televised games where I could watch and learn over a period of time, getting additional in-depth knowledge from the analysts. Anything else is just hard to find, consistently. Or I guess I should throw in golf and tennis, those get good air time too.
And lastly, a lot of dudes are uncomfortable with the singlets and seeing everyone’s business all out there lmfao. But some free life-advice: never make fun of a man with a cauliflower ear☝️
I was captain of the wrestling team in HS my senior year. It’s a lot of fun for other wrestlers to watch, but to outsiders... it just looks gay lmao. People like MMA since there’s striking. I love wrestling and it’s a great foundation to have if you’re getting into MMA. There’s a reason why all the strikers in the UFC are the most popular though.
I don't KNOW why, but my personal reason is that I don't like watching people beat each other up! :) Being strong is impressive, but you have to be able to control yourself in order for your strength to be admirable. So, I don't watch wrestling because it's basically just these fully-grown men beating each other up like my toddler little brothers do except for they're about 200 pounds heavier than them- which makes it even more dangerous (if nobody noticed).
Don't know why, I clicked on a wrestling vid last week and now youtube goes "So you like wrestling?" and now I have plenty of those videos. It's nice, it's intense, and really fast
It's a fair point 🤔 it really should be. But I think WWE, has a lot of history and they promoted themselves well. Plus in addition, it's kinda like a male soap opera or talk show.
I know guys would hate me for saying this but lets think about what happens on jerry springer. People hit each other with chairs, need security to hold them back and they taunt each other... Sound familiar 🤔 imagine allowing women like that to go into a ring to fight 😳 I think that's WWE. It's simply a fun show like that, like the romance of a fight. Vs just simply the sport.
But I feel like other sports also have that same fate as well. Still done but just not as highly advertised
High bar to enjoyment as a fan. While throws and suplexes are immediately exciting, most grappling it's not clear to a casual fan what's going on and why. This makes it harder then a lot of sports to get into.
That said i have wondered if there's potential to boost it at least for top competitions or the olympics. They really should try - wrestling almost got booted out of the olympics. There's a big fan base of mma fans who can at least be potentially interested in a little high level wrestling.
They ought to be having guys like Couture, GSP, Lesnar doing commentary on the wrestling in the olympics as a way to pull in mma fans and a little bit sell them on 'hey this might be some potential great mma fighters coming up as well as seeing really top level grappling' and explaining things for that sort of potential crossover fan. Instead, it's hard to even find the matches.
Because every sports that has a hug popularity has a point where people can connect and become a part of it. Boxing or wrestling, Judo and other sports don´t have that many connection spots like soccer, basketball or other sports. Bigger sports have managed to build a connection between participant and watcher. WWE or other wrestling companies solve this problem by creating stories and characters that have friends and enemies in the locker room. Additionally they give their wrestler ring names and build a merchandise system around them. They have big events where the best wrestlers attend. Similar to that other sports also big events like Super-Bowl in American Football, the World Cup in Soccer, ice hockey has an on going season with different teams playing against each other. Wrestling as far I can see doesn´t have this connection. They attend at the Olympic but also there they are just one competition in a line of many others.
I do not know why, but to me, it seems a very predictable sport, because it's very very structured. So is not that exciting for the viewer.
I see wrestling as an athletic event rather than sport, I know they are both closely related, however... sports are competitions more focused on entertainment and heavy on markenting. While athleticism are competitions that to me are more focused on excellence, and the display of a skill, dedication, craft, even artistic.
Bella for me it's just not something I'm interested in watching. Maybe part of that is that I don't enjoy watching 2 guys in all those different "holds" and positions. But I do acknowledge that it's at least a genuine sport as opposed to the WWE stuff.
Much like boxing it’s too limiting. Until the heavyweights they must match competitors by weight class and tracking someone’s weight over a career is too tedious. Baseball, basketball, golf.. all the major sports have all the athletes competing with each other. It’s not like a football game for 140 pounders and one for 180 pounders are played separately
Well professional wrestling is way out there while collegiate and high school wrestling is a sport but no one has ever thought it would be commercially successful- which is probably why professional wrestling came to be what it is- entertainment more than actual sport
It is just not in the US. US already has so many athletes and attention to the four main sports. That's the main reason why rugby, soccer, cricket, etc aren't big in the US. Since a good portion of our best athletes don't play it and there's less money being made in it then it gets less attention.
Guys, rolling around, on the floor, with other guys, in Leotards? Yeah, that is a TOTAL MYSTERY as to how that hasn't caught on with Heterosexual males that LOVE Sports!! Now, if you had two women, in leotards, wrestling, well that, oh, wait, that ha been done, and some might call it 'Porn'!
People don't understand the rules. Most people I know of that dated a wrestler don't know how it works. They go to all their boyfriend's matches and (obviously) cheer for him, but don't understand what's actually going on. It's like how Americans view cricket. We don't know what is happening.
I think MMA stole the light even though I don't like MMA because it like 2 stupid people beating the shit out of each other while people out of the cage laughing. if you want to do MMA for self-defense then keep it in the gym don't go to championships
TV coverage. It's not on tv very much, only college wrestling on occasion.
I guess it was only viewed as an olympic sport. It never had the national coverage or the professional leagues like football, hockey, baseball, basketball did when they were first formed.
Cause it's not that fun to watch two guys in skintight suits writhe around on each other. Especially when you can watch MMA where you have wrestling combined with all kinds of other martial arts.
Its the most popular sport in my country, thats why my country competes with Iran and Russia often. Its a traditional here to wrestle and I also did from age of 7 to 15 but then left it, well its not that common in Western European countries cause they aren't real man, they can't keep up with strenght games and most of them have a fantasy of being cucked by immigrants and blacks living in their country lol.
I agree I wish that the real Wrestling was more popular than WWE cause WWE is all stunt acts, they got know how to fall and I wish there was more Sumo Wrestling too
Because it must be fake or it wouldn't be entertaining, if they actually tried to use the techniques for real they would either not work, or they would be leathal. It's theater not manslaughter.
I think that it is generally because it isn’t a long lasting sport duration wise. I am not sure how long the average bout lasts but I’m guessing that this doesn’t help with making it popular for tv which ultimately drives up fan numbers
becoz , it's people's likes and dislikes.. some like cricket, some football, some kabaddi... u like the games u would like to try and play, not all find it fun enough to try (most probably coz of the injuries)
It’s gay. Before quarantine, there was a wrestling class after school and I saw one guys heads literally in the other guys ass. They looked like dinosaurs trying to make out
@MysteriousDarkness Oh, OK. Well, it's a bit arcane of a sport. It's also very quick so you don't have the drama of things like the big inning in baseball or game winning drive in football or time management in football or basketball. It's an individual sport really and the big sports are all team sports because of the nature of the drama involved in gameplay.
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