This is a paper I wrote for my freshman english class, English 110:  Composition.  I received a 91% for this effort.  My instructor told me it would have been higher, but I "used an unorthodox style" and was "borderline insulting my readers."  Oh well, read on anyway.

When I was a young child, I used to love Saturday mornings.  I would wake up early, get dressed, eat some sugar-coated cereal, and sit in front of the television.  However, I did not watch the cartoons, like most children my age.  I had my own addiction:  professional wrestling.  I would watch for the hour it was on, fascinated by the show these giants of men would put on.  Sure, I knew the outcomes were predetermined, but I didn't care.  I still thought of it as a sport.

Today, not much has changed.  I still watch wrestling religiously.  It is still a sport in my eyes, as it should be.  Professional wrestling is a sport, perhaps the most perfect sport there is.  As such, I have always thought that professional wrestling should be in the Olympics. 

Most people scoff at such a thing.  "Professional wrestling in the Olympic Games," they say.  "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard."  Well, I am here to back up my claims.  Professional wrestling should be in the Olympics, not only because it is a sport, not only because of how easy it is to implement, but because of the benefits it would bring to the Games.

In order for wrestling to be even remotely considered for the Olympics, it must first be established that it is indeed a sport.  To establish this, I will take away the five basic arguments that most people use to disprove wrestling's ability to be in the Olympics.

The first argument is that the outcomes of wrestling matches are predetermined, so there really is no winner.  The gold medals would be given away based on a predetermined result.  I must say that this is the most ignorant argument used.  Only people who know absolutely nothing about wrestling would use this one.  The fact is that it doesn't matter who wins or loses a match, its how the wrestlers performed in the match.  That's how wrestling fans see it.  A good match is still a good match regardless of who wins because the winner was predetermined.  The fact that somebody won simply indicates the end of the performance.  Think of it as doubles figure skating:  the two athletes work together to put on a routine.  That is how professional wrestling is really viewed by the fans.  Sure, it would have to be a sport that is scored by judges under this line of thinking, but there are plenty of those in the Olympics.  That would be a non-factor.

The second argument that comes up is the fact that professional wrestlers are just that:  professionals.  The Olympics are for amateurs.  That must not be a rule many people know about.  I suppose someone should tell all those NBA players that, because I guess they are disqualified.   Those three little letters, NBA, just prove that argument wrong. 

The third argument I hear is that professional wrestling is only in the United States, much like American Football.  Because of this, both are not in the Olympics.  However, this is another ignorant statement that is made by people who know nothing about wrestling.  This great sport is all over the world.  There are multiple organizations in Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Great Britain.  Most other nations only have one or two promotions, such as France, Italy, and most of the Europe and Africa nations.  I will readily admit that professional wrestling isn't in absolutely every nation, nor is it big in every nation.  Some people would even say that this gives the nations with lots of wrestlers almost a monopoly on the gold.  I'd like to point out that the USA had a monopoly on basketball when NBA players were allowed to participate.  It took many years for the rest of the world to catch up, but they did.  I expect the same thing to happen with wrestling.

Perhaps the fourth argument angers both professional wrestlers and fans the most:  wrestlers aren't real athletes.  Anyone can do what they do; it isn't real or anything.  Professional wrestlers are perhaps some of the best athletes in the world.  Granted, not all of them are world-class, but a good majority of them come from legitimate athletic backgrounds.  Many played football either in college or professionally, or were track stars, or any other collegiate or professional sport.  In recent years, amateur wrestlers are becoming huge stars as professional wrestlers, including Kurt Angle (former Olympic gold medallist), Brock Lesnar (two-time NCAA world champion), and Shelton Benjamin (amateur wrestling standout). 

Wrestling is also a unique sport in that all different kinds of conditioning are required to be successful.  Wrestlers require the strength to lift opponents, the stamina to wrestle for 20 to 30 minutes, the smarts to put together an effective performance, the mental toughness to get through big mistakes, the speed to hit the ropes, and the toughness to take a whole lot of punishment and still get up for more.  Most sports only require a few of those attributes.  Professional wrestling uses them all and more.  If anyone says these people aren't athletes, they are right; they are more than that.

I also firmly believe that professional wrestlers sacrifice more for their sport than any other athletes.  Not in any other sport will you find athletes who perform or travel to performances 270 to 300 days a year.  There is no off season for professional wrestling.  Injuries are simply a part of the job, and are worked through.  Perhaps the best example of this physical and mental toughness is Terry Funk.  In the documentary Beyond the Mat, he visits his doctor and has his knee looked at.  The doctor tells him the prognosis isn't good, and he needs a new knee right now.  Terry asks if he doesn't have the operation done, if he will be able to get around comfortably later in life.  The doctor responds, "You shouldn't be able to get around comfortably now" (Blaustein).  The people who do this for a living are so incredibly tough in both body and mind that it is probably beyond what most people can even comprehend.  To say that they are not athletes is just insane. 

Finally, the fifth argument is that there is rampant steroid use in this sport, and the International Sports Federations can't regulate it.  I would like to point out that those same Federations can't even regulate the sports they are supposed to.  This year (the 2004 Athens Olympics) was incredible, with a record amount of athletes caught using illegal substances.  To quote a statistic from USA Today, there was "[. . .] a record 24 athletes ousted for drug-related violations [. . .]" (Weir). This includes three gold medalists, by the way.  I would say that this is a non-factor as well, seeing as how not only can these Federations not regulate in the first place, but they would catch those who did cheat after-the-fact. 

Now that I have established how professional wrestling is not only a sport but is on par with other Olympic sports, the next step would be "How would it be implemented into the Olympics?"  Well, it's quite simple.  First off, there would be two divisions:  singles (one on one) and tag team (two on two).  Under this system, each country would send six of their best wrestlers and one or two of its best referees (who are a very important part of any match and cannot be disregarded), which allows the fans to see plenty of wrestlers they've never seen before.  This would draw in many more paying fans, but more on that later.

The scoring system that the judges would use would be similar to those of most sports.  Points would be based on difficulty of maneuvers, ring psychology (how and why moves are performed), charisma, and how the match ends, among other things.  However, this scoring system would be unique in that it would also give points for how much the wrestlers get the crowd into the match.  That's right; the fans would have an impact on the scoring!  While I think that this part of the score should not make or break a match, I just feel that wrestling fans are the harshest critics of their chosen sport in the world, and as such they know when they are watching a good match.  Yes, there could be problems due to countries packing the stands and having large sections boo other nation's wrestlers, but the Olympics are all about friendly competition and integrity.  This sort of thing could even be looked upon as doping (it would illegally influence the scores, just as any steroid would), which we all know would result in a disqualification.

Adding professional wrestling to the Olympics would also bring in a substantial amount of money to the Games (and isn't that really what the Olympics is all about?).  I went back and looked at the numbers (keep in mind that these are numbers in the USA, not worldwide, for the year 2003).  Professional wrestling's top rated show, WWE Smackdown, drew an average Nielson rating of 3.35 for the year.  WWE Raw drew an average of 3.13 (which is consistently very high on the Nielson Top 10 Cable TV Shows) (Scaia).  The Olympics on NBC (where ratings were the highest) drew an average of 22.0 ("May the TV ratings games truly begin").  Wow.  That means that, on average, 22 million people watched the Olympics each night (Nielson Media Research).  While I feel that I could account for this over-inflated number (people only watch certain sports and then stop, people watch it because it is the ONLY THING ON, etc.), I would not have any real facts to back up my conclusions.  However, I will say this, even if it is only based on observation on my part, and not on any proven fact:  I have talked to many, many wrestling fans over the Internet in my life.  None of them, not a single one, claimed to have any real interest in the Olympics (with the exception of the amateur wrestling).  Even giving the Olympics the benefit of the doubt with the overlap of viewers, which I will give them to be two-thirds, that is still roughly one million fans that don't watch the Games.  Do the Olympics need that extra ratings point?  No, probably not.  Does it hurt them?  Of course it doesn't.  I realize this sounds rather nit-picky, but one million more people are still one million more people.  Money is still money, no matter how you look at it.

The Olympics could even get away with charging extra money to see the professional wrestling events.  The pay-per-view market has been a huge reason businesses like WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) continue to make money each year.  Last year, the average PPV buyrate, including all the smaller ones, was 0.80 ("WWE PPV Buyrates").  This means approximately 320,000 people bought each PPV each month.  Seeing as how each PPV sells for about $30, this comes out to be about $9.6 million before taxes and before paying the companies who carry them.  Even after all the costs have been taken out, that is still a substantial amount of money.  More importantly, the Olympics could get away with doing this.  Not only are wrestling fans fiercely loyal to their chosen sport, but they are also willing to pay to see quality matches.  The best proof I have of that is the PPV buyrates of WrestleMania, the biggest show of the year.  This is the only thing that I could compare an Olympic Games of professional wrestling to (even though I think it would be bigger).  WrestleMania's average PPV buyrate, from WrestleMania III to XIX, is 3.62.  Therefore, if the Olympics wanted to charge more (which I feel it could get away with) and started at $50, they could theoretically make upwards of $72.4 million before taxes and all that.  That is a ceiling estimate, mind you, and they most likely would make significantly less, but we are still talking millions of dollars from the US alone.  I know that I would pay for this sort of thing. 

Professional wrestling has had some very negative lights thrown on it for years.  People single it out for its corruption and drug use, and yet barely blink when other sports have similar problems.  Professional wrestling is beaten up for so many reasons that are unfounded or unfair.  For that, it will probably never become an Olympic sport.  Perhaps a quotation from Mick Foley (maybe the toughest man to ever wrestle) can sum up how many people feel.

"See, back in 1985, there was a program called 20/20  that challenged the wrestling industry - which kind of portrayed it in a negative light.  [. . .] And for me to stand in front of that television set and see people running down a business that I loved and held dear - even though I knew very little about it [. . .]  That night I went to bed not with visions of sugarplums dancing through my head, but of broken bones, of battered bodies and bloody corpses, saying to myself, 'If it's the last thing I do, if I have to hold myself up for a human sacrifice - the world will respect professional wrestling'" (Foley 346-347).

Yes, the man was talking as a performer (or "in character"), but I think the point is still valid.  We as fans want our sport to be accepted.  So, naturally, the Olympics are the next step.  The pros outweigh the cons, and in the end, everyone wins.  But will this ever happen?  Not in the foreseeable future.  Texas Hold'em Poker will be in the Olympics before professional wrestling, but we still have hope.

Then again, maybe it's for the best if wrestling isn't in the Olympics.  According to the naysayers, professional wrestling is corrupt.  So, logically, to keep more corruption from entering the sport, we should keep it as far away from the Olympics as possible.  Protect the sanctity of the sport, you know. 

Works Cited

"May the TV ratings games truly begin."  1Sept2004.   23Sept2004

            <HTTP: nielsens.ap 01 09 TV SHOWBIZ 2004 www.cnn.com>

Blaustein, Barry, director & Howard, Ron, producer.  Beyond the Mat.  Universal Studios, 1999.

Foley, Mick.  Have a Nice Day.  New York:  ReganBooks, 1999.

Nielson Media Research.  23Sept2004 <HTTP: index.html www.nielsenmedia.com>

Official Website of the Olympic Movement.  23Sept2004

<HTTP: index_uk.asp uk www.olympic.org>

Scaia, Rick.  "2003:  The Battle in Review."  6Jan2004.   23Sept2004

<HTTP: ratings2003recap.shtml features www.onlineonslaught.com>

Weir, Tom.  "Doping cases hit record."  USA Today.  29Aug2004.   23Sept2004

<HTTP: 2004-08-29-doping-usat_x.htm news athens olympics sports www.usatoday.com>

"WWE PPV Buyrates."  23Sept2004 <HTTP: wwebuyrates.html info www.steveswrestling.com>

StretPharmacist is a lot like the Undertaker:  A gimmick that should have never gotten over, but was taken to unbelievable heights.  Also, he is constantly injured.