Wrestlers

Wrestlers

High school, college, and Olympic wrestlers are more commonly referred to as amateur wrestlers to distinguish these athletes from their showy counterparts in pro wrestling. Both men and women wrestle at this level, however it is much more popular among men. Wrestlers at the amateur level may practice several different styles. Freestyle and Greco-Roman are the styles currently practiced at the Olympic Games. Collegiate or Scholastic wrestling is similar to these styles and is used by wrestlers in high school and college. Wrestlers in all of these styles must be able to maintain a specific weight to remain in a weight class, by which they are paired up at a match. A match’s rules vary according to the style being practiced, and therefore wrestlers at this level must be well schooled in the rules governing their matches.

Sumo Wrestlers

A contact sport long practiced by the Japanese, the sport of sumo wresting is related to the Shinto religion. As it is practiced today, there is still a great deal of ritual involved. Sumo wrestlers are well recognized for their large size and body mass. In Sumo, two wrestlers face off in a circular ring. A wrestler wins by either forcing his opponent out of the ring, or forcing his opponent to touch the mat with a body part other than the bottoms of his feet. Other rules disqualify one sumo wrestler and grant the other the victory, including if one uses an illegal technique, or also if one’s belt comes undone during the match. It typically only takes the Sumo wrestlers a few seconds to determine a match.

Pro Wrestlers

Professional wrestlers are capable both of the athleticism necessary to evade potential injury as well as the ability to conjure up a character-like image in the heat of a dramatized and story-lined athletic competition. While both men and women participate in professional wrestling, most of the pro wrestlers are men. Pro wrestlers tend to be excessively large in physique, both because of their roles as larger than life entertainment figures and as a necessary result of being violently thrown around wrestling mats on a daily basis. Pro wrestlers, unlike those at the high school or collegiate levels, are not matched up by weight but rather by fighting style. Therefore, while the majority of the pro wrestlers are greatly larger than even a most athletic man or woman, there are often great size discrepancies among the wrestlers themselves. Pro wrestling for woman has risen to the fore of the sport since the 1980s. However, along with this increase in women in the sport came the entertainment side’s marketing of females not as athletes but rather as “Divas” utilizing more of the “sex sells” marketing appeal.