http://m.fightland.vice.com/blog/th...restling-association?utm_source=fightlandfbus Good news for wrestling in the UK, lets hope they make more of this then UK Judo did!
British Judo made a lot of its sponsorship, unfortunately the international governing bodies didn't appreciate their pioneering spirit. There's a chance the wrestling governing bodies might take a similarly dim view.
The comments in fb about the BJA and the UFC were amazingly misinformed. From what I heard its the french who ruined it for the UK, so the BJA couldn't make best use of it, the UK scene was split about it too, and the head of the BJA stepped down because of it too, all in all a shambles.
I think the UFC is quite good for the profile of wrestling, and certainly in this country the majority of people with an interest in wrestling do so because of MMA.
When they used to be FILA they ran amateur MMA competitions and still have the no-headshots version on their books. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're OK with it. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdw9pyRDABA"]World Championship of MMA FILA 2012: FRA vs UKR - YouTube[/ame]
It's good recognition. It'll take a while for anything to get rolling I think. As Ben says, due to a certain few fighter's popularity in the UFC and wrestling's usefulness in MMA is the reason there is a slight improved interest in wrestling in UK. But look at a lot of timetables of MMA gyms, there's still no wrestling classes. But that's also (once again) lack of general interest to have comps that is worth the gym's time to have wrestling classes. We are a striking style country, I feel. Despite the wrestling history that UK has.
MMA has helped wrestling in this country. There is a wrestling club I go to occasionally and only three of us are there for anything other than wrestling. The rest of the club (maybe 10-15?) are just there for the benefit of wrestling. On the flipside I know a few MMA gyms that are wrestle-heavy because they believe they will carry an advantage over other gyms. Higher Level and Shooters Dundee spring to mind. Both wrestle very well.
In London there's LAW in South Kensington. Run by a Singaporean, full of Middle Eastern and Eastern European wrestlers. Other wrestling classes are run independantly in random places or as part of a MMA gym timetable. As said in a thread, I was wearing a wrestling club shirt and hobbling about due to my knee injury, next thing I know some random Asian guy with cauliflower ears points and shouts "wrestler"! To this day....dunno who he was pointing to.
Judo was at one point. Ray Mears had to learn Judo as a compulsory subject separate from PE (literally watching him talk about it on TV now, he had to wrestle in mongolia to get his passport back)
If coaches were full time professionals, schools wouldn't be able to afford to bring them in. It's a circular problem.
