UFC President Dana White isn't surprised that wrestling has been eliminated from the 2020 Olympic Games, according to a Feb. 13 report from MMA Junkie.
White even went so far as to say that nobody watches the sport.
"The problem is nobody wants to watch it," White said. "Any sport, especially these days, it's about selling tickets and eyeballs and viewers and all these other things. And there's been a lot of people saying, 'You've got to f---ing do something,' but – and Garry (Cook) and I were talking about this yesterday –what this could be is the evolution of mixed martial arts becoming an Olympic sport."
While it may seem on the surface that White was ripping the sport, that is clearly not the case. White and the UFC have funded many wrestling programs over the years, but the problem is that it doesn't translate well to television.
The Olympic committee wants to have sports that people want to watch on television, and wrestling is one of its lowest-drawing events.
"We bring spectators, eyeballs – whether it's TV or whatever it is," White said. "This sport draws. Wrestling doesn't. I can't be the guy to run out and try and save wrestling. I've been doing it for years. You know how many wrestling programs I funded over the past five, six years? A lot. Yeah, I don't want to see wrestling go away either. It's such a big part of the sport. But, something's going to happen here. It's going to evolve into mixed martial arts or something. I don't know. I don't think wrestling is going to go anywhere, but competitive wrestling definitely is."
UFC stars like Chris Weidman and Daniel Cormier were standout college wrestlers.
"I've been battling this problem for years now," White told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) after a news conference for UFC on FUEL TV 7 in London. "Colleges are dropping it. High schools are dropping wrestling. The problem with wrestling is, it's an awesome base for mixed martial arts, for everything – I mean, I've never wrestled, but what I hear it does to guys that wrestle, it changes peoples' lives. It's this grueling, hard work and dedication – all the things that go in with being a wrestler."
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