TNA Impact Wrestling has stood up to protest the IOC decision to cancel wrestling as an Olympic sport starting in 2020. According to rajah.com on Feb. 12, TNA has also asked the WWE to step up to help fight for wrestling in the Olympic Games.
Dixie Carter, the President of TNA Impact Wrestling asked the WWE and other wrestling organizations worldwide to join with them to make their voices heard. She called the IOC decision "disheartening" and said that it hurts the "tens of millions' of people around the world who either compete in amateur wrestling or take part in it.
TNA Impact Wrestling star Kurt Angle won the Gold Medal in the 1996 Summer Olympic Games before going on to win the world championship in both the WWE and TNA Impact Wrestling. Angle called winning the Gold Medal for his country to be one of the "greatest moments" in his life.
The IOC said they eliminated wrestling from the Olympics to make room for another sport to join its "25 core sports" later this year. They said they removed it after a secret ballot, while keeping other "core sports" such as badminton, handball and table tennis. The decathlon was thought to be the sport eliminated, so the removal of wrestling comes as a surprise.
While TNA Impact Wrestling hopes that they can save the sport, the same uproar occurred when the IOC eliminated softball and baseball from the competition a few years back, and nothing was done to rectify it. Baseball rebounded with the World Baseball Classic, but softball has struggled since the removal.
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