age” of American wrestling is the gaudy showmanship and theater of make-
believe “professional” wrestling, currently touted as “sports entertain-
ment.” There are attempts to revive the art, however. Today, there is a form
of wrestling known as pancrasein Japan that resembles catch-as-catch-can.
Two official amateur wrestling systems exist today that may be de-
fined as international styles because they have attempted to impose a rule
structure that is uniform in application and that is intended to allow
wrestlers from all nations to participate: Greco-Roman and freestyle
wrestling. Both types are Olympic events. Freestyle wrestling allows com-
petitors to grasp any part of the body and use the legs for sweeps and take-
downs. Greco-Roman allows only the upper body to be used; the legs can-
not be employed to sweep the opponent, nor can they be touched for grabs
or takedowns. Both forms of wrestling are similar in that competitors at-
tempt to pin their opponents by forcing the shoulders to touch the mat.
Freestyle wrestling is practiced worldwide and is the most popular form of
the sport. In North America, high school and college students compete in
freestyle wrestling tournaments with modified rules, such as changes in the
time allowed to pin an opponent. Greco-Roman is most popular in Europe.
Due to the lack of worldwide acceptance of this style, however, there is talk
at the present time of removing this category from Olympic competition.
Wrestling has traditionally been a male pursuit, but with the close of
the twentieth century, female wrestling began to receive greater acceptance.
Jûdô has allowed female competition for a number of decades, and in 1987,
the Soviet Union allowed female sambo competitions. There is still no
worldwide sanctioning body for female Greco-Roman or freestyle wrestlers.
However, with the growing demand for gender equality and the passage of
laws enforcing it in the United States and many European nations, it is likely
that female participation in wrestling will be allowed internationally.
Wrestling is a martial art and sport that transcends national bound-
aries and cultural identities. Beyond the general criteria presented at the
beginning of this entry, hundreds of recognized regional variants of
wrestling exist in the world. A small listing includes the following: trente,
from Romania and Moldavia; kokh,the national wrestling system of Ar-
menia; Georgian jacket-wrestling, which resembles jûdô in many respects;
dumog,one of the better-known wrestling systems from the Philippines;
Schwingen, the national wrestling system of Switzerland; tegumi, a
wrestling system from the island of Okinawa; lutte Parisienne,the French
combat wrestling system that is often associated with the art of savate;and
Corsican wrestling, from the Mediterranean island of Corsica.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is safe to assume that
wrestling will continue to grow in popularity throughout the world. The
fate of specific cultural forms of wrestling is unknown; perhaps as the718 Wrestling and Grappling: Europe