Buvaisar Saytiev Amazing Move Plus Wrestling in General

When it comes to wrestling, I have great respect for the sport. Below is the video from one of the modern greats.

Saytiev is truly one of the greatest in the sport today and for him to pull off such amazing moves is just extraordinary. The guy started winning big in 1995 and is still at the top of his game.

Having never done freestyle wrestling myself I have to respect the sport having trained with some wrestlers in no-gi grappling at my academy. There takedown defense I particularly respect as well as their top control. These guys are very quick and well-conditioned and it just shows how great this sport is in producing powerful and agile athletes.

Sadly, while MMA has experienced a tremendous boost in growth and other sports like Judo and Sambo have benefitted from popularity and support from the authorities, others have been declining.

Taking a look at wrestling, I found this particularly to be the case. I was looking at the number of clubs available for adults in two major capitals of the world, London and Moscow and frankly I was amazed. Basically there is probably one or two clubs total per each of these cities where an adult can go and train wrestling which is aweful. I don't know what those federations are doing but certainly they are doing very little if anything at all to boost the number of clubs offering GrecoRoman and Freestyle wrestling.

There is a lot of discussion in fact to whether you can do wrestling from the adult age having never done it before. Some say you can't but I think this is a problem with the motivation schemes that some of the trainers especially in Russia have. The trainers do not want to take you unless they can make a champion out of you in five or ten years time. Of course if you are 25 or even 20, they can't and in this case they can't make any money or get any title themselves as a world-class trainer.

A similar thing goes on in Judo but thankfully there are so many Judo enthusiasts out there teaching the sport, it is growing immensely without any need to focus on elite athletes or money.

Frankly BJJ has an edge here. It is not troubled with all this necessary insurance or affiliation. Just look at Judo. If you have great skills and you are from abroad and just want to come over and compete at some local tournament, there is a whole lot of paperwork you have to deal with. Why do you have to be a member of the British Judo Association? If a guy breaks his neck, his BJA membership will not help him that is for sure.

BJJ is free from this, at least for now. The only crazy thing in this regard I have seen is that in the UK for the BJJ AbuDhabi Pro Trials you have to have an EU member passport which is absurd. So if you are Russian, Ukranian, Belarussian - you can't compete at all. Ridiculous.