It is not too many times that wrestling gets an opportunity to receive pre-meet coverage of any of its major events in the nation’s largest newspaper, USA Today. The Metropolitan Wrestling Association and its partners USA Wrestling and NYC2012 hosted the 2003 World Freestyle Championships that attracted 12,500 fans to the finals never received one inch of pre event publicity in any major newspaper let alone the New York Times or NY Daily news.
For some of you who may not have seen the article that appeared Tuesday in USA Today is simply quite amazing. There was a front page listing, a banner with a photo in the Sports Section and a 3/4 second page story on page 3 with additional 3 photo’s about the 2005 Asics Beach Wrestling Championships being held at Long Beach, Long Island on Aug. 13th, 2005. If you missed it, click the link and save it as it maybe the only one of its kind for a while.
www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/summer/2005-07-11-beach-wrestling_x.htm
As Neil Duncan, a partner in TW Promotions for Asics stated eloquently when asked what does Asics get out of this being that the competitors do not wear shoes. His answer was, ” I am in wrestling and anything that helps wrestling is good for Asics and lets give it a shot. ”
Wrestling needs to be in front of people as we do not have enough people involved either as competitors or as fans.
If we build the fan base, the competitors will come and we know we have millions of potential wrestlers and fans in the largest urban centers of America who wouldn’t know real wrestling from Smackdown if they tripped over it.
Please support the effort by either attending, telling others to attend and if you can, send a contribution to the beneficiary of the entire event, the USAW/MWA Beat the Streets Program.
Go to www.mwausa.org for more information about the tournament and the Beat the Streets Program and how you can help building the base of wrestling in the largest city in the United States. There are well over 1.2 million kids in the schools today who would love to wrestle. Your small donation would go a long way to building wrestling in the United States.
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