“Ignorant Wrestling Community”: USA’s Kamal Bey Slams Haters Over Istanbul Paris Olympic Qualifier Backlash

Greco-Roman wrestling is a pretty formidable subset of wrestling and has ushered quite a lot of glory over the years. With popular names such as Artur Aleksanyan, Aleksandr Karelin, Hamid Sourian and many more. But it has also gained a lot of notoriety over the years, making it a lacklustre, often overlooked cousin of Freestyle Wrestling. With viewers and denizens tuning it to freestyle wrestling more often, what makes Greco Roman be viewed through a derisive lens? For one, fans are of the opinion that it is only second to Freestyle wrestling due to it struggling to find its niche and place.

Owing to the dissimilar styles and techniques as that of Freestyle wrestling could also be one reason why many people stick to the conventional style as opposed to this. Their lesser medal tally might just be another reason why they stick out like a sore thumb. Facing backlash about Greco-Roman not being a big thing in the US, Kamal Bey seems to have faced a double whammy of late. The wrestler finds himself at the receiving end of it all owing to not just his defeat in the Istanbul Paris Olympic qualifier but also being answerable to a fan’s ignorance, which isn’t bliss in this case. 

After his victory in Jordan Bryce Center for the US Olympic team, everyone expected Kamal Bey to earn the 77kg-category ticket from the qualifier. For the last several years, Kamal Bey has remained the last man standing in the 77kg category in Greco-Roman wrestling. But after his defeat in the World Olympic Games Qualifier, that seems to be a distant past to several wrestling fans. And now he’s embroiled in a fresh controversy about fans showcasing their blase attitude towards Greco-Roman wrestling, for which Bey did come in clutch with his own inimitable grace.

Eventually, the wrestler had to face consistent online abuse after his defeat on Friday night. That led Bey to put a firm message on x clarifying his side to the fans and attackers. He took the onus of the American Greco-Roman wrestling community on himself, expressing a grave concern: “I hate how Greco-Roman athletes are treated like subhuman creatures in the U.S.” He further added, “I hate how people bad mouth Greco-Roman and its athletes in the United States.” This once again brings to the fore a persistent problem. The fans on the bandwagon hating on Greco-Roman weren’t familiar with its top-notch techniques, moves and maneuvers, as called out by Bey himself. He urged the fan to do his/her homework about the X-factor it actually holds once properly learnt.

Historically, Greco-Roman wrestling has seen a lackadaisical approach at the American college level when it comes to providing ample structure. As a result, the US has diminished Olympic participation in the event. Still, the criticism never remains back seated. Such partiality led Kamal Bey to vent out his sorrow by stating, “I hate how the love is so divided that we forget regardless of style it’s all just wrestling. I hate that people forget we’re human and we make mistakes.” But he also called for a change in the situation by saying, “I wish for change, I fight for change in an ignorant wrestling community.” Let’s look at how Greco-Roman wrestling has been received in the past.

2 years ago, a reddit post one such curious George took to a wrestling video and struck a stark question of sorts as to which fares better in the grand scheme of things – Greco or Freestyle. The user named gmdmd –“Sorry if this is a stupid question- but is the overall talent pool in Greco generally thought to be better or worse than freestyle? Super casual never-wrestled fan but it doesn’t seem like high level NCAA wrestlers care as much for Greco-Roman”.

 It was in context to a video containing snippets of hulking Greco Roman wrestlers which prompted the aforementioned user to pose this doubt whether it pales in comparison to the much more glamorous Freestyle wrestling. To this user, a swift response was hurled by flowingandrolling who said that-“It’s taken very seriously around the world. Freestyle gets more glory but Greco is truly an amazing sport. Talent is very high , In USA we focus on folk a lot maybe 2-4 months of Greco. But it is absolutely wild it requires strength speed and technique and your attacks are cut in half.”

Another user was quick to retort that even outside the jurisdiction of the US, it wasn’t given as much impetus. They stated that –“Lower overall, even outside US. I was on the Kazakhstan youth team for Greco, and it was very clear we were the “B team” – “A” grapplers went to judo or freestyle. This is the case in all of former Soviet Union, and Mongolia also: the top talent goes to freestyle and judo, while Greco is filled with people who couldn’t make the national team for those sports, or people who just love throwing people across the room.”

The user seemed to have first-hand experience with Greco-Roman style of grappling and wrestling and lent his credibility on the matter further -“There are some countries where top talent goes Greco – Scandinavian countries come to mind – but my experience competing against them is that their A team is far below B team in the US, Iran, or former Soviet Union, and we had no trouble against them.”

Cut to 2024, this arcane mindset still hasn’t changed as Greco-Roman wrestling received some backlash from viewers and Kamal Bey, a Greco-Roman wrestler himself, called out the blatant ignominy of the fan fittingly. But what else seems to have irked fans?

Kamal Bey bowed out to tactical superiority 

Kamal Bey had to swallow a defeat in the penultimate fight of the Paris Olympics qualifier against Hungarian wrestler Zoltan Levai. In contrast to the heightening expectations, the match ended with no such charismatic wrestling moves or maneuvers. In fact, the final scoreline, 3-0 might prove the game one-sided. But in reality, the contest panned out to be a dead rubber. The reason was improvisation. 

For a larger part of the bout, Levai continued to hold Kamal Bey in the center position, while Bey remained in the defensive position. Such an orthodox technique handed Levai an edge over the American challenger. Later, Kamal Bey gave the 2-time European medalist a step-out point. From there, his return chance became zero. But as per several fans, the 6-minute long defensive holding was nowhere to help anyone from a larger perspective. Rather, it may prove a poor advertisement for the sport. Now, after Kamal Bey’s dismissal, only three American Greco-Roman wrestlers will fly to the Paris Olympics. Will we see tides shifting in favor of the overlooked Greco-Roman wrestlers? Time will tell.