Five Brief And Obvious Points About The IOC Dropping Wrestling From The Olympics

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1) I don't really care that much about this, but bullsquat is bullsquat, folks. Taking wresting out of the Olympics because you need to modernize them is silly on every level. It's an event that honors countries, kind of an old-school concept, and is only important because of that. You also have people honoring a bonfire and claiming to a tradition that goes back millennium. I call bullsquat. So does everyone else with eyes.

2) Unlike many events in the Olympics, wrestling does not require the audience to accept the word of a judge, or panel of judges, to tell us who won or lost. And unlike running or lifting or swimming or any number of other medal events, there's actually strategy involved, rather than Do That Thing Real Hard. So there's that.

3) The same countries do not win these events every year. That kind of matters, too. And if this is really out just due to Londoners not liking it very much, um, yeesh.

4) The Olympics will still gives medals out to things like horse ballet (or dressage; you might remember that Mitt Romney's wife was all over this), synchronized swimming (an event that will never, ever, get past the Saturday Night Live crush skit), modern pentathlon (a vanity gimmick five event thing that includes, and am I not making this up, laser pistols), badminton (good grief) and ping pong (a pale substitute for beer pong). Throwing wrestling out for any of these events seems absurd on every level.

5) If you believe anything the IOC tells you, given its ridiculous history of graft and more graft for site locations, I've got a bridge to sell you. With five rings and flames.

Personally, I'd like to see a competing event (X-Games? Sure, why not) take on all of the sports that the IOC forgets. That gets you softball, baseball and wrestling right off the bat. Then throw in stuff like team paintball (tell me this wouldn't be more watchable), bowling (eh, why not), lacrosse (give Native American tribes the chance to go in as their own nations, dammit) and what the hell, anything to give us more tackle football.

And if this somehow leads to the Olympics becoming not important at all, and the IOC becoming a sad little backwater of corruption that increasingly loses out on global advertising and support?

Well, what part of this is bad, really?