On Tuesday, February 12, the International Olympic Commission recommended that wrestling should not be included in their 25 core sports as of the 2020 summer games.

I wrestled for more than half of my life, so this decision is intimately dear to me. Growing up in the sport, I learned so much about life and myself in the wrestling room. I know I am not alone in this. Wrestling is the sixth most popular sport for boys in high school in the US according to the 2007–2008 High School Athletics Participation Survey. Millions of young men wrestle worldwide as a sport, but this is an activity that transcends organized athletics. Wrestling permeates every part of our society, such as when children wrestle each other for fun or even in the context of the biblical story Jacob wrestling with the Angel and being renamed Israel. Wrestling embodies what it means to fight, what it means to struggle, what it means to persevere in a way that I cannot see in other sports. Its one-on-one nature and brutal yet elegant style serve as a metaphor for life distilled into six-minute matches. This same metaphor cannot be made for tennis, basketball or golf. Each of these already has their major tournaments and professional championships.

This decision is practically a death sentence to the sport. The mountaintop for wrestling is an Olympic gold medal. Young wrestlers will no longer have that dream now that their mountaintop is being toppled by the IOC in the name of ratings. It seems that even in an event meant for amateur sports, the rich cannot help but get richer.

I believe that wrestling and track/field are the truest Olympic sports because they are open to everyone from any background; they are the sports that are true to the games as an ideal. That ideal means that the Olympics are a global competition. To be truly global, minimizing the amount of capital necessary to train and compete is essential. Almost anyone can go run on a track or go roll on a mat; very few have the opportunity to train for yachting, golfing, or horseback riding. This is emphasized by the fact that 27 different countries won Olympic medals for wrestling during the 2012 games. Every continent, with the exceptions of Australia and Antarctica, was represented on those podiums.

Wrestling has always been a part of the Olympics. Wrestlers competed below the shadow of Mount Olympus in ancient times for an olive branch. When the modern games began in 1896, wrestling was one of the events in those games. Wrestling also gives the world great Olympic moments as well. Last year, the 74kg freestyle gold medal match was between Sadegh Goudarzi of Iran and Jordan Burroughs of the United States. Burroughs won the match 2-0. After the match there was a moment that defies current international politics and will likely last forever. Burroughs and Goudarzi, the United States and Iran, stood with one arm wrapped around the other as friendly competitors, not as citizens of hostile nations.

This is one of the few sports that is truly Olympic and truly global. The Olympics is making a fool out of itself through this act. The grassroots reaction to this decision is overwhelming: over 50,000 people have already signed a change.org petition to save Olympic wrestling. Everyday that goes by, more and more people throw their weight behind this worthy cause. I humbly ask that you help me save my sport and sign as well. For me, I will personally boycott any future games if wrestling is not returned to the core sports. That is a promise.