James Ronca
Final Paper Wrestling is one of the oldest sports in the world. No one is sure who invented the sport but it was first implemented as a real sport in the first Olympics in the year 776 B.C. The origins of wrestling can be traced back 15,000 years through cave drawings in France; Babylonian and Egyptian relief's show wrestlers using most of the holds known to the present-day sport. More modern day wrestling has weight classes implemented so participants will wrestle people that weigh the same as them, thus starting a trend known in the wrestling world as cutting weight. Weight classes in wrestling were implemented in order to insure the optimal amount of fairness for each wrestler before they step out onto the mat. I believe that weight classes are positive to the sport but also negative. Positive in the fact that you don’t have a kid who weighs 103 wrestling someone who is 185, that just wouldn’t make sense. It makes it so everyone that goes out there are roughly the same weight so size doesn’t play a roll. But, this causes many issues as well. I know from experience the side effects of cutting weight. You feel weak, tired, and hungry; you get cotton mouth, and extremely aggravated over little things, everything pisses you off, it’s just an awful mood to be in. Cutting weight often is misconstrued and everyone believes that you just starve yourself to make weight. In some occasions this is true, but that is the wrong way to do it. There is a right way to cut weight and a wrong way. The wrong way is what everyone thinks every wrestler does. The wrong way to cut weight is starving yourself for days, not drinking anything, and working out with a rubber suit. Many wrestlers including myself have resorted to these methods as a way to easily lose mass amounts of weight in a short period of time. I’ve been wrestling my whole life; I started when I was