Chris Jericho Wants Pro Wrestling To Be Part Of The Olympics

Chris Jericho has made an interesting argument about why pro wrestling should an Olympic sport.

While pro wrestling has its roots in amateur and freestyle grappling and in carnival strongman competitions, the modern understanding of wrestling as a ‘work’ has existed for a century.

It was Raymond ‘Toots’ Mondt who came up with the concept of the wrestling program and created the face/heel dynamic. With each passing decade since then, pro wrestling was seen as less and less of a sport and more and more of a kind of entertainment.

This, coupled with its inherently cooperative nature, has excluded it from being a part of any international sporting competitions and meets, including the Olympics.

But that hasn’t stopped Chris Jericho from arguing that pro-wrestling does belong at the Olympics alongside other “paired” events like figure skating.

Speaking on his Talk Is Jericho podcast, Chris Jericho explained why he thinks pro-wrestling is close enough to certain ‘performance’ Olympic events to be considered:

“I literally want to go in front of the IOC, the International Olympic Community, and pitch pro wrestling as an Olympic sport. Now, you might go, ‘How can you do that? It’s all,’ now, hold on.

Stop right there. Gymnastics, pairs gymnastics, figure skating, pairs figure skating, what is that? It’s two people working together to put on the best performance possible. There is no way we could not do the same with pro wrestling.”

Jericho will defend his ROH World Championship this Saturday night at Full Gear in Newark when he faces Bryan Danielson, Claudio Castagnoli and Sammy Guevara in a fatal four-way match.

h/t WrestlingInc for the transcription