Chooljian Continues — and Excels in — Armenians’ Wrestling Heritage

In addition to his high school team, Chooljian also takes an interest in wrestling at the Olympic level. In fact, he was a spectator at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where he watched with pride as Armen Nazaryan claimed the gold medal for Armenia in the 52-kilogram Greco-Roman category for wrestling. Nazaryan was the first Olympic champion to come out of post-Soviet Armenia in the modern Olympic Games, and is one of six Olympic medalists in wrestling from Armenia.

Chooljian said he is pleased with the way the sport is growing, but one of the biggest challenges it faces is the need to “market it better” and find a way to draw more people into it. In the United States, the sport is very popular at the high school and college level, but not really beyond those years, unlike similar contact sports such as boxing or mixed martial arts.

Professional wrestling – the one where they hit each other with chairs and the outcomes are pre-determined – is far more popular then amateur wrestling in the U.S.

In Armenia, the story is different. Wrestling stars, while not well-paid professional athletes, are highly visible and beloved. Chooljian said, “Armenians value their Olympic athletes. It is a source of great national pride for them. They aspire to be wrestlers, or boxers, not [American] football players or basketball players.” The Wrestling Federation of Armenia, founded in 1996, oversees the training of wrestling prospects across Armenia, which has dozens of wrestling schools and thousands of elite wrestlers.

Although wrestling is wildly popular in Armenia and in many other countries, the sport faces challenges.

In 2013, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to eliminate wrestling from the lineup of the summer games, effective 2020, during the Tokyo Olympics. The IOC cited that the decision was made due to low public interest, lackluster TV audiences, difficult-to-understand rules and the desire to add a different sport to the Olympic slate.  But ironically, this decision brought wrestling more attention than ever before and the decision was reversed.

Chooljian said, “One of the real positives that came out of that [decision to scrap wrestling], was the number of people across the country and internationally who rallied around the sport of wrestling. People that weren’t even fans of wrestling rallied to the cause of reinstating the sport.” He continued, “It is one of the original sports [in the Olympics], and the heritage of wrestling, it’s really what the Olympics are all about.”

“Another thing that people realized — and that the IOC realized before reversing their decision of removing wrestling from the Olympics — was that wrestlers are not people that give in easily. Like the Armenians, you can knock us down, but we’ll get right back up.”