Amateur wrestling was established 5000BC. The history of the sport has been well documented throughout history and its folklore expressed so vividly by wrestling historian Mike Chapman. The last remaining frontier of wrestling exists in the urban and inner cities of this great country.

There have been several attempts to reach out to the inner cities in the past when two legendary men of the United States Wrestling Federation, Chris Poff and Bud Linholm of Pennsylvania , had the vision and the will during the early 1970's...

They attempted to breach the gap of introducing schoolboy wrestling to the urban cities. Many Board Members shared their vision but the resources of the fledgling organization financially could underwrite the initiative properly supporting and promoting such a major project.

Several attempts during this period of time were being made in Chicago , New York City, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to begin schoolboy wrestling. These two men attempted to penetrate the huge market of millions of people that encompasses nearly sixty per cent of today's' population single-handedly. With the exception of a few public and private schools in New York and Chicago with organized high school programs, many cities today do not have any school wrestling programs.

The lack of wrestling in the largest urban centers of the country has hurt the visibility of the sport, especially in the area of sponsorships and mass media communications.

To mainstream wrestling, and gain the acceptance of the mass media and Corporate America, wrestling must penetrate the large urban areas. That is the key for securing sponsorships, advertisements, media recognition and the financial resources to bring the sport to the final and highest level of amateur sports. It is called MAINSTRE AMING

The Metropolitan Wrestling Association, Allied Member of USA Wrestling, is operating from a $30,000 grant from USA Wrestling awarded in 2002 and 2003. The MWA secured the services of Bill Crum to design and developed the business plan to make this happen.

Bill comes with an extensive professional experience with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Essex, New Jersey and a USA Wrestling Board Member as well. His charge by the MWA Board of Directors, made up of board members that read like a “who's who” in amateur wrestling, is to use the momentum of the 2003 World Championships and the potential 2012 Olympics to bring this dream to a reality.

New York City has 1.2 million students in the Public School systems with 157 high schools. In 1973 an effort made by Bud Linholm and Chris Poff as well as Dr. Vince Zuaro and with the leadership of Dr.Irwin Tobin, PSAL Sports Commissioner whose son had wrestled in Long Island, a suburb of New York City , was successful. There were 25 teams who introduced the sport and began with a development program and presently have 23 teams who wrestle in league, Sectional and New York State High School Championships.

The Metropolitan Wrestling Association is a non-profit organization founded in 1985 by Setrak Agonian of Woodside , New York . Setrak is a former boxer who was introduced to wrestling shortly after he immigrated to New York in 1971. Through his close association with his mentor, Bill Farrell, he helped the USA Team in Bulgaria at the World Championships. Thus began his legacy of bringing amateur wrestling to the capital of the World, New York City .

He was selected by USA Wrestling as its 2004 Man of the Year for his leadership in the successful 2003 World Championships. The finals of the 2003 World Freestyle Championships held in the worlds most recognized arena attracted 12,500 fans while both the Yankees and New Giants had home games. The attendance is the largest number of fans to attend a World or Olympic Championship. In the Athens 's Olympic Games, there were less than 4000 people attending the Games. I was one of them!

The MWA were the competition managers of the event and USA Wrestling, the national governing body for the sport on the international level, awarded a two year grant to the Metropolitan Wrestling Association of New York City based upon the business plan of designing a grass root effort of instituting Youth, Modified and High School Clubs to increase the number of high school wrestlers and programs in New York City.

The technique and inner city club programs have been very successful with other sports such as soccer and most recently ice hockey. The NHL recently began penetrating major Southwestern cities such as Los Angeles and Phoenix , which have professional hockey teams in the area. They have become actively involved in community based programs providing funding, coaching and equipment for the millions of inner city youths. The goal is twofold, to increase their fan base and to develop future hockey stars.

There is an opportunity for wrestling to provide the same coaching and equipment as well as grass roots funding to launch such a program in New York City and the MWA is committed to making it happen. We have made tremendous inroads the past two years with developing local training centers for high school wrestlers in several boroughs of New York City . New York City has five boroughs with over 9 million people. If Brooklyn were a city, it would be the 4 th largest city in the United States behind New York , Los Angeles and Chicago . Within a one-hour drive of New York City there are 25 million people of which, 15 million do not have wrestling in its schools.

From a business standpoint what a tremendous opportunity for USA Wrestling, Asics, Cliff Keen, Brute, Matman, Resilite, Dollamur and every other business related to wrestling to get in front of this effort.

Our business plan is the same as Bill Gates outlined for Microsoft in 1983. He invested well over 50% of his net worth at the time by providing computers and internet access to every school in America as well consultants to teach the teachers who in turn taught the kids who provided the impetus to make Microsoft what it is today.

The MWA is ten mats away from having thousands of kids begin to wrestle. That is thousands more USAW members, more uniforms, more shoes, more events, more competition and all the other rippling down basic wrestling needs.

If successful, the second half of the business plan is to roll the program out nationally with Beat the Streets Programs beginning in Boston , Philadelphia , Pittsburgh , Detroit , Denver , Miami , Los Angeles , San Francisco and the rest of the cities who have no wrestling. What potential wrestling has and the opportunity is here now!

Look at the numbers of schools and students in those cities because they represent well over 50% of the total student populations in the country. It is our last Frontier and now more than ever, we need to expand out base and become a mainstream sport in high school and college wrestling.

Enthusiastic wrestling people everyday witness the importance of a foothold in the major cities when they watch television or read national newspapers. They simply ask themselves, why is it that when thousand of commercials are aired everyday, many testimonials by athletic celebrities, wrestlers are not represented? Why is wrestling always aired on cable television stations with less than 60% market penetration, aired at 1AM in the morning or 1PM during a weekday? Why were the 2004 Olympics, with the success of the wrestlers, given such poor coverage?

These questions are constantly being asked by the wrestling community and many successful people who have wrestled can not understand how a sport that does so much for kids in providing and building lifelong skills, not be given an equal opportunity to gain access to mainstream America.

The importance of the 2003 World Championships in New York City was not only for the athletes, who were training for their opportunity to be the best at what they do and to be a World Champion, but also for the image of the sport. We still have a “shot” in New York City with these people who can bring wrestling to the next level. We simply need the help of wrestling people together to execute and deliver the PLAN!