The Purest Team Sport

What are the sports that come to mind when you think of American culture? You’d probably think of baseball, football, or basketball. These sports, along with many other sports beloved by Americans, have one thing in common. They are what you would call “team sports”. American culture is based primarily on ball and stick sports, all of which are team sports.

Researchers estimate that 74% of Americans are extroverted. This would leave me to believe that Americans love team sports so greatly because of our general need to seek out other people with the same interests and socialize more than any other culture.

Despite this, there is one non-team sport that is among the most popular sports of all time, and may be the most popular sport of all time. This is wrestling. Wrestling has been present since the dawn of time and has reached to every culture in the entire world. It is the human nature to struggle and overcome against another man. This is the essence of wrestling. In present day wrestling, despite there being team dual meets where one team wins and one team loses, people don’t believe it is a team sport because they compete as individuals. However, wrestling is the purest team sport of them all because everyone has to do their part. In every other team sport, one or two people can carry a team. In wrestling, you cannot. Every person has to compete and do their part for the team to win as a whole. This builds a comradery not like any other. Teammates must prepare each other as well as themselves at practice, and have faith in their teammates to do their part.

This is how the purest team sport is not a team sport at all.