From the Mud Pit to the Olympic Mat: The Funding Knot of Pakistan Wrestling

In the outskirts of Lahore, before the sun is fully up, a group of men has already waded into the mud. They wrestle in waterlogged clay pits, bodies caked in red earth, the crowd roaring every time someone is lifted off the ground. This is kushti, Pakistan's traditional wrestling, a sport with roots going back centuries. For many of these men, it is also a livelihood.

A few hours' drive away, at the headquarters of the Pakistan Wrestling Federation, a different story is unfolding. Three athletes seen as the nation's hopes for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics - Inayatullah, Abdullah and Mohammad Gulzar - have no money to train abroad. No scholarships. No sponsors. The Olympic-standard mats sit idle.

Between the roaring mud pit and the silent mat lies the real story of Pakistan's Olympic wrestling today: a sport caught between talent and scarcity.

I have spent years following martial arts and combat sports, from small gyms in Binh Duong to international arenas. When people talk about combat sports, they talk about technique, power, knockout blows. But behind every medal there is always another question, far less discussed - where does the money come from to pay for the journey?

Pakistan's wrestling story is a painful example of that question.

Wrestling is one of the oldest Olympic sports, governed by United World Wrestling (UWW) in two disciplines: freestyle and Greco-Roman. Freestyle allows athletes to attack both the upper and lower body of an opponent, while Greco-Roman permits only attacks above the waist. The two demand different skill sets, and in Pakistan, freestyle is tied to tradition and regional success.

In Pakistan, the sport rests on a special foundation - the kushti tradition, also known as pehalwani. In villages and cities, akhara, or traditional wrestling schools, have operated for centuries. Athletes train in mud pits, building strength, endurance and a competitive spirit. That foundation has produced a considerable pool of talent.

At the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, Pakistan's wrestling team won medals. That was a milestone confirming regional standing. The Pakistan Wrestling Federation (PWF), led by Mohammad Inam, a former beach wrestling world champion in a UWW-recognised discipline, points to this to argue the country has talent, even a whole batch of wrestlers capable of Olympic qualification.

The gap between the Commonwealth stage and the Olympic stage remains vast. Commonwealth wrestling has far less competitive depth than the Olympics, where European and Central Asian programmes - the true wrestling powers - dominate. Crossing that gap requires something the PWF lacks: money.

The LA 2028 Olympic qualification system offers four clear pathways: the World Championships, the UWW ranking series, the continental championships and the final Olympic qualifier. Qualification begins in February 2027. All four routes demand the same thing - international travel, international competition, ranking points.

Here, the financial structure of Pakistani sport reveals all its fragility. The Pakistan Sports Board (PSB) is the main source of state support. Last year, the PSB gave the PWF 3 million rupees. This year, that figure is zero. The PWF submitted a request for 30 million rupees, about US$108,000, for the Olympic preparation cycle. It received nothing.

And there is an even more important resource, designed specifically for athletes in Pakistan's position: the International Olympic Committee's Olympic Solidarity scholarships. This programme grants scholarships directly to athletes with potential but no resources, to cover training and competition costs. In the current cycle, not a single Pakistani wrestler received one.

The programme's economics are circular, and that circularity makes it self-defeating. International medals are the precondition for sponsorship - the PWF admits finding sponsors is hard without major international medals. But sponsorship, along with state support, is the precondition for the international exposure needed to win medals.

No medals, no sponsors. No sponsors, no money. No money, no international competition. No international competition, no medals.

That spiral tightens around each athlete. And it leads to what I consider the sharpest observation in this story - a paradox buried deep in the survival economy of Pakistani wrestling.

These athletes earn a living through mud wrestling. Kushti carries more than tradition; it is a real source of income, the thing that feeds their families. But mud wrestling and Olympic mat wrestling demand two different physical profiles. Mud wrestling, defined by raw power, produces a different kind of athlete from Olympic freestyle, where speed, agility, level-change ability and par-terre technique decide matches.

In freestyle, a pin can come from controlling the lower body, from a fast level change, or from turning technique on the mat - things that require a neuromuscular sharpness the mud environment does not train. The survival economy forces athletes to earn a living in a discipline that trains the wrong physical profile for the Olympic goal. They spend their time and energy in the mud pit, which feeds them today, trading away the chance on the mat that could change their lives tomorrow. This is the deepest twist of the whole story: the very economy that keeps them alive is quietly eroding their path to the Olympics.

This reminds me of an experience of my own. In 2026, when Becamex Binh Duong fell into financial crisis, sitting 13th and facing a relegation play-off, I received messages from players: late wages, broken morale. I did not write a simple bad-news piece. I launched the campaign Save Our Home Team, calling on fans to fill Go Dau Stadium. On 15 June 2026, around 14,500 spectators turned up, the team won 2-0 and stayed up.

But I have always known one thing: community solidarity can save a match, can save a season. It cannot replace a sustainable financial system. In Pakistan, there is no Go Dau Stadium to fill for Olympic wrestling. No stand where the roar can rise and turn into money.

In Vietnam, I have watched many martial arts and combat sports grapple with a similar problem: the talent exists, but the resources to take it to the international stage are thin. The difference is that Vietnam still maintains a relatively stable national sports development system, however imperfect. Pakistan, in wrestling, seems to lack both at once: money and a stable allocation mechanism.

There is another underrated detail. The PWF says the wrestlers' departments also declined to provide financial support. That phrasing reveals that many Pakistani wrestlers are employees of state bodies or state enterprises, a legacy of the departmental sports system. Their income and training time are entangled with non-sporting work obligations. When those departments tighten their belts, that support dries up too.

And the PWF's approach to Kyrgyzstan, a genuine Central Asian wrestling power, to negotiate training is a rare positive signal. It is a bilateral, decentralised workaround to a central funding failure. The problem is that airfare and accommodation still have no source. But at least the federation understands it needs higher-quality training partners.

Earlier, a six-month overseas training camp for leading wrestlers, preparing for the Asian Games in Nagoya, was cancelled for lack of funds. That was a missed investment: six months training with international partners could make a big difference in technique and competitive experience.

At the same time, wrestling was dropped from the Glasgow Commonwealth Games programme. That was a Commonwealth Games Federation decision, beyond Pakistan's control, but the consequences are concrete. Pakistan's wrestling lost a mid-tier international stage, the rung connecting the domestic arena to Olympic qualification. When that rung disappears, the path from the mud pit to the Olympic mat grows steeper.

Two doors closed in the same period: state funding and a competition stage. One door can reopen with a political decision. The other is far harder to restore, because it depends on an international body's schedule.

This is where I want to offer a view contrary to the usual telling. The story is told as a tragedy of missing money. But looking closely at the structure, the problem is not a shortage of qualification pathways - there are four clear, transparently defined ones. The problem is the absence of a stable funding mechanism to reach them.

Among these, the absence of Olympic Solidarity scholarships is the most notable point. These scholarships are designed precisely for athletes in Pakistan's position - people with potential but no resources. That no Pakistani wrestler received one raises a question about administrative capacity: either the PWF did not apply, or Pakistani candidates were not selected. Both possibilities are governance problems that can be solved, unlike raw funding scarcity.

The 30 million rupees the PWF requested, about US$108,000, is a modest figure by global Olympic preparation standards. It shows the barrier here is political and priority-based, not absolute financial impossibility. I also note that the figure, put forward by the federation itself, may be a negotiating anchor rather than a fully costed budget.

And how the PWF frames the story is worth discussing. The federation insists state support is the only source of sustainable progress. That is an advocacy position, a rhetorical strategy common among underfunded sports federations, designed to pressure a state body. It has merit, but it overlooks a reality: the mud-wrestling economy, seen as a hurdle, is the only functioning revenue stream. Any policy that restricts it without replacing the income would backfire.

There is another angle rarely mentioned: the athletes' health and career risk. Olympic wrestling is known for an extreme weight-cutting culture - dehydration to make weight - a documented safety risk. In the funding picture, the medical dimension is almost absent. But for athletes who must earn a living through mud wrestling, they face a poorly regulated environment where injuries can occur without adequate medical supervision.

The biggest risk is not an acute injury, but career attrition. With no money, no scholarships, no sponsors, and livelihoods dependent on a different discipline, the real threat is that athletes leave the Olympic-mat pathway entirely before qualification begins in February 2027. They return to the mud pit, where there is roaring and money, but no Olympics.

I sit here, in Binh Duong, thousands of kilometres from Lahore, wondering why the story of Pakistan's mud wrestlers troubles me so. The answer lies in something I learned after years on the terraces.

The roar at the 2026 AFC U-23 quarter-final taught me that the stand is a living, speaking being. It speaks through the rhythm of clapping, through silences, through the tears of a seventy-year-old man seeing Vietnam reach an Asian semi-final for the first time. And at the 2026 World Cup, filming a coffee shop on Phu Loi street erupting when Japan beat Germany, I realised: the drumbeat on any stand shares one pulse - love of the game.

But that love needs somewhere to ring out. It needs a mat for athletes to step onto. And behind that mat, there must always be a financial mechanism - dry, rarely mentioned, yet the thing that decides who competes and who stays home.

Pakistan's Olympic wrestling stands at a crossroads. Without money, without international presence, without Olympic qualification, the country's wrestling medal drought will stretch into a fourth decade. Three athletes - Inayatullah, Abdullah, Mohammad Gulzar - will enter a compressed development window, with qualification starting February 2027, and not a single overseas camp in hand.

Fans do not need me to give them a voice; they need me to stand on the side of that voice. And that voice, in Lahore or in Thu Dau Mot, asks the same question: when will talent be paid what its journey is worth?

I will watch two milestones. The first is the Pakistan Sports Board's funding decision in the coming months - whether the 30 million rupees is disbursed, or another year passes with nothing. The second is the Asian Games window in Nagoya, a key stepping stone before Olympic qualification, where the six-month overseas camp was cancelled for lack of funds. If both milestones pass without change, the Olympic mat will sit idle for another cycle.