As I stumbled out of bed Sunday morning, fumbled around for my phone and tried to recuperate from the first game day of the season, one tweet on my timeline made the weekend worthwhile.
“WRESTLING IS IN !!!!,” USAWrestling tweeted from its account.
There will be Olympic wrestling in 2020.
It was validation. Not that I needed it, but after the Olympics’ oldest sport was callously axed last February, I felt like the five years I had spent on the mat were for naught.
First, there were some hurdles to clear. The sport that was a part of the original Olympiad in 708 B.C. was pitted against the discontinued sports of baseball/softball and Olympic hopeful squash for inclusion. And, as it should, wrestling dominated with 49 of the 95 votes from the International Olympic Committee delegates.
But it should never have come to this.
Fed up with the so-called antiquated style and “dull matches” permeating the arenas, the IOC crushed the dreams of thousands who tirelessly toil over takedowns and reversals, taking away the 2016 competition and their chance to take their place in history.
I’ve written about my displeasure before, so I won’t go into another diatribe with the specifics. But an Olympic gold medal is the pinnacle for any wrestler. 
It’s what the up-and-coming Midwest middle schoolers strive for and what the college wrestlers who’ve hit a wall use as motivation to power through a practice where it seems everything goes wrong. Gold medals have molded men into folk heroes, women into national icons and given faces to an otherwise under-the-radar sport.
So, according to the IOC, because the sport didn’t have the folding chairs, performance enhancing drugs and nicknames that surround the WWE or TNA, it wasn’t worthy to showcase on a national stage.
No, the truth is, the wrestlers lucky enough to qualify for the Olympics aren’t about to take any chances on the mat. They’ve honed and refined skills for endless hours to get to the top of their sport — a sport so tactical and requiring so much finesse that a single step or finger out of place could result in disaster.
With this in mind, I have to forgive the man who isn’t willing to try the big throw just to woo the crowd. Or the woman who is wrestling in the Olympic quarterfinals who  won’t try the flashy pinning combination she learned a few weeks ago.
Don’t get me wrong, the adjustments the international wrestling’s governing body made were needed. Going from three, two-minute periods to two, three-minute periods was brilliant. Now, wrestlers have more time to develop moves and notice tendencies in their opponents, making counter attacks more prudent and matches more tactical.
Also, the shift takes the decision out of referees’ and  judges’ hands, giving wrestlers the chance to dictate their pace and create opportunities, something FILA president Nenad Lalovic said was “impossible in two minutes.”
The beauty of these changes lies in the fact that the integrity of the sport isn’t tarnished. Moves will be the same, pageantry will continue and the best wrestlers in the world will still showcase to the world their years of dedication.
Changes were needed, but this wasn’t the way to get them. Threatening to discontinue such a revered sport in the world’s premier sporting event was downright wrong. Sure it was a wake-up call, but other means could have been employed.
But, as a whole, the often overlooked but always vocal group of athletes that call themselves wrestlers can rejoice. The ultimate prize is again ahead of them and nothing should stop the pursuit of it. Training should get tougher and desires should be unmatched, for your voices have been heard.
Loud and clear.