Pakistan cuts wrestling funding to zero: the Los Angeles 2028 dream and the price of the mud pit

In August 2026 I stayed up until 2 a.m. to watch the freestyle wrestling sessions at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. A Pakistani wrestler, nearly ten kilograms lighter than his opponent, stepped onto the mat, accepted conceding points first, then clawed them back with two turns from par-terre that I had to rewind twice in slow motion. I wrote one line in my notebook: “This kid has been coached properly.”

Three years later I reopened that federation's budget sheet. The Pakistan Wrestling Federation (PWF) asked for 30 million rupees. Last year it received 3 million. This year: nothing.

Three million rupees split across the three names being counted for an Olympic quota is one million each, roughly US$3,600 for an entire year. A freestyle wrestler in Europe burns that on two months of camp and one flight. I have sat and watched Vietnamese wrestlers prepare for the SEA Games on short camps in China and South Korea, and I have seen how that shortfall eats into results. Being underfunded is one thing. Being cut to zero is another: that is a stop signal.

A big wrestling nation, a tiny invoice

Pakistan is not a wasteland for this sport. The kushti and pehalwani tradition runs through generations, with akhara — wrestling pits — scattered across Punjab and Sindh, where men grapple in wet mud in front of paying crowds. That cradle has produced wrestling medals at Commonwealth Games, most recently Birmingham 2026. Three names sit in the plan toward Los Angeles 2028: Inayatullah, Abdullah and Mohammad Gulzar.

At the head of the PWF is Mohammad Inam, a former beach wrestling world champion, a discipline recognised by United World Wrestling (UWW). That title says nothing about administrative competence, but it says one thing: the man running the federation understands the mat, understands weight, understands the physical price of this sport.

The PWF's request is 30 million rupees, about US$108,000 at roughly 278 rupees to the dollar. That is the entire multi-year budget proposal for a national Olympic programme, three athletes, wages excluded. To anyone inside professional sport, US$108,000 is what a mid-table club spends on one player's surgery and a few months of rehabilitation.

The calendar waits for nobody. Los Angeles 2028 qualification opens in February 2027, through four routes: the World Championships, the UWW ranking series, the continental championships and the Olympic qualifier. The 2026 Asian Games in Nagoya are the last rehearsal before that threshold. The PWF has already cancelled a planned six-month overseas camp for its leading wrestlers for lack of money. The fallback is Kyrgyzstan — a genuine Central Asian wrestling power — but talks have stalled at one condition: airfare and accommodation must be covered.

Four doors and not a coin to open them

UWW has closed nothing. The four Olympic pathways are built to be open, and they are clear enough for a village coach to read. The problem is that all four require international travel, and international travel requires money. The World Championships need a ticket. The ranking series needs a ticket, several times. The continental championships need a ticket. The Olympic qualifier needs a ticket. An Olympic quota exists on paper; it does not exist in practice.

The body that controls sports money in Pakistan is the Pakistan Sports Board. Last year it released 3 million rupees. This year it released zero. The departments that once took wrestlers onto their payrolls — a legacy of the subcontinental departmental system — also said there was no funding. The PWF states plainly that state assistance is the only source. I read that line three times. It is not a complaint. It is an indictment of a structure.

The problem is not the amount of money but the absence of a formula. A federation can scrape by on a poor budget as long as it knows next year's figure in advance. Nobody can build a multi-year plan on a funding stream that moves with mood. Three million and then nothing is patronage, not policy. And patronage never arrives with a line attached: “There will be money next year.”

I look at Vietnam for comparison. Vietnamese wrestling also lives on state budget, also takes short camps abroad, also carries a traditional folk-wrestling culture from village festivals. The difference is continuity: a programme funded steadily, even modestly, still beats a programme switched on and off. Pakistani wrestlers are living inside the switch.

The mud pit feeds them and holds them back

This is where I think the real problem sits, and almost nobody says it out loud.

Mud wrestling rewards raw strength, grip, endurance and a stubborn head. Wrestling on the Olympic mat rewards level-change speed, chain wrestling, defensive reflexes from the bottom position and par-terre technique. Those are two different neuromuscular profiles, producing two different kinds of wrestler. Pakistani wrestlers earn their living in mud. Every hour spent earning in the mud pit is an hour not spent building the profile the mat demands.

Their survival economy is training the wrong body for the sport they want to compete in. That is the deepest paradox in this whole story, and no cheque solves it.

If I were handed a scoresheet, I would build an index no statistics database carries: the ratio of mat hours to mud-pit hours per week, per athlete. In a healthy Olympic programme that ratio should lean heavily toward the mat. In Pakistan I suspect it leans the other way, and leans toward what feeds the immediate hunger, away from the ticket that arrives in three years. Nobody measures that ratio because nobody wants to see the result.

Kyrgyzstan is the right move. That country has an elite wrestling base, quality training partners and a grappling culture close to Pakistan's. The PWF knows what it needs. It simply has no money to buy what it knows is correct. A poor federation that still aims at the right target deserves funding; the problem is that nobody is reading that signal.

In the same window, wrestling was dropped from the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games programme. The middle rung between domestic competition and Olympic qualification disappeared. Pakistani wrestlers lost their mid-tier international stage at the exact moment they lost their money. Two blows to the same spot.

The money nobody bothered to claim

Olympic Solidarity is the International Olympic Committee's scholarship fund, designed precisely for athletes in this position: it covers travel, accommodation, coaching and medical support so they can train instead of working. In the current cycle, not one Pakistani wrestler received one.

This is a fixable failure, and far cheaper than asking for a larger grant. Not receiving a scholarship means one of two things: the federation did not apply, or the candidates were not selected. Both are administrative problems. A country can be poor in money and still have the administrative capacity to fill in a form correctly. Pakistan is short of both, and the second shortage costs more.

That also reframes the whole debate. The issue is not that the state has no money. The issue is a system that cannot reach money already set aside for it.

Where I could be wrong

I got EURO 2026 wrong, not because I lacked information, but because I trusted the crowd. So before I close, I argue against myself.

The 30 million rupee figure comes from the PWF itself, and it may be a negotiating anchor. The minimum viable budget to get three athletes to a qualifier is probably lower. If so, the barrier is political priority, not financial impossibility — and the phrase “funding crisis” quietly hides an uncomfortable fact: the sum required is roughly one month's salary for a handful of sports officials.

It is also possible that pouring money into a federation with weak administrative capacity fixes nothing. The Olympic scholarship case is the proof: the money was available, all it took was an application. If the paperwork was not filed when there was no money, it will not be filed when there is.

Commonwealth medals can mislead. Commonwealth wrestling depth sits far below Olympic depth. The claim that “we have a whole group good enough to qualify” arrives without a single line of data: no weight classes, no rankings, no continental results. My experience of watching these matches teaches me that such claims usually certify belief, not capability.

And the mud pit may not be the enemy. It is the only revenue stream still running. Any policy that squeezes it without replacing the income will push wrestlers out of this sport faster than a budget cut. The biggest risk here is attrition, not injury: people leave the mat because they must earn a living, not because of a fall.

To understand a wrestling match, I look at the defeat that came before it. Here, the defeat that comes before it is a flight nobody bought.

What I am willing to bet

People call me a contrarian; I call it how I keep myself sober. This time I am not contrarian: the data runs one way only. If, before qualification opens in February 2027, no Pakistani wrestler receives an Olympic Solidarity scholarship, there will be no Pakistani wrestler on the mat at Los Angeles 2028. That is a testable prediction, and I will check it myself, including if I am wrong.

An Olympic scholarship is not charity. It is infrastructure — the cheapest infrastructure this sport has, and the most neglected, because it produces no bout to sell tickets for.

Ronaldo's tears that night taught me that legends hurt too. In Punjab, the pain is not losing on the mat. The pain is never getting onto it, because nobody bought the plane ticket. And if there is one thing I want readers to do after this piece, it is to open next cycle's Olympic Solidarity list and count how many Pakistani names appear. None is an answer.