More than 20 professional wrestlers to go to Pakistan.
“Wrestling is coming to Pakistan for the revival of wrestling industry and also for to inspire our young generation”
When you think sports in Pakistan, obviously cricket comes into our minds. But also the wrestling has a long history in the country. Dating back hundreds of years, in the last decade due to lack of investment seen a decline in sports but is that about a change, next week more than 20 professional wrestler was head to Karachi. One of the wrestlers Timm Wylie and the man organizing the event Imran Shah are with us.
Timm how excited did you to be involved in an event. And when did you first get into wrestling? When I was about fifteen years old, back in England. Really excited to go back to Pakistan. My last experience is really good. Imran please tell me I have never Idea about wrestling it such a long tradition in Pakistan. Yes, as you know Pakistan has a history of wrestling, Great Gama the greatest wrestler ever he was from Lahore. And so I thought now it’s time to revive this tradition.
Imran you claim that its biggest sport on social media. Is that really true? Or is that promotional you talking. It’s the biggest sport on social media, mostly very popular in teenagers and most of the teenagers are on social media known. So, it’s pretty much true. Timm tells me, we see WWE how popular that is, comes out of the stage, but when you see wrestling on television, how much he is real/recorded play acting. Obviously when you go in front of cameras and the storyline and the things like that, it all entertainment but the action is very much real the injuries, you can’t fake drop on your head and the paunches you know, I’m relatively lucky in term of getting injuries, my colleague tore their biceps and over the years there are quite small ones.
Imran tells me as you said interesting things on the press releases you talk about to make youngster less prawn to radicalization, I’m very impressed you jump from trait to wrestling, so what you explain? Wrestling is very popular in Pakistan and the numbers are growing up and watching it. I’m very much inspired by the wrestlers, when you see them that inspirational figures did not live character and I’m sure when they come to Pakistan and we give hope to new generation if you want to be wrestler, if you want to recognize, you can do it.
And these guy coming over, your plan is to about to hooked them up, to end up going youngsters going to school. And all of that how you spread this message? Absolutely, we plan to do it by going to school, colleges, and universities and in the malls to interact with the general public. So they feel more included. That’s true purposes.
Ok, Timm thank you very much for coming in and Imran thank you very much to be with us and good luck with your event.
[Reporter: Matthew Amroliwala, BBC News Global, London, United Kingdom]