The Gris-Gris Wrestlers of Senegal | Hacker News Reader

The Gris-Gris Wrestlers of Senegal

maptia.com

62 pointssamsolomon9 comments

This article is very well written and gives a great notion on the sport. At least from another foreigner point of view who lived there for only about 2 months.

One interesting thing I noticed is that the very big role of magic at the fights doesn't fundamentally change how the sport is perceived and followed as social and cultural phenomenom.

I would assume it would be followed with some trace of religious approach, but no. It is the same of how other sports are followed on other countries and particularly similar to fight sports with long preparations and relatively short matches.

Very impressive photography work in this article.

I would really like to see how this type of wrestling evolves in the next few years, and if we'll see champions try to join international MMA leagues like UFC.

It will probably happen in the future (assuming mma money is still there), but locally at first. To get to something close to the UFC they'll need to get much more competitive, meaning learning more disciplines and training harder.

This kind of wrestling, as all wrestling I can think of, has nothing to do with MMA. This fights are much more similar to olympic wrestling than any martial arts. It is actually less physical or violent (not sure what word to use here) than olympic wrestling. Is all about getting the opponent to the floor under some rules and then the fight is over.

Very different sports.

It perhaps closer to Judo, if anything?

Here's what it looks like in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHWw9UKzHAo

Surprisingly similar to games like Swiss Wrestling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRJQpXMAm3E

And Korean Ssireum:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5eyvFYjxgA

And Mongolian Wrestling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry-OuWGhjVg

And to a point even Sumo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyA4kW-Y5rE

And Igbo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYkarWIhTDg

Turns out it just seems to be a pretty human kind of thing to do.

Oh this is absolutely true, but there is a non trivial proportion of MMA fighters with a serious wrestling background, even in UFC. A good amount of skills are transferable between those two sports, as different as they are.

Yes, but many American college wrestlers take their skills to MMA. I think he was referring to the possibility of Senegalese wrestlers doing that.

Fantastic article! Vice also did an segment on Senegalese wrestling in their HBO series, which included one of their reporters going through training and competing in an actual match: https://youtu.be/2QtfxYOkXIA

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