The AAU Grand Nationals wrestling tournament is returning to Billings.

The tournament — which features freestyle, Greco-Roman and folkstyle competition — will be June 13-15, 2013, at Alterowitz Gymnasium, located on the campus of Montana State Billings.

The last time the event was held in Billings was in 1999 at Rimrock Auto Arena at MetraPark. It was held in Butte at the Civic Center in 2007.

The host clubs for the event are the Renegade Wrestling Club and the Darkhorse Wrestling Club. Mike Littleton, Dan Elser and Bryan Emborg, all of Billings, will serve as tournament directors.

Littleton said the tourney is open to AAU card members ages five through adult. A majority of the wrestlers will be youth competitors. Organizers are hoping for 600 wrestlers.

The clubs go to national tourneys in South Dakota and Colorado every year and will promote the Grand Nationals there Littleton said.

“We are excited for it. Our model is, ‘Bringing the Grand back in the Grand Nationals,’ ” Littleton said, adding the clubs plan on bidding for the Grand Nationals in 2014 and 2015 as well.

A website to promote the event is under construction and will be functioning soon. It is www.aaugrands2013.com.

Wrestling’s governing body is preparing for what could be the match of its life.

It is holding a special meeting in Moscow to discuss changes to modernize the sport in hopes of staying in the Olympics.

The meeting Saturday comes four months after the IOC executive board recommended that wrestling be dropped from the 2020 Olympics. Wrestling has a chance to regain its place by beating out seven other sports vying for one available spot.

All those sports are to make their case to the IOC at a meeting this month in St. Petersburg. The other candidates are sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding, karate, wushu, roller sports and a combined baseball-softball bid. The IOC will make a final decision in September.

The meeting is expected to consider an array of changes — from giving women more say in the organization and more chances to compete, to rule adjustments and possibly even to clothing changes.

The IOC’s recommendation to drop wrestling put the federation, known by the acronym FILA, on a crisis footing, forcing the resignation of President Raphael Martinetti days later.

Nenad Lalovic, appointed acting president, is expected to be confirmed as full-time president Saturday. Martinetti sued in the Court of Arbitration for Sport, opposing Lalovic’s appointment and the special meeting. The court rejected both moves.

In wrestling, as in life, your greatest success won’t come easy. You’ve got to battle through the disappointment, the losses, and the pain. But that’s why the success feels so good.

Growing group of international wrestling federations form a partnership for unified effort to show that wrestling belongs on Olympic program.

The Save Olympic Wrestling Coalition has been formed by a number of international wrestling federations to show wrestling should remain on the Olympic program.

This is a unique partnership that will send a powerful message to the International Olympic Committee about the importance and relevance of wrestling to the Olympic Games. The coalition will initially be comprised of strategically identified federations to show that regardless of geographic or political differences, they are unified in a commitment to this effort.

Goals of the coalition include:

• Support the political campaign of FILA, the international governing body of wrestling
• Mobilize energy and resources in each country
• Promote Olympic wrestling through World Wrestling Month in May
• Support Acting FILA President Nenad Lalovic and his administration
• Assist with the continued development of Olympic wrestling

The following countries have committed their support to this effort:
Albania, Argentina, Belarus, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Cuba, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, India, Iran,Japan, Korea, Nigeria, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Russia, United States and Uzbekistan.

Each of those countries will sign a resolution which states their cause and publicizes the key initiatives.

In the summer of 1996, the eyes of the wrestling world weren’t transfixed on ratings or politics. They were locked onto 27-year-old American Kurt Angle, who was putting the finishing touches on one of the most decorated careers in the sport’s modern history with an Olympic gold medal victory in Atlanta.

Now, the concern in the wrestling world is whether the sport’s tradition can earn it a spot in the 2020 Games and beyond — and it’s all Angle’s icy blue eyes are focused on.

“It’s all about politics and money, and there’s no more tradition or history that really interests the IOC [International Olympic Committee], or at least that’s the way it’s basically perceived now,” lamented Angle, who at 44 is on top of an entirely different world of wrestling.

There wasn’t much left to prove after Angle defeated Abbas Jadidi of Iran for the gold in ’96. He had already captured whatever championships there were at any level: a Pennsylvania state championship with Mount Lebanon High School, two NCAA championships for Clarion University, a gold medal in the World Championships, and the Olympic gold. He had risen so high in the sport that his head was crashing against the ceiling.

So, sports colleague supreme John Dudley once commented how there’s no middle ground when it comes to a youth’s initiation into wrestling.

He meant amateur wrestling, by the way. Not the Hulk Hogan/Rowdy Roddy Piper/Nature Boy Ric Flair/Sgt. Slaughter/Captain Lou Albano variety that once hoarded the attention of my Strong Vincent brethren.

I don’t remember John’s quote verbatim, but it was something along the lines of how you only needed one gym class session on the mat to learn if mankind’s oldest known sport was for you or not.

Win or lose, you immediately knew in your gut if you wanted to try it again.

Well, after all-the-way-back-to-kindergarten friend Brian Lipiec gleefully mangled my guts, I can emphatically tell you I never wanted to try it again. Since then, the closest I ever came to a half nelson was watching that Ryan Gosling movie of the same title.

Still, I’ve come to appreciate the sport since I began covering scholastic wrestling in the mid-2000s.

No, make that sincerely appreciate.

Basically folks, you have to have a different mindset to wrestle. And I mean that as a compliment.

As a life-long wrestler and supporter of wrestling, my first thought when hearing the Olympic committee had canceled wrestling for the 2020 Games was “this can’t be true.” Wrestling is an original Olympic sport, and one of the only true amateur sports still left in the world. In case you haven’t heard, wrestling has indeed been cut from the 2020 Olympic Games.

What does it mean? My first thought is outside of America, where wrestling in some countries, Russia and Iran, is the national sport. Some young people in these countries use wrestling as a way of escaping poor living conditions. Thinking about that puts a little perspective on the magnitude of the decision.

Wrestling may not be the biggest spectator sport, and no one expects to get rich doing it. And most who do it, do it just for the competition and the potential Olympic glory. America is the only country where wrestling is available in middle school, high school, and college; every other country has the Olympic Games.

For many young athletes in East Tennessee, football just makes sense.

Wrestling? Not so much.

Hunter Fortner, one of four local boys who won AAU Spring Youth Nationals on March 23 in Kingsport, said he’s learned they’re not so different — but not without a few surprises along the way.

“I got a flyer for it at school,” said Fortner, of his first exposure to wrestling as a second grader. “I thought it was WWE stuff at first. It was really weird. I didn’t really get it.”

Now an eighth grader at Holston Middle School and two-time AAU All-American, Fortner said it all makes sense.

“It’s like football,” he said, while crediting coaches Joe Reep and Tim Pittman as well as teammates for helping him along. “It’s a contact sport that keeps me in shape during the winter. “A takedown is kind of just like tackling, but there’s more technique,” he added.

It’s clicked with others in the area as well. Six-year-old Mason Shields (35-pound tot division), ten-year-old Colby Dalon (75-pound midget division), and sixth-grader Tyler Jay Holmes (112-pound junior division) each won nationals in their respective classifications. The event included competitors from more than a dozen states.

The Bahamas Amateur Wrestling Federation (BAWF) has joined with federations around the Americas in a campaign to reinstate wrestling as an Olympic Sport.

The executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted in February to drop wrestling from the Olympic program as of 2020. The surprise decision was a significant point when the Pan American Council of Associated Wrestling (CPLA) met in congress April 4 in Panama City, Panama. The Bahamas joined 27 countries at the congress, where several actions to campaign for the sport’s reinstatement in the Games were discussed.

“Wrestlers around the world are initiating programs in their countries and joining with other countries to save our sport,” said Clarence Rolle, president of the BAWF after attending the CPLA Congress. “Wrestling is popular around the world. We have 177 countries with recognized federations and wrestling is an original sport of the Olympic Games. It is an important link between the ancient Games and modern times. It is not even possible for us to imagine the Olympics without wrestling.”

Dana White

There was a time in the not-to-distant past when Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was two million dollars in the hole. Today, it’s several billion in the black, thanks to the efforts of promotion president Dana White (and the checkbook of the Fertitta brothers).

Now, White tells NBC Sports he’s taking on a new fight.

“[Wrestling] needs to be more fan-friendly, it needs to be more exciting. I’ve met with a lot of the top guys in wrestling. Actually I met with them last Tuesday, and yeah, the UFC is joining the fight to help save Olympic wrestling. Not just Olympic wrestling, but colleges are dropping wrestling now. High schools have been dropping wrestling… I’ve personally funded tons of wrestling programs, and the UFC has funded tons of wrestling programs for high school kids. It’s in the discussion phase. These guys are going out and fighting the fight, and whatever they need from me and what I think I could do, [I'll do].”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Executive Board voted earlier this year to have amateur wrestling cut from future games in an effort to overhaul the entire program, focusing on “popularity, finances, tickets sold and governance” (see why here).