A Letter To Sports Illustrated From Nathan Fish, Lusk, Wyoming

If you're reading this, you're probably a passionate wrestling fan - active in the wrestling community, knowledgable about the sport and with a good pulse of where to seek out matches, interviews, coverage and analysis. You wake up, watch matches, peruse results, scour message boards and you know where to go for all of it. It becomes routine.

And though we've seen the proliferation of FloWrestling's offerings, ESPN's NCAA coverage expansion and the advent of the internet, which has afforded us immediate dual and tournament results, one thing that might get lost upon us is that wrestling is infrequently featured by "big" outlets. Frankly it's why FloWrestling came into existence.

So leave it to an 8-year-old to remind us that, for passionate wrestling fans, and for us who view the sport as engaging, exciting and virtuous (and often superior), not having wrestling in the mainstream media is both unconscionable and head-scratching.

Nine years ago, before Lusk, Wyoming's Nathan Fish was even born, Intermat's Mark Palmer cited that just once in the long history of Sports Illustrated, had a wrestler been featured on the cover. That was Dan Hodge, our sport's John Heisman, in 1957, and none since. Not Dan Gable for his exploits on the mat at Iowa State or as the revolutionary and incomparable head coach at Iowa. Not 13-time World/Olympic Medalist Bruce Baumgartner. Not Cael Sanderson for becoming the first ever undefeated 4x NCAA Champion, or Kyle Dake for winning four titles at four successive weights. 

Jordan Burroughs, after winning an Olympic Gold sandwiched between two World Titles, had a spot Arsenio Hall, and Anthony Robles was on Jay Leno. 

But that's about it. And Nathan Fish is fed up.