Takedown Report

US wrestling community helps rebuild bombed gym

Last September, ISIS terrorists delivered back-to-back suicide bombings at a wrestling club in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 26 and wounding 91. Among the dead: 16 young wrestlers. In subsequent months, the U.S. wrestling community stepped forward with donations of money and equipment to bring the Maiwand Wrestling Club back to life. These efforts have received positive coverage from non-wrestling media, including a 1,000-word feature in the New York Times which ran during the 2019 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships, and just this week, The Stars and Stripes, which describes itself as “the U.S. military’s independent news source.” To provide a sense of the severity of the two bombings: On the day of the attack — September 3, 2018 — Ghulam Abbas, a 52-year-old coach at the Maiwand Wrestling Club for nearly three decades, held the steel-plated door closed so the bomber couldn’t enter the main wrestling room. The terrorist then detonated his explosives on the other side of the door from Abbas. When the coach awoke in the hospital the next day, his left arm was missing. (A handful of others are still recovering from critical injuries.)

“We were doing nothing wrong here, we were teaching people how to wrestle, how to be healthy and be a good person in the community,” Abbas told the Stars and Stripes‘ Phillip Walter Wellman. “We are building the community, but they are coming and killing us.” In the days following the attack, the New York Times provided coverage that drew the attention of two ex-wrestlers: Paul Halsey, 69, a former IBM executive … and Hooman Tavakolian, 42, an Iranian-American investment manager in New York and London, who is active in United World Wrestling and USA Wrestling.  Rest of the story at https://intermatwrestle.com/articles/21806

April 15, 2019 Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized | Leave a comment