All sports enrich our lives. They are great to watch and exciting to do. Some sports like car-racing rely heavily on material and technology. However, some sports just rely on the strength, skill and stamina of the individual. One such a fascinating sport is wrestling. No fancy gear, no technology! Just man-to-man (or even woman-to-woman) competition.

Wrestling is one of the oldest sports in the world, and many regional forms of wrestling not only are a great sport but at the same time also respresent traditions and culture. Turkish Oil-wrestling (Yağlı Güreş, pronounced 'yaluh geresh') is one such a style of wrestling. It is one of the oldest styles and the biggest tournament, called Kırkpınar ('Forty Springs') has been taking place since 1363. In 2011 it will be held for the 650. time!

The Turkish men and youngsters that wrestle are called pehlivan. Wrestling is more than sport to them. It is sport, obsession, life-style, comradery and personal pride. The olive oil applied before the match makes wrestling much more difficult and requires special skills and techniques. The special pair of trousers the wrestlers wear called 'kispet' is a further characteristic of this traditional style of wrestling.

While artofwrestling.com aims to promote the sport by focusing on Traditional Turkish Oil-Wrestling other styles of wrestling will also be included.

Thank you for your interest. We hope you will enjoy browsing through the hundreds of pictures  and the videos that we  have added for you. Feed-back and comments are always welcome.