Inam meets Hamid in Rustam-e-Pakistan final tomorrow

KARACHI: Pakistan’s premier wrestler Mohammad Inam will meet Hamid Khan in what could be an interesting final of the Rustam-e-Pakistan at Iqbal Stadium, Faisalabad, on Friday (tomorrow).

This is the first time that Inam played a high-level mud wrestling event. Inam, an expert of mat wrestling, is expected to pull off crown in his maiden event. Hamid, who is Rustam-e-Multan, is also a fighting wrestler. He won the heavyweight title of the 2010 National Games in Peshawar, beating the 2011 Rustam-e-Pakistan Usman Majeed.

Hamid has represented Pakistan in several international events. However, he has not achieved anything big in any international competition. Inam, on the other hand, has to his credit two titles of the Commonwealth Games and two crowns of the World Beach Wrestling Championships.

Inam has also qualified for the World Beach Games which will be held in the United States later this year.Inam said he would try his best to win. “I have no strong grip on mud wrestling as my whole focus is on mat wrestling but I have prepared myself and will try to win,” Inam told ‘The News’ on Wednesday. Rustam-e-Pakistan has been revived after a gap of seven years.

Karachi hosted the event in 2011 at the Asghar Ali Shah Stadium. This will now be a biennial event.“There were too many events so we could not hold it during the last few years. Now our general council has decided that as mud wrestling is our traditional wrestling, we should promote it. Now we will hold it after every two years,” Pakistan Wrestling Federation’s (PWF) secretary Arshad Sattar told ‘The News’ from Lahore on Wednesday.

Arshad expects a huge crowd to witness the final. “It’s a popular sport in Punjab. If you look at the semi-finals video you will see that around 30,000 people witnessed the competitions. I expect that similar number of people will turn up on Friday for the final,” Arshad said.

When asked why he did not generate gate-money despite the great response from fans, Arshad said they had kept a ticket for the quarter-finals but the step was criticised by the public.

However, Arshad was quick to add that in future the event would be conducted in a much better way and would be properly marketed so that ample revenue could be generated which would be used for the development of wrestling.

The final between Inam and Hamid will be of 30-minute duration. If it is not decided in that period, another fight under the rules of mat-wrestling will be held and the wrestler who takes the first point will be declared the winner.

About the format of the Rustam-e-Pakistan, Arshad said that two wrestlers from each affiliated unit of the PWF took part in the competitions. All units sent the names of two leading wrestlers after formal trials. The pre-quarter-finals, in which grapplers of regions took part, were held in Lahore. The quarter-finals and semi-finals were conducted in Bahawalpur.

The winner will be handed over a purse of Rs500,000 and the runner-up Rs250,000. Besides, Rs150,000 will be given to the third position holder and the fourth-position holder will get Rs100,000.

Arshad said that Inam had become a popular seed of mud-wrestling on his debut event. He said Inam’s value had reached around Rs300,000 per fight.