Freestyle wrestling vs Mongolian wrestling
Freestyle wrestling and Mongolian wrestling side by side, from the facts recorded for each art.
| Freestyle wrestling | Mongolian wrestling | |
|---|---|---|
| Country of origin | — | Mongolia |
| Founder | British Empire | — |
| Type | amateur wrestling | folk wrestling |
| Competition at the Olympics | Yes – 30 Olympic events recorded | — |
| Notable practitioners here | 562 | 2 |
| Top countries of practitioners | Russia, Soviet Union and Iran | Mongolia |
| Weight classes | Yes | — |
Freestyle wrestling
Freestyle wrestling is a style of wrestling. It is one of two styles of wrestling contested in the Olympic Games, along with Greco-Roman. High school wrestling and men's collegiate wrestling in the United States are conducted under different rules and termed scholastic and collegiate wrestling. U.S. collegiate women's wrestling is conducted under freestyle rules.
From the Wikipedia article Freestyle wrestling (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Mongolian wrestling
Mongolian wrestling, known as Bökh, is the folk wrestling style of Mongols in Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, Buryat Mongol regions, Kalmyk Mongol and other regions where touching the ground with anything other than foot or palm of hand loses the match. Bökh means "firmness, reliability, vitality, wrestler", from Mongolic root *bekü "firm, hard, solid; fighter, strong man" Wrestling is the most important of the Mongolian culture's historic "Three Manly Skills", that also include horsemanship and archery.
From the Wikipedia article Mongolian wrestling (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Facts from Wikidata (CC0): Q327223, Q1207182. Practitioner counts are the people with a profile on this site. Data retrieved 2026-10-22.
Data: Wikidata (CC0 1.0); Wikipedia (English) (CC BY-SA 4.0). Retrieved 2026-10-22.