http://www.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Sports/Story/A1Story20130213-401894.html
Japan and Turkey - whose cities Tokyo and Istanbul are bidding to host the Games in seven years' time - led the calls for the world body to reconsider, as an online petition was organised urging a rethink and gained thousands of supporters.
"To have the 2020 Olympics in Istanbul without wrestling is unthinkable," said Hamza Yerlikaya, president of the Turkish wrestling federation, himself a double Olympic gold medallist, three-time world champion and eight-time European champion in Greco-Roman wrestling.
"We won't allow it," he added.
In Japan, Yerlikaya's counterpart Tomiaki Fukuda said on his federation's website, "I want to know the reasons why the IOC removed wrestling."
Wrestling will remain on the programme for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro but faces a fight against seven other sports for inclusion at the Games four years later. A final decision is to be made when all IOC members meet in September.
Members are seen as unlikely to vote against the executive board, however, raising the prospect that one of the few sports that survived from the original Olympics in ancient Greece into the modern era will disappear.
Wrestling first appeared in 708 BC and has only ever been left out of the Olympic programme once before in 1900.
The International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles (FILA) has vowed to fight the decision, while Russia - like Turkey, another powerhouse in the sport - has also said it hoped the IOC would backtrack.
An online petition at change.org entitled "The International Olympic Committee: Save Wrestling as an Olympic sport #SaveOlympicWrestling" has also been mounted, urging the US Senate to take up the matter.
By Wednesday morning, it had nearly 19,000 signatures.
On Twitter, one user, @WrestlersLoveUs, wrote: "Ancient Olympic wrestlers used to sometimes fight to the death. IOC better understand we're ready to do that again. #SaveOlympicWrestling."
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