The United States, Iran and Russia has forged an unlikely heavyweight alliance to keep the ancient sport of wrestling in the Olympic Games.
While political differences between the three are deep, the national teams from the three wrestling superpowers will grapple with each other in New York's Grand Central Station railway terminal today to back the campaign.
Wrestling has been in shock since the International Olympic Committee announced in February that it wanted the sport ejected for the 2020 Games.
There were complaints that the sport, where a broken nose or a cauliflower ear can be a badge of honor, is too macho, too complicated and not attractive to television audiences.
But after initial hunger strikes by coaches and Olympic champions sending back their medals in protest, wrestling is fighting back.
The bouts between the US, Iranian and Russian teams in New York on Wednesday and Sunday in Los Angeles are part of a new offensive to make the sport more attractive.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has said he will raise the case. But leaders of the international wrestling federation, FILA, admit they are in a desperate battle to make sure that the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games are not the last for one of the original Olympic sports.
Christakis Alexandridis, Russia's Olympic wrestling coach, said that when wrestling was included in Ancient Greece Olympics "it featured the beauty of the athletic body, willpower and determination.
