Greco Roman wrestling is the 2nd most popular style of wrestling in the world as well as one of 2 wrestling styles in the Olympics. The main difference between Greco Roman wrestling and Freestyle wrestling is that Greco wrestlers cannot touch the opponents legs or use their own legs in order to throw, takedown, trip, hook or grab. This results in an emphasis on throws, all upper body dominated.

Contrary to popular belief, modern Greco Roman was actually developed by a soldier in Napoleon’s army named Jean Exbrayat. His style came to be known as French Wrestling (Exbrayat actually called his own style flat hand wrestling) until a wrestler from Italy named Basilio Bartoletti came up with the name - Greco Roman wrestling, the rest is history.

Greco Roman has been really pivotal in MMA as there are many famous MMA fighters that have come form a Greco background such as Jon Jones, Dan Henderson, Randy Couture and Matt Lindland. Greco has a lot of benefit as due to the fact that there is no allowed use of the legs, the clinch is more upright in stance and there is a lot more pushing involved. This has direct impact on a fighter fighting off of the cage and placing pressure for holds in the clinch.

Some of the strongest countries in Greco Roman in international competition are Russia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Turkey, Romania, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Finland and Cuba.