Shirazam All Wrestling Federation
Nyamae Sar Koshti Shirazam | |
| Abbreviation | SAWF or NSKS |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1968 |
| Type | Sports governing body |
| Legal status | Nonprofit organization |
| Purpose | Organization of wrestling tournaments and promotion of wrestling culture. |
| Headquarters | 2 Bergameh-Tahkti Street |
| Location | |
Region served |  Shirazam |
The Shirazam All Wrestling Federation (Ayar: ཉམེསརཀོཤྟིཡེཥྷིརཟམ Nyamae Sar Koshti Shirazam) sometime abbreviated NSKS is the organization that currently governs freestyle wrestling and heroic sports in Shirazam. NSKS is also the official representative of Shirazam to the World Wrestling Association and is considered to be its governing body at professional and amateur competitive levels under the supervision of Shirazam' ministry of education, culture, and sports.
History
Traditional Ayar wrestling is already recorded in the Shahnameh epic by the mythological hero Rustam. The Skadians nomads and semi-nomads especially practiced wrestling as part of their Mithraic rituals. They called it Koshti Pahlevani, "Heroic Wrestling" and practiced it in gymnasium-like structure known as Zourkhaneh. The Zourkhanehs would become especially associated with knight orders and spread across the Azagartian Empire after the conquest of Chirasmia by the Aeroneses. The legends say that it's in a Zourkhaneh that the Satrap of Chirasmia first conspired with his knights and vassals against the Mithridatid Dynasty before he publicly proclaimed himself Skadanshah, "King of the Skadians". Zourkhanehs would remain throughout the age a meeting place for resistants to foreign occupations and a symbol of Ayar culture.
Due to the popularity of Wrestling, even non-Melekists began practicing this sport, adding their own repertoires of songs and chants to collective trainings and using their own icons and relics instead of the Mithraic swords and symbols. Some sects forbid their members to frequent Zourkhaneh and these gymnasium were regularly targetted by occupiers, such as Zilung Chen to disognize resistance movements, to no avail.
Traditionally, the Zurkhaneh gyms are non-profit organisations that demand no payment from their athletes in the spirit of Javānmardi, the knightly code of honors of Shirazam. They became important meeting grounds for people of different classes of society, including the Dash (Knights) and the Lati (Gangsters). Finances came from charity, donations, and the organisation of public events such as "casting of flowers" ceremonies in which athletes held matches and other displays of strength (weightlifting, bodybuilding...) to raise funds for the needy. They were thus part of a network of associative and charitative organisations, including hospitals and schools, that formed the social tissu of Shirazam against which the Zilungeses would fight back, pushing all of its actors into illegality and resistance.
Following the independence of Shirazam, Zurkhaneh gyms returned to the forefront and developped across the country without completely shaking off their rebellious spirit. They became dominated by gangsters and organised crimes who had turned donations to the gyms as a form of protection racket and used athletes as enforcers and charity matches as staged competitions for gambling. The Fourth Republic, less willing than its predecessors to use wrestling for propaganda purposes, led police crackdown on "Lati and the Lati who call themselves Dash" in the word of the then-president of the Public Salvation Committee. But to truly "clean up" the sport, the state began sponsoring wrestling competitions involving multiple Zurkhaneh which formed their own local federations. The transition from neighborhood donations to private sponsorship coupled with a crackdown on gambling, with the creation of the national Shirazam Games Company, the operator of the national lottery as well as the only legal Bookmaker from there on out for every sport in Shirazam.
Shirazam' wrestling was then divided in many different regional federations, organising their own local competitions and tournaments with the support of the authorities. This state of fragmentation began to displease politicians in the 1960s who wished to see a unified national system with the goal of organising and preparing Shirazam wrestling for international events. From 1966 to 1971, the "5 Years of Competitions", the different Wrestling Leagues competed against one another to assess the relative strength of their athletes. After those five years, in 1972, a unifying ranking system was proclaimed and all Zurkhaneh and clubs merged into one: the Shirazam All Wrestling Federation was born.
Organisation and Governance
Today, NSKS has more than 100,000 members composed of wrestlers, coaches, officials, provincial federations and others interested in the sport. The organisation is led by a General-Director, two National-Directors, a Secretary, a Treasurer, and various other members forming the Directing Board. The role of the Board is to pilot the administration of the Federation which is made of various Managers and their Teams mandated for specific tasks such as the organisation of tournaments, the control of member-clubs professionals, the investigation of irregularities, but also offering assistance and counsel to the clubs when it comes to management or finances. The Administrative Council is the organs through which clubs, gyms, regional branches, and the Sports Ministry are represented. Every trimester the Administrators control the board's activities, validate its policies, greenlight or reject their proposed projects. The Board's mandates last a year and one cannot serve for two mandates in a row. Elections are thus held at the end of each year after one last Statement from the acting General-Director who symbolically give his chair to the Administrator who has been randomly selected to serve as Acting-Director during the election. The Administrative Council then chose the Mandates it wishes to add or remove, how to allocate their budgets, and then who to mandate to serve on the Directing Board among the potential candidates.
Competitions
Hierarchy of the Competitions
In Shirazam, competitions are divided by weight classes, age classes, rank classes, and between professionals and amateurs. There are also Team competitions, where athletes compete in groups representing their club, and individual competitions, where a wrestler compete in his own name (even with the support of a club).
"Professional Men Seniors" is the most followed category of competitions. Their hierarchy mirror that of other categories: newly professional athletes must first compete in District-level competitions, in teams or solo. The final rank achieved during competitions and the number of victories improve a wrestler's "National Ranking". Province-level competitions require wrestlers to have reached a certain National Ranking before they can compete, and so does the higher National-level competitions.