IT’S a privilege to cover an event like the Commonwealth Games because you get the best seat in the house to watch some world-class sport. It was fantastic to be in Hampden Park on Monday to witness the drama and excitement of the men’s and women’s 100m finals, and having covered their progress over the last few years, it was equally rewarding to be able to watch Aimee Willmott and Laura Weightman claim silver medals in their respective sports.

But one of the best things about being a journalist at a multi-sport Games is that your pass gets you access into pretty much anything you want. So when I found I had a couple of hours spare earlier this week, it was only natural that I found myself watching India’s Sakshi Malik grappling with Cameroon’s Edwige Ngono Eyia in the quarter-finals of the freestyle wrestling.

If you were born in the 1960s or 70s, wrestling probably evokes memories of World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon, with Big Daddy trying to throw Giant Haystacks all over the ring.

If you were born in the 1980s or 90s, wrestling probably means Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker and various assorted heroes and heroines of the WWE. Either way, you’re talking about the point where sport and showbusiness blurs.

You can say a lot of things about the action that’s been unfolding in Glasgow’s Scottish Exhibition Centre this week, but you’d struggle to describe it as showbusiness. Freestyle wrestling, as opposed to the Greco-Roman version which is also on the Olympic programme, is one of the oldest sports in the world, and was part of the very first Empire Games in Canada in 1930. In the eight-and-a-half decades since, though, it’s safe to say it hasn’t quite attained worldwide recognition.

That’s a little bit strange given how popular the nonsporting side of wrestling has become, but in truth, it didn’t take too long to start to understand why the sport remains a niche pursuit, even amongst a programme that features weightlifting, netball and lawn bowls.

I’ve watched some fairly impenetrable sports in my time – if you can work out the scoring system for Olympic dressage or synchronised swimming, you’re a much better person than me – but it’s hard to remember anything quite as baffling as wrestling.

Basically, two competitors roll around on a mat that looks like something out of a giant toddlers’ soft play pen for five minutes, and then the scoreboard shows that one has won by ten points to nil even though, to the untrained eye, there’s been nothing to choose between the pair of them.

That certainly seemed the way of it in the 58kg contest between Malik and Eyia, with the Cameroon fighter triumphing even though he spent half of the contest rolling around on the floor with a wriggling Indian attached to his back, trying to force his leg behind his ear.

Every now and then, it would be possible to discern a winner – whatever sport you’re participating in, you’re not going to be very successful if you’re thrown head-first into a mat and then flipped over with your arm tucked somewhere beneath your arm-pit – but the dark arts of the wrestling ring remained pretty dark as far as I could tell.

That said though, the crowd were certainly enjoying themselves, with the speed of the fights and constant churn of home fighters meaning there was always something to focus on and get excited about.

The noise reached fever pitch during the 61kg quarter-final that saw Scotland’s eventual bronze medallist, Viorel Etko, beat England’s George Ramm in an adrenaline-fuelled grapple that would not have looked out of place on Sauchiehall Street at kicking-out time on a Saturday night.

Etko’s potted history is a neat summation of where British wrestling finds itself as it attempts to survive without any lottery funding or support from UK Sport, who do not regard it as having Olympic medal potential.

Born in Moldova, he travelled to London in 1998 as an asylum seeker, quickly found himself in Glasgow and, having previously wrestled in his homeland, applied to compete for Scotland in the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester. He camped outside the wrestling venue for a week, but headed back north when his UK passport failed to arrive in time.

Twelve years on and he is a fully-fledged UK resident, married to a former Scotland gymnast, Laura Davies. The pair’s five-year-old son started school last month, something Etko was generally unable to do in his native Gorodiste, a small Moldovan village close to Romania, and together they run a sports club in Glasgow, Laura’s Gym, where Viorel coaches.

Four members of England’s wrestling squad were also born outside the UK, a situation that caused controversy when one of them, Olga Butkevych, was selected as the only British wrestler at the London Olympics.

The muttering didn’t last long though – she lost in the first round.

The sport’s popularity in Eastern Europe, allied to the recent wave of inward migration from the newlyratified eastern members of the EU, explains why British wrestling has a heavy Romanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian influence, but wrestling wouldn’t be the first sport to use overseas influences to try to drive up domestic standards.

Results from Glasgow suggest it’s going to be a slow process to become even remotely competitive at world level, but there’s something commendable in trying to keep a fringe sport going when even the UK sporting authorities have effectively given up.

With its position on the Olympic programme under threat given its lack of appeal to sponsors and spectators alike, wrestling needs all the support it can get, and the sight of Glasgow’s packed stands must have cheered the sport’s administrators.

It’s a good thing too. There are copious opportunities to watch football, cricket or rugby most weekends, but once in a while, it’s nice to watch a couple of wrestlers going at it hammer and tongs as they realise their dream of competing at a major Games.

The sporting world is a wide and varied one, but that is one of its great strengths.

And ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if you understand what’s going on or not if you’re getting pleasure from watching someone from Botswana dump someone else from Uganda onto their behind.