UFC to sponsor both Iowa men’s and women’s wrestling programs

The Iowa males’s and girls’s wrestling packages will now be sponsored by one of many world’s premier combined martial arts group.

The Iowa Athletics Division, at the side of its multimedia rights holder Learfield’s Hawkeye Sports activities Properties, introduced Thursday that the Final Preventing Championship will function a sponsor for each wrestling packages.

“The partnership between Iowa wrestling and UFC is an ideal match,” Iowa males’s wrestling coach Tom Manufacturers mentioned in a launch. “We each have fun robust, bodily athletes who compete on the highest degree.

“There’s a bridge between wrestlers and fighters throughout the 2 sports activities. With this settlement, it’s much more important.”

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That is the primary faculty sponsorship for the UFC, the world’s largest MMA promotion firm. The deal contains UFC indicators inside Carver-Hawkeye Area, ads on wrestling radio broadcasts, plus visibility on Iowa’s official social platforms.

The UFC selected Iowa due to the custom and historical past of the boys’s program, which has led the nation in attendance every year since 2007 and has received 24 NCAA staff titles, and to help the primary Division I Energy 5 ladies’s wrestling program, which begins competing subsequent 12 months, in 2023-24, beneath head coach Clarissa Chun.

“It’s important that UFC chosen Iowa and its wrestling packages for a first-of-its-kind sponsorship. We’re extraordinarily appreciative of that help,” Chun mentioned in a launch. “Our athletes, and theirs, have a shared bond of coaching and competing at an elite degree.”

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One in all Chun’s wrestlers, Bella Mir, has dabbled in MMA, with a 3-0 skilled file earlier than becoming a member of the Iowa ladies’s program this fall. She’s additionally discovered success in jiu jitsu, one other combined martial artwork, along with her wrestling profession. Her father, Frank Mir, is a two-time UFC heavyweight champ and 16-year MMA veteran.

“We’re proud to help the Iowa Hawkeyes’ males’s and girls’s wrestling packages,” Lawrence Epstein, UFC Chief Working Officer, mentioned in a launch. “Lots of the greatest UFC athletes have been expert and skilled collegiate wrestlers.

“Wrestling offers a wonderful basis of athleticism, self-discipline, willpower, and respect that’s wanted to have a profitable MMA profession. We’re trying ahead to seeing the Hawkeyes proceed their custom of excellence and sportsmanship and compete for NCAA championships for a few years to return.”

Cody Goodwin covers wrestling and highschool sports activities for the Des Moines Register. Observe him on Twitter at @codygoodwin.