3. Martial Arts
Boxing and wrestling have always been Olympic events, later joined in the programme by their fellow combat sports, judo and taekwondo. Three other combat sports, karate, sumo and wushu, are recognised as sports by the IOC, but despite this, they seemingly have little chance of inclusion in the games at the present time (regardless of the fact that there was an IOC-sanctioned wushu tournament that took place in tandem with the 2008 Olympics in Beijing), given that the IOC seems hell-bent on restricting their programme to a mere 28 sports at a time. Given that the likes of swimming, diving and water polo are grouped together as Aquatics by the IOC to cheat the quota, a viable option would be for more martial arts disciplines to be included and grouped together under some form of Combat Sports banner, particularly as the worlds most popular martial art (karate) lingers in the wilderness whilst practitioners of taekwondo and judo gain worldwide exposure in their quests for glory. With the current popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), an argument could also be made for a Mixed Martial Arts event, but thats open to debate.