Tryst of an American wrestler with Kabaddi

Hailing from a part of the world where kabaddi is rarely even heard of, Jairo Chavez is an interesting tale of an American's love affair with the rustic Indian sport to which he was introduced by a slight twist of fate.
Jairo, who won the best stopper in his debut game for Vancouver Lions at the ongoing World Kabaddi League, spoke to PTI about how he accidentally got hooked to the sport.
"I got started about three and a half years ago. One of my really good friends invited me and my brother Jesus to go wrestle in Olympic style wrestling. Me and my brother have wrestled and I became a state champion in 2013 for college (in California)," Jairo said in an interview to PTI.

But as destiny would have it, Jairo and his brother started developing interest in Kabaddi as their scheduled wrestling tournament during Kabaddi matches was called off.
"My friend Gurpreet Singh invited me and my brother to go wrestle and my brother went to a local match, he wrestled and he won and we decided at that point that we wanted to continue wrestling during the kabaddi tournament. The following week there was a kabaddi tournament and we got invited to go wrestle and it ended up being cancelled.
"The wrestling was cancelled so we started watching kabaddi and at that point, we decided that we wanted to play, we wanted to try it out. Our friend Gurpreet talked to one of the sponsors and we got onto a team. My brother played under 21 and I played open, we both started as raiders," he added.