The recent champions attribute their talent to India's traditional wrestling arenas, also known as mud pits, where freestyle wrestling is practiced. WSJ's Paul Beckett reports.

Today, wrestlers leave their hometowns as children to live and train at wrestling academies ... to see what it takes to be a mud wrestler. More from Still Standing Kushti is a sport with roots ...

Find out Saturday, when Pirate Mud Wrestling goes down in a back alley in Mesa. “It’s not a knock-down, drag-out kind of thing. There’s no hair pulling, no eye gouging. It’s whoever can ...