As I sit and watch many wrestling matches a year, I wonder what people would think about the sport if we tweaked a few rules. Maybe we do some subtle tweaking, maybe we do some drastic tweaking, and maybe we change the whole sport. Anything to get our sport from dying and to get on television more. I know most of what I write will never happen, but I just want to make people stop and think what if? Here are some things that I think need to be looked at all levels of wrestling.
Ever see a wrestler hit a beautiful shot, stand up, get ready finish only to see his opponent dive between his legs and create a dangerous scramble position for both men’s knees? I have seen it thousands of times and most of the time one guy usually blows one of his knees out and is lost for the year. How about when this happens, the ref stops the match and awards the guy who a point and then put both wrestles back in the neutral position. This rule change might stop the guy from trying this in practice (which would result in fewer injuries) and make the wrestles do the fundamental thing and sprawl and get his legs back.
This next one, I think needs to happen soon. You see a great match for 5 minutes. The score is tied and one guy is really putting on the pressure, the next thing you see, is the man who is apparently tired takes a fake injury time out, then rested, gets up goes crazy, gets the takedown and wins the match. I can’t stand that, either get in shape or take a loss. I think that a point should be awarded for every 20 seconds of injury time taken. This will penalized the wrestle who does take a “ lung time out” and also let guys who do get poked in the eye or something will obvious to take a5 -10 seconds to recover. This will also encourage guys to get in shape and win fairly.
How about we take a page from international wrestling? I think we should penalize a wrestler who is always going out of bounds. If we could keep the wrestlers in bounds, where they are supposed to be, and keep the action going, then our sport will be more attractive. Lets give each guy one freebie. You can go out of bounds only once and then every time after, it is one point the opponent. I really think that wrestlers will think twice about hanging out on the edge of the mat, or when they get into trouble, heading for the out bounds. It is simple, you step out of bounds, and you lose a point.
We need to get rid of riding time in college. First of all, have you ever seen a college match where the riding time clock is run perfectly? I have not. The clock operators are always a second or two off which is understandable because they are human and it does take time to hit a button the clock to start the riding time clock or turn it off, but a second or two could be the difference in a point. Also, in the rule book it states that riding is illegal and should be penalized with a stalling call. Why do we call it riding time then? Let’s change it to giving more points, say 1 point for every second you hold a guy on his back. I think that would make guys try and “ride” to turn their guy and get back points. Could you imagine a guy getting turned for 1 minute and losing by 60 points to come back and win the match, now that would be exciting and fan friendly.
Somehow let’s get cameras placed on the headgears. Now viewers at home could see exactly what the wrestlers are seeing and feeling. Wouldn’t be great to be able to feel when a guy gets clubbed real hard, or about when he gets head locked? Somehow we have to get the audience to feel like they are a part of the action. I think this would be great, but also extremely hard and expensive. I am not going to list the problems with all these ideas, because most of them are unrealistic, but it still would be fun to have a “head gear cam”
Last, I think we have to make our matches and tournaments like a party atmosphere. We need to have music blaring, we need to have cheerleaders dancing, and entertainment when there is no action going on. Now it seems when there is no wrestling going on, people are bored, and just sit there. The cheerleaders could get them evolved, or the music. I attended beach volleyball at the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens. I went to match with Australia and Germany. It was great, just because they had an announcer who would get the crowed going; they had girls in bikini’s dancing, and basically put on a great show. I think if we can do that, we can get more people to support our sport and it will grow instead of dying.
Now, I hope you like these ideas, some are far fetched, but some could really be put into place, but we all have to agree that we do need to spice up our sport so we can watch it grow, not die. Just read this again and ask yourself What If?
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