Pinning

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Gene Mills was in town tonight doing a kids clinic.
He was great as always. In the beginning he was joking with the kids that the sport does not let you wrestle any more.
Tech falls eliminate being able to run up big scores before you pin a guy. No fun.

I sat with him for a while and I asked him his thoughts on the Nationals. He said the stalling stuff is a big problem and supports push outs and anything to get stalling called correctly. He said the real issue falls on the coaches and wrestlers. He said hardly anyone really wrestles to pin these days. They will take a pin when it is there but they do not wrestle hard for he pin. It is all rides. They look like they are trying but they are not. He said if wrestlers go into matches trying to win by fall wrestling would change over night. His view is coaches teach to get a take down in round one and ride for riding time, then cut and go for take downs. The first wrestler to start wrestling to really pin guys will be a champ. Best ride is a pinning combo. He said Logan is one of a very few guys who want to really dominate on top.

I agree. If college guys really started to go for pins, the sport would be more fun to watch. You would see more guys working to get out to avoid getting turned. Switches and sitouts would be more common. It would just be fun. I know there are a number of pins but if you think about it, they happen but very few Guys really go for it.

This is a simplistic look at it but it is an interesting thought.

What do you think?

 

[Jaybird319]

Personal dilemmas w my thoughts on pinning/scoring. I would like to think Mills is correct about coaching and wrestlers needing to open up their offensive arsenal. Maybe a lesson on the half from Mills could right a few problems

However, I think today high school kids can hold their positioning better and have a much stronger defensive base coming into college vs past years. Most incoming freshmen will have wrestled 1000+ matches. When watching older clips , I usually can't help but to feel that wrestling was little more carefree and sloppy all at the same time. Nothing wrong with that, way more exciting to watch for sure. But when total match pts reach high 20s, low 30s, the defense couldn't have been that good

 

[artradley]

Originally posted by Jaybird319:
Personal dilemmas w my thoughts on pinning/scoring. I would like to think Mills is correct about coaching and wrestlers needing to open up their offensive arsenal. Maybe a lesson on the half from Mills could right a few problems

However, I think today high school kids can hold their positioning better and have a much stronger defensive base coming into college vs past years. Most incoming freshmen will have wrestled 1000+ matches. When watching older clips , I usually can't help but to feel that wrestling was little more carefree and sloppy all at the same time. Nothing wrong with that, way more exciting to watch for sure. But when total match pts reach high 20s, low 30s, the defense couldn't have been that good

I tend to agree with this. I don't care how good you are, it's tough to tilt -- let alone pin -- a good wrestler. I think kids get so experienced at good defense and positioning that by time they're in HS the better strategy is to try to simply outscore them.

The only way you can increase pinning is if you don't award points for takedowns, escapes, and reversals; just award pins and near falls. Because although the "object" of wrestling is theoretically to pin your guy, as soon as they included scoring points as a means of deciding a winner in the event that nobody got the fall, it became a better strategy to simply try to score points.

I'm actually okay with that -- it's okay for pins to be a somewhat rare and "out of the blue" event -- so long as the matches without falls are more exciting. That's why I'm in favor of pushouts, 1-pt back exposures, etc as a way to give guys more opportunity to score (ie more opportunity for excitement).

 

[hawkster03]

OMG, where was it, in Iowa? Mills is so funny with tons of great stories. I'm sure he was stacking kids like crazy! Big fan of him, hopefully he didn't cuss too much.

 

[Scryed]

I believe he's onto something on the current state of top wrestling. So many people look for the rideout for the extra point rather than turns (pins). I think part of the problem is that there's much more parity in wrestling now than there was even 15 years ago, and almost everyone is in equal shape going into March. In the past people would wear out and give up, you don't see that to the same degree anymore.

I think a push out rule of some variety would be great. I would almost be okay with making it an auto stall call, with a warning then subsequent points as a penalty. They may need to go back to the format they had for a couple years where you get hit for 1 point indefinitely, rather than 1, 1, 2 DQ. That way stalling also plays into it if a person isn't shooting and just pushing towards the edge without getting a push out. I don't know if this is the ideal solution, just some food for thought.

 

[pablow]

Don't the PD calls contribute to the lack of pins?

 

[billm2575]

Gene is a pleasure to talk to as well as watch him run a clinic. He is one of the great wrestlers of all time. He has some great stories on a couple of Iowa Wrestlers.

 

[Old_wrestling_fan]

Originally posted by pablow:
Don't the PD calls contribute to the lack of pins?

While not the only factor in there being fewer pins these days IMO, I totally agree that the current state of wrestling officiating is to call a PD situation MUCH faster than in days gone by.