Why is sportsmanship in wrestling so very poor

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TheDreamCrusher

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Just finished watching four hours of wrestling in the commonwealth games greco roman.
Everytime the match is over and they go to shake hands there is no eye contact at all and no words exchanged such as "good match" or "bad luck"..it all seems so cold and unfriendly even after the matches.

To illustrate my point..in the U94KG greco roman gold medal match one wrestler got disqualified from the tournament cause he kept trying to hit the other wrestler in the head and then he throws his middle finger and the camera and leaves the arena....
 
wrestling is rooted on aggression whereas BJJ is more on respect and self-defense. They are shaking hands no? I see that as a sign of respect. I wouldn't hold them to BJJ or TMA standards.
 
Damn, if I had known that was on, I would've watched it.

Wrestling isn't nearly as much of a passive form of combat as jiu-jitsu.
 
I think it is because the "winning is the only thing" mentality is so deeply ingrained in the sport that it makes everyone sore losers. It even happens in hs and college. Brent Metcalf couldn't hack losing the finals last year, so he tried to push a guy in his mid air flip celebration after the whistle.

I think it is the "mental toughness" training aspect. It is almost like if you aren't a sore loser, then you must not care about winning.

I don't know for sure, but it is definitely there, and it is weak.
 
why is there so much more whiney bitching at BJJ tournaments? Its a different mentality, different type of sport.
 
armtriangle said:
I think it is because the "winning is the only thing" mentality is so deeply ingrained in the sport that it makes everyone sore losers. It even happens in hs and college. Brent Metcalf couldn't hack losing the finals last year, so he tried to push a guy in his mid air flip celebration after the whistle.

I think it is the "mental toughness" training aspect. It is almost like if you aren't a sore loser, then you must not care about winning.

I don't know for sure, but it is definitely there, and it is weak.
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This is the truth. It was drilled into our head that if you don't take every loss as personally as you can then you don't deserve the honor of competing in the sport and you don't care about how you perform. Something I never really listened to (and caught some flack for it several times) because, if you're a dick when you lose or win, then the next time you match up with that guy and win, he's going to be a bigger dick then you were and so on and so forth.
 
There is not as much phoniness in wrestling.
 
wrestling is probably the most intensely competitive sport there is. I wish I could have wrestled in high school. Those guys learn from a young age to figure out why they lost and never lose again. The need to learn from your losses doesnt make it ok that you lost. I think that mindset will help a man out everywhere in his life.
 
As a life-long wrestler, I can tell you that losing is unacceptable. You are on a wrestling mat for one reason and one reason only and that is to win. If you are just out there to have fun and maybe shed some pounds, then competition wrestling is not for you. In my wrestling career, from rec to college (16 years), I lost a total of 11 times. I couldn't recap all of the wins that I had in that time but each and every lose is etched into my memory. Every second of every match. It's jsut how they wire us.

BJJ has been a welcome change for me and I'm enjoying the shit out of it.
 
That's just the winning mentality, they train hard and hard to win, they suffer to win and if they don't win, then all was for nothing.

I don't agree with that mentality but i never really competed at the level of some people i know. Of course if you are matched against a living demigod, then there is not much room to get mad.

Im pretty sure very few people actually went mad when they were defeated by Karelin.
 
There was a documentary about Iowa wrestling in 2003 or 2004 on ESPN. You can find it in youtube. Tom Brands mentions that he wants his wrestlers to be complete selfish assholes that will do anything to win. Steve Mocco also says something like he wants to completely break his opponents. To humiliate them and dominate them physically so they're never the same again.


I wrestled in Jersey where the sport is pretty big. It gets intense. I've seen coaches, parents, teammates refuse to talk to a kid if that wrestler were to lose a match he should have won or felt as if he "pussed out".
 
Definelty very intense.
 
Dead Roman said:
need to learn from your losses doesnt make it ok that you lost. I think that mindset will help a man out everywhere in his life.
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Some of the biggest fuckups I have ever known are the guys I wrestled with HS and college. It really depends on whether you can transfer the mentality to a more mature way of thinking. A lot of success is luck, as much as people don't like to hear that.

At some point you have to realize that being out scored in a game is really not that big of a deal. You bust ass while you are competing, and then when its over, you act like a man, not a bitch.
 
KILL KILL said:
There was a documentary about Iowa wrestling in 2003 or 2004 on ESPN. You can find it in youtube. Tom Brands mentions that he wants his wrestlers to be complete selfish assholes that will do anything to win. Steve Mocco also says something like he wants to completely break his opponents. To humiliate them and dominate them physically so they're never the same again.


I wrestled in Jersey where the sport is pretty big. It gets intense. I've seen coaches, parents, teammates refuse to talk to a kid if that wrestler were to lose a match he should have won or felt as if he "pussed out".
Click to expand...

^This

I've been a part of a teammate shunning. We had run the table in a regional tournament and one of our guys lost in the finals. The bus left him there at the school it was held at by the coach's orders and he had to find his own way home. At practice on Monday he was cut and none of us were to be seen talking to or hanging out with him. It's a brutal sport but it builds severe mental toughness.
 
Ballzilla said:
^This

I've been a part of a teammate shunning. We had run the table in a regional tournament and one of our guys lost in the finals. The bus left him there at the school it was held at by the coach's orders and he had to find his own way home. At practice on Monday he was cut and none of us were to be seen talking to or hanging out with him. It's a brutal sport but it builds severe mental toughness.
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This right here is why I was such a shitty HS wrestling coach. My HS coach was like this, not to that extreme though. I was always more encouraging, and you know, they are just kids, wanted to make them feel good about themselves, shit like that. My team went like 4-25 my one year as head coach.
 
Ballzilla said:
^This

I've been a part of a teammate shunning. We had run the table in a regional tournament and one of our guys lost in the finals. The bus left him there at the school it was held at by the coach's orders and he had to find his own way home. At practice on Monday he was cut and none of us were to be seen talking to or hanging out with him. It's a brutal sport but it builds severe mental toughness.
Click to expand...

this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard

i would sue the shit out of that school if they left my kid somewhere like that
 
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