WRESTLING BOUTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LI, Issue 199, 24 July 1931, Page 5

WRESTLING BOUTS.

To the Editor.) Sir, —As last night’s bout ushered in a new local season of wrestling, may I offer a suggestion regarding future bouts in the Dominion. By a careful analysis of the results of all professional matches for the last three years throughout the Dominion, I have noticed that well over 50 per cent, of the “falls” obtained have been directly or indirectly due to the victim striking his head—or some other vulnerable part of his anatomy—on the hard board floor. • Now such falls must inevitably contain a large proportion of the element of luck, and are therefore unsatisfactory both to the contestants and the public (viz., G. Walker’s recent comments re Pasha, referring, however, to the latter’s tumble outside the ring) and contain little of the real science and skill involved in such falls as the Boston crab, crucifix, body scissors, and other submission falls due to splits, shortarm scissors, etc. I suggest the standardisation of a certain size and thickness of padded mat, stuffed with, say, three inches thick of horsehair, and of a regulation area. The use of this would give us more sheer submission falls, and less of the slight concussion or “k. 0.” falls now predominating, and would in no way impair the success of such holts as the aeroplane spin, headlock throws, flying mares, etc., when correctly applied, as these holts themselves produce in the victim a state of dizziness or “dazedness,” which in itself makes the subsequent pinning of the victim a fairly easy matter. Anyone who has had the aeroplane spin correctly applied to him knows that after a few turns he is so dazed as to lose all sense of direction, and therefore to be totally unable to use arms or legs to break his fall (it is common knowledge that a man falling from an aeroplane is dazed after a few somer-

saults in the air in the first hundred feet, unconscious after a few hundred feet, and probably dead in a thousand), and with the use of this mat we should have less depending on the chance of what particular portion oi the victim’s anatomy struck the floor first when landing.—l am, etc..

G. H. WESTON-WEBB. 32 Florence Avenue, Palmerston North, July 23, 1931.