Hi
I am currently enjoying Tony Earnshaws second book - We Shall Not Be Moved.
it has me wondering the following:
1. What is the difference between a disqualification and a No Contest and a draw. There seems to be a lot of no contests for varying different reasons.
2. There were many more one fall matches than I had envisioned, was any rhyme or reason given either officially or not for why a match would be best of three or first fall wins?
3. similar to above with rounds, the amount used and the length. Why were some matches fought under different stipulations?
thanks in advance,
Clean wrestlers refusing to accept the result was a very clever way of suggesting the result actually mattered.
Excellent answer John.
When i started, in 1972, was 2 8x5 1fall, 2 5x10 2 falls......one 5x10 was reduced to 4x10, later on went to 6x5 i fall. NC's were few and mainly injury. DDQ's did happen but as DDQ.
Disqualification = one person breaks the rules to the point the referee ends the match and they lose. No contest = two main possibilities. One is that neither man has broken rules badly enough to be disqualified, but the referee has lost control and ends the match with no winner.
The other is that one man is injured and can't continue. Normally in British wrestling the other man would be asked if he wanted to accept the win. The "sporting thing" would be to refuse, at which point the referee calls a no contest. (Jim Breaks was not always sporting.)
Very rarely you'd have a no contest for another reason such as the referee being unable to continue. It's effectively any match that has to be stopped without a winner. Draw = the match has gone the scheduled number of rounds and either nobody has scored a fall or it's one fall each.
The shift to more one-fall matches was partly increasing American influence and partly to allow for shorter matches on TV. The same happened with the switch from five minutes per rounds to three minutes (and many years earlier, from 10 to 5 at some venues.)