However, the subject of weigh-ins has been on my mind lately, in light of the first-ever weigh-ins/finals preview held at the 2016 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday afternoon, March 19, before the ten title bouts. I had written about the event for InterMat in advance, so the wrestling community could plan to attend if interested. I had been curious as to how it went ... but didn't see much in the way of comment about it online.
That changed after reading fellow InterMat writer T.R. Foley's "Grading 2016 NCAAs at NYC" article which appeared at this website on Thursday, March 24. He provided an analysis of various aspects of the just-concluded NCAAs, including the weigh-ins/finals preview event which took place at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. Here's what Foley wrote:
"The one major dud of the event seemed to be the weigh-ins at the theater. While these weigh-ins are meant to draw attention to the sport they seemed to be less about the athletes and more about those in charge of showcasing the event. Wrestling doesn't just need promotion, it needs intelligent promotion."
As someone who's very interested in the positive promotion of college wrestling -- as well as its history -- I thought it was time to provide some insight of my own into the weigh-in process overall, which tends to be shrouded in mystery and folklore.
Wrestling weigh-ins: Out of sight, out of mind
The weigh-in at NCAA college wrestling championships, dual meets and tournaments is as much a part of the sport as the mat or singlet. You can't wrestle without weighing in ... yet, unlike the wrestling surface or the standard uniform which we all can see, stepping onto the scale is a process that's conducted behind-the-scenes.
Weigh-ins are closed to the public and the press. Even the exact weights are not made public (with one exception this writer remembers from covering the 2010 NCAAs, when the organization shared actual first-day weights of the 33 heavyweights). Yet, even sports fans who don't know a takedown from a touchdown have an idea of what goes on behind the closed doors of a weigh-in, thanks to Hollywood movies such as "Vision Quest" and "Foxcatcher" -- as well as documentaries like "Wrestling With Iowa" -- that shape our notions of the process and what it looks like: a bunch of guys in briefs, lined up to step onto a scale, sometimes forced to strip off their underwear to lose that critical last few ounces to make weight.
As for real-life weigh-ins ... nowadays, rules require wrestlers to wear "suitable undergarments" -- meaning briefs/shorts for all athletes, and, for women, something to cover their breasts. This is to prevent photos and videos of naked young athletes to be disseminated online. Yet this happened at least once in an era long before cameras on smartphones, as evidenced when someone left a video camera running in an open locker, lens pointed the shower room, at a major college wrestling tournament nearly two decades ago. Tapes were sold online.
At one time, it appears that the press was allowed into a college weigh-in -- at least twice. In an early edition of Amateur Wrestling News, its coverage of the 1957 NCAA championships at the University of Pittsburgh included an entire page of images from that historic event ... including a photo of the backside of a naked, unidentified wrestler while an official fiddled with the sliding weights on the scale, and at least two others (presumably coaches) look on intently.
In another example without any photos -- yet paints a word picture nevertheless -- "The Cowboys Ride Again!" -- the classic book chronicling the history of Oklahoma State wrestling by Bob and Doris Dellinger -- includes an account from the Daily O'Collegian (the Oklahoma State student newspaper) of a February 1935 weigh-in between the men of Stillwater vs. their cross-state rivals from Norman, the Oklahoma Sooners. Here's just a sample:
A naked blond dwarf with a red splotch of Mercurochrome on his neck stepped onto the scales. He was Rex Peery, Aggie national collegiate champion at 118 pounds. Forty pairs of eyes focused on the dancing needle that finally came to rest at 117 1/2 pounds.
"Check!" said Coach Keen [Paul Keen, Oklahoma head coach, and brother of Cliff Keen, legendary Michigan coach.]
"Get 'em on quick!" said Coach Gallagher [Ed Gallagher, who headed up the Cowboy mat program from World War I to World War II.] and Peery hustled into a pair of blue and white striped undershorts.
With rare exceptions such as these, college weigh-ins are out-of-sight of the media, not to be shared in photos or videos or write-ups.
By contrast, weigh-ins for professional mixed martial arts events are media spectacles, captured on camera, and in the words of MMA writers. We see athletes -- many of them former college mat stars -- step onto the scale in their underwear, then stepping off to do fighter face-offs that sometimes degrade into trash talk, shoving and punches being thrown.
Nahshon Garrett flexes after stepping on the scale at the weigh-in ceremony (Photo/John Sachs, Tech-Fall.com)The 2016 NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships at Madison Square Garden in New York City featured something of a hybrid event the Saturday afternoon before the finals seemingly intended to bring a bit of MMA showmanship into college wrestling. Held the iconic arena's Theater, the first-of-its-kind event was billed as a finals preview/weigh-in ceremony. It opened with the weigh-ins, incorporating the actual scale used for the 1971 "Fight of the Century" between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in the Garden. One by one, each of the 20 of the finalists stepped onto that historic scale, in pairs, starting with the 125-pounders, and going in ascending order to conclude with the heavyweights.
This public weigh-in show (available for viewing online) could be described as a G-rated version of a MMA weigh-in. There were no scantily clad ring girls ... or athletes in briefs; all of the 2016 NCAA finalists were fully clothed in school warm-ups. Some did some muscle-flexing, but that was the extent of the theatrics. Likewise, there were no fireworks in the face-offs of the two finalists in each weight class; in fact, most appeared to merely look -- not stare -- at each other, without any threatening gestures or pushing or shoving or thrown punches. After a few seconds of standing face-to-face posing for cameras, most of the finalist pairs shook hands and parted ways. (Despite use of an actual scale, the weights that were called out were those of the weight classes in contention -- 125 pounds, 133, etc. -- not the actual "here's exactly how much Alex Dieringer weighs." Those actual weights were recorded earlier Saturday, in a traditional weigh-in out of sight of fans and media, as they have been for years.)
MMA flavor in amateur weigh-ins
In recent years, MMA-style weigh-ins have crept into some unique amateur wrestling events. Some of the various attempts at paid amateur wrestling such as Agon Wrestling had weigh-ins that had many of the elements of an MMA event, complete with ring girls, and with some of the wrestlers wearing nothing but briefs and a double-bicep pose ... along with a few intense stare-downs where the two wrestlers got chest-to-chest. But no fisticuffs that I remember.
Arguably the most intense weigh-in between two former college mat champs at an amateur wrestling event took place a couple years ago at Grapple at the Garden 2 at Madison Square Garden. In addition to the dual-meet tournament featuring a number of colleges from across the country, there was a special wrestling match between Bubba Jenkins and Frank Molinaro, who had been teammates at Penn State until Jenkins was dismissed from the team and transferred to Arizona State. Molinaro posted some images from the weigh-in showing two guys standing chest-to-chest wearing briefs and fierce glares ... and in comments from Jenkins on his Twitter account, including "I hate that they put me and Frank the skank in the same sentence. I don't even like 2 see his name next to mine. #karmacoming4yoass."
Amateur wrestling has come a long way in terms of trying to make the sport more fan-friendly and appealing to non-fans as well. In recent years, ESPN's NCAA broadcasts have featured a bit more theatrics, with more dramatic lighting as the wrestlers each enter the arena, smoke plumes coming out from matside as the wrestlers step onto the mat and as matches end, providing mics for some of the referees, and more sophisticated camerawork that brings viewers closer to the action.
All that said, it's hard to imagine the powers-that-be in college wrestling wanting to add too much dramatic flair to a sport that is based on honest competition. (There's always the looming concern of avoiding any imagery that seems too much like WWE.) It'll be fun to see if the 2016 NCAA weigh-in ceremony was a one-time thing ... or becomes a staple of future championships. Only time will tell.
Recommended Comments
There are no comments to display.
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now