the one thing not being considered is the scoreboard being correct. I am not saying it was in this case but often the score isn't appropriately recorded -one can understand when there are a lot of signals being flashed at you. Regardless, when do you ask that the scoreboard be verified? If that is a challenge, then how do the brick rules apply?
I personally couldn't find anything on the scoreboard in the rules, but didn't read it cover to cover:
https://unitedworldwrestling.org/sites/default/files/2017-12/wrestling_rules_2018_2.pdf
My personal view now, though, of the whole situation (warning: I'm not an expert), having read a good chunk of the rule book and after reading more and more commentary, is that it actually may be counterproductive to try to understand what happened in the Zain-Yianni bout via rules interpretations or to try to find a violation by combing through the rules.
The UWW rules can be very vague in some places and far from comprehensive other places, and I think that's intentional: officials, in practice, just have a ton of leeway and discretion as to how they administer and call a match in the UWW officiating framework. There's literally no post-match protest procedure at all. Essentially, the refs get to decide:
Article 54 – The Protest: No protest after the end of a match or any appeal before CAS or any other jurisdiction against a decision made by the refereeing body may be lodged. Under no circumstances may the result of a match be modified after victory has been declared on the mat.
If the UWW President or the responsible person for refereeing notes that the refereeing body have abused their power to modify a match result, they can examine the video and, with the agreement of the UWW Bureau, sanction those responsible as laid down in the provisions of the Regulations for International Refereeing Body.
"Abuse of power" in the second paragraph above strikes me as a
very high burden of proof...Basically, it seems there would have to be obvious corruption on a very high profile stage in order for the UWW President to get involved. And that wouldn't change a match result- a ref would just get a sanctioned after the fact. Plus, did anyone ever get sanctioned for Olympics ref-matching/stacking scandal? I'm not aware if so (still waiting on Foley to inform us
).
On Twitter, Foley argued that what seem to be rules in the UWW International Wrestling
Rules book are, in practice, more "guidelines" to "provide texture"-- even when they are extremely explicit, evidently. And, despite initially thinking that's ridiculous, I think he may well be correct in terms of the actual application of the rule book to real in-match officiating.
As pertains this match, using that framework, I think the "2 & 2" call, which procedurally went against the scoring "rules" may simply have been deamed to be sensible to the officials. There's no indication that they were planning to conference to change "an incorrect score"- they may well have been satisfied with the call. The challenge wasn't 5 seconds after the score was posted, but the scramble was long, so to them it seemed sensible to forego that "rule" and to accept the block , even if the concept of a "scoring sequence" isn't referenced in the rule book.
Maybe another crew would have done things differently on multiple fronts, but thats what you get-- the power is really vested in the refs to use their discretion, and, not in the rules, given that a.) the rules are weak in many places and b.) there really is no protest or even threat of repercussions in UWW. I'd rather have guys wrestling for 45+ seconds understanding the score or at least being notified that something that occured recently will be reviewed, but for reasons that seem broadly sensible this crew priortized other principles of the competition in the way they handled it.
It's not exactly a "rule of law" mentality, but this is the same organization, after all, that violated it's own seeding and bracket procedures at World's last year when it pulled Sadulaev and Snyder out of the bracket draw to pre-emptively put them on opposite sides because that final suited their interests. How do you think Taylor and Yazdani felt about that (also world #1 and #2 drawn to face each other in Round 1), or, the other competitors that actually traveled around the world to the ranking events to accumulate the points they were told they needed to be seeded?
This isn't the type of attitude we typically expect in high level athletics and I do think at the highest of levels fans and competitors deserve better- particularly with a more flushed out set of rules that are actually treated like "rules" in practice. Of course, even in the NFL, there's no recourse or "do over" for a blatenly bad call that violates rules that
have to be followed. That's sports and the concept of a "do-over" match/game doesn't seem to have much precedent in the rest of the sporting world (outside of failed drug tests).
Too long. In summary: None of this is to say that USA Wrestling or the body that's being appealed to won't view things differently, but when you adopt the UWW ruleset, it seems you inherently accepting a massive amount of referee discretion as well and may ultimately have to yield to or respect that discretion...even when you disagree or it seems the "rules/guidelines" aren't being followed to the letter.
Maybe that's all wrong tho.
