I've tried thinking about this for years.
This is gonna be a bit of a long one, boys and girls.
Rules interpreters need to make it a point of emphasis that if you make no honest effort to break a guy down, you're stalling. And if this breaking down is not then followed by an honest effort to turn, that's stalling. That's the way it's written. One would think it shouldn't be that hard to turn the rules into reality.
But clearly we have a culture of officiating that wants every instance of stalling to be specifically written out. The rulebook starts by giving a very general instruction - it is stalling when one or both wrestlers attempt to avoid wrestling action. But refs very obviously want more than that - perhaps to cover their butts in case they get yelled at? Who knows? But that's why Chris Perry's side headlock stall tactic was
explicitly banned - it was
obviously stalling, in the general sense of the rule, but it wasn't getting called. It just boggles my mind that we had to specifically ban that trashy tactic, but, there it is.
I can't blame refs for that. I certainly didn't and don't enjoy being yelled at when or if I did something wrong ... or something that's a "judgment call."
To my mind, the rulebook was written in general way to encourage refs to use their own judgment with a core philosophy in mind. That core philosophy is that refs ought to be willing to promote ACTION, to err on the side of actual wrestling action. But, once again, that general rule apparently isn't enough when people are scrutinized so intensely. Thus we get this culture of trying to legislate stalling out of existence by specifically banning particular situations. Now, this is just speculation on my part, but I can't imagine why else guys are so scrupulous about "inserting themselves" into the matches via the whistle.
The other funny/dumb thing is that refs are still pretty aggressive against "bottom stalling" while being extremely lenient against various top stalling tactics (until the NCAA bans individual ones).
I suppose I'm a bit of a libertarian when it comes to wrestling rules: I really like the idea of more general rules against stalling, because, frankly, some of it is pretty obvious. And I dislike ideas like push-out rules, or big changes to riding time, because then we get close to changing the nature of folkstyle itself.
Of course, it must be said that the overall quality of the sport is still at a pretty high level. I absolutely think stalling is less predominant than it was even 10 years ago. More serious threats to its existence really lie elsewhere.