LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE REFS!
You've seen the picture.
That one of your favorite wrestler with his hand raised. It's a great picture except there's an amputated hand attached to his or her wrist. Where did that hand come from? Who does it belong to?
It looks like Thing from The Addams Family, but the thing about Thing is that Thing gets thanked for what Thing does.
In fact, his tag line is "Thank you, Thing."
Referees get thanked by having their bodies and faces cut out of wrestling pictures. That's shameful!
We've even been guilty of it in the past. That's not something we want to do, but we get rushed and hands or bodies get amputated. We are hypocrites. But we want to do better.
We want to apologize for that, and for how we've treated y'all over the years, except for the time you guys gave the win to evil Michigan's Ryan Churella over Mike Poeta because of an illegal hold in sudden victory, and when you gave #1 ranked Mark Perry of stupid Iowa the win over Roger Smith-Bergsrud in sudden victory when the takedown was given but not yet secured, and then there was the time #4 Kellen Russell's hand was raised even though Ryan Prater had secured the takedown in the last few seconds.
Then, there was that time Brock Ervin was called for stalling against Iowa to give the stupid Hawkeyes that match. What about when Mark Jayne got the winning takedown waved off in the NCAA quarterfinals? After four overtimes!
And let's not forget that time that Jesse Delgado was forced to beat Iowa's Matt McDonough in regulation and then again in overtime! In Carver-Hawkeye Arena! We don't want to sound like weirdo conspiracy theorists, but y'all even followed ILLINI wrestler Trey Sizemore after his transfer to the University of Indianapolis to take away his quarterfinal win in the Midwest Classic.
We're really not conspiracy theorists. We know that the ILLINI have gotten close calls as well. We just ask that you keep the past in mind the next time you're calling a match between ILLINOIS and stupid Iowa or evil Michigan.
For all of your hard work, for all of your attention to detail, for the fortitude to enter hostile arenas and make the tough call, we want to give this to you, the unsung heroes of the wrestling world:
Comments
Post a Comment