for the refs

[scott]

first a little back story. i was watching a mixed tag on classic awa wrestling between baron von raschke and candi devine against col. debeers and the (not so) magnificent mimi. candi has mimi in a leg hold. the ref notices her shoulders are down. he counts one- she doesn't move. two- she still doesn't move and instead of counting her out and ending the match he just stops counting. and she STILL hasn't moved. now the question. has this ever happened to you where the wrestler who is down just isn't paying attention and you just have to stop counting? if so , what kind of reaction from the fans did you get? i always thought tommy rich's win over harley race to win the nwa title was a fluke along these lines. also, when your hand is coming down for the final 3 count and the wrestler kicks out at the last second how do you keep from hitting the mat for the third time (unless you know he's gonna kick out, right. wink wink.) let me know what you think.

[Dustin Robinson]

It's always taught from WWE on down to call the match like a shoot. If a guy doesn't break at 5, DQ him. If a guy doesn't get his shoulder up before 3, count 3. If you don't see a tag on either side, don't allow it. Often, you'll see a referee allow a heel tag team to make tags he doesn't see. That's not what they're taught to do. The purpose of this is to keep the heat on the guys in the ring and not on the refs. Also, it's done as to not expose the business.

We just had an encounter at a recent Rampage Pro Wrestling TV taping during a dark match. J-Rod was facing a guy whose name escapes me (he had never worked RPW before and we were taking a look at him). The guy had J-Rod in some sort of illegal move. The referee gave his 5-count and the guy didn't break it. The ref DQed him.

I've talked to a referee before who had an incident where he counted a guy down that didn't kick out. According to him, the guy pinned him by his neck in the locker room and threatened him, but all the boys jumped on him and informed him that there's no heat on the ref for that.

Any promotion worth its salt will tell the boys that if something goes awry with the workers in the ring and the referee does what he has to do, there's no heat on the referee.

There are times when you want to keep things going and not break up the flow of the match. But when someone doesn't follow the rules, you have to act accordingly.

In terms of keeping your hand from hitting three, you just have to have twitch reflexes as soon as you see a shoulder move.