I'll Miss Red vs Blue....Sort of

Cael Sanderson winning his Olympic Gold Medal. 

United World Wrestling made a huge announcement recently that really wasn't a definitive announcement (ah....politics). It sounds like the days of the singlet and the days of red vs blue are both numbered. While the singlet debate is a whole topic to itself, I'm going to focus on red/blue here. 

It seems simple, easy, and understandable why wrestling does red vs blue. For refs, scorekeepers, and fans to follow along with relative ease to who is scoring and how. If you have ever reffed, you know the difficulty of looking for an ankle band before raising your hand for points. Hell, even some of the time you're looking for colored head gear, socks, shoes, or a subtle stripe on the uniform to keep it straight. 

UWW is rumored to go to a light vs dark (home vs away) color scheme much like you see in soccer, football, and basketball. Each country will have two uniforms (no longer singlets) where the top will have to be predominantly light or dark. This will improve marketability and hopefully ratings where someone can root for their own country without confusingly trying to figure out where these competitors are from. 

I understand the thinking here. It's weird to see Canadians and Polish wrestlers where blue because that's what side of the bracket you are on. Other countries that don't have red or blue in their flags (or traditional uniform color scheme i.e. the weird Dutch) struggle to make the singlet represent their country at all. How does Ireland with orange, green, and white make it work for red and blue? Plus we see some pretty badass ideas in the soccer world. Making them work in a wrestling uniform would be pretty cool to see. 

The thing is I grew up with red and blue. Yes, I did grow up in a country where the flag contains red and blue so there is little stretch for us to have fun with the singlets. I just have to say I'm going to miss it though. It was fun having a red and a blue and picking them out. I remember wearing red a lot when I was a little kid because a lot of the other kids always wanted to be blue. I remember at a tournament wearing a North Carolina singlet as a blue and an Arizona State singlet as my red and thinking it was the coolest thing ever (as long as I won of course). I remember once in high school having my red on (I was supposed to be red on the chart) and my opponent informed me that his blue ripped so he was down to just his red singlet for the last match of the day. I simply changed right by the table in to my blue and we wrestled the match. My high school girlfriend wasn't very pleased that she all the sudden saw her boyfriend in his undies in a packed gym, but we wrestlers are the opposite of bashful. 

Red and blue is fun, and so will home/away or what you want to call it. It'll most likely be a really cool thing and already I've started thinking about what the Bloodround uniform would look like home, and what it would look like away. I am just for nostalgia sake going to miss the red and blue days.