Mat Wizard 5 Review: The Adjective

I woke up one morning, began my morning routine, which at some point leads me to opening Instagram. Most of the time I scroll through some things of minimal interest, then I close it and move on to making coffee, or eating breakfast, or whatever it is that I am doing that day. However, this day was different. This particular day, I noticed that the Tech Fall 2.0s were going to have a new black color option, and I noticed some blue and red shoes that I had never seen before! The anticipation levels were tremendously high. These shoes, as you have likely deduced by this point, were the Mat Wizard 5s. I didn’t know what sort of a timeline we were working with as far as a release date, but I didn’t expect they’d be released very soon. So you can imagine my delight as I logged onto adidaswrestling.com to find them posted on the site as an option. In addition to this new addition to their tremendous collection of shoes, I learned there were several other color options of Tech Fall 2.0s, Combat Speeds, HVCs, and Mat Hogs to peruse through as well. This post isn’t about them though (their reviews are also available here at bloodround.com), this is a review of the Mat Wizard 5s.

The first thing to note about these shoes is that they look tremendous. Big fan of the modern angled three stripes on the outside of the show. Equally as big a fan of the bottoms of the shoe. They are the same full sole design as the most recent two Mat Wizard iterations, but they seem to have a greater grip than the 4s, and more similar grip strength to the 3s. In addition to the functionality of the bottoms, they also look awesome. The shoe has the grippy part of the bottoms in the same color scheme that you order (they currently come in red, black, and blue), and the perforated portion of the bottom is white. It looks great, which clearly has a huge impact on the performance. The makeup of the shoe is primarily cloth and mesh, allowing it to break in rather quickly. This is different from the last rendition of the shoe, which had more plastic on the outside. There isn’t any concern with the level of durability with this shoe, since the cloth won’t wear out as quickly. This shoe is very similar to the Mat Wizard 4s in that it will provide tremendous ankle support. It’s a thicker shoe, with a tight fit, and tremendous foundational support. Even with the additional built in support, it is still a lightweight shoe, and shouldn’t slow down the foot speed.

Personally my favorite thing about this shoe is it’s design and build. It has kind of an old school feel with it mostly being mesh and suede. If you prefer a shoe with more mobility in the ankle and extremely light weight, then this shoe might not be for you. However, if you want a shoe that looks as good (or better in some cases) as you want to compete, will provide ankle support, and give you top notch mat grip, then this is the shoe for you. As far as providing ankle support, I can’t think of a shoe that comes close to providing this much cushion and support. Webster’s dictionary gives a definition of Wizard in noun form as “One skilled in magic”. The shoes aren’t magic (at least I don’t believe so at the time of writing this. I suppose I can’t rule it out indefinitely), but the adjective definition of the word Wizard seems to apply very well here. Wizard as an adjective means “worthy of the highest praise”, which I believe applies very well here.