Amateur Wrestling - Illegal Moves

Illegal Moves

Amateur wrestling is a positionally-based form of grappling, and thus generally prohibits the following:

• Biting
• Pinching or poking with the fingers, toes, or nails, including fish-hooking the nose or mouth
• Gouging or intentionally scratching the opponent – eye-gouges especially are grounds for disqualification and banned status in most amateur wrestling competitions
• Strikes using the hands, fists, elbows, feet, knees, or head
• Joint locks, including armlocks, leglocks, spinal locks, wristlocks, and small joint manipulation.
• Chokeholds, strangling, suffocating, or smothering
• Spiking, or lifting and slamming the opponent head-first to the mat (though other forms of slamming are generally allowed in the international styles; in collegiate, slamming per se is illegal)
• Grasping or holding the opponent's genitals
• Using a triangle (grappling hold) scissors (where one knee is bent at a 90° angle and placed behind the other knee) on the head. Scissors can be used on the body or limbs, while the figure four has been made completely illegal as of 2011.
• Most types of amateur wrestling also discourage or prohibit the use of one's own or the opponent's clothing for grasping or performing any type of hold.

• Full Nelson, When both arms are under both opponent's forearms or arm and both hand are behind his neck or head, although, it is now legal in Junior and Senior, if you do it to the side and do not bend the head down.