Pin (wrestling)
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A pin, a fall, or a pinfall (the latter most commonly used in professional wrestling) is a victory condition in various forms of wrestling that is met by holding an opponent's shoulder blades to the wrestling mat for a prescribed period of time.
Pinning also refers to the pinning of hands during close hand-to-hand combat of [Wing Chun].
- In American high school folkstyle wrestling, a pin must be held for two full seconds.
- In American collegiate folkstyle wrestling, a pin must be held for one full second.
- In Freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling worldwide, and in America for 15-year-olds and above, a pin must be held long enough for the referee to count "21, 22" in French (pronounced "vingt-et-un, vingt deux").
- In America, in freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling for schoolboys (14 years old and below), a pin must be held for two full seconds.
- In professional wrestling, a pin is a common method of winning a match and typically must nominally be held for a count of three by the referee (though the staged and entertainment-based nature of the sport makes this a somewhat ephemeral requirement).
In amateur wrestling, situations which are almost pins but for whatever reason do not meet the criteria - for example, have only one shoulder down or have the defending wrestler blocked in a neck bridge - are rewarded with near-fall points in order to encourage wrestlers to take risks to try to pin their opponents.
Under the 2004-2005 changes to the FILA rules, amateur wrestling moved to a round-based system in which each period is conducted as a separate match with a winner declared. The pin is an exception - it ends a match outright, unlike the period-only victories awarded by technical fall or decision on points. In this way, it is equivalent to a knockout in boxing.
