Wrestling

Is wrestling safe?

For death risk, yes: scholastic wrestling is safer than American football and far safer than any striking combat sport. The cost is in injuries. College wrestlers get hurt at one of the highest rates in American school sport, and concussion is now the single most common injury reported.

The best long-run count comes from the US National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR). From 1982 to 2025 it recorded 34 deaths among high-school boys in 10.7 million participant-seasons, 3 from trauma and 31 from exertional or medical causes such as heat, cardiac events and the effects of weight loss. That is about 3 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per season. With about 80 practices and meets in a season, a single session carries about 0.04 micromorts (our estimate). College is riskier, with 7 deaths in 301,000 participant-seasons, or roughly 0.3 micromorts per session. No high-school girls' wrestling deaths were recorded in 442,000 seasons.

The weight-cutting deaths of 1997

The most notorious deaths in the sport happened within five weeks. Between 7 November and 9 December 1997, three healthy college wrestlers in North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan died while trying to make weight. The CDC found the same routine in all three: no food or fluid, rubber suits under warm-up clothes, and hard exercise in hot rooms in the hours before the weigh-in. They died of hyperthermia and dehydration.

After the deaths, the NCAA changed the rules. Each wrestler now gets a minimum weight based on body fat, weight loss per week is limited, weigh-ins happen close to the match, and wrestlers must pass a hydration test. The point is to remove the incentive to sweat off kilos the day before. NCCSIR still warns that weight loss to make weight "can be dangerous and cause serious injury or death", and the practice survives in other combat sports, including MMA.

How often do wrestlers get hurt?

Often, and much more in college than in high school. Over a decade of web-based surveillance, high-school wrestlers had 2.38 time-loss injuries per 1,000 practices and matches, and college wrestlers 9.28. The latest NCAA figure, for 2014–2019, is 8.82 per 1,000, with injuries in matches four times as frequent as in practice. In college the knee, shoulder and head take most of the damage. In high school, head and face injuries come first.

Emergency departments see a lot of it. An estimated 370,000 wrestling injuries were treated in US emergency departments in 2015–2024, 85% of them in young people aged 18 or under, with the shoulder and the head the most common sites and sprains and strains the most common diagnosis. Visits rose sharply after 2020.

The rare but serious injuries are to the neck. NCCSIR recorded 45 high-school wrestlers left with permanent disability from trauma, plus 31 serious injuries without lasting disability. That is about 0.4 per 100,000 participant-seasons, lower than football but higher than most non-contact sports.

Heart, heat and skin

Most wrestling deaths are not caused by a hold or a throw. Of the 34 high-school deaths, 31 were exertional or medical, a group that includes cardiac arrest and heat illness during conditioning. That makes the usual sports-medicine basics matter: a defibrillator in the gym, staff who know CPR, and conditioning sessions that build up gradually.

Skin infections are the everyday nuisance. Ringworm, impetigo, staph and herpes gladiatorum pass from skin to skin and via mats. A 2026 survey of college and club wrestlers linked frequent scratches with more infections, which supports covering wounds and keeping hygiene tight.

How to wrestle more safely

1. Never cut weight by dehydration. Choose a weight class you can make with steady eating over weeks. Rubber suits and saunas before a weigh-in are how wrestlers died in 1997.
2. Learn to fall and to post. Breakfalls and keeping the head up protect the neck. Referees should penalise slams.
3. Report concussion symptoms and follow the return-to-play steps, even mid-season.
4. Shower straight after practice and wash gear daily. Report any rash; stay off the mat until it has been checked.
5. Build conditioning gradually, especially in the first hot weeks, and know where the defibrillator is.
6. Match by weight and experience, especially for children and beginners.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (97) reflects well under one micromortMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per session (below 0.1 in high school, where most wrestlers compete), lower than American football. Injury risk (48) is the weakest factor, because time-loss injuries and concussions are common, especially in college. Controllability (62) credits weight rules and technique, and the rescue environment (88) is good in school gyms. Compare rugby, another sport where serious injury rather than death drives the score.