How Shayne Van Ness Majored Ty Watters | NWCA All-Star Classic 2024

Shayne Van Ness completely dismantled Ty Watters at the all-star match this past weekend, first match back from a season ending injury he had early last year. I won’t get into it too much but I actually knew Shayne for a time, he went to the wrestling club I owned for like 6 months to a year during his 7th/8th grade year. Great kid, great family, very respectful, down to earth, intelligent. Never had any issues, they’re just good people. Wrestling with Shayne was like wrestling with a college kid, even when he was that young, he was so good at picking up technique, applying it, and staying in good position. Level headed, he was just insanely consistent all around.

25 seconds in, fresh off of a light scramble, Shayne lowers his level and fires off a random double from space. Notice his level change, good penetration step, head stays up, against a better reaction this would have just him get back into his stance and continue hand-fighting, but here he doesn’t have to. Shayne’s level changes but Ty’s doesn’t. I think Ty is getting a little too comfortable letting people in on his leg, and this can easily happen when you’re good at scrambling because you get lulled into a false sense of security. If 95% of the time you can escape shots or get the better of them and win the scramble, you start to lower your guard against the initial attack, which is not a great habit to get into. I had the same problem, especially in my transition from high school to college. I was good at defensive scrambling, but everyone in college knows how to scramble, stay in good position, and finish takedowns. So it’s important that if you are good at scrambling, you still take every single shot seriously. At the very least try to match your opponent’s level at all times and get good at your first line of defense, head position, hands, down blocks. The better your first line of defense is, the worse the shots coming in are, and the easier it is to scramble against top tier opponents.

Shayne continues to drive forward, Ty grabs a body lock, his options are super limited due to the double Shayne has and how low he is with the shot, so it’s really his only option. He uses the body lock to kick Shayne over to his back and then tries to step over to keep him there, but Shayne commits to one leg and rolls towards it, escaping that step over. This is a really good decision on Shayne’s part, if he held onto the double he could have easily got stuck in that situation. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to pull an ankle down and step over the leg for a more secure position.

Shayne comes up and grabs the hip, which is not ideal unless you have some height and a better angle because it gives people a good whizzer, and then they’ll slam your head on the mat. You really should be digging your shoulder across, a little lower than the hips so you don’t give up a shin whizzer and start reaching for that far leg, which usually nets an easier takedown. Shayne steps over that far leg, he would be looking to limp his arm out and cross face for a takedown, but Ty is super knowledgeable in these scramble positions, he grabs the ankle, starts to pull and tries to funk or leg pass. It’s as if Ty went to my club or something, but he didn’t, he seems to understand all of the same techniques I used to teach. You can do this same thing after you try to jonesy someone, you grab a shin whizzer, kick over the body, if they don’t go through or they cover your ankle, you try to funk out like this.

Shayne does a good job of keeping his ankle in and staying on the near side. Here the ref won’t call a takedown just yet, you need to lock up the leg and get a cross-face, but I’m assuming Shayne’s not locking up that near leg because it does allow someone to roll underneath if they have that grip on your other leg, so that would be Ty rolling to his right. So Shayne keeping his right knee above that leg and keeping his knees apart, and keeping forward pressure, is what’s solidifying this scramble at this point. To understand this requires a super good feel for scrambling in general and is pretty cool to see. Then Shayne does something really cool, he reaches under the body with his right arm and grabs that far arm, Ty’s right wrist. He pushes the head under and steps his knee to the left to expose the shoulder, kind of like a half nelson with his leg, then applies hip pressure to secure the position and keep Ty on his back. Obviously this gives Shayne the takedown and some backs. This is a really sketchy position to try to keep someone in, so Ty rolling out was probably inevitable save for a super quick pin call from the ref, but it’s enough to give Shayne the 6-0 lead.

Shayne lets Ty up, 6-1. Not much happens for the rest of the period. Shayne gets a few very easy shots but lets them go each time, probably looking for a better situation to come along. He might be respecting Ty’s ability to scramble a little bit too much, but kudos for him not overcommitting to stuff he doesn’t have to, why take the risk. And Ty, well, he needs to start developing attacks. He does shoot once from space but otherwise is just letting Shayne get to his legs, giving up a stall call by the time the period runs out.

Second period, Ty chooses bottom, stays in pretty decent position and is able to get the escape by the 1 minute 40 mark. You can tell the sheer size of Ty is making it difficult for Shayne to get to a solid position on top. So, 6-2 Shayne.

35 seconds in, check out how much Ty is not defending Shayne’s shots, like, at all. Shayne is able to just reach down and grab his leg. Lets go of it, gets a piece of an underhook, but Ty ends up converting it to a russian tie. Shayne locks his hands up, notices Ty’s foot is too far forward, and kicks it out, which ends up being a super nice little back trip. This is probably something he’s just swiping at, not a crazy attempt, probably didn’t even expect it to work, but work it did. There’s not much to say here honestly. Ty with that two on one needed to start using it. You don’t want to hold onto tie-ups and try to control them, you should use them to at the very least move your opponent, take a shot or fake, or transition to another tie-up. When you try to control a tie-up it ends up getting used against you. The easiest thing here is to just push the wrist forward and attack a near leg, you have the angle already, why not, Shayne is up 9-2.

Shayne lets him up with a minute left in the period, 9-3, stays on the attack, gets another stall call with 20 seconds left for the 10-3 lead. Chooses bottom in the third. 25 seconds in, Ty is riding with a claw ride and a leg pry, and tries his best to pull pressure forward to break Shayne down a little but it looks like he just plain slips off of the situation, falls to his side, and Shayne catches an easy cement job, or cow catcher, whatever you wanna call it. Ty is trying to force this way too much, he could pull pressure forward a little and then jump to the other side or transition to something else. Reach down with the leg pry arm to grab the near leg to try to break him down or lift if Shayne stands up. There’s a lot of other options, you don’t need to force things.

Shayne isn’t able to get the pin here, mostly because his grip on the head isn’t amazing. He’s holding onto the shoulder with his left hand, he needs to slip his hand under the chin and get that as far across the neck as possible. I never had my wrestlers grab the chin, there’s not enough control there, you go past the chin, hand goes flat and up to the far side of the neck, hand on your chest, and you have the dual benefit of completely cutting off your opponents air pipe while also having complete control of his head. Cement jobs, half nelsons, this grip on the head is in my opinion the easiest way to pin someone when you know how to control it and get a good piece of it.

Watters somehow pushes Shayne off of him and rolls around a little, Shayne goes for that grip on the head that I was talking about but slips, and so is forced to settle for the 4 points. So, reversal is 2 points, 4 backs, brings the score to 16-3.

Shayne lets up Ty again, not satisfied with the major, 16-4, and keeps pressuring for more points. Shayne is unable to get another takedown, but not for lack of trying. Either way, major decision against the #3 Ty Watters, a super good showing after not wrestling last year. He’s the favorite in my eyes to win NCAAs this year, no question, he’s just too solid.