Introducing the Wrestler Performance Rating

Glicko-2 ratings are great at one thing: telling you who beats whom over a long enough timeline. They don't, however, tell you why a wrestler wins. A 2,200-rated grinder who pulls out 4-2 decisions and a 2,200-rated finisher who hunts pins look identical to the rating system but feel completely different to scout, recruit, or wrestle.

That's why MatMetrics now publishes the Wrestler Performance Rating, or WPR, alongside every wrestler's Glicko-2 number. WPR rolls up five sub-scores — Technical, Finishing, Mental, Competition, and Consistency — into a single 0-100 figure that captures both how much a wrestler wins and how they win. A wrestler can climb the WPR leaderboard by stacking pins and tech falls, by surviving against elite competition, by avoiding bad losses, or by some combination of all three.

We split the score into five components on purpose. Coaches told us a single number is great for sorting a list, but the moment you click into a profile you want to know which lever a wrestler is actually pulling. Two wrestlers can both score an 82 WPR and have wildly different stories: one is a 90 Finishing / 70 Consistency wrestler who pins everyone he beats but occasionally drops a heartbreaker, the other is a 70 Finishing / 95 Consistency wrestler who never loses to anyone he should beat. Same overall grade, very different scouting report.

WPR is now visible on every wrestler spotlight page, and it feeds the new scouting blurb that explains in plain English which tier a wrestler belongs to. We will keep iterating on the weights as we ingest more matches. If you spot a wrestler whose WPR doesn't match the eye test, send us a note — every correction makes the model sharper.