I’m old enough to remember when singlets weren’t mandatory at tournaments. 

In my first few tournaments, I was one of those kids that wore a t-shirt and shorts in matches when I was about 7 or 8 years old. It wasn’t until later on that I got my first singlet and felt like a total badass going into battle. That feeling never really went away. Pulling up your singlet straps was like loading up and getting ready for war. 

But we fast forward to today and singlets aren’t really a requirement anymore. My first day at Flo in October 2014 we got into the discussion of whether or not to change from the singlet to the two-piece uniform for Who’s Number 1 that they sport now and have been since that year. 

That first year there was a lot more scrutiny and pushback, but five years later and it’s more accepted as the official uniform of WNO. 

The first WNO match with the compression top and fight shorts:

Until the 1960s when the NCAA adopted the singlet as its official uniform, things looked more like MMA with two shirtless warriors going at it.

But FloWrestling wasn’t the first to try out an alternate that has been added to the types of accepted attire at the NCAA and high school levels. I can remember going to a wrestling match when I was in college at Wilkes University and seeing TCNJ sport the compression shirt and compression shorts look back in '06 or '07 that’s still an acceptable alternate today. But it was very different then. A lot of head-scratching as to why they would detour from tradition. However, again, all these years later and people aren’t too taken aback by a two-piece being sported on the mat anymore. 

The phrase “grow the sport” has kind of become an unofficial slogan in wrestling, and while making some changes to the uniform may trigger traditionalist, we’ve seen there have been plenty of wrestlers to sport the look. Maryland’s singlets basically collected dust last season as they sported the look in a variety of colors. 

The singlet has no doubt been embedded into the culture of the sport, and for the record, I am team singlet, but is it so bad to give wrestlers an alternative? As Deion Sanders said, “If you look good, you play good, if you play good, they pay good.”