Pretty sure we’ve all seen the movie Vision Quest. It’s basically a wrestling right of passage. But the specific scene I’m talking about is where we find out about “the six minutes.”

Six minutes. 

In high school, the standard match has three two-minute periods. A college match lasts seven minutes long with the first period being three minutes and the last set of periods being two minutes apiece. In addition, folkstyle matches can go into overtime which will obviously extend the bout.

On the international scene, the timing of a match goes back down to six minutes with the matches having a pair of three-minute periods. Unlike the high school and college levels, international matches do not have overtime, but a 30-second break comes between periods.