It honestly makes the finals match practically meaningless. Most of these tournaments hype the finals to the point that to the kid nothing else matters.
I don't agree that it is meaningless. Maybe it reduces the "making the finals" status but earning your spot based on performance vs luck of the draw is a good thing to me.
We could always remove the finals hype including the parade.
BTW - you already know this but I support true 2nd for brackets that are drawn or mapped based on geography.
I have asked around and the estimates are anywhere from 75% to 90% of the time the 3rd place wrestler wins as he is just coming off a win and has the momentum.
I'm a data guy and this just doesn't pass the sniff test. Just for grins I took a well known national tournament (Tulsa) and mapped the results for the person who lost in the finals by age group. They either won the true 2nd, lost it or didn't have to wrestle since they already wrestled the 3rd place finisher. Here are the results (Note round robin brackets removed from data):
Division--Won--Lost--No Match
---6U--------2-------2------5
---8U--------4-------4------5
--10U-------6-------5------5
--12U-------6-------4------8
--15U-------4-------4------6
TOTAL----22-----19----29
Based on the above:
The wrestler that lost in the "finals" won their true 2nd 54% of the time.
The wrestler that lost in the "finals" LOST their true 2nd 46% of the time.
Of the total opportunities no match was required 41% of the time since the 2nd and 3rd had already wrestled (RULE).
Unless Tulsa is a statistical outlier in terms of results I'd say the above data suggests that the 75%-90% assumption does not hold true. No doubt it's an emotional task but it seems that more than 50% are up to the task!
