The Basic Rule of Pairing

Here is the rule that is used to figure out who wrestles whom:

You wrestle the first person below you in the bracket whom you haven’t met yet and is still in the tournament.

That’s all there is to it, with some interesting twists that you’ll see later. In a more complete form, here’s how pairing gets done:

  1. Start with the first name on the list.
  2. Pair that person with the first person below him whom he hasn’t wrestled against yet (and is still in the tournament).
  3. Move down to the next unpaired person.
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until everyone is paired

Let’s see this in action...