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Match officials and referees are looked up to for being impartial and competent within the realm of sports. While referees are mostly right with their decisions and actions, they still hold a small margin of error, like everyone else. Recently, however, a wrestling referee got accused of being in the wrong when he wasn’t.

Social media has become a staple part of today’s culture, and so has social media content creators. It is not uncommon to find false information uploaded on social media from time to time. However, the false portrayal of a referee made him furious. In fact, he tracked down the contact of the content creator and directly confronted him for spreading misinformation.

Social media content creator receives a long message from the wrestling ref

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Cayden Henschel, a Division II wrestler and a content creator, recently uploaded a reel on his Instagram page. The reel showcased the wrestling match referee, giving the win to the losing wrestler despite having been pinned to the mat. Apparently, this happened after the wrestler who had actually won the match did a crazy celebration dance after his victory.

Henschel did a voiceover for this video and said how he had never seen something like this in wrestling. Several social media users commented on Henschel’s post and trashed the referee for carrying such a soft and offendable personality. The video became widespread on the web and also reached the referee who was in the video.

The referee, whose name is Roger Burkett, approached Henschel and sent him a huge text. Burkett wrote, Dude, I don’t know where you got the story about disqualifying a wrestler for excessive celebration but your reel is total BS. I’m the referee in the video. I just inadvertently raised the wrong kid’s hand.” While this explained what actually happened, Burkett also noted that Henschel videos just carried half the truth.

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A domino effect of mistakes

Burkett had typed, “I bet if you watched the rest of the video, you would see me raise the hand of the kid who got the pin. I was a two-time All-American and was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2017, I think I know the rules. I suggest you go back and look at my comments and remove the reel. This kind of BS really hurts our sport.”

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When Henschel realized his mistake, he uploaded a story on his Instagram page where he apologized to Burkett. In his defense, the Division II wrestling sensation said that the kid who celebrated after his victory had uploaded the match video on his page. But, his caption said that he lost because of the celebration. Thus, the referee fiasco turned out to be an inadequate translation of a grim joke caused by a grave mistake. 

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