If we're talking about a gameplay system that should mimic the 'dig deep and carry on!' will of whoever's in a bout, then putting that on a timer-basis feels absurd. You're essentially relegating every wrestler's stats to nothing more than a timed button press - something that if you miss, I guarantee will be infuriating. No longer will you lose a match because your guy just couldn't carry on and was completely down for the count, but you just missed the applicable window, and they gave up. Surely a button-bashing system would've been better for both submissions and pins? The former is literally just the UFC games' submission system where you 'chase' each other around an icon, lining it up to apply pressure, but a metered system where a certain ceiling had to be reached by hammering the buttons would've been a far more applicable way to showcase what it's like actually being in a submission. Your opponent does their best to hit as many inputs as possible, and you do the same - both your wrestler's fatigue factoring into an on-screen display for who's about to give in or break out. For pins it's much the same. Not to mention how impossible it'll be to hit a tiny timing window with online lag, you should essentially always be able to pull off the near-impossible if you can muster the willpower to bash enough buttons furiously enough.
