These are both unedited.
ISO 1600 f2.8 1/500s 200mm
ISO 1600. F2.8. 1/500s. 75 mm
Wrestling is not my forte, I have only shot it once as a favor to a graduating football player so I don't have any expertise with it. One question is how much cropping are you having to do in editing because that is where noise (aka graininess) and loss of detail from noise reduction are going to be killers? Get as close as you are allowed to the action so that the scene comes close to filling the sensor.
You have to make the best tradeoff between sensor noise and motion blur when in a low light indoor setting and 1/500 is going to be on the ragged edge for motion blur in wrestling with any fast movement. The one meet I shot, I settled on 1/640 because it was in the gym I referred to as "the cave" at the time because of poor lighting that was later upgraded. I was using 1DX and 1DX II bodies at the time and using 135 and 200mm f2 lenses with ISO set to auto resulting in ISO 1600 to ISO 4000 depending upon where I was in the gym.
With any gear change you make, don't go to a slower (narrow aperture) lens than your f2.8 because regardless of body a wider aperture lens is key to low light sports. A newer higher performance sensor is a move in the right direction but don't cripple it by going backwards by purchasing it with a slower lens and/or one that requires additional cropping. One of my early favorite lenses for low light sports was Canon's EF 85 f1.8 which was inexpensive and focused quickly.
For sports photography, you are going to be restricting the focus system to a single point or a very small array of points because until we are replaced by AI it is up to the photographer to understand the sport and focus upon the point of interest. And wrestling moves slowly enough that choosing that point is pretty easy. So a good servo AF system is needed but you and not the system will be choosing the spot of prime interest.
Bottom line, get close so you don't have to crop excessively; shoot in RAW if you aren't already so that DPP or whatever editing software you use has the best chance at good NR without excessive loss of detail, and make sure your tradeoff between motion blur and ISO/noise level is the best for that venue.
Hopefully someone who specializes in shooting wrestling will be able to assist more with specifics for that sport.
Rodger
You are welcome! Mat side placement will make a huge difference when low light forces the use of a higher ISO setting.
As an example, here are two crops of the same frame shot with a Canon 1DX III which is very well behaved at high ISO and this was captured at ISO 10,000. The first jpg is from 80% of the sensor area while the second is from just over 8% and at this high ISO it makes the grain coupled with loss of detail very noticeable with a heavy crop.
The third image is using the same 1DX III body and EF 400 f2.8 glass but at ISO 250 where this crop using only 7% of the sensor area still provides a decently clean and detailed image. With excellent lighting allowing a low ISO choice, you can crop severely but once the ISO goes up then so does noise and heavy cropping results in a mixture of undesired noise and loss of detail.
Rodger
