Ways to simulate chain wrestling/early parts of a match?

I give most of my Edits, when appropriate, the back switch, as both a grapple move and as a counter. It can lead to some nice hold/counter-hold wrestling.

I am still working on it. These edits are a permanent work in progress as they are going to change every time I see the guy do a new move or get a new attire. So after the Destruction Tour, I am probably going to update anyone who needs it. You don't need to worry as you just get the updates automatically when you sign on PS4 anyway. But yes, I've added part of it but am always looking to refine and improve them.

My current thing I've been adding to most of my edits is an early-game standing stun move (like Toe Kick B, etc) then setting the SmallDamage category in 'Opponent Dazed' to be one of the heavy strikes (like upwards of 50%), or potentially a Flying Pin or Armbreaker for lucha/sub edits. I just drastically drop (if not flatly remove) those move %s in the Medium category.

This gives WAY better use of your Big-Move strikes throughout a match, as many of them are too long of animations to hit non-dazed and you dont really want them active in Critical category (unless they are strike finishers). It also 'expands your moveset' a bit seeing as you can set one to fire heavily at Small then have the other two equally rise in the LargeDamage category.

So, using my updated Chris Severla edit as example, Sev will tend to Fierce Chop if he Toe Kicks you at Small. Once he hits Large, the chop notably lessens but his Enziguri shoots up and gives it a much more 'bigger move' feeling. His 3rd Heavy Strike is a 'Big Boot' Front Kick, which stays at flat use at Small/Medium as a 'filler' move. At Critical his strikes basically vanish in stun because he has a Back Finisher and he'll instead often go for that.

I heard the MMA back mount can be hard to use as it does a ton of spirit damage to non-MMA guys? It was outlined by Severla in a thread somewhere. Otherwise this is great info.

They're like any other move, ensure your guys have decent technical/MMA defense, don't spam the mounts and they work fine. Mounts are only an issue in a wrestling match when they're being used often throughout the entire match; controlled properly they're fine.

If you want to use them strictly for chain wrestling, then restrict their usage to small and only use moves that fit the early stages of the match; no piledrivers or bash counters.

For what it's worth, Back Switch also does spirit damage equal to the MMA mounts (all do 7 damage across the board, while I'm assuming the counter does 14). So, it's really down to controlled use of all the technical moves, as well as proper offensive and defensive parameter allocation if you actually do want to use them often.

I'm assuming that the idea behind this is that you're rewarded for executing the transitional move, but since you have multiple options to choose from while the opponent is limited to one their counter does "decent" damage as well.
Probably to balance out the amount of damage you would get from the transition & successful move.