Catch wrestling

Catch Wrestling

Also known as	Catch As Catch Can Wrestling, Scientific Wrestling
Focus	Grappling Pinning Submission
Country of origin	United Kingdom / United States
Parenthood	Lancashire Wrestling Rough And Tumble
Famous practitioners	Kazushi Sakuraba Ken Shamrock Masakatsu Funaki Minoru Suzuki Josh Barnett Frank Shamrock Kiyoshi Tamura Erik Paulson Stu Hart
Olympic sport	No

Catch wrestling is a style of Folk wrestling made popular in the late 19th century by the wrestlers of traveling carnivals who incorporated submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents.^[1] The style derives from a number of influences, most significantly the regional styles of Europe such as English Lancashire wrestling and the Irish Collar-and-elbow, and styles of the Indian subcontinent such as Pehlwani and Iranian styles such as Varzesh-e Pahlavani. A number of modern submission wrestlers' training is founded in Catch wrestling.^[2] .

History

Catch wrestling became immensely popular across both sides of the Atlantic, especially in the carnivals in the United States of America during the late 19th and early 20th century. The carnival's wrestlers challenged the locals as part of the carnival's "athletic show" and the locals had their chance to win a cash reward if they could defeat the carnival's strongman by a pin or a submission. Catch wrestling dominated in American "rough and tumble" fighting, real, no rules (without a mat) format with all striking, submissions and eye gouging allowed. Eventually, the carnival's wrestlers began preparing for the worst kind of unarmed assault and aiming to end the wrestling match with any tough local quickly and decisively via submission. A hook was a technical submission which could end a match within seconds. As carnival wrestlers traveled, they met with a variety of people, learning and using techniques from various folk wrestling disciplines, many of which were accessible due to a huge influx of immigrants in the United States during this era.^[1]

Catch wrestling contests also became immensely popular in Europe involving the likes of the national wrestling champion Great Gama, Imam Baksh Pahalwan, Gulam from India, Bulgarian world heavyweight champion Dan Kolov, Swiss champion John Lemm, Americans Frank Gotch, Ralph Parcaut, Ad Santel, Ed Lewis and Benjamin Roller, Mitsuyo Maeda from Japan, and Estonian Georg Hackenschmidt. Traveling wrestlers and European tournaments brought together a variety of folk wrestling disciplines including the Indian variety of Pehlwani, Judo and Jujutsu from Japan, and others. Each of these disciplines contributed to the development of catch wrestling in their own way.^[2]

A colleague of Frank Gotch, Martin 'Farmer' Burns, offered a correspondence course in catch wrestling called Wrestling and Physical Culture.

Techniques

The Lancashire phrase "catch as catch can" is generally understood to translate to "catch (a hold) anywhere you can". As this implies, the rules of catch wrestling were more open than its Greco-Roman counterpart which did not allow holds below the waist. Catch wrestlers can win a match by either submission or pin, and most matches are contested as the best two of three falls. Often, but not always, the chokehold was barred. Just as today "tapping out" signifies a concession, back in the heyday of catch wrestling rolling to one's back could also signify defeat. Frank Gotch won many matches by forcing his opponent to roll over onto their back with the threat of his toe-hold.^[3]

Jiu Jitsu Influence

Many of such novel techniques arose out of cross cultural exchanges with Jiu Jitsu proponents.^[4] Teddy Roosevelt, a practiontioner of Catch wrestling himself , was a witness to the early inadequacies of Catch wrestling as he witnessed a champion middleweight wrestler of the United States duel with professor Yamashita.

The rules of catch wrestling would change from venue to venue. Matches contested with side-bets at the coal mines or logging camps favored submission wins (where there was absolutely no doubt as to who the winner was) while professionally booked matches and amateur contests favored pins (catering to the broader and more genteel paying fan-base).

Martial arts

Judo

Although catch wrestling did not normally include kicks and blows, it is credited as one of the two disciplines involved in one of the 20th century's first major cross-cultural clash of styles in Martial Arts, occurring between the American catch wrestler and Judo practitioner Ad Santel (11 time World Judo Champion) and the Japanese Tokugoro Ito, a 5th degree black belt in Judo.

The match in 1914 was one between two prime representatives of their respective crafts, Santel was the World Light Heavyweight Champion in catch wrestling while Ito claimed to be the World Judo Champion. Santel defeated Ito and proclaimed himself World Judo Champion. Tokugoro Ito avenged his loss to Santel with a choke, thus setting the record between them at 1-1.

The response from Jigoro Kano's Kodokan was swift and came in the form of another challenger, 4th degree black belt Daisuke Sakai. Santel, however, still defeated the Kodokan Judo representative. The Kodokan tried to stop the hooker by sending men like 5th degree black belt Reijiro Nagata (who Santel defeated by TKO). Santel also drew with 5th degree black belt Hikoo Shoji. The challenge matches stopped after Santel gave up on the claim of being the World Judo Champion in 1921 in order to pursue a career in full time professional wrestling. Although Tokugoro Ito avenged his loss to Santel with a choke, official Kodokan representatives proved unable to imitate Ito's success. Just as Ito was the only Japanese judoka to overcome Santel, Santel was ironically the only Western catch-wrestler on record as having a win over Ito, who also regularly challenged other grappling styles.

The impact of these performances on Japan was immense. The Japanese were fascinated by the European form of catch wrestling and a steady stream of Japanese fighters traveled to Europe in order to either participate in various tournaments or to learn catch wrestling at European schools such as Billy Riley's Snake Pit in Wigan, England.

Mixed martial arts

Karl Gotch was a catch wrestler and a student of Billy Riley's Snake Pit in Whelley, Wigan. Gotch taught catch wrestling to Japanese professional wrestlers in the 1970s to students including Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Hiro Matsuda, Osamu Kido, Satoru Sayama ( Tiger Mask) and Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Starting from 1976, one of these professional wrestlers, Inoki, hosted a series of mixed martial arts bouts against the champions of other disciplines. This resulted in unprecedented popularity of the clash-of-styles bouts in Japan. His matches showcased catch wrestling moves like the sleeper hold, cross arm breaker, seated armbar, Indian deathlock and keylock.

Karl Gotch's students formed the original Universal Wrestling Federation (Japan) in 1984 which gave rise to shoot-style matches. The UWF movement was led by catch wrestlers and gave rise to the mixed martial arts boom in Japan. Catch wrestling forms the base of Japan's martial art of shoot wrestling. Japanese professional wrestling and a majority of the Japanese fighters from Pancrase, Shooto and the now defunct RINGS bear links to catch wrestling.

The term no holds barred was used originally to describe the wrestling method prevalent in catch wrestling tournaments during the late 19th century wherein no wrestling holds were banned from the competition, regardless of how dangerous they might be. The term was applied to mixed martial arts matches, especially at the advent of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

References