119556588 catch wrestling
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CATCH WRESTLING
CATCH
ASCATCH
CANONCE A CARNIVAL ATTRACTION, CATCH
WRESTLING NOW INFLUENCES MMA.
BY KELLY CRIGGER //PHOTOS FROMTHE BOOKCATCH WRESTLING - ROUND TWOby MARK S. HEWITT
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CATCH WRESTLING
Anywhere you find bored
blue-collar men, youll
find competition. Its in
our blood. Some whittle
away their disinterest with camel rac-
ing, some with soccer, but the more
combative types box or wrestle. In
19th century Lancashire, England,the lads who worked the local mines
oftentimes found themselves with
enough energy to wrestle for bets af-
ter a long day of grinding out coal
(try finding that in West Virginia to-
day). In the Queens odd English, it
was called catch-as-catch-can wres-
tling, meaning catch any break you
can to win. Along with Irish collar-
and-elbow wrestling and Pehlwani
(modern Indian) wrestling, catch-as-
catch-can made its way to America,
probably with some of the thousands
of immigrants who came to fightin the U.S. Civil War in the 1880s.
So what do wrestlers do after a war
when theyre suddenly unemployed?
Join the traveling circus, of course.
COME SEE THE STRONGMAN
Rather than scare away tourism from
American shores, the War Between
the States attracted fighting men from
around the world for various reasons.
Joining the ranks was an easy way to
secure U.S. citizenship. For the Irish
in particular, the Civil War provided
an opportunity to learn new fight-
ing skills they could use back in their
home country where their own Civil
War was brewing. After Robert E. Lee
surrendered, though, jobs were difficult
to find, especially as the South tried to
rebuild from a crushing defeat. Thou-
sands of men used the combative skills
they learned as youths and joined car-
nivals and traveling circuses as wrestlers
and strongmen, blending their arts in a
caldron of sweat and sawdust. It was the
carnival, with all its colorful mystery,that introduced many grappling styles
to America, including judo and jiu-jitsu.
Traveling carnivals offered cash re-
wards for anyone who could defeat
the carnivals own champions. It was
called catch wrestling because the lo-
cal challenger would try to catch any
break he could, like the miners back in
Lancashire. In general, a pin (forcing
your opponents shoulders to the mat)
was an accepted method of victory, but
a submission was more certain, which
could be anything from a toehold to
forcing an opponent to roll onto his
back. Sometimes a choke was a sub-
mission, though they were frequently
barred depending on the wrestler and
the venue since the rules were anything
but consistent. Just as the Japanese
MMA promotion Dream allows knees
to a downed opponent and the UFCdoes not, the rules of catch wrestling
differed from carnival to carnival. Gen-
erally, catch wrestling rules were more
lax than the most popular wrestling of
the dayGreco-Roman, which did not
allow holds below the waist. The term
no holds barred is credited to catch
wrestling, referring to those rare carni-
vals that resembled Brazilian Vale Tudo
fights that allowed everything from the
Boston crab to Forrest Griffins Kyoko-
shikin (see the last page in his book).
Predictably, aggressive and ambitious
men from all across the land wouldtravel hundreds of miles to take up the
challenge carnival wrestlers provided.
Naturally, these challengers went to
great lengths to achieve victory, so wres-
tlers had to prepare for anything a lo-
cal hooligan could dream up. And since
submissions ended a fight quickly and
convincingly, the carnies became very
adept at them. Catch wrestlers were ag-
gressive, and the casual onlooker might
mistake them for being unrefined and
primitive. Catch wrestling historian and
practitioner Kris Iatskevich disagrees.
The system is based on domina-
tion and pain compliance, but also on
leverage, physics, and control, says
Iatskevich. The use of pressure points
also is encouraged to set up techniques
and keep opponents on the defensive.
Catch wrestling has a wide appreciation
of body mechanics and demonstrates a
flexible and innovative mindset when
it comes to submissions. Not only does
it use the typical submissions you see
across styles, but also flows freely fromone technique to another, oftentimes
improvising submissions to better take
advantage of whatever the opponent
leaves open during a scramble. Hence the
name catch-as-catch-can wrestling.
You might be saying, That sounds
like jiu-jitsu, and you wouldnt be too
far from the truth. But there are differ-
ences. For one, the traditional catch
wrestler almost never had clothing,
such as sleeves and collars, to use to his
advantage, so his attacks focused on ex-
posed limbs. But the big difference was
in the mentality of the catch wrestler,who had a Patton-esque mantra of At-
tack, attack, attack! A catch wrestlers
greatest advantage was the offense. He
was trained to seize the initiative and
maintain it, never letting his opponent
have a moment to recover. Jiu-jitsu
tournaments reward points to the ath-
lete who achieves and holds positional
control, so they oftentimes get to a cer-
tain position and hold their opponent
down to win a match. Catch wrestlers,
on the other hand, never stopped at-
tacking until they won.
Its easy to see how the carnivals be-
came the test beds for wrestling tech-
niques, where certain methods became
tested and approved, while others got
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CHUCK LIDDELL
Another catch wrestling hotspot was
Wigan, near the sports trinity site of Lan-
cashire, England, where a moulder named
Billy Riley lived. Riley had a talent for sub-
mission wrestling and made a great deal of
money wrestling local miners and breaking
many of their arms. In 1950 Riley opened
The Snake Pit with a Spartan training regi-men, a low threshold for whiners, and
no tolerance for women and children. It
would become one of catch wrestlings
greatest historical fixtures, turning out
some of the best wrestlers to ever live,
including a man who would eventually
be known as Karl Gotch.
Gotch wrestled in the 1948 Olympics
under his birth name of Charles Istaz. Af-
ter eight years at The Snake Pit, perfecting
the art of the catch, he became Karl Kraus-
er and dominated the European wrestling
scene. In 1959, he came to the United
States as Karl Gotch and quickly estab-
lished his legacy as one of the greatest
true wrestlers to ever step on the mat. It
was Gotch who would use catch wres-
tling to sow the seeds of MMA, but not
in America.
BURGEONING PRIDE
Jim Miller invited Gotch to teach his
skills in Japan. Starting in 1972, Gotch
spent a decade instructing and influenc-
ing a slew of whos who in Japanese wres-
tling, including Antonio Inoki. In 1976,
Inoki promoted a series of mixed mar-
tial arts bouts against the champions of
other disciplines (including Muhammad
Ali), which were hugely popular and gave
him a stage to showcase some of Gotchs
favorite moves, like the sleeper hold,
cross arm breaker, seated armbar, Indian
deathlock, and keylock. Much like Wres-
tlemania in the 1990s, these matches
spread like wildfire in Japan.
During and after his time in Japan,
Gotch was a boon to Japanese wres-
tling, personally teaching many of
the greatest wrestlers there, who in
turn embraced wrestling the same wayBrazil embraced jiu-jitsu. Twelve years
after Gotch began his work in Japan,
a handful of his students formed the
original Universal Wrestling Federa-
tion and Shooto, which gave rise to
shoot-style wrestling matches and
eventually paved the way for MMA in
Japan. Catch wrestling is the base of
Japans martial art of shoot wrestling
and has found a home in an ironic case
of reverse immigration. Japanese mar-
tial arts have been exported through-
out the world for centuries. Catch
wrestling is the first western martial artto establish a following in Japan.
Everyone thinks Japanese marital arts
are so mystic, but catch wrestling had
so many more techniques, says Shooto
champion and MMA trainer Erik Paul-
son. We were learning the north-south
choke, the DArce choke, the anaconda
choke, and the head and arm choke, all
those way back in the 80s. Nowadays
everyone knows them and thinks they
come from MMA, but they were really
some of the basics of Shooto.
In the late 1990s, Yuko Miyato estab-
lished the UWF Snake Pit in Tokyo, Ja-
pan, in order to keep the sport of real
wrestling and catch-as-catch-can alive.
The head coach was Billy Robinson, a
wrestling legend who trained at the orig-
inal Snake Pit in England and who was
widely feared and respected in the wres-
tling community. At the UWF Snake Pit,
Robinson trained MMA legend Kazushi
Sakuraba and current top-ranked heavy-
weight Josh Barnett.
[Catch wrestling] is a root on the tree
of MMA, says Barnett. Catch went to
Brazil with Mitsuyo Maeda, formed thebasis of New Japan pro wrestling and lat-
er Japanese shooting through Gotch and
Robinson, and was an art based on bat-
tle testing. Its aggressive and explosive
and has a deep history throughout the
world and was my first major exposure
to submissions. I see many top amateur
wrestlers who go to BJJ gyms because
thats what they think you have to train
to learn submission. Most of the time
though, those BJJ trainers train the wres-
tlers in ways that are counter-productive
to a wrestlers skills and strengths.
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CHUCK LIDDELL
Todays MMA, modern Olympic
wrestling, WWE-style pro wrestling,
and even the reality-based self-defense
system of Krav Maga are all derivative
of catch-as-catch-can, adds Shannon,
whose Web site (www.scientificwres-tling.com) is an Internet shrine to catch-
as-catch-can. The father of the founder
of Krav Maga, Imi Lichtenfeld, was a
carnival acrobat and wrestler who went
on to win championships in wrestling
before developing the Krav system for
the IDF. Even Frank Shamrock credits
learning his submissions from Minoru
Suzuki in Pancrase, who learned them
directly from Karl Gotch.
Back at the trinity site of catch wres-
tling, Billy Rileys original Snake Pit sur-
vives today as Aspull Olympic Wrestling
Club under Roy Wood, an original dis-
ciple of Riley. Were he alive today (Riley
died in 1977), Riley would be astounded
at how prominent catch wrestling has
become in the proving grounds of
MMA. Unlike many martial arts, catchwrestling was not born out of a necessi-
ty to defend oneself. Its purpose was en-
tertainment and conflict resolution, but
that doesnt diminish its impact on
modern fighting. In fact, catch wres-
tling is the basis of all submissions, and
along with Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu, and
western boxing, catch wrestling has ris-
en to the top of the mixed martial arts
heap as one of the disciplines critical to
the success of every fighter. Makes you
want to check out a traveling circus to
see what else theyre cooking up.
Have you ever seen a lone
guy in a gym using the head
crank machine to build up his
neck muscles? What were your
thoughts? Did you pass him off
as silly? Legendary Iowan wres-
tler Farmer Burns made a liv-
ing from those exercises. Burns
purposely increased his neck sizeusing weights and pulleys.
Burns did it to perform an ex-
tremely risky stunt at carnivals,
during which he would hang
himself to prove how strong
his neck was. Burns repeatedly
performed the stunt, subjecting
his neck to the full force of hav-
ing his body dropped from the
gallows and never once got hurt.
And you thought base jumping
was scary.
IN THE
NOOSE
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