Catch Wrestling is a popular style of wrestling with origins in a variety of styles, most notably those of Lancashire, England, collar-and-elbow, and "catch-as-catch-can" (which is the immediate source of its name). Making the leap from recreational pastime to spectator sport, it is arguably the ancestor of modern professional wrestling and mixed martial arts competitons. The term is sometimes used in a restricted sense to refer only to the style of professional wrestling as practiced in United States carnivals just before and after 1900. Under this stricter definition catch wrestling it is one of many styles of professional wrestling, specifically as practiced in carnivals and at public exhibitions from after the US Civil War until the Great Depression. Modern submission wrestling enthusiasts may refer to their own style as catch wrestling to indicate its pragmatic, less formal flavor or in homage to this rich history or in reference to their training "lineage", which may trace back to catch-wrestling.
Origins and Popularity
Folk wrestling has a long pedigree in the United States, famous practitioners of such folk wrestling have included US Presidents George Washington (collar and elbow), Abraham Lincoln (catch-as-catch-can), and Teddy Roosevelt. The immediate source for these styles was British Cornish and Lancashire.
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 would challenge the locals as part of the carnival's "athletic show" and the locals would have their chance to win a cash reward if they could defeat the carnival's strongman by a pin or a submission.
This eventually led to the carnival's wrestlers preparing for the worst kind of unarmed assault and aiming to end the wrestling match with any tough local quickly and decisively (i.e. via submission). A hook was a technical submission which could end a match within seconds. As carnival wrestlers travelled they would meet 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.
Catch Wrestling contests also became immensely popular in Europe involving the Indian Champion Great Gama,Swiss champion John Lemm, Americans Frank Gotch, Ad Santel, Ed Lewis and Benjamin Roller and Estonian Georg Hackenschmidt. Traveling wrestlers and European tournaments bought together a variety of folk wrestling disiplines including the Indian variety of Pehlwani, Judo and Ju-Jitsu from Japan, Irish Collar-and-Elbow wrestling, etcetera. Each of these disiplines contributed to the development of Catch Wrestling in their own way.
A colleague of Frank Gotch, Martin 'Farmer' Burns offered a particularly popular correspondence course in catch wrestling called Wrestling and Physical Culture.
Catch Wrestling's contributions to Mixed Martial Arts
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 Ad Santel and the Japanese Tokugoro Ito, a 5th degree black belt in Judo.
The match took place in 1914 when Ad Santel was the World Light Heavyweight Champion in Catch Wrestling. Santel defeated Ito who claimed to be the World Judo Champion and subsequently claimed the title for himself. This apparently embarrassed the founder of judo, Jigoro Kano. In response, Jigoro Kano sent another challenger, 4th degree black belt Daisuke Sakai, to defeat Santel. However, Santel also defeated Sakai.
The challenge matches continued in 1921. In March, Ad Santel challenged the Kodokan to dispute his claim as "World Judo Champion". In the first match, Santel defeated 5th degree black belt Reijiro Nagata by TKO. Santel then drew with 5th degree black belt Hikoo Shoji after fighting for 60 minutes. Based upon these performances, the Japanese became fascinated with the European style of submission wrestling. Given the first opportunity, Japanese wrestlers would flock to learn the secrets of European "hooking".
Legendary Catch wrestler and a student of Billy Riley's Snake Pit in Great Britain, Karl Gotch taught Catch wrestling to Japanese professional wrestlers in 1970's. His students were the likes of Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Hiro Matsuda, Osamu Kido, Satoru Sayama (the legendary Tiger Mask) and Yoshiaki Fujiwara.
Starting from 1976, one of these professional wrestlers Antonio Inoki, would go on to host a series of mixed martial arts bouts against the champions of other disciplines. This resulted in unprecedented popularity of the clash-of-the style bouts in Japan.His matches showcased catch wrestling moves like the abdominal strech, the cross arm breaker, achilles' tendon hold, wakigatame, Rolling Leglock Hold, Sickle Hold, Key Lock and the Fylfot.
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,gave rise to the mixed martial arts boom in Japan.
Catch wrestling forms the base of Japan's martial art of shoot wrestling and Japanese professional wrestling and a majority of the Japanese fighters from Pancrase, Shooto and the now defunct RINGS bear links to catch wrestling.
Notable mixed martial artists with traceable catch-wrestling links are numerous; among them are Kazushi Sakuraba, who trained in the UWF Snake Pit--a gym founded by catch wrestler Billy Robinson--as well as Masa Funaki and Ken Shamrock, both of whom trained under Karl Gotch and Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Some other important mixed martial artists with ties to catch include Josh Barnett, Frank Shamrock, Kiyoshi Tamura and Erik Paulson. Ultimately, however, there are far too many mixed martial artists with ties to catch wrestling to compile anything resembling an exhaustive list of all such fighters.
It may also be worth noting that the term No Holds Barred (NHB) was used originally to describe the wrestling method prevailent 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.
Predecessors
A full list of arts which influenced catch wrestling would be difficult to assemble, but is likely to include the following (in alphabetical order):
- Folk wrestling, any of a variety of non-professional wrestlings, across ethnicities.
- Kodokan Judo, founded by Jigoro Kano in 1882.
- Lancashire wrestling, relatively athletic and not relying on clothing.
External links
- Early Catch Wrestling.
- UFC's list of fighting styles.
- A brief history of wrestling in England.
- History of the Aspull Olympic Wrestling Club in Lancashire.
- Farmer Burns correspondence course from 1912.
- An article on Cornish wrestling, for comparison.
- John McMahon, a notable catch wrestler.
- US Presidents who wrestled.
- Modern Catch Wrestling, DVD courses by Fujiwara and Karl Gotch.