KJGould Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:34 pm
Wrestling in general is the oldest combative art. Cavemen probably swung wildly and then grappled. This would be before they realised bones and clubs of rock could be used as weapons lol.
But in terms of actual historical records, even as far back as the Romans invading and conquering the British Isles there are accounts by Roman historians of how Roman soldiers liked to wrestle with the locals, except for the Britons since they were too rough and brutal.
Kings of Britain and Europe have been known to wrestle. I believe there's a picture somewhere of Henry VIII in a wrestling match and he has a figure four head scissor (aka triangle choke). There's also a story of Henry and the King of France wrestling and Henry losing the match, and it's alleged the right to sovereignty of France was on the line and that another reason for Henry splitting with the church of Rome was because Henry had been promised France, but the Pope favoured France's King (Louis XII I believe).
Catch really began to develop as Britain expanded it's Empire by sea through the navy (merchant and millitary weren't seperated in the beginning). Basically it goes back to the stories of men being "Shanghai'd". If the navy needed to sail and were short of crew, they'd send sailors out to the pubs and get men drunk before clocking them over the head and dragging them back to the ship. When they woke up they were at sea and well on their way to the Americas, or Africa or Asia. Because of the long and historied troubles with France a lot of the navy left port at Liverpool and merseyside so they could avoid the channel and give France a wide birth, and after defeating Spain and their armada had little to fear from their part of the sea (except maybe pirates).
Anyway, to keep fit and interested the sailors would wrestle in the countries they traded with, wrestle with the natives and so would pick up bits and pieces from all the respective folkstyles (India and Persia in particular) and then bring that back with them when they returned home to Britain.
They'd land back at Liverpool and some retained what they learned from all these other countries.
This was the early formation of what we know as Catch, and it became mostly known as Lancashire Wrestling (there were often slightly regional variations, Cornish was another type of wrestling though I don't think there's as much information on it).
In Lancashire you had a lot of work in the mines, whether it's coal or tin or copper or whathave you, and the miners needed something to keep fit and keep entertained (working class, likely illiterate so didn't read, obviously no tv's or videogames) and so during breaks they'd have wrestling matches and it'd be on the gravel outside the mines.
The wrestling soon became known as catch or Catch As Cacth Can since it was a nickname, a colloquialism for "Catch me if you can", or as some in the north like to say as in "Catch us if you can".
It wasn't long before neighbouring towns and communities had competitive matches and of course money came into the equation, and good catch wrestlers could make 10 times what they would as a miner if they were good enough and won. In particular we know Wigan became a hotbed of Catch wrestlers in the early part of the 20th century with Billy Reilly and The Snake Pit. It was from here that wrestlers like Billy Joyce, Jack Dempsey, Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson learned to catch wrestle, with Robinson being famous for training Sakuraba and Barnett (Robinson is in his 70's and still coaches today, but unfortuantely not in the UK). Also on the other side of the pond you had Catch evolving in it's own way in America (since obviously it used to be British and it stands to reason some British wrestlers / sailors ended up staying in America as a result of colonisation).
There's loads more I could go on about, including Maeda entering matches with some catch wrestlers in europe and adapting his style of Judo as a result, to a claim (not proven) of Karl Gotch showing Masahiko Kimura the Double Wrist Lock in Japan, who went on to beat Helio Gracie with it.
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