Catch Wrestling Q&A

I've set up a blog and forum at www.catchwrestlingunited.com which should provide a good free resources for those interested in Catch Wrestling.

Thought I'd start a new thread that's evolved out of the Josh Barnett thread.

I don't consider myself an expert in the history or technique of Catch wrestling, but it's interested me for some time now and I've become a bit of a hobbyist, so if there's any questions on it I'll try to answer as best I can.

ok ill start:

1. I know about Eric Paulson's CSW, but what are the other top gyms for teaching catch wrestling and who trains there, also what about places that teach it in the uk?

2. whats wrong with this pic?

Trust you to find something like that!

Great idea for a thread KJ! I'll come back with a question or two.

also how is the british style of catch wrestling you talked about in the other thread different to the what they do in japan, such as places like takada dojo and laughter7 (saku's gym)?

In the UK it's difficult to say where you can learn catch. Unfortunately there are some here and in North America that have been accused of being con men. Matt Furey in the UK has been heavily scrutinised and I personally would avoid.

In North America you have Tony Cecchine who heavily markets himself as catch and has dvds, and claims to be a student of the late Lou Thesz although really they met a few times and discussed Catch, and Cecchine has no competitive record to speak of (that should be something you always look for, genuine lineage and competition tested). A good amount of the techniques he shows are legit and he explains the ones he knows in good detail, but he's a bit of a meathead and is dismissing other catch guys to serve his own marketing agenda.

Billy Robinson has been working with Scientific Wrestling to produce a catch certification system of 3 levels so genuine competition catch can be taught as he learn it at The Snake Pit in Wigan. Alex Cook is level 2 certified under Billy Robinson and is based in Cumbria, but I don't have an address unfortunately.

Kris Iatskevich in Montreal, Canada is another good coach and co-founder of Scientific Wrestling and learned under canadian catch wrestler Eddie Carpentier. Kris is also a blackbelt in Judo and Canadian representative in sambo.

Yoshiyaki Fujiwara in Japan, he was Karl Gotch's best student and taught Funaki who in turn taught Ken and Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten.

Gene LeBell if you are able to train with is a catch and judo guy, and has trained Gokor and Karo Parysian, and even Bruce Lee for a bit in Lee's last couple of years alive. The beginning to Enter The Dragon was heavily influenced by Lee training with LeBell (LeBell has also been a stuntman in numerous films, that's how he and Lee met).

Randy Couture's current grappling coach Neil Melanson was taught by Gokor and LeBell, and mixes his knowledge of Judo, BJJ and Catch to be the head grappling trainer at Xtreme Couture.

manschesthair_utd wrote:also how is the british style of catch wrestling you talked about in the other thread different to the what they do in japan, such as places like takada dojo and laughter7 (saku's gym)?

Basically Karl Gotch, who was already a good amateur wrestler (I think he was a medalist, might not have been olympic though) trained for 4 years under Billy Reilly at the Wigan Snake Pit, and became a professional wrestler touring the world and became hugely famous in Japan (They still refer to Gotch as The God of Pro Wrestling).

Gotch settled in Japan and taught a lot of the japanese wrestlers who had backgrounds in sumo, judo and karate and the style began to evolve from there. Funaki, who would be 2nd generation catch wrestler from Gotch, would be the one to bring back a shoot style type of fighting and shy away from the pre determined pro wrestling, and it was actually Gotch himself who came up with the name Pancrase named after greek pankration. Before Pancrase there was also Shooto, but they both came out of the same submission wrestling developed under Gotch with Japan's own other grappling arts.

There is a poster on sherdog called KForcer who is really knowledgable about that Japanese side of Catch.

i always thought it was strange how they had pro wrestling rules in an mma context in pancrase.

i wonder what the ufc would be like if a fighter touched the cage you had to let go of the submission hold

---

Sh**dog eh, i barely post there these days since i got the double yellow cards for "fighter bashing" (surely double yellow = red?)

oh well i only go on there for rumours etc, i come here for actual mma discussion

I'm sorry, but double yellow cards??

KJ is there anyone in the south of england that trains catch?? I know there'd a chap in Crawley that trains some variation of submission wrestling but that's about it.

mmajunkie and mmabay are all u need in keeping up to date with latest news. I dont use sherdog for anything.

KForcer and I have discussed making a catch wrestling resource site that will try to remain neutral (ie we're not going to promote cacc>bjj or any petty, political nonsense). Just a place to learn about the history, catch family tree, techniques and glossary of terms.

Don't know of anything in crawley. I know there's an MMA gym in Hove which is where John Hathaway got his start, and there's a Carlson Gracie affiliate BJJ class in Tonbridge in the leisure centre there (mostly Gi, but I think there is one no-gi class a week).

The rope breaks are straight out of pro wrestling, and were also kept in the worked-shoot promotion Bushido which I think was the show put out by UWFi. I think their rules were you started at a number (let's say 20 points) if you were taken down you lost points, and if you used a rope break you lost points, and could no longer use the rope break if you had no points left. It was all a bit gimmicky, and a lot of it was still pre determined, just they took harder, more realistic bumps.

Pancrase was more legitimate but did, on occasion, have dubious matches that may or deffinitely were worked.

Why do people use MMA Bay? They spam the hell out of other messageboards and have shown to be incorrect with a number of news items.

I tend to use MMA Junkie as well, sometimes read the blogs at Sherdog/ESPN, the Yahoo Cagewriter blog since they can sometimes get good video interviews (same as MMAFighting with Ariel Helwani), used to watch Fox Fight Game until they changed their website to block non-US visitors, Fighters Only site, and the telegraph online section.

"2. whats wrong with this pic?"

Why is Michelle Obama sitting in the background?

KJ I've been done to that MMA gym. It's run by the same guy who ran that event that rob broughton won recently. They have another branch in crawley were the sub wrestling is held.

Sol Gilbert, ZT Fight Skool. He's a good guy from all acounts.

I think what people have to do for now is just try stuff out in the free-rolling part of class, stuff found on youtube for example, but obviously make sure it's cool with the guys you're rolling with. I'm a firm believer in training with people, not on people, and that in class and at gyms everyone should be there to learn, not to win. Win when it matters by all means, in competition or in self defense.

Paolo_73 wrote:

Why is Michelle Obama sitting in the background?

Why did Lyoto Machida leave his morning beverage so close to Michelle Obama's head?

KJGould wrote:Sol Gilbert, ZT Fight Skool. He's a good guy from all acounts.

Ah, the living dead man (see his fight against Curtis Stout, if only for the finish!) And you're right KJ Gould, he's apparently put on 16 fight nights, all apparently based in Hove (which makes you wonder why the heavy weight tournament was advertised in London...)

And the UWF guys definitely knew how to take a bump or two. Some of Gary Albright's matches were amazing. His german suplex was very impressive and the guys that got hit by them sold them very well, it really does make you wonder just how "fake" it was sometimes. And I think you could use a rope break wants you ran out of points but if the fighter did they were counted as being TKO'd.

'Fake' probably isn't the best word to use. OK, outcomes, durations, even feuds are predetermined, but the same can be said of movies, yet I wouldn't call the bumps and tumbles stuntmen have to take as being fake as it discredits their work.

Before it was known as pro wrestling, it was known as show wrestling - exhibitions to showcase holds so people could see what was going on (eg Aoki/Mousasi vs Fedor). But there would also be legit submission & pin matches too.

I think Sol Golbert tried to hold the event in London, but bad ticket sales meant the location had to be moved back to Hove. At least it still went ahead.

I've set up a blog and forum for anyone interested www.catchwrestlingunited.com

KJGould wrote:I've set up a blog and forum for anyone interested www.catchwrestlingunited.com

I had a little nose around this site earlier at work, good work in my humble opinion. Very informative if you haven't much of a clue about wrestling, cheers.

Very professional blog, I'm impressed!

The thing that bugs me a little is that when you look at the history of a lot of these catch wrestlers coming from the snake pit is that, don't you just wish it had taken off here a little bit more. I'd love to learn catch and just to see more Sakuraba/Funaki style grappling would be amazing.

I agree, Sunthunder. I'm much more interested to learn catch wrestling over say BJJ as I love the aggressive aspect of the discipline. It's one of the things that made me a fan of PRIDE and Sakuraba, watching Kazushi working for locks and chokes whenever he hit the mat. He could come at his opponent from any angle which made him very exciting to watch. I'm definitely a more submission before position kind of guy which is why some of the higher level BJJ guys fighting in MMA wind me up when I'm watching them. I love seeing a fighter working for a finish (that said, I love Palhares as I think the way he'll grab a limb and do his best to twist anything within reach is amazing).

Palhares combines BJJ and wrestling very well and is almost like a catch wrestler in some aspects.

Barnett, Frank Shamrock and Saku have all showed Catch can be hugely effective in MMA.

I agree with you two, Catch would be amazing to learn. I know there's a place in Brighton, ZT fight school maybe? that teaches submission wrestling. Obviously not the same but at least it's something.

Oh, and that blog is excellent. Well done mate.

One of the things I loved about Sakuraba was that his style allowed him to essentially never be held down on his back (in his prime). Facing all these bigger guys he was essentially able to stay off his back by turning and turtling, but being so good in that position that no one could get any offence off on him. If you had Sakuraba in turtle position (before knees/kicks on the ground were legal) it was almost an advantageous position for Saku with the quality of his single leg/kimura. I'd love to see more fighters who just couldn't be controlled on the ground.

Anyway, so much in catch would lend itself to really exciting MMA.

Thanks for the positive comments on the blog guys.

I think BJJ has its place regarding some skills and strategies, but I honestly think Catch is the missing link to a more in depth and active MMA game.

Interestingly the wrestling coach for Kaobon in Liverpool, a guy called Shane Rigby, is a Catch wrestler. 3rd generation Snake Pit basically, as he learned from Roy Wood who officially took over from Billy Riley. Kaobon also has a Luta Livre coach and Luta Livre has ties to Catch wrestling and has had a rivalry with Jiu Jitsu in Brazil for decades. So guys like Paul Kelly, Paul Taylor, Terry Etim and Paul Sass are getting Catch Wrestling training.

Rigby also teaches two Catch classes and one Takedown class a week in Wigan.