Wrestling question

I sometimes get confused about wreestlign terminology:

I know that Olympic freestyle wrestling has no submissions but is supposedly based on catch as catch can.......so what's the difference between 'catch as catch can' and Lancashire Catch

Hi John.. longtime mate

right there are several styles based on 'catch' of which Lancashire catch is ONE regional style with (as far as I can make out) THREE historical stages.. the one I personally prefer was stage TWO

However the first catch was called 'Catch Hold' .. because at that time, around the early 1700's it was the only style around that DIDNT start from grips.. like in cumberland etc.. so before you could wrestle him, you had to 'catch hold' of him

catch-as-catch can style was born of catch hold combined with hooking and ripping, and is the basis of many American off shoots, such as Frank Goth and the late great Lou Thesz...
Lancashire catch even had differences in Lancashire .. The Mancunians had different rules than say Bolton or Wigan, with the Wigan fighters probably the orughest ofthem all

Olympic Freestyle took PARTS of Catch-as catch can in order to produce a fast style suitable for olympic competition.. the older catch styles could sometimes be 'slow and boring' for spectators (not for the competitors mind) ..

think of the massive differences between Judo as was and Judo as a jacketed olympic wrestling sport .. Judo can be slow and boring to watch in competition

hope that helps a bit

Thanks. That does help a bit. yes it's been a long time. BTW SFUK has gone through a bit of a resurgence and it was Carl Fisher who suggested that you might be the man to ask, when the issue of catch as catch can came up in a recent thread.

SFUK is well worth a look. There's a distinct BJJ bias but there are no idiots about these days

Dave,
Sorry to hijack this thread but it is sort of on the subject of my question.

I am a member of a European MA club and have been asked to look at other early european unarmed/wrestling or dagger techniques up to 19th century.
I am about to order some of your new DVD collection (shin kicking wrestling looks realy good)and have some books from Silver ,Petter,Talhoffer and Meyer but was wondering if you could recomend any other literature.

Sorry if this is the wrong place for this but you seem to be something of an expert in this field.

Cheers

Steve

cheers mate .. Err hardly an 'expert' just like yourself an interested party

You mention Silver (George Silver??) his is cracking stuff..

most of my material was collected from book fairs and now Ebay... but a lot of it was anectdotal stuff from oldtimers 'wen I wer a lad'.. there's not much stuff about.. I have a collection of videos I recorded off channel 4 years ago called 'Arms in Action' they were good...

but there's so little around, if you want to ask me any specific questions I will be more than happy to see what I can come up with.. but reference libraries are excellent in some ways.. its the lack of stuff TO BUY that does my head in

good luck with it

regards

Dave

Stevew:

I bumped into a bloke on another forum who was a member of this lot:

http://www.thearma.org/HEMA.htm

They've got a forum here:

http://www.thearma.org/forum/index.php

Might be useful to you and of interest to Dave if you've not encountered them already.

Cheers.
yes George Silver is the framework around our club. The problem with older stuff is that it is mostly pictorial and open to bad interpratation as the frames ,a lot of the time,show the end of a movement and not how they reached it!
At present we are trying to reintroduce Backswording to country faryes around England.
Will be back with more specific questions when they arise.

Thanks again

Steve

Dannyl,
Thanks for that, there is a load of research stuff on there!

Cheers

Steve