Ready to wrassel partner?!
Although wrestling began with the Greeks, it has worked it's way through the different cultures and evolved significantly. In fact, I don't believe that there is one culture that has ever existed on earth that has not had some form of grappling.
The reason for this? Fights almost always end up body to body. Even in great weapon systems like the Romans, Greeks, Japanese, and European fighting systems, they all understood that fights rarely stay at a distance. Ever wonder why the Greeks carried a xiphos? A sword that was less than 2 feet long? How about the knights of old carrying daggers? Of course the reason is that they knew that their enemy would be close enough for them to use it.
Although punching and weapons are a quality system, no society on earth have found them exclusively sufficient.
This brings us to wrestling. When Chris and I speak about "wrestling" we are talking about grappling in general.
Chris and I talked a lot about "catch wrestling". This is because it happens to be in our eyes, the most combative applicable. Catch wrestling does not involve a lot of rolling on the ground, compared to other grappling systems. This is because sharp shit is on the ground in real life.
Catch wrestling also happens to be as close to pancration (ancient Greek) wrestling as anything.
The other great thing about catch wrestling is that it is set up to keep your opponent on the ground while you remain standing or kneeling. For purposes of escaping, this is very important.
Here are a few videos that we have had sitting in our western martial arts archives.
The first video shows several old techniques. Keep in mind that this is fake, but the moves were still real. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IK21Lr1VXY
The second video is a video of us at class... Just kidding. It's actually old footage of some guys at a YMCA practicing wrestling. You will see a ton of moves that we did in class. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m29kosKl6VE
The third video is 2 young men wrestling "catch" style. Notice the amount of hip and shoulder locks that Chris and I talked about. During the time this video was shot, you can tell that it was going from a martial art/carney show to a sport. At 112 you will see a move getting set up that you won't really see anywhere else!
It's Wikipedia I know, but as far as I know, all this info is legit. Most of the info in this article is good. Quick google searches will yield plenty of more articles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_wrestling
Be a victor, not a victim!
Monday, May 18, 2009
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