Question for Cecil:

[FrankinCA]

What’s your opinion of catch wrestling? I’m curious because some of their techniques look feasible.
Thanks
Frank

[Cecil Burch]

What’s your opinion of catch wrestling? I’m curious because some of their techniques look feasible.
Thanks
Frank


The best part of catch is that it is a great step forward for wrestling to be more available to non-competitive athletes who are not only going to wrestle and nothing else. I have been wanting that for 30 years.

Some of it is good. The part that is based on fundamental wrestling and is the same as typical freestyle/folkstyle is fantastic of course. Where it starts to fall down are the submissions. They either tend to fall into the "yeah, right" category, or they are taken straight from BJJ. For example, ANYTHING done from guard is not catch in any way, and there is zero historical precedent for it because you would be pinned. It is also essentially a really young sport with few athletes. One of the reasons BJJ has taken off so much the last 20 years is that there is so many people competing that innovations are happening constantly. The BJJ of today does not look like the BJJ of even 10 years ago. If catch continues at a good pace, hopefully they will build a strong base of material and concepts.

The main issue I have right now with catch is that it is almost completely sport focused. I am hoping more catch guys will start looking at it from a self-defense perspective at some point. The drawback to a pure sport approach is that it becomes easy for the techniques and tactics to be attribute based (which is what wrestling is based on now), which does not help the smaller and weaker person against a bigger stronger attacker. Hopefully that will change soon.

[Cecil Burch]

BTW, I was intimately involved with the modern emergence of catch starting in '98. I became involved with one fo the few guys who had a catch background and was trying to talk about it publicly. I even helped him form his organization. My library is full of catch books even dating back to the 19th century. I even got to train with the great Lou Thesz. So I have been paying attention to it for a long time.

[FrankinCA]

BTW, I was intimately involved with the modern emergence of catch starting in '98. I became involved with one fo the few guys who had a catch background and was trying to talk about it publicly. I even helped him form his organization. My library is full of catch books even dating back to the 19th century. I even got to train with the great Lou Thesz. So I have been paying attention to it for a long time.

Cecil thanks. I figured you would have some keen insight.

[Sal Picante]

I think the only thing Catch Rastling has going for it is the attire. I mean, no-gi is really an excuse to romp around like a super hero, but that got nothing on my outfit.

38965

Very nice...