Catch-As-Catch-Can Carny Style Wrestling
Around the turn of the century, Martin 'Farmer' Burns offered a correspondence course in catch wrestling called Wrestling and Physical Culture which is still considered “required reading” for today’s Catch Wrestling enthusiast.
Catch Wrestling, a style of Folk wrestling, was made popular during this era by the wrestlers of traveling carnivals like Dick Cardinal and Billy Wicks who incorporated submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents. They would take on all comers and since they didn’t know who they would be facing on any given day, they had to be able to legitimately protect themselves and end matches quickly and decisively.
The carnival's wrestlers challenged the locals as part of the carnival's "athletic show" and the locals had their chance to win a cash reward if they could defeat the carnival's strongman by a pin or a submission. Catch wrestling dominated in American "rough and tumble" fighting, real, no rules (without a mat) format with all striking, submissions and eye gouging allowed. Eventually, the carnival's wrestlers began preparing for the worst kind of unarmed assault and aiming to end the wrestling match with any tough local quickly and decisively via submission. A hook was a technical submission which could end a match within seconds.
History has shown that gambling has a very specific effect on competitive fighting. Greed led to fixed fights and ultimately to the development of a “worked” version of wrestling seen as a performance art. Among the performers are also many “hookers” that can still punish opponents and MMA has many modern stars whose training is founded in Catch Wrestling.
Fortunately for us, the carnival wrestlers of yesterday kept the techniques alive to teach current and future generations of wrestlers.
As wrestling between two opponents has existed as a combat art and sport in some form or another since the beginning of time, the precise beginnings of catch-as-catch-can wrestling are not known. The first recorded catch wrestling matches under rules (i.e., submission or pin wins the match, best two of three falls, no points, and win, lose, or draw format) began appearing in a small county in England known as Lancashire.
The men there were tough and often wrestled each other for fun and side-bets on the gravel after a long day spent in the coal mines. Eventually some of these men earned enough money from these side bets to make a living from just wrestling and the modern professional wrestler was born and this style of wrestling made its way to America with the huge influx of immigrants during the late 19th and early 20th century.
