Line #27 UsefulNotes/CatchWrestling


1	[[quoteright:236:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/catch_wrestling.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:236:Don't feed the wrestlers.]]
3	'''Catch wrestling''', also known as '''catch-as-catch-can''' and less so as "loose-hold" or "up and down wrestling", is a classical combat sport and form of entertainment developed in Britain in the 18th Century. The style actually an umbrella term for several forms of wrestling and grappling styles based around pinning, joint locking and strangling, though it is actually much more known for being the grandfather of modern UsefulNotes/ProfessionalWrestling.
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5	Catch wrestling's history is a blurred affair. We know the name of the discipline comes from English styles of folk wrestling characterized by their violent and open rulesets, most specifically the Lancashire, Cumberland and Westmoreland styles, where it was a popular entertainment and source of bets for coal miners in the 1800s. It's also known that the art was shaped further in the American and European travelling funfair and carnival scene, where huge mustachioed strongmen would challenge members of the crowd to beat them in a wrestling contest for a reward, often letting them have the advantage for a time to entertain the crowd and entice more challengers before defeating them painfully. In any case, catch wrestling would become synonymous with spectacle, sweat and men wrenching each other's bones in front of cheering crowds.
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7	However, always in search of the contentment of the audience and the money they would throw, catch wrestling would take over the years a road to theatricality and showmanship over all-around competitions. Matches became deliberately back and forth instead of being boring stall fests or fast squashes, wrestlers started taking on larger-than-life [[TheGimmick gimmicks]] with [[{{tecnico}} heroes]] and [[{{rudo}} villains]], and finally, "worked" elements like {{tag team}} bouts, [[ActionGirl female wrestlers]] and [[GarbageWrestler weapons]] were introduced to spice up the party. Catch wrestling stopped being a competitive sport and turned into the violent soap opera we know and love as ProfessionalWrestling – or did it?
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9	Distinguishing catch wrestling from pro wrestling today is pretty much impossible due to how enrooted the former is to the latter and how the latter never distanced itself much from the former despite what you would believe by watching Wrestling/{{WWE}}. However, the tradition of the art as a legitimate fighting style survived in the strangest places, namely Japan, Brazil and some ramshackle gyms in the Anglophone sphere.
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11	* Japan, the land of martial arts, is the country with the strongest catch tradition nowadays, even above Britain and United States. After some history of challenges against native UsefulNotes/{{Judo}} practitioners, [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff Japanese people decided that catch wrestling was awesome]] and integrated it in their culture through professional wrestling (which they call ''puroresu''). Despite it entailing the same worked nature as abroad, in Japan it never left its competitive roots altogether, as crowds there love to see fake wrestlers kicking each other for real, and it actually returned full force with a revival movement called "[[Wrestling/UniversalWrestlingFederation shoot-style]]." Mixed with other styles like judo, UsefulNotes/{{Karate}} and UsefulNotes/{{Sambo}}, as well as some Japanese creativity, catch lived on to give birth to the early stage of competitive UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts and submission grappling.
12	* In Brazil, catch-as-catch-can attracted the crowd's attention both before and during the rise of the ''vale tudo'', a system of bouts which saw people beating down each other with lots of blood to entertain the average Brazilian and which would take invariably the same route towards modern MMA. Local wrestlers mixed catch wrestling with judo and striking arts specifically to adapt to this kind of competition, and it received the antonomasia name of "luta livre," a Portuguese word which formerly referred to any kind of sport wrestling, catch or not, and to differentiate from them, it uses the name "Luta Livre Esportiva" ("sporting") or "Luta Livre Submission"[[note]]Olympic Freestyle Wrestling is called "Luta Livre Olímpica" and Professional Wrestling is "Luta Livre Profissional"[[/note]]. Different from traditional catch-as-catch-can, LL doesn't have a pin, allowing from fighting from the back and thus focused on submission-seeking. Luta livre almost disappeared with the wild rise of UsefulNotes/BrazilianJiuJitsu, but the style is still out there and surviving in European countries like France and Germany.
13	* In America and Britain, some gyms and associations that host old school competitions are still active nowadays, most famously the Wigan Snakepit, where many famous wrestlers trained, as well as some parts of the defunct American territorial system.
14	* In Eastern Europe, while rare compared to the popularity of Greco-Roman wrestling, produced some great catch wrestlers, especially when the Russian Empire was still in existence. In Russia before the Soviet Union, catch wrestling was known as "free wrestling" and survived there as a major influence in creating the relatively newer martial art of Russian UsefulNotes/{{Sambo}}, with its appeal for leg locks, use of shoes, and the banning of chokeholds in sport sambo as possibly its biggest influence, aside from other influences that include UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}, Greco-Roman, and other folk styles of wrestling. Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oshchepkov, the guys who laid ''two'' different foundations for what would become sambo were both according to some people catch wrestlers in their own right. In addition to Russia, the other countries in the now former Soviet Union translated their rather humble catch wrestling traditions into becoming the freestyle wrestling powerhouses they are now known as.
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16	!!Tropes associated with catch wrestling
17	* TheAce: The most definitive wrestlers to fit the description were probably Frank Gotch and his trainer Martin "Farmer" Burns.
18	* ArmedLegs: Some of the earliest catch bouts featured wrestlers wearing spiked pumps (some reports the maximum allowed length of spikes was a quarter of an inch) or heavy wooden metal tipped clogs.
19	* ArrogantKungFuGuy: Cocky, magnificent personas were actively endorsed in order to appeal the crowds. If a wrestler didn't have enough personality to attract heat, a flamboyant manager would do the trick.
20	* AttackAttackAttack: One of its most well known features, as its philosophy is usually composed of avoid thinking in the possibility of losing and never, never stop trying to wrench some limb off or getting the pin.
21	* AwesomeButImpractical:
22	** Invoked and kept as one of the traits of the style. Due to its theatrical nature, most forms of catch-as-catch-can favored flashy moves over pragmatic ones (although all of them hurt the same), so nasty armlocks and stylized leglocks with lots of visible limb twisting became the favourites of the discipline. Nevertheless, less visually cool techniques like neck cranks and headlocks were also included, as they are a vital part of the wrestling process.
23	** Japanese catch wrestling took it up to eleven. The influence of judo and traditional puroresu on their culture meant crowds were able to understand the holds's workings and were already expecting something more, so the wrestlers had to keep it the most dynamic and visually appealing possible, even when they wrestled for real as in the Pancrase and early Shooto promotions. That many of the wrestlers themselves had judo and sambo backgrounds only contributed to it, as the former art favors a grappling game very fast-paced and based on wild submission-hunting, while the latter features bold entries into joint lock from very unusual angles.
24	* BadassBack: Unlike other grappling styles, catch wrestling doesn't inculcate a desperate fear to have one's own back taken in a match (though, naturally, it enforces that it is preferable not to have it taken), and in fact it has a few techniques which are initiated from the back. Wrestling/KazushiSakuraba marked possibly the most famous instance when he caught Renzo Gracie in a double wrist lock while Gracie was clamped to his back.
25	* BashBrothers: The most notable example of this in catch wrestling are Polish wrestlers Stanisław and Władysław Cyganiewicz, better known as Stanislaus and Wladek Zbyszko.
26	* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame:
27	** Ad Santel become famous for defeating judokas in their own terms (i.e. wearing uwagi jackets).
28	** Some notable wrestlers of different styles managed to do this to high level catch wrestlers, like sumo wrestler Sorakichi Matsuda, Turkish oil wrestler Yusuf "The Terrible Turk" Ismail and Indian/Pakistani Pehlwani wrestler Ghulam Muhammad Butt, better known as the Great Gama.
29	* BloodKnight: The sport has attracted some of those during its story, most famously Wrestling/KarlGotch.
30	* BodyguardingABadass: When pro wrestling started to become more predetermined in the 1920s, there were wrestlers who disliked the new wrestling "trust" (meaning worked or coordinated) and so they became "trustbusters", outlaw wrestlers who posed threats to promotions and their champions by refusing to co-operate during matches. To counter them, the wrestling trust enlisted wrestlers of high skill who could ward them off, being called "policemen". A good example of a policeman wrestler was "[[PantheraAwesome The Nebraskan Tiger Man]]" John Pesek who worked for Wrestling/EdStranglerLewis and the Gold Dust Trio and was famed for his brutality against such trustbusters. Funny enough though, Pesek himself was a major trustbuster in his own right, as a consequence [[ScrewedByTheNetwork promoters isolated him from the wrestling mainstream for much of his career]].
31	* BoringButPractical: Ancient catch-as-catch-can styles often preferred to win by pinfall instead of by submission, to the extent that some rulesets disallowed submissions entirely. Many experts believe most submissions in catch wrestling were created by controlling an opponent with regular pinning holds and then squeezing or twisting whatever you were grabbing, or even vice versa, by squeezing or twisting something painful so you could control the opponent better in order to force a pin, such techniques were originally referred to as "punishment holds". The popular, submission based rough-and-tumble style came later, possibly influenced by the Japanese judo and jiu-jitsu stylists who came to Europe and United States.
32	* BrawlerLock: The Irish collar and elbow tie up is pretty much this. As well as the Greco-Roman knuckle lock. If the names weren't enough hint, these are styles of wrestling all their own, use set ups were adopted for catch matches, the former becoming synonymous with worked pro wrestling.
33	* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: Many catch wrestlers were also strongmen, and the legendary Wrestling/GeorgeHackenschmidt was even a pioneer of physical culture.
34	* TheChessmaster: Old school wrestlers like describing wrestling as physical chess, so high level guys could be known as physical chess masters.
35	* CombatPragmatist: The old catch wrestlers had techniques that are considered dirty in order to set up their submissions or to just hurt the other wrestler that they called "rips". Some of these techniques include fish-hooking and eye gouging.
36	* CombatSadomasochist: British catch wrestler Bert Assirati was known to love getting hurt and hurting his opponents. Many were afraid to face him in worked matches as he could double cross them just to see them in pain.
37	* {{Contortionist}}: An useful skill in order to avoid being crushed in cradles and to escape submissions.
38	* CoolVsAwesome: Many of the golden age matchups were this, especially the Frank Gotch/Georg Hackenschmidt feud.
39	* CounterAttack: A fundamental part of catch wrestling is the "chain wrestling" or "lockflow", the ability to chain one submission to another (both to and from the opponent) in a fluid sequence.
40	* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: ChokeHolds were the main no-no in some rulesets; the term "no holds barred" came precisely from any catch competition which allowed one to do any hold including chokeholds. It has been speculated that because of this ban on chokes, wrestlers instead developed and refined head locks, face locks and neck cranks to compensate. Another move that is often banned is the full nelson mostly due to one recorded instance of a wrestler having his neck broken by the move, was left paralysed from the shoulders down, and died two days later when his body shut down.
41	** In later times, however, the heel hook and some variations of the toehold are the moves most people will tell you they don't want to be in, especially when wearing shoes.
42	** Curiously, modern Luta Livre rulesets ban the crucifix position and it is not clearly explained why.
43	* DavidVersusGoliath: Back in the times in which there weren't such things like weight classes.
44	* DefeatMeansFriendship: The reason why catch was so well received in Japan was Ad Santel defeating judokas left and right with his catch wrestling techniques. The Japanese only needed to see it to think "this is awesome, we definitely need to learn it." Some of his very opponents returned with him to United States in order to get initiated in catch wrestling.
45	* DifficultButAwesome: The opinion of many people about catch wrestling as opposed to other grappling styles, although the source of the difficulty is a more heated debate. The main explanation is that catch is a niche sport today, and thus it's quite difficult to find quality instruction compared to worldwide disciplines like judo or Brazilian jiu-jitsu, but other reason is that catch wrestling is comparatively harsher to the body than the gentler pajama rolling found in the aforementioned two.
46	* DivergentCharacterEvolution:
47	** Aside from the how catch spread to and in Japan, Brazil, and Russia as listed above, its birthplace of England actually had two separate styles that formed in Lancashire and London from very different origins.
48	*** The Lancashire style comes from a wild rough-and-tumble form of prizefighting known as "Up and Down Fighting" (or just Lancashire Fighting), a form of contest reminisce of Brazilian Vale Tudo and the early No Hold Barred era of UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts (though often it didn't allow punching with the closed fist as most fighters needed their hands in good condition for their regular jobs afterwards) that was officially banned in 1825 and eventually became extinct years later. Lancashire Catch was formed by taking out the everything that wasn't considered grappling and introduced a number of "fair back falls" as a condition for victory and to substitute the "unable to continue" victory condition of the previous style, these falls include the well known pinfalls, rolling falls (flipping a grounded opponent onto their back with both their shoulders touching the ground, which almost made pinfalls redundant) and flying falls (throws that result in the opponent falling on their back with both shoulders touching the ground). Venues were for these bouts were in the muddy enclosures at the backyards of pubs or in fields of green turf with wrestlers half naked and only wearing drawers and either wear socks or go barefoot (originally they would wear spiked pumps or heavy wooden metal tipped clogs). This style was also the one associated with the traveling carnival scene.
49	*** The London style was LighterAndSofter and was catered more to the English amateur wrestling scene. It was said to be inspired by various English folk wrestling styles, especially the wrestling style promoted and detailed in the wrestling manuals written by Thomas Parkyns, who was known as the "Wrestling Baronet of Bunny[[note]]a village in Nottinghamshire[[/note]]" which looked a bit like Greco-Roman wrestling as it only allowed holds above the waist without a fixed or starting hold, but also allowed the use of feet for tripping and hooking with the legs and falls were counted when any two joints (hips, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles) simultaneously hit the ground or when three foils were suffered, with one foil being when the wrestler fell upon any one part of their body but recovers to continue wrestling and was usually contested under 3 out of 5 falls and wrestlers wore a waistcoat and shirt. A version of it was introduced to London in the 1820s and was called "Catch-as-catch-can", it was contested under 2 of 3 fair back falls and also introduced the use of boxing rings as their venue of choice since the style at the time was mostly used by local boxers when they wanted to challenge each other in wrestling. It was "reintroduced" in the early 1870s as a “new style of wrestling” in the London amateur wrestling scene as "Catch-Hold" with falls counted when wrestlers were thrown on any part of their body, most were contested under one fall though tournament finals were under two out of three falls and wrestlers wore tight jerseys, drawers and socks or barefoot. It was then replaced in popularity by a style known as "Loose-Hold" which was a combination of the earlier London "Catch-as-catch-can" style with the leg holds and ground wrestling techniques from a style of wrestling introduced to England by Phokion Heinrich Clias, a pioneer of Physical Culture who was brought in to teach the British Army his training methods. This combined style eventually made its way to the civilian population through the German Gymnastic Society of London in the 1860s and grew into the style used in the Olympics alongside Greco-Roman wrestling, before it eventually formed into its descendant style of freestyle wrestling, which is basically catch wrestling without submission holds.
50	** Modern Luta Livre also has two main lineages that evolved differently.
51	*** One lineage falls under the Brunocilla father and son duo of Fausto and his son Carlos who were both very close students of Luta Livre founder Euclydes "Tatú" Hatem and kept the closest to his style. Visually the best way to recognize a practitioner of the Brunocilla lineage is because they tended to train while wearing the pants of a Gi with the Rank Belt over it, though those were in the vale tudo years and aren't really seen any more, though they do still use the ranking system.
52	*** The other lineage falls under Roberto Leitao, a former judoka, capoeirista and Greco-Roman wrestler with a degree in Engineering. He claims to have used his engineering knowledge to improve the techniques that existed in Luta Livre, changing the idea of using force to apply them, to the use of leverage and technique to apply them as he was a smaller than average guy. Most of his students come from the Academia Budokan gym, which was founded and run by his students João Ricardo and Hilbernon de Oliveira (father of Johil de Oliveira) and trained in shorts and little else. His lineage also developed the "Luta Livre Olímpica"/Freestyle Wrestling scene in Brazil.
53	* DontThinkFeel: Inverted, as old school wrestlers liken wrestling to chess (XanatosSpeedChess to be specific); they believe to be a good wrestler they have to able to think under pressure in order to plan moves ahead, improvise and/or change strategies, as opposed to the concept of ''mushin'' (no mindedness) found in Eastern martial arts. Of course, being able to react instinctively is important as well, but to be able to think under pressure is an asset to a wrestler.
54	* EarAche: There are accounts of early bouts where wrestlers use what was known as an “ears hold”.
55	* GeniusBruiser: Quite a few wrestlers were highly educated.
56	** Georg Hackenschmidt authored several books on wrestling, physical culture and philosophy, spoke about 7 languages and once challenged Albert Einstein to a debate on the Theory of Relativity (Einstein politely declined).
57	** Stanislaus Zbyszko studied music, philosophy and law when he was growing up in Austria, graduated as a lawyer at 24 years old and spoke about 11 languages.
58	* GirlShowGhetto: A common scam among hookers was to teach dangerous holds to seeming waifs in order bait suckers into matches. Despite women being natural for this role, few if any women wrestlers of this style aside from possibly Mildred Burke, who wrestled at least 200 men in a well publicized campaign, became stars. Josie "Minerva" Wahlford, for instance, was a world famous weight lifter but her wrestling exploits barely got any attention by comparison (it didn't help that while she claimed to be undefeated in weight lifting she couldn't say the same [[UnskilledButStrong regarding wrestling]]). Cora Livingston was a much more popular and respected ''wrestler'' than Minerva but was otherwise comparatively unknown. While Livingston never lost the belt and retired as champion, she was [[OvershadowedByControversy most famous]] for starting a riot after [[RageQuit beating up the first challenger who gave her trouble]]. Wrestling/ShaynaBaszler made an effort to bring attention to catch wrestling during the 2010s, but while she did pull off impressive victories in catch as catch can contests she failed to develop [[AchillesHeel an adequate stand up]] for mixed martial arts fights and voluntarily {{pa\|yingtheirdues}}id dues as a {{jobber}} on professional wrestling's independent circuits because of it.
59	* GlassCannon: Among other groundfighting styles, catch wrestling tends to be considered to have a killer arsenal of holds but a not so efficient system of setting them up or defending against other holds. Actually, this assumption qualifies only for a very specific fixture of catch, the Japanese shoot-style, which often saw wrestlers carelessly diving for joint locks (and thus getting into bad positions for an enemy counterattack) due to the sambo and judo influence found on it, as explained in Awesome, But Impractical above (this is brought up by old wrestlers to emphasize the importance of pinfalls in Wrestling). Pure, ancient catch wrestling would resemble more amateur wrestling, with the wrestler controlling his opponent with body pressure and smart chanceries before applying any submissions. This conservative strategy was presumably the reason why the matches started turning into slow snoozefests and forced the business to go worked.
60	* HandicappedBadass: American wrestler "Rough" Tom Jenkins lost his right eye and had poor eyesight in his left eye from a Fourth of July explosive accident, meaning he was legally blind. It did not stop him from becoming one of the most well known catch wrestlers of his time. In fact, he gained a bit of a psychological advantage over his opponents from this because he wore a glass eye, which he would take out before the match in front of his opponent to the latter's disgust.
61	* HandyFeet: Clarence Eklund as noted above [[PrefersGoingBarefoot preferred wrestling without footwear]] and is described as having these. This led to his RedBaron as "The Octopus".
62	* HoldTheLine: A unique rule in modern Luta Livre (the International Luta Livre Championships in particular) subverts this, as bouts don’t end instantly if one is caught in a submission at the end of the time limit, the defender must either escape the submission and see if they can win the bout by points or tap out.
63	* HumanChess: Not literally, but old school wrestlers often describe the mental application of wrestling as similar to playing chess, so they nickname wrestling as physical chess.
64	* HumanKnot: Some submissions can look like this, usually AwesomeButImpractical where two limbs are targeted instead of one, for example a step over toehold with an armlock variation.
65	* LegacyCharacter: There were two "Strangler Lewis'" in catch wrestling. The first one was Evan "Strangler" Lewis, and the second a Robert Friedrich who took the name Ed "Strangler" Lewis in tribute to the original.
66	* LeotardOfPower: Mostly subverted, the wrestling singlet is actually a relatively recent addition to modern wrestling as it only became mandated in the late 1960s (and was even banned for a few years beforehand), by which time catch wrestling was already mostly the pre-determined pro wrestling shows. The singlet was actually used in the 1912 Olympics when catch wrestling was the style used before the creation of freestyle wrestling, but the singlet never caught on in competitive catch for some reason.
67	* LightningBruiser: Big, strong wrestlers who were difficult to take down and control often became the dominant class, but most of them were deceptively agile too. Georg Hackenschmidt, for example, was both insanely strong and shockingly capable of leaping over a table with his feet tied.
68	* ManlyFacialHair: The perfect picture of a catch wrestler typically involves a musclebound, barechested gentleman with a handlebar moustache.
69	* TheManTheyCouldntHang: Legendary catch wrestler Martin "Farmer" Burns was famous for having a neck so strong that he could shrug off chokeholds and as a parlor trick could partially hang himself with a six-foot rope and, while still in the air, whistle "Yankee Doodle Dandy." This feat was performed dozens of times a week and witnessed by thousands of people.
70	* MartialArtistsAreAlwaysBarefoot: This is subverted in traditional catch wrestling as while wrestlers can go barefoot, most preferred to wear shoes as they offered more protection for the feet and ankles, stability, and a sure-footed grip with each step taken on the mat. This had a side effect as wrestlers developed a focus on leglocks as shoes also offer wrestlers a way to more easily grip the feet. Brazilian Luta Livre plays this straight however due to its fighters participating in the vale tudo circuits that required them to go barefoot.
71	* MeaningfulName:
72	** When worked professional wrestling took off, "shooters" was a title used to designate wrestlers who had a legitimate background in some form of amateur wrestling (and thus they knew to do takedowns, an action which is called "to shoot"), while "hookers" was reserved to the more expert wrestlers who also knew to make people tap out (by using submissions, which were called "hooks"); also there were "rippers" for those who knew how to brutalize their opponents if they wanted to (by using dirty moves like fish-hooks which they called "rips").
73	** In a subversion, the use of this specific jargon is almost non-existent nowadays. "Shooter" is used to refer any pro wrestler with martial arts training or belonging to the Japanese shoot-style, while "hookers" became known as wrestlers who specialized in scamming carnival goers into paying money to lose in matches against them (or, well, [[TheOldestProfession a prostitute]]). With the downfall of kayfabe, which ironically made fans less willing to try their hands against pro wrestlers, even that's become obsolete, with "hookers" now usually being anyone a promoter throws into a match specifically to get a wrestler they don't like hurt.
74	** The majority of old school wrestlers from its birthplace of Lancashire were recruited from the local coal mines, and the most skilled of them were called the “black diamonds”.
75	* MetronomicManMashing: A downplayed example, as besides suplexes and takedowns, catch wrestlers also uses throws to get their opponents on the ground with many of them similar to other throwing arts.
76	* MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate: Averted for Dr. Benjamin Roller, an actual physician before he got into pro wrestling, who used it as a way of traveling around the world to learn under various professors in order to become a surgeon.
77	* MurderousThighs:
78	** The crooked headscissors is a technique in which the user traps the opponent's head between his legs and uses them to squeeze it. It is usually used to immobilize and increase pressure while applying an armlock, but a skilled wrestler can submit his opponent with this move alone.
79	** During the early 20th Century, namely the period of the teens to the late 20's, many of the best professionals began to excel with the use of their legs on the mat. Similar to BJJ guard players, these shooters were able to use their legs like another set of arms and were experts at controlling the legs and arms of their opponents, either from the bottom position or though leg riding to set up submissions. They were commonly called "leg" wrestlers and leg wrestling became part of the trade of the old time catch-as-catch-can masters, especially the light heavyweights. Arguably the greatest among the old time leg wrestlers, pound for pound, was Clarence Eklund, who was called "The Octopus" as he reportedly took his leg wrestling to a new level by being so flexible and technically sound that his legs was considered like a second set of arms.
80	** Another notable leg wrestler, Joe Stecher had very powerful legs, and he capitalized on them to have a lethal bodyscissors technique and was even known as "The Scissors King". He practiced it on full grain sacks till they burst, then went onto pigs and did them the same (hopefully without bursting them), and then, according to some people, used a mule. When he put the body scissors on opponents, there are accounts where he left bruises and tapped out people with just that technique.
81	* NeckSnap: The neck crank is one of the jewels of the moveset, and although it is not meant to snap the opponent's neck (well, at least if he doesn't give up...), it targets the vertebrae and spinal column.
82	* OddFriendship
83	** The Brazilian luta livre guys were quite friendly with the UsefulNotes/{{Capoeira}} and UsefulNotes/MuayThai guys. In fact, it were the luta livre guys who first brought muay thai to vale tudo fights with Flavio Molina, and Luiz Alves from the Boxe Thai gym had many lutadors come though his doors.
84	** Orlando Americo da Silva, or also known as "Dudu" was a Brazilian catch wrestler and vale tudo fighter (one of the three main coaches of luta livre founder Euclydes "Tatú" Hatem), who is said to have also trained the brothers Jorge, Oswaldo and even Hélio Gracie of all people in catch wrestling.
85	** Joe Moreira, a BJJ black belt and pioneer in the USA, was friends and training partners with Luta Livre specialists Marco Ruas and Eugenio Tadeu. He even gave them black belts in the art in recognition of their technical abilities. This was during the mid-1990s where the BJJ vs LL rivalry was still ongoing and caused an uproar of criticism from the BJJ community at the time.
86	* OldMaster: There are quite a few notable trainers that make the list.
87	** Martin "Farmer" Burns was dubbed "The Grandmaster of American Wrestling" as he trained many of the best American wrestlers of his time. His most famous students include Frank Gotch, Earl Caddock, Joseph "Toots" Mondt, etc.
88	** Billy Riley, the founder of the original Snakepit in Wigan. Most famous students include Billy Joyce, Wrestling/KarlGotch, Bert Assirati, Wrestling/BillyRobinson, etc.
89	*** Wrestling/KarlGotch trained many of the guys that would innovate the shoot-style in Japan.
90	*** Wrestling/BillyRobinson has trained some of the best MMA guys with a catch background like Josh Barnett, Wrestling/KazushiSakuraba, Wrestling/KiyoshiTamura, etc.
91	** Willy "Pop" Charnock, Billy Riley's teacher turned rival had his own gym that produced fine wrestlers as well.
92	** Euclydes "Tatú" Hatem, Brazilian catch wrestler and creator of modern luta livre.
93	*** His students Fausto Brunocilla, and Fausto's son Carlos, Roberto Leitão, and Joao Ricardo are responsible for training the most well known Luta Livre guys like Hugo Duarte, Eugenio Tadeu, Marco Ruas, etc.
94	* OneHitKill[=/=]InstantWinCondition: Interestingly subverted. While most modern sport competitions only need to be won once, catch wrestling contests usually were ruled in two out of three falls. Some bouts featured modifications like 3 out of 5 falls, 4 out of 7 falls, etc.
95	** It is however played straight within falls, at least in early catch matches. Besides pinfalls and submissions (which were only officially recognized in the beginning of the 1900s), early bouts also featured winning through flying falls, which were the equivalent to "Ippon" throws in judo and "Total Victory" throws in sambo, and rolling falls, which meant flipping a grounded opponent onto their back with both their shoulders touching the ground without the pinfall count.
96	* PowerTrio: Ed "Strangler" Lewis, Billy Sandow, and Joseph "Toots" Mondt formed the Gold Dust Trio.
97	* RammingAlwaysWorks: Basically how a double leg takedown works.
98	* RenaissanceMan: Before the pro wrestling circuit became a real money-making business, old school wrestlers were usually practitioners of multiple styles of wrestling with a few being champions in more then one style at the same time, with an even rarer few also being boxing champions.
99	* SadistTeacher: Any catch wrestling trainer is traditionally assured to be it in any degree. Billy Riley, Billy Robinson and Karl Gotch were the main practitioners of the art of leaving apprentices completely broken after every trainings session.
100	* TheSpartanWay: Catch gyms, which popularly received of the MeaningfulName of "snakepits", only accepted apprentices after the veteran wrestlers had thoroughly beaten them in a ritual of passage of sorts, sometimes to the extent of injury, which was designed to make the un-tough quit. Unfortunately for the tough enough to pass, beatdowns had just started for them. That this was ForYourOwnGood had to be beat into the head of Karl Gotch, who after his first humiliating stretching returned to the gym and headbutted the offender.
101	* StartMyOwn: It was very common for large figures in catch wrestling to start their own promotions profiled after their personal styles. Many of them include pro wrestling (UWF and its offshoots), MMA (Shooto and Pancrase), submission wrestling (Noriaki Kiguchi's Combat Wrestling and Hidetaka Aso's Submission Arts Wrestling), and even kickboxing offshoots (Caesar Takeshi's Shootboxing and Wrestling/SatoruSayama's Seikendo).
102	* StoneWall: Similar to judo and jiu-jitsu, the turtle position (par terre or defense position, as wrestlers call it) is the go to position when wrestlers want to stall and/or get forced to stand up and try their luck there, which Ed Lewis and Stanislaus Zbyszko used to great effect in their careers. Wrestlers attempted to defy this trope with techniques they called "rides" and the usual rips or dirty techniques.
103	* StoutStrength:
104	** Brazilian catch wrestler Euclydes Hatem gained his nickname, "Tatú," from the Brazilian word for armadillo, as he had originally ventured in catch wrestling in his late childhood in order to get fit, being was supposedly quite fat as a child. While he remained a bit stocky, he became one of the most feared grapplers around.
105	** British catch wrestler Bert Assirati was this and {{Acrofatic}}, as he was a professional strongman and weightlifter as well as a former acrobat. One of his best known feats that combined his strength and acrobatics skill was doing the gymnastics iron cross at ''240 pounds'' and 5ft 7.
106	* SuplexFinisher: Just like Greco-Roman wrestling, suplexes are one of the more painful ways to get an opponent on the ground for a pin or submission. Even by itself, a well placed suplex or throw can knock out (which is a legitimate condition for victory in some pro rulesets).
107	* TopHeavyGuy: As stated above, some catch wrestlers were professional strongmen, and some were also high level Greco-Roman wrestlers, which gave them this body type too since that style prohibits any holds below the waist. Notable example is Polish wrestler Stanislaus Zbyszko, who was all three.
108	* UnderwearOfPower: Once something similar to a catch wrestling uniform was established, it tended to take the shape of tights, either short or long, complete with wrestling shoes or boots, [[WalkingShirtlessScene usually leaving the top half of the body bare]].
109	* UrExample:
110	** There are people who believe that it actually comes from hand-to-hand fighting techniques used by knights in the Middle Ages, very much like jujutsu would be created in the struggles between armored samurai.
111	** Grappling holds like heel hooks and complex toeholds are known to have been popularized by catch wrestling, though their origin is rather blurred (the heel hook is thought to have been created in Greek pankration, for instance).
112	** A popular legend has catch wrestler Wrestling/KarlGotch teaching the judoka Wrestling/MasahikoKimura the double wrist lock, which Kimura then used to defeat Hélio Gracie to get it renamed to Kimura lock in Brazilian jiu-jitsu circles. This is most probably apocryphal, as judo had contained the double wrist lock for years before its contact with catch wrestling.
113	** It is said that the term vale tudo actually came from a ruleset of luta livre which appropriately called "luta livre - vale tudo ("wrestling - everything goes") and then just shortened to vale tudo when the other styles came to fight. Also the term "no holds barred" came from a catch wrestling ruleset where all holds, locks and strangles are allowed.
114	*** Even earlier than that, it is said that originally the ruleset was called Luta Livre Americana and that it came to Brazil from America in about 1906.
115	* UseYourHead: As an alternative to sprawling, in order to defend against takedowns, all a wrestler has to do is place his head in front of his opponent's head, that way his opponent will never be able to reach his legs to do the takedown. Granted, nobody uses this in competition, as it can be translated into an actual headbutt, which is illegal.
116	** In fact when executing a single or double leg takedown, the head must connect to the body before it can be completed. All one has to do to avoid these takedowns is to keep their opponents head away from their bodies.

Context UsefulNotes / CatchWrestling