Catch Wrestling - History

History

Lancashire Wrestling first came to prominence as an amateur sport practiced by coal miners and others in Lancashire, England, with a particular center of popularity in the town of Wigan. Catch wrestling was most popular with the carnivals in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century. 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. 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. As carnival wrestlers traveled, they met with a variety of people, learning and using techniques from various other folk wrestling disciplines, many of which were accessible due to a huge influx of immigrants in the United States during this era.

Catch Wrestling contests also became immensely popular in Europe involving the likes of the Indian national wrestling champion Great Gama, Imam Baksh Pahalwan, Gulam, Bulgarian world heavyweight champion Dan Kolov, Swiss champion John Lemm, Americans Frank Gotch, Ralph Parcaut, Ad Santel, Ed Lewis, Lou Thesz and Benjamin Roller, Mitsuyo Maeda from Japan, and Georg Hackenschmidt. Traveling wrestlers and European tournaments brought together a variety of folk wrestling disciplines including the Indian variety of Pehlwani, Judo and Jujutsu from Japan, and others. Each of these disciplines contributed to the development of catch wrestling in their own way.