Wrestling - By Country

By Country

• Shuai Jiao, a wrestling style originating in China, which according to legend, has a reported history of over 4,000 years.

• In Pharaonic Egypt, wrestling has been evidenced by documentation on tombs (circa 2300 BC) and Egyptian artwork (2000-1085 BC).

• Greek wrestling was a popular form of martial art, at least in Ancient Greece (about 1100 to 146 BC).

• Roman Wrestling: After the Roman conquest of the Greeks, Greek wrestling was absorbed by the Roman culture and became Roman Wrestling during the period of the Roman Empire (510 BC to AD 500).

• Arabic literature depicted Muhammad as a skilled wrestler, defeating a skeptic in a match at one point.

• The Byzantine emperor Basil I, according to court historians, won in wrestling against a boastful wrestler from Bulgaria in the eighth century.

• In 1520 at the Field of the Cloth of Gold pageant, Francis I of France threw fellow king Henry VIII of England in a wrestling match.

• The Lancashire style of folk wrestling may have formed the basis for Catch wrestling, also known as "catch as catch can." The Scots later formed a variant of this style, and the Irish developed the "collar-and-elbow" style which later found its way into the United States.

• A Frenchman "is generally credited with reorganizing European loose wrestling into a professional sport", Greco-Roman wrestling. This style which was finalized by the 19th century and by then, wrestling was featured in many fairs and festivals in Europe.