Join us for Catch Wrestling classes! We are a proud affiliate of Old School Grappling Catch Wrestling Association, directly under Head Coach and Founder John Potenza. We are in the Billy Robinson and Erik Paulson lineages of Catch Wrestling.
What is Catch Wrestling?
Catch As Catch Can Wrestling, or simply Catch Wrestling (or even simpler, CACC or just Catch) was built as a sport, it was the MMA of grappling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, yet it is one of the most “fight ready” grappling arts available today. Wrestling is the oldest known combat sport, and has taken on many forms over the centuries, and is so woven into our DNA that children wrestle, naturally, to settle disputes. Even Renaissance sword masters placed wrestling as the foundation for all other combat, such as Pietro Monte:
“Perhaps I am denying the other exercises their due, but whenever I want to pursue anything relating to the body or spirit, I turn to wrestling as the best guide. …makes us step with true measure; it shows us how to strike long or short as needed; it teaches us how to anticipate the opponent’s attacks…”
Pietro Monte’s Collectanea: The Arms, Armour and Fighting Techniques of a Fifteenth-Century Soldier Translated by Jeffrey L. Forgeng
Catch Wrestling just took the common practice of wrestling to a pin and enabled rough and tumble tactics of using painful holds to help achieve that goal. Eventually the holds became a way to win in their own right. So we have all of the positional dominance of conventional wrestling, but we also have all of the submissions too! And to ice the cake a little more, the American Folk Style of wrestling was created by a catch wrestler, the very famous Martin “Farmer” Burns, to enable kids to participate in the sport with less risk to their bodily health. Very similar to how Shotokan adapted karate for school children. It’s a fantastic place to start, and there’s a mature version waiting for you when you grow up.
Why Catch Wrestling?
Despite striking winning most fights, fighters with a wrestling base are the most dominant champions in the UFC. This is because wrestling not only accustoms you to close quarters combat, but teaches you how to control position, control your opponent, and dictate where the fight goes. It is extremely dynamic and fast paced, gets you used to escaping bad positions, and just generally makes you tougher. This is why I tell people who have children who can’t train with us to sign them up for wrestling in school.
• Which component of MMA do you feel is most applicable to a self-defense situation…?
• Wrestling, because it enables you to decide where the fight goes.
~”MMA for the Street” Richard Nance interviewing Famed MMA coach Pat Miletich
How is a sport like Catch-As-Catch-Can so remarkably “fight ready”? It’s aggressive, top dominant, it puts unrelenting pressure on the opponent, and has every conceivable submission, which can all be easily translated from “tap outs” to damage. We always start from the feet (NO BUTT SCOOTING!) and are not reliant on confounding clothing grips. Body to body, man to man, and requires almost no adjustment or translation to be suitable for the cage or the street.
Catch Wrestling fits in so neatly underneath our Wing Chun. Wrestling brings us to the extreme close range, and adds takedowns and submissions, and ground work that are not explicitly part of the kung fu system, but flow so seamlessly within its principles. CACC is the perfect grappling companion for a close quarters combat art like Wing Chun.
See our schedule and tuition
1457 W Southern Ave, Suite 4
Mesa, AZ 85202
(602)472-5918
BlackSunBoxing@gmail.com
What others are saying about Catch Wrestling
