A lot of people refer to this as early professional wrestling...it's actually very similar to today's legitimate folkstyle wrestling that is practiced by thousands of youth, jr high, high school and college athletes across the country. Cool to see half nelsons, sit outs and front headlocks in a 100 year old film. This is the same stuff my 10 year old uses today.
You arent kidding. Who do we see today move with such sustained vigor and move with such skills? College competitions and Olympic wrestlers dont put on this kind of display (mind you it was a display show but these guys were going full tilt). I am amazed at their ability to hold full bridges in the blink of an eye even under fairly extreme pressures.
A classic. And it was only 2 minutes! I could watch a 30 minute catch wrestling bout and never get bored. Wrestling is the greatest sport in the world. It's a shame that as soon as most people mention 'wrestling' they instantly think of the sports entertainment wrestling (WWE) you see on TV. This, however, is a classic bout.
@simplynotfact Thanks for clearing that up. I've taken CSW (Erik Paulson's Combat Submission Wrestling) and I was told (not by my instructor) that it was based on Catch Wrestling. I've read different items on the internet that imply that Farmer Burns, et. al., were submitting opponents at carnivals in "take on all comers" matches. This because they had to be able to beat much larger, stronger opponents, and the only way to do that was with submissions.
This is cool stuff, but I'm surprised not to see any submission holds or attempts. Is this really catch, or just wrestling as we see in our high schools and colleges now? Catch nowadays is all about pain from submission holds.
In this historic video, we see 13 year old "Hollywood" Hiram Hogan refuse to put over 11 year old Court "Mr. Polio" Henning. Hiram was quoted as saying, "That's not gonna work for me, brother." After dropping the Big Chicken Leg on young Henning, Hiram was driven to a diner by his legal guardian, Ken McMahon Sr, and allowed to eat his weekly ration of food. Henning was sent back to the orphanage he was recruited from and forced to clean chimneys until dying of natural causes at the ripe old age of 23.
simplynotfact actually I read that in the first official PRO wrestling event it was supposed to be a catch wrestling match that included submissions. but one of the fighters purposely injured the other during training, word got out, and it failed as a shoot fighting event. AND I believe it was in 1903... check Wikipedia. so pretty much from that point on, catch as catch can submission wrestling (and later brawling) only thrived as a sport for entertainment purposes (work) for American audiences.
The story you're no doubt referring to is Gotch vs. Hackenschmidt, which occurred in 1911 and positively killed wrestling in Chicago when rumors circulated that Hackenschmidt had attempted to negotiate for himself an outcome that would allow him to save face after sustaining a leg injury in training, allegedly perpetrated by a man with connections to Gotch. The outcome played a major role in the perception of wrestlers as clowns (in spite of the fact that Gotch was ironically not clowning around when he finished Hackenschmidt quickly in straight falls). But it was far from the first official pro wrestling match, which had thrived in the United States throughout most of the nineteenth century. When consulting wikipedia for information on really old school wrestling history, take anything you read on there with a grain of salt.
actually i think i read something on wikipedia, but i actually saw it on the documentary: the history of professional wrestling on youtube... and what was said is that someone actually legitimately purposely injured the ankle of that wrestler your talking about, during training. most likely twerked his ankle when he was off his guard in what was supposed to be a "friendly" match sparing session. the same exact thing happened to me by the way, and i still have the ankle injury to this day... swollen and all. the disgusting part is that he was instructed by the teacher to do it, just like the guy you're talking about was apparently instructed by somebody.
I think I know which documentary to which you refer. If it's the one I'm thinking about, the doc is somewhat spotty (having Mike Chapman appear as your expert on Frank Gotch is going to raise a few eyebrows, given Chapman's hero worship and largely bullshit biographical account of Gotch). Documentaries are kind of hit-miss too. I guess you can expect a little spottiness when you attempt to condense the entire rich history of wrestling into a 45-minute video, but still. And yeah, the name of the man who allegedly perpetrated the injury to Hack was Adolph Ernst, who would become better known in later years as Ad Santel, one of the guys that mentored Lou Thesz.
The part about the injury to Hack sounds like it's on the money. However, I think you have the documentary mixed up, it was in 10 parts and each part was just about 10 minutes or close to 10 minutes... that equals at least an hour and a half or more. it went all the way to nwo, and the monday night wars, and pro wrestling into almost the year 2000, or following the beginning of 2000. for some reason some parts of the 1 through 10 parts have been deleted though. most likely the wwe asshole copyright guys... i think that's particularly the portions that are missing.
it could simple be amateur catch wrestling, no submission allowed. People nowadays are so focused on submissions that it is called catch WRESTLING. And a lot of submissions are a question on how you apply them. You can you a toe hold to make someone turn or you can hurt, you can do an hammerlock like in folkstyle or you can crank it more and break the shoulder. Smae with the nelsons, etc. And submissions, or concession holds as they were called were always part of wrestling. I mean chokes were barred in a lot of matches, if something is not allowed it means that it was done. Ansd you can find pictures of various submissions in Hugh Leonard's book that was published at least a decades before japanese came to teach jujutsu in western countries. Westerners did not japanese to mess up each others limbs
While I do agree with you that originally catch didn't have submissions but NOT in this match. With the leg on someone's neck. Based on the book by Ruslan Parasylev catch didn't originally have submissions. Even though it partly evolved from lancashire up and down fighting which DID have submissions(including the STRANGLE). But later during the time of Yukio Tani(at least in UK) was submissions found in wrestling. While the japanese came into the USA during the1840s. So by 1860-1890s submissions were already found in american catch.
@OrlyDudeGuy Yeah I remember "real pro wrestling" it barley had anyone in the stands and was on at like 1 am. Guys wouldn't get paid like now 90 years ago. You should LOOK UP why it became "fake". Since "real pro wrestling" failed, that just tells you people like to be entertained more than watch a real contest.
@OrlyDudeGuy TV is where the money is. If you want to wrestle you can do it in high school and college, and then transfer to MMA if you so choose. And professional kick boxers don't make much. If "real pro wrestling" didn't work, then I doubt it will ever work for a for profit system.
@OrlyDudeGuy Rikidozan (who made it popular in Japan) wrestled FAKE/Predetermined matches. Same for in the US in the 30s and 40s with Lou Thesz. But back then there would be idiots trying to shoot, and guys like Thesz would put them in their place. And yes, El Santo and Blue Demon wrestled fake matches too down in Mexico. I guess being "fake" is somehow bad?
@OrlyDudeGuy It became fake due to them wanting to make money and not risk getting hurt and therefore not being able to support their families. Many real wrestlers went into pro wrestling to make money. There was no money in legit freestyle or grecro-roman. It would be great if you actually learned about how it became "fake". Pro wrestling is still greatly respected in places like Japan and Mexico.
@OrlyDudeGuy Yeah no shit. But if you got injured, you couldn't wrestle and therefore be paid. They also realized you could make more money being fake, especially back then. Go look up how it became fake for yourself and learn about Toots Mondt. How would they promote it back in those days like today? That's just dumb, no real radio, no TV, no internet. You know about Japanese and Mexican pro wrestling? Then you'd know that is fake too.
This can not be! Everybody knows Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was the first grappling system with submissions. This is quite clearly a fake. Nice try, but I watch the Ultimate Fighter. lmao.
