The History of Pro Wrestling as told by Blank.
Chapter 1: The Origin Story: Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling
There isn't much to say about Catch wrestling. It's a style of wrestling in which all holds are permitted. Catch wrestling is often credited and seen as the start of what would become pro wrestling. Though the sport was a real athletic competition while it's child, pro wrestling, is a scripted item.
Catch wrestling was often used as a circus side show and went from place to place. The competition lacked rules as a way to allow wrestlers of multiple different styles could compete against eachother to discover who had the best style. In a sense it was the original MMA. The final catch practitioners would actual play a crucial role in the creation of MMA.
The artform is pretty much dead in modern times. The people who were tought it all changed styles to a more advanced modern version. Much of the original catch wrestling techniques have slowly been removed from pro wrestling and their parts in MMA have been replaced with modern more effective techniques.
If you are interested in seeing what catch wrestling probably would have looked like, I'll suggest checking out the Pancrase matches of Minoru Suzuki. Suzuki was trained by Karl Gotch whom was one of the final true catch wrestling practitioners. Though Suzuki's MMA matches are still not exact replicas of what early catch wrestling would have looked like.
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