Both BJJ and wrestling are grappling based martial arts. They both offer practical self defense aspects and have fairly similar rulesets. Catch wrestling is now a fragmented martial art and doesn’t really have an official governing body or a tournament that decides who is the best in the world at that time. BJJ does have these things and is a lot more organised, marketed and well promoted.
If you were to look at the comments of a catch wrestling youtube video, you would assume catch wrestling is the best submission grappling art of all time. Whilst Brazilian Jiu Jitsu culture is not quite as toxic in modern day, there are still some in the community who believe BJJ doesn’t have any weaknesses and is a complete martial art. Overall, the two arts are really very similar and have a massive amount of crossover.
Table of Contents
What is catch wrestling?
Catch wrestling, also known by “catch as catch can” is a wrestling art which developed in England during the late 1800s. The idea behind this format was a development and progression from Greco-roman wrestling in which you would try to submit or pin your opponent, rather than just take them to the ground.
CACC is generally thought to be more brutal than BJJ. Whilst a lot of the submissions used aren’t illegal in BJJ you certainly wouldn’t make any friends using them in your own gym. Submissions such as the “face lock” and “hip lock” are truly as painful as they sound. This pretty much sums up catch wrestling, you must try to submit your opponent in any way possible.
Points are not used in catch wrestling and a win must be by submission or pinfall, this is different from competition BJJ in that you will often see points scored, followed by stalling. It is also quite rare to see weight classes used in catch wrestling. Whilst BJJ has many different weight classes to make things fairer, catch is almost always an absolute format. In addition to this, it is also very rare to see women competing in catch wrestling, whilst it is very common to find a womans tournament in BJJ.
Perhaps the most famous catch wrestling gym was the “Snake Pit” in Wigan which was owned by Billy Riley. Here he trained the likes of catch wrestling legends such as Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson.
Due to its strange crossover with professional “fake” wrestling, a lot of people ask if catch wrestling is real. This was not helped due to the fact that a lot of top catch wrestlers have competed in fake wrestling matches. There is a distinct difference between the two, however. Catch wrestling is legitimate submission grappling, professional wrestling is not.
During the 20th century catch wrestling began to gain popularity in other countries such as the USA and Japan. This led to famous and successful MMA fighters such as Josh Barnet and Kazushi Sakuraba adopting the style and winning with it. The pair, amongst others, was so successful with the style it had a brief golden age of the late 90s and early 2000s.
Why It’s Hard To Find A Good Catch Wrestling Gym
Due to the fragmentation of catch wrestling and it’s lack of an official organisation. It can be very difficult for the community to police who the legitimate practitioners are.
BJJ has unified tournaments and a large emphasis placed on lineage. If somebody says they are a Roger Gracie black belt for example. It is very easy to find out online whether this is true or not. If nobody in this gym has ever heard of the guy claiming this, he will be found out very quickly. Also if the said person performed very poorly at a group of tournaments, it may raise more red flags.
Catch wrestling has a smaller group of people who started the artform, most of which are dead. Therefore it is very difficult to find out who trained under who. A gym may claim it has a great pedigree in catch wrestling and that the owner has trained under a dead legend. This cannot be proven so it is very difficult to tell who is wrong and who is right until you have invested time in to training at the said gym.
The Dominance of Sakuraba
Sakuraba was trained by Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson. At the time of his rise in Japanese MMA, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was thought to be in it’s prime and dominating American events such as UFC, along with Rickson Gracie being hugely successful in Vale Tudo.
Sakuraba shocked the world when he defeated Renzo Graice by submission, defeated Royler Gracie by submission and won a 90 minute match against UFC legend Royce Gracie.
It was not just the fact that he won these matches, he didn’t win them by being a superior striker. He dominated the Gracie’s mostly by his superior knowledge of the Kimura (or double wrist lock position). These were still very early days for grappling in MMA, but the Gracie Family was thought to be the only source of knowledge in how to use this efficiently in mixed martial arts.
When Sakuraba plowed through the 3 Gracie’s, it was (quite rightly) at the time thought that catch wrestling was superior to BJJ.
In Modern Day
Some people are still stuck 25 years behind and believe BJJ does not work simply because they do not like the Gracie family and saw Sakuraba dominate them. These kinds of people believe every word Billy Robinson has said and genuinely think catch wrestling beats BJJ. In reality, this was probably true during the late 1990s. However, the world of grappling is a very different place since then and really there is not much difference between BJJ and catch wrestling at all.
If you watch a modern no gi submission-only BJJ competition, you will see a very high level of grappling. Other than some minor differences in the ruleset, if you were to watch this with no knowledge of BJJ you would assume it was a catch wrestling match, and vice versa.
More recently 10th planet black belt Quentin Rosenzweig easily submitted the catch wrestling world champion Curran Jacobs 2-0 in a best of 3 match under catch wrestling rules. He has since defended his belts, winning 2-0 again, submitting his new opponent twice in under 2 minutes.
This has solidified modern opinion that catch wrestling is out of date. They can produce as many “scientific wrestling” t-shirts as they want, but surely it is time to admit that they are now behind BJJ.
Catch wrestling is certainly a legitimate fighting art and once was at the top of the world in terms of the grapplers who trained it. Now parts of it look like a bitter old man who is clinging on to achievements of the past.
Perhaps one day it will make a comeback and threaten BJJ. In doing this it would really need to compete against BJJ in settings such as ADCC to prove itself. This looks very unlikely happen in the near future, as some of the fundamentals, along with the primitive leg lock attacks are quite a way off high level BJJ.
Position Over Submission
This could be the most fundamental difference between the two grappling arts. BJJ has traditionally been about securing positions – passing the guard, gaining mount or back control, followed by submission. In IBJJF tournaments this is encouraged with points for passes and sweeps.
Due to the brutal nature and no scoring system of catch wrestling, submissions are often painful and attempted from almost any position. This can lead to a complete lack of control in the submission attempt. A novice will simply tap from the pain, but a trained opponent will often find an escape since there was no control to stop this happening.
If we think of the turtle position in BJJ, the idea is to try and crack this, gain 4 points, and then submit the opponent via choke.
In catch wrestling we would likely see someone attempt a toe hold whilst the opponent is still in turtle. Whilst this is a possible submission, it is also an incredibly low percentage attack and can ruin your good position when it fails.
Due to the modern day leg lock game of BJJ developing, submission only tournaments have appeared. The rise of leg lock specialists has removed some of the “position over submission” mentality. Because of the popularity of these tournaments, BJJ has greatly progressed in this arena whilst catch wrestling seems to have stood still.
The Danaher Death Squad is widely credited with developing the leg lock game. John Danaher has said on many occasions that the leg lock game was very unsophisticated in the early 2000’s. People would be able to submit with leglocks, but they were very hit or miss.
His newer system has allowed his competitors to fully control the opponent before attempting a leglock. If the submission attempt now fails, it doesn’t matter as the position is fully secure. It can simply be tried again and again until it works, rather than getting your guard passed from a failure.
The Issue With Money
Perhaps the main reason BJJ has been able to pull ahead of catch wrestling is the organization and money behind the sport. Whilst many people may think that federations such as the IBJJF are a bad thing, at the very least they are able to unite the community around a common ruleset and crown a champion under the said rules.
BJJ competitions have a lot of money at the top level, catch wrestling does not.
This allows competitors to become professionals alongside private lessons and instructional videos to supplement their income. Gordon Ryan is a good example of this who has been able to earn a 7 figure income from BJJ. There are not any catch wrestlers who are earning even 6 figure incomes from the sport. So it is not surprising that BJJ has leapfrogged catch wrestling in terms of innovation. The money has completely changed the evolution of the sport.
Summary
Legitimate martial arts go through periods of peaks and troughs. BJJ and catch wrestling are both quite obviously legitimate martial arts but are at polar opposite ends of the spectrum right now.
BJJ is possibly at the peak of skilled grapplers and technical prowess throughout its entire history. Whilst fighters have learned how not to get destroyed so easily on the ground in MMA anymore, this is more due to the fact that they’ve actually trained BJJ. Rather than it’s lack of effectiveness.
Catch wrestling on the other hand is currently in a ditch due to it’s more divided community. People who train catch most likely want what is best for the sport, but it is a lot harder to find skilled and devoted training partners compared to BJJ.
Maybe one day in the future catch wrestling will once again return to the top and be an innovator in submission grappling. As of today, BJJ has a lot more money and athletes developing techniques so this seems to be quite some way off for now. Athletes who would identify as BJJ experts dominate ADCC.
There are no pure catch wrestlers who can get anywhere near qualifying for ADCC in the current time period, let alone win it.
Final Thoughts
Perhaps one way to bring the two practices together under one heading would simply be to call everything submission grappling. This way if people trained for the ADCC ruleset we would see more emphasis on stand up, as opposed to pulling guard.
This would also remove the pinfalls of catch wrestling but would create a more unified grappling experience. There really isn’t too much difference between the two once guard pulling and pinfalls are removed.
By doing this catch wrestling and BJJ wouldn’t be divided into two camps and we wouldn’t need to have a catch wrestling vs BJJ discussion.
