History of Catch Wrestling - The Ultimate Submission Fighting Art
*Information courtesty of Matt Furey
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Matt Furey
Matt Furey comes from a strong wrestling background, having competed for the perennial collegiate power Iowa Hawkeyes from 1981-1984 under Olympic Gold medalist Dan Gable. He later trained at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, coached by Olympian Bruce Baumgartner, where he won the 1985 NCAAII national title at 167 pounds.
In 1996, he began competing in a style of grappling called Shuai-Chiao (the oldest style of kung fu), and went on to win 3 national titles. Furey then traveled to Beijing in 1997 to compete in the World Kung Fu Shuai-Chiao tournament. He won gold at 90 KG (198-pounds) and became the only non-Chinese to win a title at the event, and the only American to ever win a gold medal in any martial arts tournament in China.
While living in San Jose, he learned that 70-year-old Karl Gotch was in Florida. He pulled-up stakes and moved his entire family to the Sunshine State in order to learn and train from this world treasure of wrestling knowledge. Along with conditioning and catch wrestling, Furey has gained a personal grasp of the oral history of wrestling that few know and isn’t found in any book.
He has released a number of instructional videos based on his work with Karl Gotch, one of which is his DVD version of Farmer Burns‘ 1914 wrestling course, which has been supplemented with material garnered from his time with Gotch.
The relevance of catch wrestling for today‘s athletes is best summed up by Matt Furey, in his own words:
"The bottom line for me is this: The only "truth" I can really know about professional catch wrestling is whether the techniques are as viable today as they were when "Farmer" Burns and Frank Gotch learned them. Moreover, are the catch techniques that Karl Gotch learned at the Billy Riley Gym in Wigan, England, as good, if not better, than what we're seeing being practiced today in other popular submission arts?
I sincerely believe that the techniques of traditional catch wrestling are better than those used in today's more popular grappling arts. Catch wrestling moves are not just "big guy" techniques that cannot be used by smaller, weaker practitioners. Most of the superstar catch wrestlers of yesteryear weighed less than 200 pounds. Farmer Burns was 165 and he regularly beat opponents twice his size. England's Billy Joyce (real name Bob Robinson), who along with brother Joe Robinson, taught Karl Gotch, were not big men. Ad Santel was not big. Benny Sherman weighed even less than Burns and, like Royler Gracie, would fight the devil himself.
Like any type of submission grappling, catch wrestling was built upon the foundation of many other wrestling arts which were then refined and incorporated into a comprehensive system of personal combat. While catch wrestling, at least the style taught by Karl Gotch, may have more elements of pain compliance than arts such as sombo, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and judo, it is still based upon leverage and joint control. More than anything else, I believe the true legacy of catch wrestling is that we should never stop learning and never stop training."