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Catch-As-Catch-Can Wrestling

Catch-As-Catch-Can or Catch Wrestling is a style of Folk wrestling made popular in the late 19th century by the wrestlers of traveling carnivals who incorporated submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents. The style derives from a number of influences, most significantly the regional styles of Europe such as English Lancashire wrestling and the Irish Collar-and-elbow, and styles of the Indian subcontinent such as Pehlwani and Iranian styles such as Varzesh-e Pahlavani. The training of some modern submission wrestlers are founded in Catch wrestling.

Catch wrestling's ultimate origins may lie in the Ancient Greek Wrestling style which spread throughout the Roman empire. The Ancient Greek rules of winning by submission or pin are the same as those of Catch, but Catch does not have the Greek style's rule of win by removing the opponent from the contest area. Catch wrestling became immensely popular across both sides of the Atlantic, especially in the carnivals in the United States of America during the late 19th and early 20th century. The carnival's wrestlers challenged the locals as part of the carnival's "athletic show" and the locals had their chance to win a cash reward if they could defeat the carnival's strongman by a pin or a submission. Catch wrestling dominated in American "rough and tumble" fighting, real, no rules (without a mat) format with all striking, submissions and eye gouging allowed. Eventually, the carnival's wrestlers began preparing for the worst kind of unarmed assault and aiming to end the wrestling match with any tough local quickly and decisively via submission. A hook was a technical submission which could end a match within seconds. As carnival wrestlers traveled, they met with a variety of people, learning and using techniques from various folk wrestling disciplines, many of which were accessible due to a huge influx of immigrants in the United States during this era.

Catch wrestling contests also became immensely popular in Europe involving the likes of the national wrestling champion Great Gama, Imam Baksh Pahalwan, Gulam from India, Bulgarian world heavyweight champion Dan Kolov, Swiss champion John Lemm, Americans Frank Gotch, Ralph Parcaut, Ad Santel, Ed Lewis and Benjamin Roller, Mitsuyo Maeda from Japan, and Estonian Georg Hackenschmidt. Traveling wrestlers and European tournaments brought together a variety of folk wrestling disciplines including the Indian variety of Pehlwani, Judo and Jujutsu from Japan, and others. Each of these disciplines contributed to the development of catch wrestling in their own way.

A colleague of Frank Gotch, Martin 'Farmer' Burns, offered a correspondence course in catch wrestling called Wrestling and Physical Culture.