My new article, “We Came From Catch Wrestling Too” has been posted on BJJHistory.org. I provide short bios of three important, Brazilian Catch Wrestlers (Rufino, Dudu and Tatu) and their influences on Jiu-Jitsu.
Pictured: Catch Wrestler Euclydes “Tatu” Hatem, considered the father of Luta Livre, gets his hand raised after a bout by the referee, Oswaldo Gracie.
Check out BJJHistory.org for about the origins of our art.
In other news, Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
Don’t be that guy. You’d be surprised how many people have no idea about the catch wrestling roots.
Thanks, Deepu. I agree with you. I think if you ask 100 BJJ guys if Catch Wrestlers trained the Gracies or ran training camps with the Gracies, 99 people would say no.
I also think if you ask 50 Gracies if Catch Wrestling had any influence on BJJ, they would all say no.
They give the maeda story themselves. Maeda was a big time draw in Asheville and Atlanta working for probably the GOAT p4p charley Olsen, who had just beat the tar out of maeda’s partner, uno.
Koizumi, the founder of the London budokwai was also in Asheville and lost twice in a row to phelan Beale, whose exwife and daughter star in the documentary Grey gardens
This is a train wreck
Should be Gracie Gardens, IMO.
The average age of guys on this forum is 75. They’ve been around for a while. Maybe the dorks on Reddit in their Hello Kitty rashguards don’t know this yet, because Danaher hasn’t told them, but the old farts here do.
And history remembers the winners. That’s why we don’t do Brazilian Catch Wrestling
Yeah we’re old, but history buffs like knowing the details too. So who was the Maeda equivalent to catch that we can credit? I’m gonna google this Olson guy. My only catch knowledge was from the Cat dude, Big Daddy days of English wrestling.
Anton, I understand. But one of the points in the articles is that you are doing Brazilian Catch as it was incorporated into BJJ.
Deepu, from a Brazilian perspective, Rufino was a pretty big deal.
Speaking of Catch, This is great with alot of big names
At one point in time I had posted around 800 newspaper clippings that completely covered from 1901 through 1949. Tinypic died and it went poof, not before a guy compiled them in a book and never even mentioned me as being the originator. There were three threads with about an average of 800 articles on two and double that on one
The wizard catweasle?
Lol yes. My first intro to grappling was watching English wrestling with my mom. Guys like Mick McManus, Fit Finlay, Catweasel etc.
the whole series of catweasle is on YouTube, the first episode is called “sun in a bottle”. I liked the rasslin catweasle also, he was actually a pretty good lancanshire wrestler, he didn’t get to show it though
Oh had no idea there was also a series for Catweasel. I just thought you were calling the wrestler a wizard.
Right! Carry on