By Ruslan C. Pashayev
Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.
The Evolution Of The Species 14
And finally we got to the last part of this, I hope interesting for my readers, the pro wrestling fans, subject. Oftentimes I receive questions either on Facebook or people email me about the current status of the historical Lancashire’s catch wrestling, especially after reading my book The Story of Catch, whether it exists in any form or not. My answer to this question is no, Lancashire catch wrestling currently does not exist in Lancashire, nor in England whatsoever, and in North America it also is not known as being practiced.
But, its original ruleset (a touch-fall freestyle wrestling contest), as I observed, is currently used by the traditional non-oil wrestling competitions in Greece, called paradosiaki pale, and this sport is so popular that it packs the arenas, yes in Greece they have specific venues the stadiums which are designed specifically for this type of traditional wrestling competitions; another literally “Lancashire catch-like” style for a very long time (over a hundred years) existed in Bavaria (Germany) where it was locally known under the name of Ranggeln, I stress here the Bavarian, barechest Ranggeln, not the Austrian one in which they wrestle in shirts, but it looks like lately Bavarian style was suffering some sort a decline in popularity because of the strong promotional push of the Austrian version of this sport.
In 1921 NY State Athletic headed by the former pro wrestling superstar Wm Muldoon brought old Lanky catch back, for a short period of time all pro wrestling matches in the State of New York were governed by the “touch-fall only rule”, the last pro wrestling world champ according this new (read very old) style’s was Stan Zbyszko the Mighty Pole!
For many decades and even in the 1980s, a sport of catch as catch can wrestling was part of the most of the Highland Games in Scotland, although they used a three count pinfall instead of the original Lanky touch-fall rule.
“Wrestling: Catch-As-Catch-Can In some Highland Games an alternative type of wrestling is allowed, namely ‘Catch-As-Catch-Can’. The object here is to pin the opponent’s shoulders flat on the ground for three seconds. Under the Scottish Games Association rules the hair, flesh, ears, private parts, or clothes, must not be seized, the twisting of fingers is forbidden and any grip that has as its object the punishing of the opponent or inflicting such pain as might cause him to give a fall will not be allowed! Each bout in this form of wrestling lasts for ten minutes if no fall occurs and the referee then nominates a winner.”
The same three-count pinfall rule was used by the Saddleowrth Morrismen the dancing wrestlers (or the wrestling dancers) at their famous annual Rushcart (Rushbearing) Festival. Wrestling entertainment and partner dancing have a lot in common, as my dear friend Tony St Claire the former British Heavyweight champion likes to say it “TAKES TWO TO TANGO!”; and ultimately the performers’ golden rule applies to all visual arts of which pro wrestling is one of the most athletic there is: “whatever you do out there (in the squared circle), should sell out the crowd!
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