By Ruslan C. Pashayev
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The Evolution Of The Species 9
FIRST SUBMISSIONS COME TO AMERICA.
For centuries in Japan besides the actual wrestling (which is sumo) there also was a tradition of submission wrestling culture also known as jiu-jitsu, the “gentle art” of self-defense. In their vocabulary Japanese martial artists had a great variety of submission holds that a skilled wrestler could apply on different parts of his opponent’s body and be a master of his adversary, make him quit. All currently known submission holds (including armbars, arm and wrist-locks, ankle and foot-locks, knee-bars, toe-holds, all kinds of chokes including the most famous triangle choke) which are practiced all over the world and exist in various submission grappling systems are of Japanese jiu-jitsu origin. When in the 19 c those dangerous holds were first exposed in the Western hemisphere, people there found a best application for them, they were immediately included in policemen training, and back then jiu-jitsu was simply called a “policemen wrestling”.
In the early 1900s in United States the Japanese jiu-jitsu masters would often challenge local catch-as-catch-can wrestlers to the match on mixed conditions, the catch wrestler to win had to pin his opponent and that would be enough, and his adversary had to apply a successful submission hold to become a victor. Those kinds of matches were becoming very popular in North America since 1905. But it still took about ten years of “slow evolution” when American pro wrestlers and promoters finally fully realized that “Japanese tricks” are in fact enriching local pro wrestling and make wrestling matches and the in-ring opposition between the two wrestlers look more elaborate, intricate first of all because of the nature of the Japanese method which exhibited the best and fastest “transition from defense to counter-attack into submit”.
Originally, in the early 1900s, this kind of wrestling sport was not called catch wrestling but a mixed-wrestling championship match in which: “A bout shall be terminated when either man is forced to quit or has his shoulders pinned to the mat”. Basically it was a Judo/Jiu-Jitsu v Catch, and who wins faster their own way gets the money-prize!
Later, in the 1910s, when jiu-jitsu holds became familiar to most of the American wrestling performers the matches were decided either on submissions or on falls. “Both jiu-jitsu and catch-as-catch-can tactics will be used and falls will not be considered it being necessary for one man to quit before the bout is decided.” “The Match will be a combination of jiu-jitsu and catch-as-catch-can, two falls out of three”. That is why around this time and later in the 20s the journalists stopped calling those exhibitions catch wrestling and simply referred to them as pro-wrestling, because it in fact wasn’t catch wrestling anymore but was a mixed-style wrestling show event.
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