Scientific Wrestling

NECKBREAKER: Our Latest Featured Instructional by the Incomparable Erik Paulson!
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Scientific Wrestling provides quality Western martial art strategies, training, research, and competitive leagues for those looking for an alternative or complement to Professional Wrestling and popular competitive combat sports like Mixed Martial Arts, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Kickboxing, and Amateur Wrestling. Click here for the rules of the game!
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Submission grappling is not new to the West. With roots in the English Lancashire style, Catch-As-Catch-Can ("CACC", which means "catch me if you can" in the original Lancashire dialect) was by far the most popular American sport during the post-Civil War period up until just before World War I. Wrestling events drew crowds larger than boxing, baseball, and basketball combined.
Control, takedowns, bone-breaking holds, and knockout chokes; these men knew how to make their opponents scream "Uncle" and sometimes they even knew what is was like to kill (e.g., CACC wrestler Charles Olsen once killed an opponent by snapping his neck with a full-nelson).
They didn't wrestle on cushy pads or mats, they rolled on hard floors and grassy fields (this is the reason they did NOT like being on their backs. Try playing bottom game on the asphalt and you too will see why they hated being in that position).
Unfortunately, the wrestlers of that period often had less than sterling reputations. They (even World Champion Frank Gotch did this early in his career) would venture into new cities and towns under assumed identities. Staying for a few weeks, even months, the locals would eventually accept them as one of their own. This is when the grappler would do his best to insinuate his way into a big match with the local tough guy.
The unsuspecting locals often bought into the scam and the wrestling "new-comer" would proceed to bilk the gambling locals of their hard earned money and then split before sunrise the next day.
This form of "sandbagging", on top of the the rampant fixed matches (made possible by greedy promoters and competitors looking for an easy payday), terminally tarnished the reputation of competitive submission grappling in America for the remainder of the 20th Century. The aftermath is the melodrama we now see on TV filled with acrobatic body-builders/stuntment in leotards screaming at each other and going through the motions of a real contest, a la WWE.
Scientific Wrestling's mission is to promote the legacy of competitive professional wrestling as a legitimate sport, a means of superior physical fitness, and a brutally efficient form of self-defense. Join us!