Since Lou Thesz, Karl Gotch, and Billy Robinson...
this is the best catch wrestler the world has seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnEFL0dt73g
looks like Victor may have been onto something
This is from a current thread on the UG.
I had a chance to talk with Xtreme Couture Grappling Coach Neil Melanson about a smorgasbord of topics. Here is part one of the interview. Be sure to come back this week for the rest of the interview.
Matthew Roth: The first question would be, can you explain what the difference between catch wrestling and no-gi grappling?
Neil Melanson: Catch-as-catch can is like the original style of no-gi grappling. It’s original form is almost dead, there’s a few guys out there that can really do it. I consider myself a catch wrestler but when it comes down to true catch wrestling, I’m really not. That particular form, it’s so hard to find guys that know that style well. It had a lot to do with the application of what I call “mat wrestling” which people that are wrestlers, people to to quickly associate takedowns with wrestling and not realize there’s a lot of mat work in wrestling. That mat work and all of wrestling came from catch at one point, it was just a dumbed down version of it. It’s hard to find that element in no-gi grappling, that has a lot of jiu-jitsu influence from it, the majority if not all. It was mainly a brazilian jiu jitsu influence, so a lot of the concepts and the principals.
Catch wrestlers focus on head and neck locks and controlling the body a certain way, where jiu jitsu, neck locks were illegal, so they have different techniques. Each art, whether it’s Brazilian Jiu Jistu, Judo, Catch Wrestling or grappling, whatever it is, they’re the best at what they do according to their rule set. If you talk about grappling with the gi on the ground with that rule set, you’re looking at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu being the front runner. If you’re talking about just the throws and all those other elements, then you’re talking about Judo and Wrestling. So I think no-gi grappling, without getting too long, is gonna start turning more and more into old school catch wrestling. I just foresee thats where it’s heading. Even if you look at Jiu Jitsu now, they’re changing their game to include some of the neck locks and arm locks, I think they’re eventually turning to the Catch Wrestling format. The original form of it, there’s only a few guys.
MR: You’re listed on the Xtreme Couture website as the Jiu Jitsu coach, do you guys train in the gi at all or is it your form of Catch Wrestling?
NM: Yeah, there’s no gi here. It shouldn’t say Jiu Jitsu on there, it should say submission grappling. We don’t do a gi here. We thought about having Gabe Gonzaga teach it when he was here and he wanted to teach it. It just didn’t formulate for whatever reason. I think they want to keep the MMA gym orientation and keep the programs to gel into each other and if we start incorporating the gi aspect, even if some people want that and it might do well, it might not choreograph into the rest of the program, where a lot of our guys start out in the grappling class or the kickboxing class then they take MMA classes to put it all together. Then they make it to the amateur team and then to the pro, so there’s kind of like a system and all the instructors bounce off each other. I think if you throw Gi in there, it would divert from the program a little bit. It might be successful, it might not be, I couldn’t say. As of right now it’s not in our future that we have any knowledge of.
MR: You started out with Gene Lebell and I’ve seen that you’ve worked with Billy Robinson, how did those relationships come about?
NM: I moved my whole life out to L.A. to study with Gokar and Gene was there every Monday and I would see Gene around of course. I took classes with Gene, he doesn’t really do privates but mostly worked with Gokar and then Karo. Me and Karo kinda linked up and I spent a lot of time with Karo because he was training for fights. He spent a lot of time with me and I was training under Karo mainly.
As far as Billy Robinson, Jake Shannon kinda put us together cause I met Jake, he’s a friend and he worked with Billy. They know I love old school catch guys, I love to learn from them. Billy wanted to come out and work with me and Randy and show us some of his old stuff. I had a blast man, I had a blast. I loved when he came out, I hope to see him again soon. He’s a great guy and just a database of knowledge of history of all grappling and really unique, that Wigan style of catch is really cool. You know it sucks, I was talking about this the other day, Karl Gotch dying and how that sucks. I wish I got train with that guy before he passed and I can only hope that the people he trained keep it going.