CATCH Today

Ultimate Fighting Championship: Dan "the Beast" Severn takes a kick to the ribs.

With the rise of professional show wrestling under the auspices of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) true submission wrestling has been under threat for the past 3 decades.

Despite this, it seems CATCH has been given an unlikely lifeline with the growing popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

In the UFC octagon, all styles are permitted: there are no weight categories and apart from the original CATCH rules (no eye gouging, hair pulling or groin shots) it's a no holds barred competition.

THIS IS THE REAL DEAL

UFC is not for the feint-hearted. And in this brutal competition, the submission wrestlers are proving tough to beat.

A wrestler who has been successful in the octagon is Dan Severn. Mike Chapman (International Wrestling Institute & Musuem) credits Severn with proving, on a world stage, that wrestling should be taken seriously as a martial art.

Dan "the Beast" Severn puts wrestlers' superiority in the UFC down to the traditional moves of submission wrestling: "a person has 2 arms, 2 legs, the neck…there are only so many different ways that you can turn, twist or manipulate…"

Submission wrestling in the North West

In the unlikely market town of Atherton, bordering Leigh and Bolton, Shane Rigby and friends have opened the Atherton Fighting Fit Combat Club.

A former student of the Bolton Olympic Wrestling Club, Roy Wood and a Commonwealth Games athlete, Shane's club specialises in martial arts and grappling techniques based on wrestling.

Continuously winning with the old moves, Fighting Fit students are proof that CATCH is an ultimate art.

The future

Though CATCH in its purest forms is threatened, athletes like Severn and Rigby help to preserve it through their modern-day interpretations.

As long as these fighters rely on traditional moves to win, CATCH is destined to survive in one form or another.

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