The State of Catch Wrestling - Josh Barnett Part 2

This is part 2 of the interview I recently did with Josh Barnett "The Warmaster", probably the best know proponent of Catch Wrestling in the world.
In this one we talk about Catch, obviously, but we talk about how people can train in it, what to do if you can't find a coach, we talk about what those of us in Catch should be doing to promote it, and we talk about the parallels between Catch and HEMA.
Here is the GoFundMe for Josh's team to be able to come compete in the UK: gofund.me/59a47b4e

[@MartialArtsJourney]

Thanks for the shoutout! Getting my ass kicked by an MMA fighter was brutal, but it led to some of the best changes in my life

[@lastmanstanding5423]

Hi Rokas...

[@LuxisAlukard]

Dude, you really came to watch the video! Nice! =)

[@EnglishMartialArts]

You channel has influenced a lot of people and done a huge amount of good in the martial arts world.

[@vesuvius2444]

Love this. Always wondered why catch wrestling wasn't more mainstream considering it's been proven effective. Josh Barnett being a prime example of its effectiveness.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I think we've had far more success than we deserve considering how little known the art is. I'm not sure why it hasn't been more successful, but I feel a real groundswell within the community to change that...

[@badart3204]

It’s rather rough with people along with being big on strength and most people don’t like that.

[@adrianojordao4634]

Very nice. This gave you mega status. Go after, Sukuraba! Josh is good at interviews too. Very articulate.

[@darryl8806]

Thanx For This Interview.A Big Fan Of Josh,Both Gotches,Sakuraba,Mr LaBell..For A Long Time,not to omit the Late Farmer Burns.Respect

[@tobyway5093]

This is bloody awesome. I literally was thinking of Barnett when watching you talk about English wrestling in the past. Can't believe this has happened 😢

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Always nice when that happens!

[@gaminghunt5837]

Catch deserves to be mainstream, as does savate

[@dhalav]

bring back traditional boxe française

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Did you know Josh is a Yellow Glove in Savate?

[@dhalav]

@@EnglishMartialArts did not know that, I guess he learned it through Eric Paulson?

[@EnglishMartialArts]

@@dhalav perhaps, I genuinely don't know. I'll ask him when we next do an interview!

[@nighttimeaudio]

Josh`s instructionals are brilliant ,for anyone wondering. The way i "started learning " catch was by watching the tecniques so many times that I could attempt them in rolling at the Bjj school. But what reall got me going was learning amateur wrestling (GR in my case)

[@Irrational_Pie]

Agreed, Josh’s instructionals include crucial details that I haven’t seen elsewhere. He’s excellent!

[@corrugatedcavalier5266]

Good stuff! I can only speak to the HEMA environment but I am lucky with our club and a couple others where we do at least have some individuals who like to get on the mats, get sweaty, and figure stuff out. Not everyone in my club is like that, but they still enjoy learning the techniques.

[@saltyfruits3961]

There is a strong strain of HEMA folk who pressure test and compete hard 💜💜 But definitely the old guard can have a defensive true art attitude! Big fan of your channel and of Josh!

[@johnstuartkeller5244]

The focused way this conversation is going is great. I find myself as much taking notes as asking myself the questions that make me set ego aside. Fight, team!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

He's always a really interesting person to talk to.

[@patfetes]

A great set of interviews, Josh is a legend of the game. Thanks for all your well informed and educational videos. FIGHT TEAM!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

FIGHT TEEEEEAM!

[@patfetes]

@@EnglishMartialArts thanks for the reply coach.

[@scum22]

I teach at my local BJJ school, and I love showing catch wrestling techniques as best I can, even though I can't say I've ever done catch wrestling. I showed the stockade from side control last night!

[@fredazcarate4818]

Brilliant video interview of a true master of the grappling art of Catch Wrestling. I thoroughly enjoyed your master opus! Bravo young Sir. Once again you have delivered another mighty blow. God bless you and family!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Thanks Fred!

[@batjutsu]

More of this wonderful and informative interview, thanks to you both!

[@EnglishMartialArts]

There's one more coming out today!

[@VSW2020]

I competed in the last two ACWA catch wrestling tournament, competing out of Aguirre's Fighting System out in Fontana CA. Those two tournaments were amazing.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Good on you! We need more people like you in Catch.

[@JonathanJimenez_metalriff6]

Catch Wrestling Alliance highly recommended

[@harlemdeni]

Holy crap, this guy was amazingly smart! Loved this interview! I gotta ask though - I'm new to this whole grappling thing, doing BJJ for a couple of months now. What books would you recommend me to read? I watched A LOT of videos on your channel, so they don't have to be on BJJ, but please at least recommend me something from this century 😂 Keep up the great work and cheers from Macedonia!

[@edwardanderson1053]

Kung Fu doesn't work unless its a heavy hand style, but Shuai Jiao is awesome! , trained it for 8 years and wrestling. And SCA and fencing and Asian weapons so I totally get and agree with most of these conclusions. Don't stop.

[@cmilter6360]

What an awesome chat, I have really enjoyed ❤

[@EnglishMartialArts]

It was a lot of fun, glad you enjoyed it too!

[@rudai123]

So true. Get top college wrestlers into the sport. I was an average college wrestler and I love Catch. I compete in NAGAs etc and coach at SnakePitUSA affliate school.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

It's so sad that Jordan Burroughs has taken up BJJ to continue his grappling journey. We need to make Catch a real option for top level wrestlers...

[@rudai123]

@@EnglishMartialArts Agreed. College wrestlers will have a much faster path to submission grappling prowess and MMA grappling is utilizing Catch Wrestling. I know this as an ex average college wrestler who tried BJJ and Catch :)

[@lewisb85]

Great set of interviews, there are some great people who are helping on a grass roots level the O'hagan family in Bristol for instance who started Ace submission grappling as a promotion, the snake pit promotion anything that allows more elements of catch as opposed to just Ibjjf rules for grappling, In regard to Hema we need more promotions like M-1 Medieval why? because it's the full violent display of those arts in practice weapon work in conjunction with grappling etc, you need that to show what the fighting art can be in fact some friends of mine who thought hema/re enactment was stupid changed to "holy shit that's awesome" on seeing M-1 Medieval.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I've not come across the O'Hagans before, I'll check them out!

[@lewisb85]

@@EnglishMartialArts As well as Ace Submission grappling they run a gym out of Bristol called Impact gym where they teach MMA/Submission Grappling/BJJ as well as Combat Jujutsu (not the Eddie bravo stuff but modified Japanese Jujutsu) basically stuff that has no interest in the IBJJF ruleset but works in submission grappling comps and MMA, you've probably heard of one of their students James "the colossus" Thompson.

[@chaos_omega]

Unfortunately, M-1 Medieval isn't really HEMA. It's MMA in full plate.

[@lewisb85]

@@chaos_omega it got people I know who aren't into that sort of thing at all talking about it. Also if you look at the writings of his historian and martial artist Danielle Bolelli he talks about battlefield instinctiveness where its OK to have complicated techniques but will someone remember them under pressure and if they do a streamlined version what's the harm. A lot of the hema guys seem to forget that.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I know James well, we've trained together lots. He's on my list for interviews here.@@lewisb85

[@PaulGengeCombatLab]

Having been down the route of trying to find practical application for my own non-HEMA traditional martial arts and since leaving that community to dive into BJJ, I feel your pain. 😂 Keep up with the videos and, in particular, the catch focused ones they interest the inner need that isn't always satisfied with just getting mat time. 🙄

[@rippersubmissionwrestling2704]

As someone who's of Scottish and Irish descent Scottish and Irish are very close as two countries! They both speak Gaelic which is spoken in Scotland and Ireland! So they share a common language Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic are both very similar!

[@jimbogood]

Something I hoped he was going to talk about but didn't is the idea that Catch has a "lineage" which goes back to the 19th C (and earlier for the folk wrestling styles it came from), and whether that's something worth exploring in terms of looking at how they trained and what exercises they might have used to prepare themselves for the actual wrestling part; modern weight/resistance training as we know it didn't exist back then, and I think most people would agree that's an effective way to develop the proper body structure and "whole body" muscle-use patterns needed for effective grappling. Anybody who attended a publicly funded elementary school in Britain after 1870 (or who joined the British Army after 1817; also taught to the middle/upper classes by retired Sergeants from at least the 1830's) would have been taught an exercise system called the Setting Up Drill, which arguably taught those skills without the use of heavy weights to "force" the body to make those connections. Do you think anybody in the modern Catch community would be interested in looking at those old exercises? Not that they will be "better" than modern weight training, since they don't produce hypertrophy and muscle-mass is certainly a handy thing to have for grappling, but they might offer something complimentary and hopefully helpful, and possibly give some insight into the earlier stages of Catch's "lineage" if that's something that interests anybody.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Well it interests me if that's any help? But I suspect you already knew that... 😁

[@jimbogood]

@@EnglishMartialArts That definitely helps! I was a bit worried you were cutting all ties with Hema, and by extension anything from the 19th C... sorry for not getting in touch the last few months from Belgium, turns out renovating a farm doesn't give you a lot of time to travel 'n stuff. Who knew? I'm back in Canada, but heading over again in early October, and hoping to get over to the UK; slim chance I might get selected to present a paper in London in November, so that would definitely get me there. Hoping to get Folk dancers/musicians interested in the really boring "foundation skill' parts of 19th C Hema that even the Hema guys don't want to look at! That should be fun.

[@thebaneking4787]

Snake pit in Maryland and Virginia . And where ever Erik Paulson is. Lol Oh Mark Hatmaker in Kentucky. All 3 are incredible. Or study Folk style with submissions.

[@hailhydreigon2700]

Josh Barnett put into words exactly what I wanted to say about HEMA for a long time. I just didn't want to say it because I don't want to be a jerk. But now I can be like "Hey, your grappling sucks. Josh Barnett agrees." Lol

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I've said it several times, but hopefully more people will listen to him!

[@Irrational_Pie]

Even in Los Angeles it’s hard to find somewhere to learn catch wrestling. There’s CSW in Fullerton over an hour away, and a sambo place in North Hollywood that’s pretty expensive, and mostly just bjj schools besides those. I’m lucky enough to train at a bjj school that teaches wrestling, so I can train moves from instructionals with like-minded partners, but at this rate catch is just going to be subsumed into no-gi. I really hope catch doesn’t die out, only to be resurrected in a few decades by nerds a la HEMA.

[@dhalav]

you have Catch Wrestling Alliance in downtown L.A. I believe, head coach work closely with John Strickland of American Hook Wrestling.

[@benephelps]

I wish Josh was my older brother. He’s heckin’ cool

[@EnglishMartialArts]

I think he'd have beaten the crap out of you when you were kids. But you'd be really good at fighting!

[@benephelps]

@@EnglishMartialArts 100% certainly much, much bigger than me! At least if anyone messed with me, I could summon his strength and ability to defend me! Lol

[@BanjoleleGamer]

Awesome 👍

[@galveenus8499]

What was the drama he was referring to near the end?

[@EnglishMartialArts]

It's probably best not to rehash it, but in essence some people who used to work together stopped. It was a little messy.

[@galveenus8499]

@@EnglishMartialArts Awww fair enough

[@fazeroman8885]

"This is what the dnd kids do when they aren't in their basement"💀💀😭😭😭

[@theodrake2394]

Where can I learn CACC?

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Where are you?

[@theodrake2394]

@@EnglishMartialArts Canada …. Do you know any online resources or syllabus I could follow?

[@EnglishMartialArts]

@@theodrake2394 there's one coming soon. In the mean time check out Scientificwrestling.com

[@thebaneking4787]

Hema looks like white guy Sumo without the weapons.

[@EnglishMartialArts]

Lol, we're not all that bad, but yeah, not a completely unfair comment.

[@dungeonquesting8075]

I like catch but it focuses too much on history and less on technique

[@albert_kempowillenborg1707]

He needs to help train Bo Nickal, or so says my imagination

[@markcorrigan3930]

4:43

[@xvtstephen]

hello, is Snake Pit USA a legit academy or not really?

[@EnglishMartialArts]

They're legit.

[@xvtstephen]

@@EnglishMartialArtsdo you think you can interview the head coach? they seem to be taking a different view of the sport with 8 levels/belts.

[@aaron-dd5lz]

I think its interesting how there is this aversion to linking catch with HEMA because of the nerd culture in HEMA and not wanting to become a laughing stock. I feel like the 500 lb gorilla in the room is being ignored here. Catch has already been made a laughing stock because of its connection with pro-wrestling, and i don't think that can be stressed enough. Catch is inextricably linked to the fake wrestling that little boys and trailer trash have loved for decades. Its linked to bizarre antics, men in tight underwear dancing around on a mat, and fake holds and "moves" that simply don't work. Ken shamrock was a major force in the first MMA contests in the U.S., and although the fact that he didn't beat gracie played a role, you'd normally expect the fighting form of the guy who fought him toe to toe to be a consideration. But.....pro-wrestling. Lets face it, HEMA is a step up from that.