I started at Billy Riley’s gym when I was 15 and was there for probably 12 years. When I began, Jack Dempsey, John Foley, and Joe Carroll were there. I was about 190 pounds, in great shape, and stood at six-foot-two. Billy Riley said, “Try it with this old guy.” Well, the old guy—Charlie Carroll—was in his early fifties, about 155 or 160 pounds. I got on the mat with him. God! I’ve never got hurt so much in my life. He beat me very easily.
At times, I was able to take him down or get behind him and get control, or what I thought was control, for a short while. But every time I took him down, I got hurt. Every time he took me down, I got hurt. I’d land on an elbow or a knee (his). He’d have an ankle submission on me when I thought I was beating him. It was just unbelievable. Even after I had won the British Amateur Championship, when I went to the gym the next day Joe was there, and I went, “Oh, shit!” He kept me humble. It only got better when I started to understand what catch was all about and why he was beating me or why I was basically beating or hurting myself.
ABOUT CATCH-AS-CATCH-CAN
Lancashire-style wrestling, or catch-as-catch-can, was started by coal miners and steelworkers in the north of England. Guys who travelled the world, like those in the army and the navy, started to pick up all kinds of different fighting techniques, and that’s how Wigan wrestlers found a style that beat all the different combat styles—more or less what mma is becoming today, but with no time limits.
Four thousand years ago, the Greeks had a term for the Olympic Games; they called it “Agon.” In the original Greek Olympics, whoever won the wrestling event was the champion of the Olympic Games. The Greeks had the best, most brutal submission wrestlers in that area of the world then. From drawings, we know that they used many of the same submissions we use today, and they were so good at it that the English word for pain, “agony,” comes from this ancient Greek tradition.
I’ve heard people say Greco-Roman style, which is a style of wrestling where you can’t use your legs, came from Greece and Rome. In fact, the style was originally formed by the Vikings, the Nordic men. Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lapland, and Estonia in those days were together called the Nordic countries. Some men fought with swords, but their most-used weapon was a double-headed battle axe, which was very heavy. They also had to do a lot of rowing, so they needed a lot of upper body strength. The Vikings formed a style of wrestling that developed the upper body. It became known as Greco-Roman in the modern Olympics in 1896, when they needed a name for it. Because the Olympics originated in Greece and Rome, they decided to call it Greco-Roman. There was no such thing as Greco-Roman wrestling before 1896.
Submission wrestling has been very important to the world. Wars have been decided by wrestling. Wars between tribes in Africa, between South American Indians, between peoples all over the world have been settled by the champion of one group fighting the champion of the other, sometimes to the death. It has saved thousands of lives that would have been lost otherwise. Henry VIII of England, for example, was a wrestling champion in his youth. He challenged the king of France to a wrestling match during a dispute over who should rule France. They wrestled, Henry lost, and the rest is history.
Henry VIII was from the Tudor family that brought education to the people. The last order he gave his daughter, Elizabeth I, was to build shipyards. He told her, “We need the greatest navy in the world to conquer the world.” For 300 years, England basically ruled the globe. Over that period of time, England had colonies from India to Australia to North America, all the way around. The sun never set on the British Empire.
One of the biggest ports then was in Lancashire. A lot of British sailors came out of this area because when ships lost men at sea, they would shanghai men—take them on board forcibly and only untie them after getting out to sea—and a lot of those shanghaied happened to be Lancashire wrestlers. So they went around the world—not because they wanted to, because they had to. They saw things around the world, picked up all different holds and tried different wrestling styles, brought them back to Lancashire, and Lancashire catch wrestlers improved on these holds, figured out how they could blend them into their style, and that’s how catch-as-catch-can was formed.
It’s like the way that modern day mma has improved so much over the last 10 years. Just 10 years ago, watching mma was like watching amateur street fighters. Now it’s improved because guys who are very good with different styles have come into it, and they’ve taught from each other. But even the best of mma can’t compare with a mediocre catch wrestler of the 1930s or earlier. I think that’s because back then there were just so many more catch wrestlers. You had catch wrestlers all around the world—thousands upon thousands of them. You could go to any city in the world and find dozens of people to spar with. In the mid-1800s through to the early 1900s, working-class guys were working round the clock on eight-hour shifts, so gyms were full 24 hours a day. After their shift was over, they’d get something to eat and go to the gym and find different sparring partners. Practice was never difficult.
There were other styles, too, in England. For example, the Cornish Devonshire style was brought to England in 1066 by William the Conqueror and the Normans. Most of these Normans later settled in Cornwall. The wrestlers wore jackets like a judo jacket, and the style had takedowns, great standing throws, submissions, and chokes. It was similar to judo, and in the early ’50s, in fact, the Japanese Judo Championship navy team visited England and entered the Cornish-style wrestling championships. Not one of them got through the first round. They were all thrown or submitted or beaten.
Comparing the English styles of wrestling—Cornish, catch-as-catch-can, and Cumberland Westmorland—is like comparing the Eastern styles of judo, jiu-jitsu, and karate. The three English styles are basically from the same country, but without doubt catch wrestling is the best because it is freer, more open. Matches used to have longer time periods than we see today in any kind of fighting; the basic rules of catch-as-catch-can wrestling included pinfalls and submissions (any kind: leg submissions, neck submissions, and so on), but specifics were argued between the managers of the two sides.
Participant weight was the first thing managers would argue about. If one guy was a lot bigger than the other, his opponent’s manager would try to get him to drop weight to make him weaker for the match. In a long match, or an hour match, that would just drain the energy out of him.
Then they would argue about the rules. In straight catch, everything, including all submissions, was allowed. Only fists were forbidden, because most of these guys had day jobs, and when you use fists, you can break a knuckle or a thumb, which would put you out of work. So the heel of the hand, which is solid bone, was allowed. Elbows were allowed. Jumps were allowed. Chokes were sometimes allowed, depending on the agreement. “All in catch” meant everything was allowed—chokes, sleeper holds, everything.
Today, nobody—no amateur, no so-called catch wrestler—really knows how to put the legs in for ankle submission rides. Some of the old-time leg wrestlers were just unbelievable. They could get figure-four body scissors, and they’d squeeze their opponent, tightening up in time with their breathing, like a boa constrictor. If, for example, Joe Robinson got a figure four on you, he’d control your breathing. When you breathed out, he’d tighten and cinch up a little, so you couldn’t get enough oxygen. You’d be gasping just to get air, while he’d be working constantly with a side headlock, back elbow, cross-face, or whatever.
In an hour match, the leg wrestlers would be down with all their weight arched out on their opponent, putting a body scissors or figure four scissors on their opponent, and they’d have their hands free, hitting the opponent with the heel of their hands and with their elbow. That opponent’s going to fight like hell to free himself, burning out in no time.
The great thing about pinfalls is that the opponent is fighting off his back to get into a defence position so he can sit out, stand up, or counter. As he trie
s to get to that safe haven position, there will be exposed ankles, loose arms, loose wrists, an opening for a neck crank; whatever comes available can be used to beat him—and that’s when the old-timers picked their submissions. It’s a lot easier to get submissions when a guy is fighting to get off his back than if he is on his back more passively, like the guard you see in Gracie jiu-jitsu. Pinning opens up doors to so many different things.
The catch guys were beating a lot of the old jiu-jitsu guys, so they changed the rules to no ankle submissions and no neck cranks, to give them a chance. The rules and the time limits have changed so much that now it’s mostly just about power. The longest amateur wrestling match, held at the 1912 Olympics, lasted 11 hours and 40 minutes. After that, they made the time limit one hour, and in my time as an amateur it was 15 minutes—six, three, three, three. You start with six minutes standing, then three minutes defence on the mat, followed by three minutes in the attack position on top of the mat. If nobody has been pinned by then, whoever is ahead on points can decide the position he wants to be in to start the last three minutes. So you had to know all aspects of wrestling to be a champion. Nowadays, a championship match is three five-minute rounds or five five-minute rounds.
In Billy’s opinion, the very best wrestler of his time Billy Joyce
(a.k.a. Bob Robinson).
Amateur wrestling is nothing like what it was in the ’20s and the ’30s. Today, nobody knows breakdowns. Right now, if you can get behind a guy, you get a takedown or get a go-behind, that’s it. All you’ve got to do is stay in there for the end of the round, or you can let him escape. You get two points; he gets one point. That’s boring! I don’t even watch the Olympics now.
In catch-as-catch-can, there are no points. It’s a cat-and-mouse game. It’s not about power; the old-timers, like Billy Joyce and those other guys, never got tired on the mat. They could stay on the mat for three, four hours. When I was training for matches, Billy would bring in five or six guys for me. He’d send them in one after another for three minutes or five minutes and change off. For hours, I’d never come off the mat. But I wouldn’t get tired. Billy Joyce, John Foley, Jack Dempsey, Joe Carroll, Charlie Carroll—those guys never got tired. When you know how to wrestle, you make the other person do all the work.
If you know the alignment from the ball of the foot to the ankle to the knee to the hip, and how to get power for your leg just from the ankle, you use strength from your body structure, not your muscles. Power is directed from the ball of the foot to the heel and straight up to the knee, and where your heel and your knee are going, that’s the direction of your power.
THE GYM CULTURE
A lot of people are familiar with Riley’s gym because of people like Karl Gotch and me, but there are so many names that have been totally forgotten, that people don’t have any idea about. The history is lost forever.
Billy Riley started in Pop Charnock’s gym. Charnock was a world champion before Billy. Then they split and hated each other. Whether it was something personal or it was just the question of who was the better wrestler, I will never know, because I wasn’t in a position to ask. In those days, if you said something wrong, it was a slap over the ear and somebody would be grinding you through the mat. You were very careful what you said to Mr. Riley.
Pop Charnock’s and Billy Riley’s gyms were not the only gyms then. There were plenty of others—Emil Foy, Jimmy Nibletts, and Foley each had their own. Foley was from Leigh, but he had learned with Billy. I started my own gym later, too. And these were just a few of the gyms around Wigan in my time. It was the same all around the world, though mostly in boxing. You could go to any city and there’d be many boxing gyms—people wanted to make money to make life easier, and anybody who was any good at fighting made money privately in street fights, or turned pro.
In those days, every gym had its own deal, and anybody could come into a gym to spar. The guys there would cut out all their top-of-the-line stuff and just do good basic wrestling, get a good workout. They didn’t want to teach anybody their top-class stuff in case they had to wrestle competitively in the future. If a visitor asked how he’d been beaten, they would say something like, “Oh, I was lucky. I don’t really know what I did.” Or if the visitor wanted to see something they did while they were sparring, they’d show him, but not the correct way.
No gym ever really taught an outsider. The basics and may be a few other things, but nothing that could be used to beat them in the future. It was the same way all around the world. If you wanted to learn Gusti, the Indian style of wrestling, you could go to the different gyms in India, like the gyms of the Great Gama and the Bholu Brothers (Gama’s nephews), who were world famous. All the gyms in India were the same. You worked out either very early in the morning or very late, after the sun had gone down, because you’re in a Quonset hut and you wrestle in sand, and it’s very hot during the daytime. In Lancashire, a lot of the matches, or what Americans called “shoots,” were done on grass—not nice, soft grass like on a bowling green, but more like the turf on a rugby or soccer field. That’s why you’d see all the old-timers wearing tights and boots or knee pads, to protect them from grass burns. In a long match, boy, those could go bad on you.
After Billy’s first match in Japan; he beat Rasha Kimura. Billy is wearing the British Heavyweight Championship belt.
In India, if you were visiting a gym and wanted to learn one hold, you could buy that hold, and they’d teach you it but nothing more. You’d get every aspect of how to get the hold and the defences against it. Then you were out; they’d show you nothing else. There were no fight photos or video footage then, and you never saw what else they could do.
It was only after the Second World War and the affluence of the ’50s that television got it all out into the open. Videos and television changed combat sports
tremendously. Nowadays, you can scout a fighter. You can watch all of your opponent’s matches before you get on the mat with him. In those days, you never saw your opponent until the match started. That’s why
jiu-jitsu guys never did any good against catch wrestlers. They picked up things like figure four scissors, which they called the triangle, or a double wristlock, which they renamed the Kimura because he beat them with it. Kimura learned it from Karl Gotch, and Gotch learned it in Wigan with Joe Robinson and Billy Riley. Double wristlocks were around for over a thousand years. But Kimura beat the Gracies, so they named it a Kimura.
What happens is young people watch what the current champions are winning with. Then they copy it, even try to better it, but it’s the same hold or moves. They forget a lot of other stuff that’s won other matches. Then maybe 30 years go by. One of those forgotten holds comes up again, and a champion starts to beat everybody with it. So everybody wants to learn it. It’s a cycle. For example, at the 1948 Olympics in London, the Turks did very well with the top ride, and people started calling it the Turkish ride. Everybody was talking about the Turkish ride that won so many medals in the 1948 games. So I went to Billy Riley, and I said, “Mr Riley, everybody is talking about the Turkish ride.”
Billy said, “Well, what is it?” So I described it to him.
He said, “Come in here.” Riley’s office was a library of wrestling books and prints. He brought out etchings that were 400 or 500 years old of exactly the same ride, and he said, “The Turkish ride? We were doing that over 500 years ago.”
Billy Riley sent me to different gyms to wrestle their guys and come back and tell him what I had a problem with or what was tough. He had other guys there from our gym watching; I didn’t know it then. He sent old-timers that I didn’t know to see what I needed to work on, what I was doing wrong, and so on. He knew before I came back to tell him.
Riley sent me not only to the local gyms, but to other countries. He sent me to Germany to work out with Gideon Gida, the Hungarian Greco-Roman champion. Gida had improved Karl Gotch’s suplex. Karl
was already very good with the suplex, but Gida coached him to make it even better. Later, Gida and Karl became very close friends. Gida was like an uncle to me. He was very close to my family, to Alf and my dad. He was great. He showed me the double arm suplex that I beat everybody with later in my career. When I asked him how he had figured it out, he said, “Well, I didn’t. A very good friend of mine won the silver medal in the Greco with that hold in the ’36 Olympic games. He was from Germany. His name was Wolfgang Ehrl, a.k.a. Bubby Ehrl. ‘Bubby’ means little boy in German, and that was his nickname.”
Gideon Gida, Greco-Roman champion, with Billy’s son Spencer.
Gida wrestled in a tournament in Munich, and I went with him, and Bubby was a postmaster for Munich at that time. Gida introduced us. Bubby showed me the hold. Then we went to the gym and worked on it together every day for about a week—how to get into it, how to get submissions from it, and how to defend it.
AT RILEY’S
Billy Riley is the best coach I’ve ever been around. He didn’t teach me just wrestling. He didn’t teach me only catch-as-catch-can. He taught me how to learn. He taught me to open my mind to angles, to the metrics, to the alignments of the ankle, the hip, the elbows, the shoulders. He explained how my body worked, how I could get the most power out of my body, how I could save energy and still make my opponent think I was the strongest man he’d ever been on the mat with; he taught me how to break their heart.
So much of catch-as-catch-can is wearing a man out and knowing how to break his spirit. For example, I get a good escape guy, and I keep taking him down. And then I let him fight up, but only three-quarters of the way up, and then I take him down again. While making it easy for him to get three-quarters of the way up, I’m setting myself in a position so that he will go down floundering again, using a lot of energy. This is what Bob Robinson, a.k.a. Billy Joyce, did so well.
Physical Chess Page 2
