“If you don’t know how to Wrestle, you don’t know how to fight. Wrestling is the prerequisite to fighting”
David “Tank” Abbott
“Very often one looks at a technique in the course of a class and you think, would this do the job on a maniac in the street? With Wrestling you were thinking, how can I tone this stuff down so that I don’t kill the maniac on the street?”
Geoff Thomspon
Wrestling is the core, the foundation. Wrestling is the pre-requisite to fighting. All other combative skill grows out of this.
Wrestling is so vastly under-rated as a martial art. The first class I took in Wrestling, I got thrown around like a rag doll. That’s in spite of the fact that I’d already been through some serious Ju-Jutsu training and a few years working as a Bouncer. Oh…Did I mention that the guys throwing me around were half my size. Anyone who tries to tell you Wrestling is “just brute strength” has clearly never done any real Wrestling.
What amazed me most about western Wrestling was how simple and natural the techniques are compared to Japanese Judo and Ju-Jutsu. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take Judo, however. Any form of grappling sport where you get to test yourself against a live, resisting opponent will do the trick. Even if you just wrestle “rough ‘n’ tumble” with your buddies you’ll still pick up a lot of useful skills.
The Berserker motto for Wrestling ought to be…
“Any where, any time, with rules or without.”
Clint
