Submission grappling. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (a few more rules than submission grappling). I can’t think of any joint locks that are prohibited in submission grappling, other than small joints (individual fingers and toes), but surely that wasn’t why you were arguing that a real professional wrestling league couldn’t exist.
Here are some kids doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: - YouTube
^^ Please note: I’m not saying submission grappling has “no rules”; I’m just saying that any of the professional wrestling holds that attacked joints would be legal, thus demonstrating that it is not the nature of the moves utilized that prevented professional wrestling from being real. And as I mentioned earlier, Pancrase exists, and it is real.
In grappling sports which allow joint holds, injuries are common. Traditionally they’ve been associated with poor officiation, poor sportsmanship, and mismatches, and rare in most sports. But they weren’t rare in the early days of professional wrestling when it attempted to be a legitimate sport. A simple move like a spinning toe hold can cause serious injury to the knee and ankle by applying too much pressure It is not likely that experienced, well trained competitors will find themselves in that hold or endangered by it, but it can happen if an official is inattentive, or a competitor does not release his hold. More recently injuries have been occuring at a higher rate in MMA because submission holds are being locked down faster and with more force because competitors have gotten better at slipping out of them. The result has been an increase in fractures.
My point remains the same. These are dangerous sports, and the type of moves allowed currently in professional wrestling are extremely dangerous already with cooperating wrestlers. Pancrase has many limitations on the moves allowed in professional wrestling (which in reality aren’t limited by any set of regulations based on competitive wrestling).
And when you add those limitations in, the sport is less interesting to watch. That’s why professional wresters make much more money than MMA fighters do.
What professional wrestling moves are not allowed in submission grappling? You can do joint locks on arms, legs, necks, spines, knees, ankles…
The reason that submission grappling or pancrase doesn’t look like the professional wrestling that you are familiar with is not because the professional wrestling holds are too dangerous for an actual competition. It is because they are too difficult to pull off on a resisting opponent.
Also, where are you getting your information that injuries are now occurring at a higher rate in MMA?
For what it’s worth, in my own experience, I have found amateur wrestling to be much harder on the joints than submission grappling. This may be surprising, considering that in submission wrestling the goal is to actually attack the joints (and flow of oxygen to the brain), but I have found that submission grappling is much more of a finesse sport – more of a mental chess match, whereas amateur wrestling is more of a straight ahead, grinding, brutish endeavor that can be hell on your body.
I never said they couldn’t (that I recall, point it out if I did). I said these types of moves are dangerous, and require strict limitations. And professional wrestling has never about strict limitations (for very long). Because that would make it boring. MMA has had increasingly stricter regulations in place since it’s inception. It was common in the early UFC tournaments to have both winner and loser of a match unable to continue in the tournament because of injuries.
Yes, obviously.
I’m basing that on reporting of injuries in MMA, not statistics. So there might not be an increase in injuries, just an increase in reporting. But it appears the injuries are changing in nature. More fractures to lower arm bones, and more knee injuries.
It was real up until the 1920’s.
History of professional wrestling
I’d agree with that. But wrestling matches have a short fixed time limit, and you win based on points, not a finishing move (except for a pin). So in amateur wrestling it pays off to overstress your own joints in order to escape, reverse, or gain a take down, or to prevent those things. A submission wrestler can simply fall on his back and get into the guard position. He won’t lose points for a takedown or having his shoulders on the mat. (although it’s almost working out that way in the way scoring is done in MMA)
It’s really difficult to tell when professional wrestling went from legitimate competetion to rigged events. It’s logical to conclude the theatrics were added after the events were rigged.
Professional sports was a young industry at the start of the 20th century. It was phenomena that arose with the development of steamships, railroads, telegraphs, radio, and high speed printing presses. Professional competitors were often suspect though. There was an idea that a professional athlete would be just as willing to take money to lose as to win. The modern Olympics restrictions on amateur status also reflected the attitudes of the time.
Before the ‘fall’ of professional wrestling, boxing was considered a blood sport, and not as respectable as the scientific sport of wrestling. When wrestling matches were outted, boxings status rose. Of course boxing has often been rigged also. Primo Carnera was a heavyweight champion, but it is suspected that all of his matches were rigged.
Wouldn’t it be easy for them to kill each other if the wrestlers attempted a lot of their flashy moves without rehearsal and cooperation? CM Punk, for instance, has one move where he lifts an opponent over his head, drops them, and then catches them in the face with his knee as they’re on the way down. That could easily kill somebody who wasn’t ready for it.
The Big Show is legitimately something like 7 feet tall and 500 pounds. If he wanted to hurt someone, there’d be almost nothing short of a tranq gun that could stop him. He could pin someone with one arm and smash the guy’s face into a red smear with the other.
You said “…In addition, like most martial arts, they can’t be practiced in competition without strict limitations. Otherwise severe injury and death is likely to occur. Wrestling is particularly problematic because the difference between a legal hold and one that will cause a permanent injury may be imperceptible, and can be passed off as an accident. This is what turned pro-wrestling from a legitimate competitive sport into theater…”
I thought by this you meant that pro wrestling could not exist as an actual sport because the holds used would be too dangerous. Maybe you meant something else?
I don’t know that you can draw much of anything from that. For one thing, there are about 50 million small MMA shows now. So, the number of participants is increasing dramatically. More fights = more injuries. Also, what would fractures to lower arm bones have to do with submissions being applied more quickly?
Not so easy to lift a trained and resisting athlete over your head. Try it some time and report back. : )
I’m sure there’s several things that converged to build to what eventually turned into professional wrestling, but Bret Hart tells his version in his book. He claimed that wrestling was legit and traveled with carnivals. Someone, Frank Gotch maybe, was currently in a long reign as a legit champion and he came up with the idea to lay down and let someone else become champ. After that, professional wrestling became a work.
The carnival aspect is also where the carny speak and weird lingo, like kayfabe, came from.
There are a lot of different stories. And that’s the problem, it’s all anecdotes, sourced from professional prevaricators. The first fixes were probably private deals between wrestlers, managers, and promoters/ None would ever tell the truth about what happened. Over time the common knowledge of the system would be developed. There’s a well known story that a newspaper once printed the results of the next day’s wrestling matches intentionally to demonstrate that wrestling was rigged. This illustrates a time period where insiders knew what was going on but the public still didn’t. It wasn’t until the 80s that Vince McMahon publicly stated that wrestling was an entertainment venue of exhibition matches that you could get anyone in the industry to speak about it’s true nature. And even then some wrestlers insisted it was all real.
Wrestling history is a wonderful subject full of tales and yarns. There’s going to be a lot of fact and a lot of fiction interwoven together. That’s the way the wrestlers want it to be.
Back around 1968 or so, a lot of Texas wrestling was done here in San Antonio. Many of the big names would put in a stint here as they worked the regional wrestling groups.
The matches were taped on Wednesday and shown on TV on Saturday evening, then later on late Saturday night.
I have no doubt that the matches were pre-planned and the champions were the ones the promoter thought would bring in the most money. The matches were a much slower pace than what has been around the last couple of decades, and most were 1-hour, 2-out-of-3-falls style.
But every once in a while, there would be a match that I think may have been a legitimate match, and they always seemed a bit odd.
The wrestlers were usually not the top guys in the area at the moment, but they weren’t jobbers either. They were known by the crowd, but were not top card. The matches occurred without any lead-up fanfare or promos - the match was just announced and came up later in the card. The announcer did the intros, but didn’t put a lot of hype in it, nor did the wrestlers put on a show as they got in the ring - they would quietly stare each other down and wait for the bell.
The matches were often very good, and at first there was a lot of style and skill, as if the wrestlers were testing or showing off to each other. Of course, at some time later in the match, tempers would flare and the guys would start beating up on each other, but it had the look and feel of a behind-the-gym-after-school fight than anything else. I got the feeling that the wrestlers were taking it very personally and that, while they weren’t trying to injure or kill one another, they definitely were trying to hurt and beat the other down.
Often you would see other wrestlers that came up from the dressing room and would stand in the shadows of the stage where the TV camera was to quietly watch the match.
At some point, one guy would pin the other and win. There was never any disqualification or count-outs or any of that nonsense in these matches. A winner would be declared and the guys would drag themselves off to opposite dressing rooms, and that was that.
Now, they may have met up in the back and had a few beers together for all I know, but these seemed like real wrestling, done for the participants and not the crowd. Maybe they had a score to settle, maybe they needed to work something out of their systems, but it wasn’t a parking lot fight or a bar brawl - they did it mostly like a legit wrestling match, like it was the honorable way to settle it.
I probably never saw more than 5 or 6 of these my entire life.
Were they Japanese? There’s some styles where they almost shoot fight. They work super stiff and everything looks brutal, until it’s time for the planned finish. They aren’t hardcore matches, but they look pretty rough.
Stanger You got worked. If a shoot fight did break out it would have stood out tremendously. Inoki vs Great Antonio was a professional wrestling match that turned into a shoot and it is nothing like any wrestling match you have ever seen.
There are wrestlers who are known to actually beat up their opponents and people do get mad and start hitting each other during a match but all of the finishes are done the way they are supposed to be done or the wrestler would get fired. In the old days a promoter would always have a shooter who could beat anyone in case someone tried to beat the champion for real and hold the promoter up, but that almost never happened.
That’s the way wrestling works. I’d be surprised to see shoots extend beyond individual cheap shots without getting noticed.
BTW: I have inside word that Cena and the Rock are really pissed at each other right now. Expect to see a couple of moves with a little too much on them at Wrestlemania. But as mentioned above, they’ll finish the match the way it was planned.
I just watched the Inoki and Great Antonio match. It reminded me of when Goldust tried to get cute with Ahmed Johnson.
Also, Lex Luger vs Bruiser Brody is a strange match where Brody just stops working with Lex. Lex finally gets freaked out, DQs himself, then runs out of the arena.