Josh Barnett: "I am a Catch Wrestler." ~ Stickgrappler's Sojourn of Septillion Steps

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Josh Barnett: "I am a Catch Wrestler."

9/20/2014 11:00:00 AM Catchwrestling, Josh Barnett, Unofficial Underground Archives No comments

For your edification, recently Josh Barnett posted to the Underground's BJJGround about his grappling...

Excerpted from Underground's BJJGround:

KidPittsburgh posted:

http://www.bjjee.com/articles/josh-barnett-jiu-jitsu-is-with-the-gi-without-a-gi-its-whatever-else-for-no-gi-catch-wrestling-is-the-way-to-go/

Full article here.

How would you describe the differences, in a fundamental capacity, between catch and jiu-jitsu? Where are they similar and where are they different?

As much as I will say catch really is more of a violent art opposed to the gentle art of jiu-jitsu, when it comes to jiu-jitsu at the highest level, it’s so funny. Everyone talks about all this skill and technique and gentleness, man, the top dudes in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, they all do the same techniques that a lot of folks do, especially if they’re all the same belt levels, except they do them all stronger, faster, harder. There’s a ton of strength dudes in all the games of all the top jiu-jitsu guys. It just wouldn’t work otherwise.

It’s the absolute truth. I think it was Karl Gotch who said “technique within strength”. If you lack the strength to pull the technique off against your opponent, then it won’t work. I remember from a very young age rolling with some of the best jiu-jitsu guys in the world whenever I got a chance to, and just being like, ‘Well, for an art that’s supposed to be so gentle, these guys feel like they’re fuel-injected, super charged funny cars going hauling ass, doing everything to discard everything in their path that they possibly can whenever the opportunity arises.’

So, I guess they’re not all that dissimilar from what we do, but the catch wrestler, we try to punish you, break you down, wear you out. You want to be as heavy on top as you can absolutely be, you want your opponent to carry as much of your weight as you can because that’s exhausting. It wears a person out. It doesn’t give them the opportunity to rest in a position and gather their wits.

The other thing is using the elbows, the shins, the bones of your body to crank and discomfort, apply pain to a person with the properly used half of an elbow when you’re on top in side control, you can maybe use the point of the elbow to dislocate the mandible on somebody’s face. Or drive into the orbital bone on their eye socket and crack it. There’s a lot of techniques like that. If a guy is too tough and he won’t open up, then you find a way to make him open up.

A less violent one, but also effective is simply you’re going for your double wrist lock or kimura, as they call it in jiu-jitsu, and someone’s planting the arm on the mat or they’re putting it on their hip, you can drive the point of your top elbow into the top of the shoulder in the delt[oid muscle], into the connective tissue and there’s a little nerve spot there that’ll actually make their arm straighten out, which can get it off of their hip and allow you to better isolate the arm before going for the submission.

nowaydo posted:

If you know the curriculum in "punishing rides", you'll see Josh displayed it perfectly.

BJJ is so funny. A BJJ player can study wrestling and judo for years, but they are still a BJJ player.

...But, it a Judoka, catchwrestler, shootwrestler, Sambo player or wrestler does BJJ for two weeks, suddenly they are a BJJ player.

So, funny and hypocritical.

Josh Barnett posted:

Judge Mental - I trained a bit with Josh back in 2000-2002. He was def doing BJJ at the time. He's full of sh!t.

You are the one full of sh!t.

If you were at AMC then you would know for a fact we didn't train BJJ. In fact we prided ourselves in being a non-BJJ school since the BJJ community around us was so derisive and dismissive of us simply because we didn't do it. We were a fight school and we had our own way of doing things that worked well for us...and still does for AMC fighters.

We didn't do Gi. We didn't have BJJ guys teaching. We didn't do BJJ and that includes me.

In that just because you are doing an achilles lock (straight footlock for you BJJ guys) it doesn't make someone a Catch Wrestler the same goes that if you are working from the bottom scissors (Guard) it doesn't make you a BJJ player.

Moves often appear across many combat arts...the body can only move so many different ways. It's application and philosophies in how styles really tend to differ.

Josh

Josh Barnett wrote:

For any that feel the need to try and discredit me being a Catch Wrestler,

If it makes you feel better to say that I do/did/train BJJ and/or that I train under a BJJ coach then go right ahead.

But Catch is not marketing or a gimmick for me. I am a Catch Wrestler. I train under the philosophies and concepts of Catch-As-Catch-Can and apply them to the modern competitive combat environment. No BJJ guy has ever rolled with me and said "That was just BJJ you used to wrestle me. You do things just like a BJJ guy would." Everyone who has trained with me knows the difference in what I do. No one who has taken my seminars has ever said "We are clearly just doing BJJ here".

I don't train in BJJ. Paulson doesn't train me in BJJ. Paulson has a background in it but even still, he teaches his own style called Combat Submission Wrestling and a lot of that is still Catch derived.

My lineage is Karl Gotch>Yoshiaki Fujiwara>Minoru Suzuki/Masakatsu Funaki/Pancrase>Matt Hume>Me

Billy Riley>Billy Robinson>Me

Karl Gotch>Satoru Sayama>Yorinaga Nakamura> Erik Paulson

Add in a slew of wrestling coaches, a few Judo coaches and you have where the bulk of my grappling teaching came from.

You can try to say whatever you want in regards to me doing Catch vs BJJ and such but now that you doing so in because you wish to despite proof otherwise.

Josh

Josh Barnett:

Judge Mental -
I used to go to all the TOny Cechinne and Matt Fury type seminars back then. Josh you know you didn't just train at AMC, you went to seminars and rolled at other schools too!!

I'll just leave it at that.

Thad?

Only seminar I went to was Erik Paulson's and I only trained at AMC and at one point Maurice Smith's a couple days a week to spar.

One time I went to Juliano Prado's school to meet him and see if he had any fighters that may want to compete or even himself as I was doing booking for shows. I took his one class and rolled with hima little and then we hung out. Hardly a basis for a BJJ background.

Josh

Josh Barnett:

Meatgrinder -

Josh Barnett - For any that feel the need to try and discredit me being a Catch Wrestler,

If it makes you feel better to say that I do/did/train BJJ and/or that I train under a BJJ coach then go right ahead.

But Catch is not marketing or a gimmick for me. I am a Catch Wrestler. I train under the philosophies and concepts of Catch-As-Catch-Can and apply them to the modern competitive combat environment.

...

You can try to say whatever you want in regards to me doing Catch vs BJJ and such but now that you doing so in because you wish to despite proof otherwise.

Josh

So you don't train bjj, but did you train bjj? If you did, what rank did you achieve? I had heard that you were a black belt in bjj.

I am NOT trying to discredit your being a catch wrestler. However, I feel that you try to promote catch at the expense of bjj. I'm of the opinion that you've taken a lot of the philsophy, principles and moves of bjj and integrated them with you catch based submissions. I don't think that it has to do with any specific move. I think it has to do more with positioning and philosophy as I stated before:

He focused on the pass and maintaining position. Not once did he dive for a foot. He never bailed on top position to go for the neck, etc. To say that he wasn't doing bjj is laughable. How did he suddenly leave all those skills and philosophy at home? As the name implies Catch is about submission with a disregard for the sacrifice in position. He did the opposite of that.

If you disagree with this, then I'd be interested in hearing why? Thanks.

"I feel that you try to promote Catch at the expense of BJJ."

That's all on you. I always state simply that I am a Catch Wrestler first and foremost and that in my opinion just because you don't do BJJ it doesn't mean you don't know how to grapple. There's no attack on BJJ or any style in that. If anything BJJ is always trying to discredit me and what I say.

As for the techniques I used in Metamoris and philosophies...well with the rule set given I used what was needed. There's only so many ways one can operate. Being a Catch Wrestler doesn't mean diving after a foot all the time or sacrificing position for submission. By your thinking that Catch is about submission with disregard for position I can say you really don't understand what Catch Wrestiling is.

I rode my opponent, attacked his neck with half-nelsons, crossfaces and more all match long. Used cradles, riding pressure with my knees off the mat, kneeled on the neck, ankles, etc. What BJJ curriculum teaches that?

How many ways can one pass a guard? The body only moves so many ways so it's pretty logical that the same method of passing could be done or "invented" by anyone. If I stay in your guard you can try to grab onto me, I can't attack the arms as well and I can't put as much weight on you as I'd like. So, I get past the legs first. BJJ may specialize in this position but it can't claim it entirely as it's own (First time I ever saw it was in Judo in 1993). But when you watch BJJ matches you can see how they employ it or even use it as the main offensive position. I, as a Catch Wrestler, would not do that.

Josh

e.kaye posted:

1-I am a Catchwrestler.

2-Josh's point about, "Being a Catch Wrestler doesn't mean diving after a foot all the time or sacrificing position for submission." is THE point. THis always comes up on this forum whenever Catch is discussed. Non-catchwrestler just do not get it. They love to lob this out, like it is some discussion ender. THey do not understand the WRESTLING from position to position.

3-PIns scmins. It is still Catchwrestling without pins. You want to play for pins fine. It is still BJJ without the gi, right? So it is still Catchwrestling without the pins. Pins end games, not fights. I have no time to waste on them, not in it for games. I am happy if you are.

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Saturday, September 20, 2014