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How Wigan Invented MMA


SuperJohnny

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This popped up on The Sabotage Times Facebook page today. Quite an interesting read ...

 

Forget Heinz Baked Beans, George Formby and JJB Sports, if Wigan wants to look cool it should start telling how, with only a snake pit and a brutal form of wrestling, they gave the world Mixed Martial Arts.

 

hans_schmidt.jpg

 

The conventional wisdom: the British don

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Try and find a documentary called "Catch: The Hold Not Taken"

 

A cracking little watch that goes into pretty much everything mentioned above with some great interviews from those that trained either at the Snake Pit itself, or just in the Lancashire Style of Catch.

 

I found a copy in HMV in Reading, not sure if it's readily available though

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How about adding to the discussion

 

I did by giving my opinion and pointing out how the topic (that being catch) has influenced me.

 

instead of trying to shill your shit?

 

At what point did I shill any of my 'shit' as you put it? I'm nothing to do with that DVD!

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It's really sad; pretty much every book you read by a wrestler who knew how to shoot has various mentions about Wigan, the Snake Pit, and plenty of speculation about how Lancashire wrestling produced possibly the best hookers in the business. Yet no one in this country has a clue any of it even existed.

 

I happened to be watching that Alex Reid thing a while back, where he was training for his big fight, and he was training out in California somewhere with Josh Barnett.

Barnett was talking up how awesome and wonderful the English history of catching is, and how that's what he learns and teaches, and this Reid cunt had this stupid blank grin on his face, going "oh, right... er, nah, what's that then...?"

Josh Barnett looked appalled.

 

Alex Reid didn't bother asking any more questions about it, oddly...

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Must admit, I have no interest in becoming an MMA fighter (glass jaw, bad stamina, probably too old now), but if I did, this article would have influenced me into seeking out catch-wrestling trainers, instead of looking for BJJ dojos - not just for cultural purposes, but also because in a sport where everyone's doing the same thing, surely there's an advantage to doing something different? I had that in fencing - did pretty well, and I think part of it was because I was left-handed, and the majority of fencers, who are right-handed, aren't used to dealing with that.

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Verne Gagne invented MMA during a booking meeting during one of those empty arena PPV's during the latter part of the last century. Greg Gagne and his dad Verne pitched the idea around 1992 with a wrestling committee where VG was on the board of USA Wrestling in Las Vegas to start a new type of wrestling which would be the Martial Arts. Randy Couture and Chuck Liddell were sat in the front audience and brought up this idea to Dana White, where White invented the UFC cause of this. This is a well known fact.

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Moot point. Hulk Hogan invented MMA, Wigan AND Verne Gagne.

 

And on the same day he still had time to persuade Brett Hart to drop the second "T" from his name (which at Tezzer's suggestion he kindly donated to Hulk's buddy Mr T who up until that point had simply been called "Mr"), convinced Jim Duggan that "Hacksaw" was a better nickname than "Lump hammer", and successfully petitioned Jim Crockett to "have a look at this Flair kid."

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