# How to Wrestle & Wrestling Catch-as-Catch-Can Style



## lklawson (Sep 24, 2009)

I have republished How to Wrestle & Wrestling Catch-as-Catch-Can Style by Frederick R. Toombs and E. Hitchcock, Jr.

The eBook download, as always, is free.

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/how-to-wrestle-wrestling-catch-as-catch-can-style/7699773

(Warning! 160 Mb file)

Blurb:
In the late 19th and early 20th Century, Spaldings Athletic Library published massive numbers of sports related book covering a wide range of topics; from Bowling to Golf, from Cricket to Ice Hockey.  Their wide ranging topics, predictably, included martial sports such as Archery, Fencing, Boxing, and, yes Wrestling.

This installment to the expansive Red Cover series reviews wrestling and combines two separate books on the subject into one. 

The first, How to Wrestle by Frederic Toombs, presents a general overview of the subject and includes monographs on the rewards of wrestling, training, and advice for beginners before launching into general instruction on various forms of wrestling, and techniques inclusive thereof.  The book closes with rules 6 forms of wrestling.

Following Toombs work is E. Hitchcocks Wrestling Catch-as-Catch-Can Style. Hitchcock claims that his book is not intended to be either inclusive of all styles nor a Complete Guide to Wrestling, hence the specificity of the name.  Further, Hitchcock states that Catch-as-Catch-Can is the most universal, practical, and natural of all forms of wrestling.  True or not Catch was certainly the most popular style of the time.

It appears that Spaldings reprinted an earlier version of the Hitchocks manual from 1892, though, in absence of an original it is uncertain if Spaldings added or altered text or substituted photographs.  However, from the difference in the quality of the photos between Toombs and Hitchcocks it is a reasonable speculation that the photos are from the original edition.

Most disappointingly, at some point in its history, someone literally ripped out a full 16 pages, 8 leafs, of the from the second book, "Wrestling Catch as Catch Can Style." Blank pages have been inserted at these points.

Altogether, this double-manual is a fascinating and valuable piece of Combat Sports history.​Peace favor your sword,
Kirk


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