Collar and Elbow match, Dublin 1878

I’m a big fan of the Hero with a Thousand Holds podcast, which looks at relatively obscure wrestling styles around the world.

The first episode is devoted to the now lost wrestling style called simply, Irish Collar and Elbow.

What’s fascinating about this style is that it used to be huge. Thousands of people would turn up to watch a high profile match up over a century ago. It also spread to America where it became equally popular. Even George Washington was a practitioner!

However, it was superceeded by other styles of wrestling, and cultural and societal changes in its birthplace involving the industrial revolution (if I remember correctly) and the rise in popularity of boxing that resulted in its decline and eventual demise.

Ruadhán MacFadden, who runs the podcast, however, has been trying to recreate what it must have looked like based on his research into accounts of Collar and Elbow matches and his knowledge of contemporary grappling styles (he’s a brown belt in BJJ).

At a recent BJJ Globetrotters Summer Camp, he conducted a seminar showing what he’s discovered about this lost art. BJJ Globetrotters have now put the seminar online, so you can glimpse through a window into the past and see what this style of European martial art would have looked like: