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When I was a boy I wrestled in Junior High-School. I think my weight class was 132 pounds or so but one thing was for sure – there were not any girls on the team. I don’t know that I would have cared if there were girl wrestlers but 35 years ago – I just don’t remember any girls willing to take on the boys!
Well that has changed. This is old news to those of you following high-school wreastling but Michaela Hutchison (in 2006) has defeated a boy to win the 103 pound weight class here. The amazing thing about this is Michaela is every bit as tough as one of the boys! Take a look at this video below and for those of you not familiar with wrestling scoring – you get points based on pins, reversals (escaping control) and such.
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You might be wondering the tie-in to karate, self-defense and MMA? Well if you have been following MMA in the last few years there has emerged a new class of fighters that come from wrestling backgrounds! In the eighties, jiu-jitsu seemed to dominate but in recent years - good old-fashioned wrestling has been dominating much of the ground work in many MMA matches.
OK - many of you might be poo-pooing this development (women wrestling) as not significant because in the heavier weight classes, men are going to be stronger and would be dominate in traditional wrestling but I would argue that developing the skill set can only help in self-defense! As many of you know about me - I am most concerned in the application of self-defense in the real world.
I applaud women getting into formerly men's sports and especially women that can excel in these sports! Knowing ground work is one part of the puzzle if one gets into an altercation. The hardest street fight I have ever been in was against a wrestler.
A guy and his female companion were giving the bartender a hard time. As doorman, I tried to defuse the situation and found this short-stocky guy to be generally belligerent. As he started cussing the barkeep and me out - I picked him up and threw him out of the bar!
I thought that was the end of the matter but some of my friends warned me and I spun around to see him throw the two drinks (he was mad about) at me! I did double forarm (inward) blocks and the glasses shattered over the bar. I charged him and bashed in his nose with my first shot.
He went down but grabbed at my legs on the way down. I was a wrestler in school so my legs instinctively spread out behind me and he grabbed the sash of my sweater I was wearing. I started raining down punches to the back of his head as we was covering with his fists. He would start to get up and I would knee his face/nose hard and he would drop back down. This went on for a while (seemed like an eternity) and finally we broke off as the fight was out of him.
While I always had respect for wrestlers - I gained new respect for the wrestling discipline that night! I think that women wrestling will give them one more tool in the bag of tricks that they can draw against if the need ever arises, as happened to me that night I faced a wrestler!