The heyday of catch wrestling was in the early 1900s, when men like “Farmer” Burns, Joe Acton, “Strangler” Lewis, Dan McLeod, Ad Santell, Earl Caddock and Burns’ best student, world champion Frank Gotch, dominated combat sports. Burns was so well-respected that he was hired as the conditioning coach for Jim Jeffries when he fought Jack Johnson in 1910. Burns was a master of the “pinfall” and would trap his opponents on the mat while executing painful submission moves like the full and half-Nelson, hammerlock, double-wrist lock, chicken wing, and a library of submission toe-holds. A barnstorming catch wrestler, Burns would fight anyone at anytime and modestly estimated he had around 6,000 matches with only six losses.

With the advent of vale tudo and no-holds-barred fighting and its far more civilized cousin, mixed martial arts, interest in catch wrestling has somewhat revived, with fans of the old-time grapplers reading their books, teaching their methods, and arguing that they were better than the top cagefighters of today. What none of these modern American “catch wrestlers” have done, however, is to actually follow in the footsteps of these fighters and use their methods to enter MMA fights or to take on the top BJJ fighters. While they might train against compliant students and dominate them, it is far cry from actually putting themselves on the line against trained opponents, with money on the table, in front of a live audience. These paper tigers talk a good story, but would most likely embarrass men like “Farmer” Burns, who let their methods do the talking, if they actually heard them claim to be real catch wrestlers. All except Josh Barnett.

Trained primarily in catch wrestling methods learned though first instructor Matt Hume, pro wrestling in Japan, where the catch wrestling tradition is very strong, and former Shooto world champ Erik Paulson, Barnett has virtually no jiu-jitsu training and very little judo, instead he uses a strong catch wrestling top game with numerous footlocks to batter and submit his opponents. Even in a grappling match with no strikes his methods are rough-and-tumble. But what sets Barnett apart is his willingness and eagerness to compete against the top grapplers of other styles. While most MMA stars of Barnett’s stature and accomplishments (UFC champion, Pride star) spend their time in the gym with hand-picked trainers, Barnett is on the mats, taking on all-comers.

At the recent Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu No-Gi World Championships, for example, with divisions for virtually every age group and every weight class, the only “catch wrestler” who showed up was, you guessed it, Josh Barnett. With no jiu-jitsu training at all, he entered the hardest division, the Black Belt Adult Super Heavy, and proceeded to win it all, becoming a BJJ world champion.

“I just wanted to see how I would do,” Barnett said afterwards. “What good is it to learn techniques if you don’t use them against top opponents? I fought these jiu-jitsu guys before in ADCC 1999 in Abu Dhabi and I just wanted to see how I would do now.”

But Barnett wasn’t done by a long shot. A few weeks later he heard about Rommel Dunbar’s Open BJJ tournament in Ontario, California with a $1500 first prize. In true Farmer Burns fashion Barnett packed up his wresting shoes and away he went, gunning for the dough. When he got there he didn’t even have a gi and had to borrow one from a vendor. Despite that, he beat-up his opponent and only lost due to a controversial referee’s decision. After his performance at the Worlds and at the Open, Barnett has no option but to enter future tournaments as a black belt. Because of that, current coach Erik Paulson, a Japanese-trained catch wrestler himself with a BJJ black belt from Rigan Machado, had no choice but to award Barnett his own black belt, with the blessing of Rigan himself. “Josh may be the only guy in history to go from white belt to black belt in one tournament,” laughs Paulson.

If someone like Farmer Burns or Karl Gotch had done something like this 100 years ago it would be the stuff of legend today. But here is Josh Barnett, not talking about the catch wrestlers of yesterday but actually being a catch wrestler of today. I guarantee that would put a smile on the face of any of the old-time “hookers.” Maybe 100 years from now, when futuristic grapplers are going through some old-time books they might see the story of Josh Barnett and start calling him “the last of the great catch wrestlers.” Hey, it works for me.