The internet is becoming the new place to train, with various different sites offering everything from BJJ to "the Secrets of the Ninja" (warning! Ninja secrets found online have limited MMA value). Jake Shannon's Scientific Wrestling is offering something unique though, Catch as Catch Can wrestling.
Developed independently from BJJ and other grappling styles popular at the time, Catch wrestling was used extensively in the carnival style match ups of the time. While it bears some similarity to No-Gi BJJ the attitude of catch wrestling differs markedly from the Ju Jitsu based styles in that submissions are king (as opposed the positional game of BJJ) and a far more aggressive top game is played.
www.scientificwrestling.com is an excellent web resource, offering a large number of high quality videos, mostly clips taken from instructional DVD's and fights in Japan (there's even an older apparently un-worked match starring the bloke who plays Kane from WWE). The information is top notch, especially for submission wrestling. I got a particularly good compression armlock from the welcome page alone.
The forum community is a big asset for the site, while it's relatively small, there are a lot of very knowledgeable people on there who are more than willing to help with any questions you might have. The sites contributors also include some absolutely legendary catch wrestlers, not to mention current MMA fighters such as Josh Barnett.
My only real complaint with the site is that the videos are difficult to control and re watching a particular move often means restarting the video from the beginning.
If your interests extend to striking, there is also material on bare knuckle boxing and the older styles of pugilism. While the main focus of Scientific Wrestling is, well... wrestling, its worth baring in mind that striking is definitely not ignored.
www.scientificwrestling.com is very reasonably priced at $14 per month, especially considering that the information that you receive is absolutely unique to the site. Right now Jamie is giving away a copy of the submission masters clinic DVD to everyone who signs up, so if you're interested, now is the time to join. Even if you're undecided there is also a free ten day trial on offer on the front page if you would like to take the site for a test drive. Definitely two thumbs up from me.
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