Judo and Lancashire Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling are very much parallel-evolved submission grappling arts. Many students of the former have adapted well to studying the latter, and after converting their skills, have subsequently gone on to pro wrestling careers. As well as the above mentioned names, Pete Roberts Pat Patton and Pat Roach are all judokas who converted to being shooters.

However in Britain, many more wrestlers have started with Amateur Free_style_ and then made the progression to Shoot/Catch/Submission Wrestling at their local wrestling clubs, or better still gone straight into the full submission wrestling _style_ via shooters' gyms such as Riley's Gym in Wigan or under personal tuition from top professionals. Which is rather more relevant to the history of the UK wrestling biz.

At my club they do both Amateur and shoot fighting on Sunday its Shoot with Ian who is really good then Monday its Amateur with Barry then Tuesday its another shoot with Ian then Thursday its shoot with Barry the difference bewteen Barry & Ian in Shooting is that Ian will teach you how to trike and Barry will teach you more on technical side to it its worth a t ry if you wan tto get into pro-wrestling that way www.users.zetnet.co.uk/shogun

Any background in real fighting will help with pro wrestling. I have brief experience with juijitsu and karate, and have studied judo and ameteur wrestling at length. Am very experienced with submission wrestling and all-around grappling, plus little bits in boxing and muai thai. I put this together, try blending it all into pro wrestling. I think most wrestlers in all countries have similar experience, and even if they havent done them directly, guaranteed they will have picked bits up from pro wrestling in general, because all the moves and takedowns have atleast some degree of realism to them.

Bear in mind tho that for the British _style_, Submission Wrestling is the most crucial. (Judo's relevance is as a parallel-evolved submission grappling art).

At my club they do both Amateur and shoot fighting on Sunday its Shoot with Ian who is really good then Monday its Amateur with Barry then Tuesday its another shoot with Ian then Thursday its shoot with Barry the difference bewteen Barry & Ian in Shooting is that Ian will teach you how to trike and Barry will teach you more on technical side to it its worth a t ry if you wan tto get into pro-wrestling that way

Bear in mind that "Shoot Fighting" is a hybrid art, whereas "Shoot Wrestling" is the pure Lancashire Catch/Submission _style_. Barry sounds like the more relevant of the two for any aspiring young wrestler.

Barry has got a lot more expericne than Ian he is a former British Shoot Fighting Champion. But Ian does also teach you technical side. Sometimes Barry will teach you one thing and Ian will teach you it again ut a different variation of it so they both are very good coaches and you will get a different blend of stuff

Yes, but bear in mind, shootfighting is a hybrid, it's not the same thing as Shoot Wrestling. The technical bits are useful, but I think an aspiring British wrestler should focus more on actual Shoot Wrestling than Shootfighting.