How to Wrestle & Wrestling Catch-as-Catch-Can Style

Spalding's Athletic Library published massive numbers of sports books. Their wide ranging topics, predictably, included martial sports such as Archery, Fencing, Boxing, and, yes Wrestling. This installment to the expansive "Red Cover" series reviews wrestling and combines two separate books on the subject into one. The first, "How to Wrestle" by Frederic Toombs, presents a general overview of the subject including advice for beginners and general instruction on various techniques of wrestling. The book closes with rules 6 forms of wrestling. Following Toombs work is E. Hitchcock's "Wrestling Catch-as-Catch-Can Style." Not intended to be a "Complete Guide to Wrestling," Hitchcock focuses on Catch. Further, he states that Catch-as-Catch-Can is the “most universal,” practical, and "natural" of all forms of wrestling. True or not Catch was certainly the most popular style of the time. Altogether, this double-manual is a fascinating and valuable piece of Combat Sports history.