HKL Exclusive Interview with Neil Melanson Pt 1: Catch Wrestling and His Books

I had a chance to talk with Xtreme Couture Grappling Coach Neil Melanson about a smorgasbord of topics. Here is part one of the interview. Be sure to come back this week for the rest of the interview.

Matthew: The first question would be, can you explain the difference between catch wrestling and no-gi grappling?

Neil: Catch-as-catch can is like the original style of no-gi grappling. It’s original form is almost dead, there’s a few guys out there that can really do it. I consider myself a catch wrestler but when it comes down to true catch wrestling, I’m really not. That particular form, it’s so hard to find guys that know that style well. It had a lot to do with the application of what I call "mat wrestling" which people that are wrestlers, people to to quickly associate takedowns with wrestling and not realize there’s a lot of mat work in wrestling. That mat work and all of wrestling came from catch at one point, it was just a dumbed down version of it. It’s hard to find that element in no-gi grappling, that has a lot of jiu-jitsu influence from it, the majority if not all. It was mainly a brazilian jiu jitsu influence, so a lot of the concepts and the principals.

Catch wrestlers focus on head and neck locks and controlling the body a certain way, where jiu jitsu, neck locks were illegal, so they have different techniques. Each art, whether it’s Brazilian Jiu Jistu, Judo, Catch Wrestling or grappling, whatever it is, they’re the best at what they do according to their rule set. If you talk about grappling with the gi on the ground with that rule set, you’re looking at Brazilian Jiu Jitsu being the front runner. If you’re talking about just the throws and all those other elements, then you’re talking about Judo and Wrestling. So I think no-gi grappling, without getting too long, is gonna start turning more and more into old school catch wrestling. I just foresee thats where it’s heading. Even if you look at Jiu Jitsu now, they’re changing their game to include some of the neck locks and arm locks, I think they’re eventually turning to the Catch Wrestling format. The original form of it, there’s only a few guys.

Matt: You’re listed on the Xtreme Couture website as the Jiu Jitsu coach, do you guys train in the gi at all or is it your form of Catch Wrestling?

Neil:  Yeah, there’s no gi here. It shouldn’t say Jiu Jitsu on there, it should say submission grappling. We don’t do a gi here. We thought about having Gabe Gonzaga teach it when he was here and he wanted to teach it. It just didn’t formulate for whatever reason. I think they want to keep the MMA gym orientation and keep the programs to gel into each other and if we start incorporating the gi aspect, even if some people want that and it might do well, it might might not choreograph into the rest of the program, where a lot of our guys start out in the grappling class or the kickboxing class then they take MMA classes to put it all together. Then they make it to the amateur team and then to the pro, so there’s kind of like a system and all the instructors bounce off each other. I think if you throw Gi in there, it would divert from the program a little bit. It might be successful, it might not be, I couldn’t say. As of right now it’s not in our future that we have any knowledge of.

More with Neil Melanson after the jump.

Matt: You started out with Gene Lebell and I’ve seen that you’ve worked with Billy Robinson, how did those relationships come about?

Neil: I moved my whole life out to L.A. to study with Gokar and Gene was there every Monday and I would see Gene around of course. I took classes with Gene, he doesn’t really do privates but mostly worked with Gokar and then Karo. Me and Karo kinda linked up and I spent a lot of time with Karo because he was training for fights. He spent a lot of time with me and I was training under Karo mainly.

As far as Billy Robinson, Jake Shannon kinda put us together cause I met Jake, he’s a friend and he worked with Billy. They know I love old school catch guys, I love to learn from them. Billy wanted to come out and work with me and Randy and show us some of his old stuff. I had a blast man, I had a blast. I loved when he came out, I hope to see him again soon. He’s a great guy and just a data base of knowledge of history of all grappling and really unique, that Wigan style of catch is really cool. You know it sucks, I was talking about this the other day, Karl Gotch dying and how that sucks. I wish I got train with that guy before he passed and I can only hope that the people he trained keep it going.

Matt: You’ve also trained Bryan Danielson as well, are you still training him?

Neil: Yeah, I still train with him. Me and Bryan are very good friends. He’s what I would consider a purple belt under me. He’s getting good, the problem is now that he’s doing Pro-Wrestling that he’s hardly getting getting a chance to train. He’s a tough bastard, he’s a legit grappler. He’s rolled with Randy, he’s rolled with those guys. He’s helped me  out with Vitor before, yeah he’s a tough kid. He’s a strong, strong guy. You know when you meet people and they’re like "this guy’s a good guy"? He is by far one of the best quality human beings I’ve met in my entire life. I hope he continues to be successful in what he does, but he is a legit grappler.

Matt: With your book "Triangles from Guard" -- what’s the status of the book? When are you expecting it to come out?

Neil: They changed the title to "Mastering the Triangle", they wanted to get the book out by March for the Arnold Classic and that didn’t happen because I’m gonna be at the Arnold Classic speaking. They now are hoping for April because there was a small setback. The book is all written and all the techniques are laid out, it’s just that the book is so damn big. I think when they totaled up the photos, it was like 400,000 photos taken  so I mean that’s a lot of photos to sift through to actually design the book. Victory Belt, they tend to take a lot of time with stuff, but it’s because Erik, who’s an owner, he really cares about the quality of his product and he wants to make great books, so it’s gonna be worth it in the end.

The premise of the book is to open the future of ground fighting for the other books. I’m a guard player, that’s what I like to teach, that’s what I do. But what I tend to train, I tend to train wrestlers. I teach them how to beat the guard player. There’s very few guys I train my guard system with, just because I’m training so many fighters, there’s not too many guys interested in being on their back. That’s why I’m a big turtle player as well. I focus a lot on training wrestlers, that’s my bread and butter. But you get guys like Vitor Belfort who has a good Jiu Jitsu backround, I tend to make those guys guards on fire and teach a lot of stuff that’s gonna be in these books.

The triangle book is not just a variety of triangles. I got into the science of what the triangle work and fail, so guys can trouble shoot themselves. I go into all the different types triangles, not just the set ups but how it’s orchestrated is pretty much the pretty much the premise of all my guard systems, and that is using the right tool for the job based on the body position of my opponent and the hand position of my opponent. If my opponent is in my guard, if he’s hugging me vs. hovering vs. sitting up or postured leaning forward or postured leaning back, his body position is gonna dictate the best tool I should use, which guard system I should use that has the highest percentage rate of success based on how he’s playing me, and thats how the book is laid out, so it’ll look like almost like a grappling match where the top game guy has this position and I’m do all these type of guard system, all these triangles from there, then his body position moves or his hand position moves so it’s very structured due to the look, and I think the way I have it laid out people are really gonna understand why they’ve failed in the past, how they can get better.

There’s so much information I don’t see it fading away any time soon. My next  book is in the work which is trapping guard systems which is like choke series, then an open guard sytem, then a turtle dvd. Randy and I are doing a turtle DVD we’re working on so there’s gonna be a lot of stuff that’s gonna be coming out. I’m gonna be teaching my top game as well but the guard system is something I’ve been working on for such a long time, I just want to get it out there and get people talking and get some feed back. 

Check Head Kick Legend for more with Neil Melanson later this week!