Only KnightMask’s incredible quickness saved him a beheading. Thanks to a fortuitously timed shoulder roll, the blackhaired powerhouse’s running clothesline sailed harmlessly over the XWF rookie’s head. The sheer force of the attack carried his opponent across the ring, so that he nearly went crashing into the corner, stopping his momentum only by throwing a foot up against the turnbuckle. Wheeling around, he faced KnightMask with blazing eyes.

Moving at a speed that belied his densely muscled frame, the wild-eyed wrestler shot out of the corner. His black mane trailing behind him, he spanned the length of the ring in one, sudden burst. With a primal roar, he put every last ounce of strength that remained in his 250-pound frame into a spear.

Shockingly, KnightMask did not shirk from the attack as he bore down upon him. Despite being dwarfed in stature by the charging mass of muscle, the masked man ran directly at him. At the last instant before collision, he dove into a backward roll.

When the two fell to the canvas, KnightMask’s legs had twined about the bigger man’s massive tree-trunk of a leg like steel serpents. His foot was tucked beneath the masked man’s armpit like a football. KnightMask arched his back slightly. A jolt of pain shot through the big man’s leg. An instant later, he was tapping his submission.

The arena, packed to capacity for the XWF house show, applauded approvingly as KnightMask helped his beaten foe to his feet and held his hand aloft. His opponent—whose wrestling moniker was ‘The Berserker’—felt a little patronized by the gesture, but was glad to see KnightMask was a kind sort. Because he was dying to figure out just how the man somehow made the instant transition from standing in front of him to having him on the ground in a devastating submission hold.

He was so eager to ask KnightMask about the move, in fact, that he practically chased the wrestler down backstage, so that he was panting and out of breath when he caught the masked man about to step into his dressing room.

“KnightMask! KnightMask! I gotta ask you man…what was that thing you did to me? That rolling thing, where you ended up with me in a leg-lock? Was it that Brazilian jiu jitsu stuff?”

KnightMask simply shook in his head in response.

“You mean you’ve never trained in jiu jitsu? What, are you just a natural with submissions or something?”

“I wish I was a natural…everything I’ve got…has come at the cost of a lifetime of work on the mat and in front of the computer or the television…watching and re-watching stuff, rewinding, slow mo’ing…”

“So I mean, what was it you were watching, then?“

“Catch-wrestling. It’s the foundation that professional wrestling was built on. You know, its basically amateur wrestling before they got rid of the submissions, professional wrestling before high-flying acrobatics and high-powered offense like powerbombs, DDT’s and clotheslines took center stage to technical mat work.”

The Berserker peered blankly at KnightMask.

“Hey, forget the history lesson. But come up to Slam Master’s any time and I’ll be more than happy to share what I’ve learned with you bud.”

Their strong hands met in a brief squeeze, and then the two wrestlers parted company.

As he threw his coat on and picked up his duffel bag, he felt the weight of a heavy responsibility across his broad shoulders. Even in the world of professional wrestling, it seemed, catch-wrestling was a forgotten style. Frank Gotch, Ed “The Strangler” Lewis, Billy Robinson, Karl Gotch, Lou Thesz…they were like ancient kings of some prehistorical era, passing through the minds of the public like shadows in the night. Even in America and Britain, where the style of catch-wrestling had once thrived, its memory had faded almost entirely. Those that did remember seemed to have but a confused understanding of it.

There were times in his life where he wondered if it wouldn’t just be easier to tell people he studied Brazilian jiu jitsu…or sambo, and then perhaps receive recognition or admiration instead of simply confusion. But catch-wrestling had meant too much to him, had given him too much, for him to abandon it. He might not be the most able torchbearer and certainly, the flame seemed to be flickering dimmer each day…but he had to try. He owed that much to the style that had given meaning to his lonely existence.

As he walked out into the cold night, he recalled what Crimson Cobra had said about him; that he was an “Olympic wannabe.” He laughed to himself bitterly. If only that was so. As an amateur wrestler, it’d taken him years to finally garner his first victory on the mat. He never gave up trying to be the sort of wrestler the rest of his family were, but in the end, he never made it to the state tournament. In fact, his crowning achievement was a fourth place finish at individual districts. Some people thought that, given his great strength and flexibility, such a mediocre wrestling career must have meant that he lacked heart.

Those people had little notion of how hard he worked to make himself strong and flexible. It was no easy gift of nature. His body had taken on its shape through a relentless hammering. And as for wrestling, well, the truth was that he struggled to learn and memorize the techniques. And it was also true that he often became frozen when he stepped onto the mats, his nerves short-circuited by fear of humiliation. His study of submission holds had come piecemeal in his teen years. Some of it came from the videos he’d rented or looked up on the internet. Some of it also came from informal but intense sessions with some formally trained friends. Eventually, he became good enough at that kind of wrestling that he’d tapped out blackbelts in the first judo class he’d attended. But nonetheless, his arsenal was rudimentary and did not extend beyond a rear-naked choke, a key-lock and a neck-crank.

He remembered the first time he’d seen Kazushi Sakuraba, the IQ Wrestler, The Gracie Hunter. He had rented Ultimate Japan from Video Watch. He’d watched the VHS alone, in his parents’ basement. And he had not been impressed by what he saw. If featured a tournament, pitting a stable of Japanese professional wrestlers representing a company he’d never heard of called Kingdom against a 250-pound Brazilian jiu jitsu blackbelt named Conan Silveira and Tank Abbott, a powerful barroom brawler. Yoji Anjo and Kazushi Sakuraba were the Kingdom representatives that night. Neither one of them had any muscle definition to speak of. Anjo, for his part, seemed outright overweight. Sakuraba had won the tournament with an armbar over Silveira, but it really hadn’t made much of an impression on KnightMask’s young mind. He had no idea they’d entered the cage in order to defend the embattled legitimacy of catch-wrestling. He didn’t know that Brazilian jiu jitsu practitioners had been tapping out catch-wrestling practitioners and throwing the styles efficacy into doubt. He didn’t realize that, when the 180-pound Sakuraba grabbed the microphone after his win, he declared, “In fact, professional wrestling is strong!” to the world. And if he had, he wouldn’t have known what the statement meant.

That seemed like several lifetimes ago.

Before he’d finally discovered, from a constant study of Sakuraba and other Japanese catch-wrestlers, an arsenal of holds that finally, at long last, clicked with him. The dynamic submissions of catch-wrestling and beyond all else, their leg-locks, seemed to make some weird kind of sense to him. Those holds had, at 25, carried him to his first gold medal. And yet, it wasn’t enough for him to simply have finally found a style of grappling that was a proper fit for him.

He was always one to look into the origins, the history of things. That was when he discovered the lineage. Sakuraba had been a student of Billy Robinson and Lou Thesz. Masakatsu Funaki, another masterful grappler, was a protégé of Karl Gotch. Their style of grappling was not something foreign and exotic to Western soil; England and America were at one point, the two greatest exports of catch-wrestling. India, Brazil, Japan, England, America…all of those nations and more had seemed to pass the art of catch-wrestling between one another like a baton. Each time one nation discarded the art, its masters found eager pupils in another nation to carry on the tradition.

Men had given their bodies up to keep the art alive, to fight a battle that most didn’t even know was being waged. It wasn't a battle with Brazilian jiu jitsu to determine the top grappling style. It was far fiercer than that. It was an existential struggle. A battle to keep from being wiped off the map entirely. A battle to be acknowledged and not forgotten.

And now the torch had been passed into KnightMask’s hands. Now he was to face Crimson Cobra, an American professional wrestler who had spurned catch-wrestling and embraced Brazilian jiu jitsu…and he was to face him in the very arena that Sakuraba had overcome a 60-pound weight disadvantage to topple Conan Silveira and declare to the world, “In fact, professional wrestling is strong.”

KnightMask respected Crimson Cobra, at least, in a way. He respected that he threw caution to the win, that he wasn’t afraid to go for big moves. He was a risk-taker and so was KnightMask. Taking risks, going for the finish, that was part of what differentiated Brazilian jiu jitsu and catch-wrestling. Catch-wrestling didn’t wait to establish a safe, dominant position from which to strike out from. A catch-wrestler fearlessly turned every position into a submission opportunity.

The difference between them was that Cobra was a man who found it easy to discard his tag-team partner, to use pets as mere props to further his image…and to not even bother to learn about the style of submission-grappling that built the foundation for the sport he was currently making his fortune. He wasn't bound by tradition, friendship or anything else but the hunger to be the best wrestler around. In a way, it seemed, he really was a cobra.

Cobra had boasted in the past that win or lose, it was his offense that the audience remembered. And KnightMask couldn’t allow that this time. This wasn’t a battle to get the win. This was a battle for the hearts and minds of the audience. He had to find it within himself to capture the imagination of viewers in the same way that Sakuraba had managed to capture his imagination. He had to be more daring, more aggressive and more creative than Cobra. He had to be without fear. He had to put on a performance that made kids wonder just what it was KnightMask was doing out there…a performance that would have them rushing to their computers to figure how they could learn to do what he did.

Capture their hearts and minds.It was the only way to keep the flickering torch he carried…the torch of catch-wrestling…from finally burning out.