Karl Gotch was a legendary catch wrestler and a student of Billy Riley's Snake Pit. Gotch taught catch wrestling to Japanese professional wrestlers in 1970's to students including Antonio Inoki, Tatsumi Fujinami, Hiro Matsuda, Osamu Kido, Satoru Sayama (the legendary Tiger Mask) and Yoshiaki Fujiwara.

Karl Gotch

Karl Gotch's students formed the original Universal Wrestling Federation (Japan) in 1984 which gave rise to shoot-style matches. The UWF movement was led by catch wrestlers and gave rise to the mixed martial arts boom in Japan. Catch wrestling forms the base of Japan's martial art of shoot wrestling. Japanese professional wrestling and a majority of the Japanese fighters from Pancrase, Shooto and the now defunct RINGS bear links to catch wrestling.

Notable mixed martial artists with traceable catch-wrestling links are numerous;

Among them are Kazushi Sakuraba,who trained in the UWF Snake Pit--a gym founded by catch wrestler Billy Robinson--as well as Masa Funaki and Ken Shamrock, both of whom trained under Karl Gotch and Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Some other important mixed martial artists with significant ties to catch include Josh Barnett, Frank Shamrock, Kiyoshi Tamura,Ikuhisa Minowa, Karo Parisyan, and Erik Paulson. Ultimately, however, there are far too many mixed martial artists with ties to catch wrestling to compile anything resembling an exhaustive list of all such fighters.

It may also be worth noting that the term no holds barred was used originally to describe the wrestling method prevalent in catch wrestling tournaments during the late 19th century wherein no wrestling holds were banned from the competition, regardless of how dangerous they might be. The term was applied to mixed martial arts matches, especially at the advent of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.