How Wrestling's Rules were Born

E.C. Gallagher was one of the codifiers of American Folkstyle Wrestling. -

He also holds some pretty impressive records that will, at this point, probably never be reached again: He guided the still fledgling program at Oklahoma State University to 34 NCAA team titles, 133 individual NCAA champs, and over 400 NCAA All-Americans. -

Here we see one of the earliest rulesets for Folkstyle Wrestling. One thing that sticks out: If you were to touch your knee to the mat, you gave one point to your opponent. This means the shot/penetration step that is fundamental to modern wrestling did not exist (as a common a movement). When we look through Gallagher’s work, we see Single Legs, Double Legs, and High Crotches, but without the knee touching the mat (or concrete/grass in these photos). In fact, he frequently uses the word “dive” to describe the motion of snatching a leg. -

Prior to the advent of points in wrestling, matches would continue until a pin fall or be decided by ride time. Because of initiatives that Gallagher and a few of his colleagues took, they were able to write and implement the first points system for any grappling sport, and implemented it country-wide in the 40’s.The implications of creating a scoring system that tried to account for nuance would be deep. In the 50’s, a modified scoring system was then carried over to international wrestling, where a variation was used for the Olympics in 1960. The Olympic scoring system encouraged Helio Gracie to create his own simple ruleset in 1967 for the Guanabara Jiu-Jitsu Federation.