Review: Wrestling for Fighting by Randy Couture

by Mike

Wrestling for Fighting: The Natural Way

One-Liner:

Can anything Randy does be wrong (don't answer that internet forums)? Great resource for those who need to brush up on their wrestling skillz. Slightly less useful for experienced wrestlers.

Overview:

Wrestling for Fighting: The Natural Way by Randy Couture is a wonderful book for mixed martial arts fans who need to brush up on their basic wrestling skills. Randy takes the reader through three main parts, Wrestling (attacking the legs), Greco (upper body throws and clinching) and Wrestling for Fighting (specific applications to MMA including ground and pound and using the cage).

Each of those parts is broken into smaller sections that include Randy's thoughts on where and why they are useful to the fighter. Entries into each position are covered (such as his famous overhand to takedown), but only a couple basic defenses in each part are shown.

The last 1/4 of the book covers specific applications to MMA, which may be disappointingly short for some. However, if you can master the guard pass to strike technique and his discussion of using your knees to keep an opponent pinned against the cage, the relatively few techniques in this section won't matter. Encyclopedia types may want to supplement this with BJ Penn's coverage on the topic.

Randy's thoughts and little bio turned out to be surprisingly good reading, especially giving some hints into his famous gameplanning for opponents. Now that he's in kinda-retirement/waiting-out-the-contract limbo, it might be a perfect time to write an entire book on that subject.

The Good:

• The direction is very clear and technique selection well thought out
  
  
• Good variety of techniques to handle many situations
  
  
• Specifically covers entries when strikes are added to the mix as well as how to work with the cage
  
  
• Philosophy/reasons for including each technique and their application very helpful
  

The Bad:

• Doesn't discuss working in a ring
  
  
• The MMA-specific portion of the book may be a bit short - BJ had a much more extensive ground-and-pound section
  
  
• Experienced wrestlers may find 2/3 of the book to be things the already know and use
  

Recommendation:

A great condensation of the a couple styles of wrestling that belong in a well-rounded fighter's repertoire. Necessary for those who don't have much experience with wrestling, seasoned wrestlers may only find it useful as a way to alter their thinking to coexist with strikers.

Now if only Randy would write, "Gameplanning the Natural Way...."