Catch wrestling went through a large decline in part because matches were too long and came to a draw causing boredom amongst the audience and said audience didn't know anything about grappling so they didn't know what they were looking at (something that you see in mma today when the crowd of mullet mouthbreathers start booing when the fight goes to long on the ground). This caused two things to happen, rules were added in order to shorten matches and make it into a spectator sport and hooking was removed due to safety concerns giving rise to Collegiate and Olympic wrestling. Others decided to up the carny aspect of wrestling and added fake feuds, crowd plants, outrageous slams and general fuckery to keep unwashed masses entertained creating "Professional" wrestling.
How ever due to the rise of mma and a select few old school Hookers (Billy Robinson, Karl Gotch, Josh Barnett, Erick Paulson, Various Russian and Japanese wrestlers) Catch has had a resurgence as of late. Here we see a modern catch wrestling championship being held in a ring just like the days of old. Lots of sweat for any of you horny beasts who just want to see mean embrace each other vigorously.
Watching that makes me appreciate BJJ and more generalized submission grappling rule sets. Wrestling is arguably a better base - I think you'll see a clean sweep of UFC champions with wrestling experience* (correct me if I'm wrong) but this is still more boring than a nogi BJJ match for me. Even if you're only comparing finals matches, the use of judo, guards, and leg locks make it seem like you're never as safe in turtle like those guys were. If that smaller guy couldn't take the back and go for the RNC, that would have been a 20 minute tie. There's something special about limited rules submission grappling that neither Judo with its rules on leg attacks and wrestling with its rules on guards + submissions that grabs me in away that this can't. Nonetheless, a beautiful display of wrestling. That was two incredibly strong men going for the throat the entire time. Wrestling like that has been a part of humanity since before there was humanity.
*BJJ is still incredibly important as a professional fighter because if you don't have it, you have a response to it. If not, you don't make it to the big leagues.
Yes wrestling did dominate late 90's to mid 2000's for a good long while (hammerhouse and the lions den come to mind) because it of the rule set change that happened in UFC to shorten the matches and make it more exciting to the crowd. Everyone was doing ground and pound and sprawl and brawl.
Bjj (No matter what the helio side of the Gracie say) is a progression of catch anyway. Mitsueo Mayaeda was a trained catch wrestler not just a judoka and you can see it in a lot of bjj submissions. Also Carlson trained and Fadda both trained luta livre and added it to their curriculum which is why they had the more aggressive bjj/mma fighters for awhile.
I actually really like watching catch wrestling and sambo matches because of how aggressive the grappling is but with bjj I like having time to think about my next move instead of having the mindset of go-go the entire round. However I'm just talking in competition not self defense where I want to get off the ground and gain advantage very early to either run or end the fight. This is where I think it lacks compared to stand up grappling arts.
