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Senegalese Wrestling (Laamb) - Ep7 - Archaic Wrestling
68 Plays1 year ago
Sasha and Evan explore the unique world of wrestling in Western Africa and complain about Rob Koll...
Serer People
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Hosts
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome back, folks. This is Archaic Wrestling. We are, as always, Evan and Sasha, happy to be bringing to you all the fun and interesting aspects of wrestling history.
Exploring Senegalese Wrestling (LAM)
00:00:29
Speaker
And hopefully we don't have too many listeners for this podcast, Sasha, who might be... No, no, hopefully we have plenty of listeners, but let's hope that not too many of them are on a low sodium diet because they are going to have to swallow.
00:00:45
Speaker
Quite the large grain of salt with some of this information will be given out today we're going to be covering Senegalese wrestling or LAM as it's known more locally in Senegal and Unfortunately a lot of the information out there is not in English a lot of it's in French And we'll talk a little bit more about how it went to trying to research this topic But before we get into that
00:01:13
Speaker
Maybe a little update.
Stanford's Conference and Coaching Changes
00:01:15
Speaker
Last time we spoke, we were complaining a little bit about the Pacific Athletic Conference and its slow demise. But since then, we were taking a look and Stanford has left the PAC-10 or PAC-12, excuse me, PAC, whatever it's going to be, and has joined the ACC, which makes perfect sense, of course. And worse for worse for worse for Stanford Wrestling, we've
00:01:44
Speaker
Rob Cole is leaving Stanford and heading to UNC. How do you feel about that, Sasha? You know, it makes perfect sense. If you conceive of the Atlantic coast as running all the way down, uh, down from South America, all the way through very tip all the way back up past Chile, past Mexico, all the way back up to us. And then, you know, boom, that's the Pacific coast. So that's, then if you conceive of the Atlantic coast,
00:02:14
Speaker
that sense it makes it makes perfect sense that Stanford would be yeah it's all relative host conference yeah we just have to flip our perspective yeah it's only like 2,000 miles away from the closest school it's fine this is fine makes makes perfect sense no one's there is no problem with this every no athletes will have any trouble with the travel the new travel requirements that are posed by this and
00:02:41
Speaker
It is great. Uh, it's perfectly, it's great that we lost, um, it's great that they lost, uh, the coach that they just hired, uh, who just went on FRL and bragged about how good his recruiting class was that he was going to continue to get better and better recruiting classes. Uh, that, and that he was just so good. As a coach that they didn't think he could do it and he was going to keep doing it and he wasn't going anywhere because he was doing so well at Stanford. So it's cool that he just left.
00:03:11
Speaker
Um, in general, I think it's, it's going really well. Yeah. Well, you know, he, he Cole, Rob Cole, he's the money guy, you know, he's a, he's really good at raising the money. That's the part that he's really talented at. So he brings in the really good assistant coaches to run the program or the wrestling aspect of it. But unfortunately the Bay Area was a little too expensive for Rob and, you know, he had an opportunity to go to his alma mater. So see Rob, it was a good two years.
00:03:42
Speaker
I hope he enjoys, uh, new, probably a couple more thousand square feet that he's going to get in his house. I hope he enjoys some of his new closets. Um, it's good, good for you, Rob. Enjoy your new closets. Enjoy having a guest, maybe another couple of guest bedrooms. Um, it's great. I hope it was all, it was all worth it.
00:04:11
Speaker
I'm so glad that we got rid of Jason Borelli. Everything has been going so good here at Stanford Wrestling. For the listeners who don't know, Rob Cole has left as the head coach and he, in his email to whoever had signed up for the Stanford newsletter, let folks know that one of the reasons was because of the cost of living in the Bay Area.
00:04:41
Speaker
which is, you know, substantial for sure. I struggle to really take too seriously that reason. It's living in Palo Alto. Sure, you know, which is expensive, of course. But I think Rob might be making more than some of us. And he doesn't have to live in Palo Alto, just like most folks do not work there probably don't live there. But
00:05:04
Speaker
Whatever we'll get. You know what? I'm not sure where Cole is going to appear on our ironic enemies list. I don't I don't think he's quite S tier here. I think he's number one. I think he's probably the only one that's really on the list at the moment, but I wouldn't put him at S tier or A tier here. Right. You know, I don't I don't really hold some hard feelings for him here, but we are disappointed, Rob. You know, this is a this is this hurts. You know, we had a lot of a lot of faith in you. We're really excited about it.
00:05:33
Speaker
But yeah, I guess, I guess a man's gotta do what he's gotta do for his family. Yeah, I'd like to, we're gonna, we're about to start a years long project of finding Rob Cole's tax returns. And boy, when you get them, you better believe we're, we're, we're gonna, we're going to be showing them on here. And it's going to be very disappointing and uninteresting. Well, I mean, it's, it couldn't be any more or less uninteresting than some of our other conversations. So we'll see how it goes.
Impact of the Three Point Rule in Wrestling
00:06:00
Speaker
Um, but apart from that, I think, I think at least for me on a much more positive note, we have started to see, uh, at least to some degree, we have very little data, but we have now seen some really good wrestlers, uh, competing under the new three point rule, uh, who's number one just happened. And we got to see a good 10, I think it was 10 different math, 10, it was all the boys matches, um, competing with three point move and.
00:06:30
Speaker
Sasha, I know you didn't get a chance to watch it yet, but from my perspective, a lot of the things that people were worried about did not manifest in these matches. People weren't just trying to hold on to leads. There was, you know, people weren't afraid to shoot. They weren't trying, you know, weren't worried about giving up takedowns, you know, because it was such a, because of the extra point added to them now. It just looked like regular wrestling. People just scored more points.
00:06:59
Speaker
And in some matches, it was really cool because they cranked up, you know, up at both both wrestlers getting up into the teens with points without it being just one of those JV matches where people are just rolling around too much and giving up back points back and forth. These were good competitive matches that were high scoring. And the I didn't see any reason to be worried about what the three point takedown is going to do. Now, keep in mind, this is who's number one. It's still high schoolers. It's not exactly
00:07:27
Speaker
college competition where people where college coaches are gonna be figuring out how they're gonna Respond to these things. So it's still early. There's still lots to watch and find out But so far so good I felt And yeah, anybody the disagree should email us at archaic wrestling at Gmail Yeah, I always found the idea that um
00:07:50
Speaker
making the takedown worth more points was going to suddenly stop people from trying to achieve takedowns. I mean I under it was just it's like well if you get taken down it's worse for you now it's like well if you get to take down it's also good like this is what this is like the
00:08:06
Speaker
The classic one where it's like, well, you know, it's a double edged. It's a double edged sword. It's like, everything is a double edged sword. It's a sport you try to win. The other guy tries to win. It's all, there's always going to be, uh, in a book, an element of defense and offense to it. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that was my perception so far looks just fine and looks good. And what I really liked seeing were, you know,
00:08:32
Speaker
the score of the match reflected what was happening in the match. I really appreciated that. The guy that got two takedowns and an escape and held the other guy down scored lots of points and the other guy that got one escape was far behind them. And that's how it should look. That's what the takedown dominance should be. So I was happy with it. But once again, we will not know until we get a lot more matches under our belts with this.
00:09:02
Speaker
to really see what it looks like, see who's going to be able to take advantage of it or not take advantage or find the loopholes. So you know what? I'm excited to see that too.
Challenges in Researching Senegalese Wrestling
00:09:13
Speaker
So today, leading in, as I said at the beginning of the pod, this was a tricky one to research. We're researching Senegalese wrestling, Senegal obviously being the most Western point of Africa, and specifically we'll be talking about
00:09:31
Speaker
The city of Dakar where a lot of the main cultural around the wrestling professional aspect of this wrestling takes place But you know, it's not just Senegal that does it parts of Gambia do a lot of different parts of Western Africa Participate but Senegal is the main one and because it was so difficult to research and
00:09:54
Speaker
I made some attempts to get in touch with people from Senegal or Senegal or anybody that might have a little bit more information on this. And in fact, one of the citations that we, that we will have in the description, I contacted the actual researchers, actually people that conducted the research. They're all the way in France, just trying my best to get in touch with them and got no response, unfortunately, there.
00:10:20
Speaker
and I was really relegated to starting to reach out to Senegalese people more locally because I wanted to speak with someone that had more firsthand experience with it because I have to say
00:10:32
Speaker
The rules are very hard to figure out because different places on the internet are giving different rules and we're watching the videos and it's very obvious that some of the stuff that you're reading on the internet is not accurate, at least not stuff written in English. A lot of stuff that is in English on the internet is obviously like pushed through Google Translate from French. And I don't speak French or read French, so anything that was in French I couldn't recognize.
00:11:01
Speaker
So I started reaching out to local folks. I emailed and called local Senegalese restaurants in the Bay Area. I called a hair braiding location and they were the only ones that actually got back to me. And I spoke to a very nice woman who, you know, was all was very interested in what we were doing and wanted to put us in touch with somebody that could speak with us about it a little bit more in detail. And
00:11:28
Speaker
She got me in touch with the president of the Senegalese Foundation of the East Bay. And that guy responded twice and then just ghosted me, unfortunately. So a big thank you to the women out there that do braiding from Senegal. You were very helpful, but a little disappointed in the rest of the community because several of them were like, oh, my brother, my cousin would love to talk to you. Of course, they did not want to talk to us.
00:11:57
Speaker
And so we will be doing our very best this episode with what information we have.
Cultural Significance of Senegalese Wrestling
00:12:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's too bad we couldn't get someone else because, I mean, I think we've, I think, you know, you and me, we were watching this, we were going back and forth. I think we've pieced together among, you know, the two different styles, sans, frappe, frappe, and avac frappe. Is that, my French is not. Oh, I don't know. I think we've pieced together most of the rules of these two styles. I think we have a,
00:12:33
Speaker
a fairly good understanding of, you know, how you win, how you lose. But, um, the thing that was so interesting about this is, uh, all of the cultural pieces that like came into it. Um, also almost sort of like the Mongolian wrestling where really a lot of stuff happens in Senegalese wrestling before and after the match. Yeah. And there's cultural practices that go along with it.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, this is one of those situations where the the location that this has taken place, the cultural origins, there wasn't written language for a long time. So a lot of the wrestling that history here is not going to be something that we have evidence for, but it's pretty clear that this goes back a long, long time in this area of the world, in what we now call Senegal.
00:13:31
Speaker
A lot of the wrestling was something where it would be to celebrate a harvest. It would be to like challenge somebody to put on a display to show your strength for a lot for men. It was about impressing women, right, trying to prepare for battle. Right. That's how it was. It was integrated into culture.
00:13:55
Speaker
And it goes back at least to the 1300s is what I was, the only thing I was really able to find. That's as far back as they can figure that it would have gone back. And they believe the furthest back origins they have are the Serra people, which is a ethnic minority that lives within Senegal. I believe they're the second largest ethnic group behind what's called Wolof.
00:14:23
Speaker
And in fact, the term l'am, which refers to Senegalese wrestling, that's what l'am means is wrestling, is a Wolof word. So within all of this, you're going to see a lot of Wolof is being spoken quite a bit, but French is heavily spoken and heavily influenced over the terminology and the national bodies within l'am wrestling.
00:14:53
Speaker
because the French colonized Senegal for a very, very long time. And so that's why we see so much French and it is like the main language in a lot of places around Senegal. The sport now, I guess we should talk about what it looks like, right? And the big thing that's going to stand out for people and what a lot of people will actually maybe even
00:15:19
Speaker
Argue that this might not actually be a rest a form of wrestling is the fact that you're allowed to punch people And yeah, so there's two two styles. Yeah, um kind of like how is referring to before right? There's um I mean, yeah, i'm gonna butcher it don't speak french, but it's like loot tradition l sans frappe Maybe it's frappe You guys can yell at me in the coming you guys can email and yell at me. I didn't look it up
00:15:45
Speaker
Right. And then an Avic frat. So that's, you know, without punching or with punching. Um, and both of them, I will say both of them look, uh, fairly similar. I don't think the punching, the punching doesn't change it into an entirely new style. It's sort of just like, uh, it just looks like it sucks a lot more to do, but is also fairly similar. And the ways you win, uh, can be fairly, fairly similar.
00:16:15
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And, and the lack of punching is what you would typically see more like the local level, right? Where you have, you know, your village and you're practicing there, or it's, you know, it's once a year, everyone comes to wrestle. Um, and in more modern times, this is where you'll see more women actually participating as well. The striking aspect is really what you see at the higher level, this, the, the level where people are able to make money from it essentially.
Structure and Economic Aspects of LAM Wrestling
00:16:43
Speaker
And from what I understand, this came in around 1930, where they started doing the punching aspect. I found the video as far back as 1960, where they were punching each other, so it's at least that old. Okay. And the idea is, you
00:17:01
Speaker
are allowed to punch people, but it still is very much wrestling because the rules aren't about like, if you knock someone out, you don't win because you knocked that person out. You win because that person hit the ground a certain way, right? So if someone is knocked out, they go right to their back or hit their fall to their head or their butt or their hip, then they lose. So this is another one of those folk styles, which is starting to, you know, pretty much be almost all of them to some degree here.
00:17:29
Speaker
where you, the matches are pretty short, you know, they can be very fast or they can, or they can take a little while, usually not more than about 10 minutes or so. But if you fall your, your back to the ground, your butt to the ground, your hip or your head touches the ground, you lose. And that can happen by being knocked out, but more likely it's going to happen through a grappling exchange, right? And
00:17:57
Speaker
I think a lot of the techniques that we see are a lot of like blast double styles. I saw some hip throws. Um, there's a lot of grabbing some, grabbing people. In fact, they're, they're kind of wearing a loin cloth is what people are wearing. And it's called the Takna Gem, Takna Gem, I believe it's called. And so you're allowed to grab there. You'll see a lot of underhook stuff. You'll see a lot of, uh, locking in the crotch and lifting from there.
00:18:26
Speaker
And there's no weight class. Once again, another folk style with no weight class. So the folks doing it are very large as you might expect. But that doesn't mean that there aren't smaller competitors. The thing with LOM is it's not the same as a lot of other wrestling styles where they do tournament formats, right? Where it's like a double elimination or, you know, you work through a bracket.
00:18:52
Speaker
Lomb wrestling is treated much more like, uh, boxing or MMA in the turn, in terms of how, uh, fighters are paired together. It's prize fighting for the most part, uh, at least at the higher levels. Um, so in Dakar where pretty much all the big fights happen, they have a big 20,000 person capacity arena, uh, arena national dilute. Um, and,
00:19:18
Speaker
It's where all the big matches happen. It's a very large circle and they compete on sand. They also train on sand, as you might expect. So these guys are very big. Bodybuilding is a very big part of the culture and a lot of makeshift devices are used to bodybuild. They'll do the thing where they'll fill up paint cans with cement or sand and lift those, right? They create their own benches.
00:19:45
Speaker
you know, you might see some of that on social media sometimes, usually you'll see some guys, you can tell it's like an African country. And, you know, they've created barbells out of just cement and, and rest piece of metal they have lying around, right? And the actual
00:20:06
Speaker
combat here essentially is a way for a lot of people to get out of poverty. It's, it's, it's like a professional sport in which people are seeking ways to no longer be in poverty, to get lots of attention, get lots of fame and win these prize fights, right? So the people that tend to train LOM are, you know, they have, they have side jobs, right? They're, they're not just training LOM, even though that they might technically be professional,
00:20:35
Speaker
because they're not going to make a ton of money unless they're one of the top couple dozen fighters in Dakar. Yeah, and it seems like some of the popularity coincided with economic downturn in Senegal. What we've seen is that a lot of the popularity, it did become a lot more popular with people after Senegal's economy started to go into a major recession.
00:21:06
Speaker
Yeah, I mean you can make maybe around 80k per fight if you're one of the better wrestlers You see a lot of wealth culture surrounding it, right? A lot of the wrestlers want to display their wealth So a lot of like wearing gold chains and things like that to signal that they have overcome poverty. In fact, like one of the most famous or popular Senegalese wrestlers is a guy named Mohammed Nidal
00:21:33
Speaker
And he took on the nickname of Tyson after Mike Tyson. He's one of the first wrestlers. Yeah. And he's gone and he trains in the USA. And he has this brand of being like a self-made man who came from nothing in poverty from Dakar. And now he trains the United States and he flies back over for competitions and stuff. Right. And that's really kind of the dream when when you're talking about a long wrestler who
00:22:01
Speaker
Is able to make it right to be able to be one of the people that can do this for a living, right?
Ceremonial and Spiritual Practices in LAM Wrestling
00:22:08
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like this is a good time to get into the Bach. So before, you know, each like like Evan said, right, this is it's more closer to prize fighting than like tournament. And before each match, they'll show up sometimes even like an hour before their match and they have like
00:22:29
Speaker
This isn't, it kind of reminds me, um, there's a lot of similarities between this and the Mongolian wrestling that we covered last week. And I think the differences here and the similarities are really interesting. Both in the style and in the culture surrounding it.
00:22:45
Speaker
So they show up not with like, you know, just their, their one person right there. Second, like you had in the Mongolian wrestling, they show up with, you know, an entire retinue. They have like a whole group of people with them. Um, and before each of their matches, you know, each side has their own choreographed dance. And so each wrestler.
00:23:07
Speaker
has not only their own choreographed dance, but like they put it together. It's a dance that they put together that is specific to them that only they do. So it'll have, you know, each, people will do like similar moves or the same moves, but like I saw, you know, when I was watching some of these highlights, I saw them, you know, drive in in a car and everyone hopped out, like drive onto the field in a van, everyone jumps out and starts doing this dance.
00:23:38
Speaker
And then they also perform like sort of a song or a poem before each match. And those poems themselves, right, those are also written by the wrestler and they also become. At least it seems like in the culture, like almost as important as the wrestling or like those words are imbued with a lot of meaning from like how good that wrestler is. So a lot of them will become like extremely popular.
00:24:08
Speaker
So Mike Tyson, right, I have up here some of like one of his. There is also another champion that we've read about that I read about in the same paper from the 1980s who had not only like such a good performance that it became so popular, they would like play it every Sunday before the like matches would start. They'd play it and like kids would act it out and they would say it.
00:24:37
Speaker
So it's kind of a really interesting thing that they add on to it. Yeah, there's a lot of showmanship, a lot of like performance, and there's a lot of like spiritualism, right? Like I mentioned, they wear that loincloth, but you'll also see the wrestlers are often they're like strapped up with lots of belts going around them and twine that's wrapped around them. And what these are is these are straps that are holding on special charms.
00:25:05
Speaker
And they're essentially lucky charms, right? Because each wrestler, as part of his retinue, right? His friends, his training partners, it may be a coach. One of the other people that's part of his retinue is a spiritual advisor or a guidance person. And they will constantly, throughout the process of their training, their competition, they will be essentially blessing the wrestler or performing prayers on them.
00:25:35
Speaker
And the wrestler will wear those charms that have been given to them and they'll also often douse themselves with potions or oils that have been prayed over or have been blessed themselves. And I had a hard time figuring out, like, what are the contents of some of these? The only one that I actually figured out of, like, what is the stuff they actually put on them was sometimes they pour sour milk on themselves.
00:26:05
Speaker
Um, which was interesting, I guess. Maybe it's a good way to recycle old milk. I don't know. Um, but yeah, so there's a lot of a spiritual aspect to it where they're coming in, not just prepared in the sense of, you know, I'm mentally prepared. I'm physically prepared. Um, but I've also, you know, got the magic on my side too. And it goes, it goes hand in hand.
00:26:29
Speaker
with the performance aspect that you talked about. Right. Yeah. It is just a very big show. It reminded me a lot of the tone of some WWE style wrestling. Right. Like performance. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. With actual combat. Right. Something I found really interesting is I've also seen, you know, prior to us even doing this podcast, I saw like a little video documentary about
00:26:57
Speaker
Um, somewhere in West Africa where people are doing their own, you know, like professional, like showmanship wrestling, uh, that has a lot to do with, um, and it seems like such an obvious outgrowth of this type of culture of just keeping all of the showmanship, a lot of like things with like magic where they do, you know, they'll like perform spells in the ring and then that will, you know, win them the match, uh, things like that. And it's actually kind of interesting that it's so much.
00:27:27
Speaker
you know, less popular than just the actual real wrestling is. Yeah, it gets treated as kind of like a tailgating sideshow compared to like the actual event, right? And you'll just have this ring that's set up and everyone's surrounding it. And the community is very involved in this stuff. It's not just like
00:27:48
Speaker
your fans are there. Like at the smaller level, sometimes after a wrestler wins, you know, not only do they, you know, go back into the, do their dance and celebration, but the crowd will rush the, the, the pitch for lack of a better term. Right. Not unlike, you know, you would see in other sports as well, but it seems to be like, no, no, no, there's always somebody rushing the pitch. There's always someone running to hug the wrestler or stand with him and carry each other around or something. Right.
00:28:18
Speaker
there's always a lot of celebrating going on. It's very performative. So I have, I was able to pull up some of the speeches that they make and I'll go through them. And I mean, I'm sure I can't really do it justice. I think we need to hear it like in the context with the music, their actual performance. And it was also really interesting because this comes from, so I don't know if you encountered this while you were researching this,
00:28:46
Speaker
But the concept of a griot, or maybe that's griot. So that's like a storyteller, someone who would tell stories. It's sort of like someone who maintains oral tradition in a lot of different parts of West Africa. It's from what I can tell in this paper I'm reading.
00:29:10
Speaker
What the outgrowth of that is that the wrestlers themselves sort of became their own griots and they have their own story. So I think at some point that used to be maybe like their griot would tell this story or would do this speech and then they started taking it over. So like this, the most famous one that we were talking about by Mame Gorgui
00:29:38
Speaker
I'm doing my best here. Um, the translation goes, it is fair to say that I did it. No one dare say that I didn't. Anyone who is trained as I would, would have beaten the best ones. I traveled to Luga with Arachnar. I recognize that Sambaia, Sambaia, Sali, Thiorye was a great wrestler. I also recognize Mudu Kane, who is Papa Kane's father. I recognize such hard to find wrestlers.
00:30:06
Speaker
So there's a lot of like boasting in it, but it's also really interesting that I think we've seen this from pretty much every wrestling folk style we've seen. There always seems to be a tremendous amount of respect for each other than every single one of these folk styles that we've seen. Yeah. And there's a lot of like reference to heritage too, right? It's like, yeah, especially with the Senegalese wrestling, there was just a lot of like,
00:30:35
Speaker
you know, my father wrestled, my older brother wrestled, his father wrestled, right? And that's, that's, you know, that's my line. That's my lineage. And there's a lot of local neighborhood pride, right? So like each, like, like I mentioned before, Dakar, the capital is still like the biggest place for the wrestling, but each of the different neighborhoods in Dakar, a lot of them have their own like wrestling club, wrestling stable.
Training Techniques in LAM Wrestling
00:30:58
Speaker
um where they trained together and oh so-and-so came out of the whatever neighborhood of Dakar right there's a lot of like neighborhood level pride um yeah which which makes sense because it has those origins in you know something very local right talking about your local harvest your um and and with it being for a lot of folks their focus of how this how i'm getting out of poverty you know i'm gonna be that that you know big giant dude right um
00:31:26
Speaker
and yeah and so speaking a little bit more like we mentioned that you know they're big they're giant um and they're they're really just as big as any of these other wrestlers that we've seen um they're really big they're really huge i think when it comes to some of these higher level guys um i i i'm not super confident in the amount of of uh
00:31:48
Speaker
drug testing and regulation that's involved in this sport. So there's definitely guys on some stuff for sure, but they are huge. They are huge and big. And it really seems like their go-to way that they want to put someone down. You know, some guys, they do seem a little bit more into the punching aspect, but if they're not knocking someone out, they're
00:32:13
Speaker
getting into a clinch and from the clinch, you'll see a lot of uppercuts to the body. See a lot of that still, still looking to punch someone in the hips. Um, but there's a, people really like to lift in this sport, right? They want to lift people up and put them back down pretty hard. Um, you don't see a lot of a suplex style stuff because I think guys are really trying to avoid allowing their back to face the mat at all, or excuse me, face the sand or the ground at all. Um,
00:32:42
Speaker
And you'll notice a lot of that. Guys don't want to get too low because they don't want to get, it seems like they don't want to get sprawled on because another way in which you can lose other than your butt, your head, your back, your hip touching the mat is as long as you're the defensive wrestler, if you go down and both hands and both knees are on the ground or we're not sure if it's elbows or hands, I think it's at least hands. But if you have essentially four points of contact down, then you lose.
00:33:12
Speaker
Um, at least if you have two knees down, so you'll see guys, they'll be down in essentially a referees position, but they'll keep one knee up and as soon as that he touches, they lose, but you know, unfortunately often they're there, they keep one leg up and they're just eating punches from the guy on top. Just punch, punch, punch right to their face. And this is bare knuckle of course. Um, it doesn't look like they're, you know, going easy on the punches either.
00:33:39
Speaker
Uh, but as long as they can tough it out and get back up, they can keep wrestling from there. Um, you know, you're not seeing, you might see, uh, I actually didn't see a lot of folk style style standups. Like you'd see guys standing up, but there's a lot of reaching back and they're looking for, they're more looking for a hip toss than they are to just break grip and face. It seems like right. They're always looking for the way that they're going to put someone down from there. Yeah. So I watched a video of like a
00:34:07
Speaker
a bunch of different matches. Um, and I also watched, um, there's all, there's like, for, you know, how rare we would think this is. Um, there's at least one account on YouTube that is putting together like 40 minutes, 40 minute videos of like Senegalese wrestling matches. Um,
00:34:28
Speaker
It's Ellie. Yeah, Ellie, Ellie boy or whatever. Yeah. The only one putting anything out there. And he puts together a lot of stuff. It's awesome. So I watched one video that was top 15 top 15 moves in the Senegalese wrestling. They all had like their own names. So I kind of got a good idea of like.
00:34:53
Speaker
a lot of different, what different things they do in different positions. So, you know, a lot of it is going to be, is very similar to the Mongolian wrestling. There's like a ton of underhook and knee picks, overhook and knee picks, uh, like things of that nature where they're just like blasting through someone. Um, they use the loin cloth a lot. So there will be a lot of times where they'll say like, you know, they'll have an overhook on one side.
00:35:19
Speaker
They'll grab the loincloth and then they'll grab a knee and they'll drive to that overhook side. So there's a lot of like, a lot of things like that, um, that are just like very upper body. Um, there's a ton of judo throws, especially when you come into the loincloth, there's a ton of throws where they're like, I saw a guy just, uh, I saw one where someone came in, shot textbook high C.
00:35:46
Speaker
came around the back and then got lat whipped. Yes. Incredible. There's actually quite a few on some of those highlights I saw where I saw some stuff that I wasn't expecting to see, like some back trip stuff, like from below. Yeah. A lot of that judo hips, hip toss stuff, they looked really good at. And you mentioned the high C. I feel like we hadn't seen a lot of high C style entries and a lot of these folk styles.
00:36:16
Speaker
But this one there was definitely more of it. Um, definitely a little bit more trying to come underneath, get your shoulders underneath someone, hips underneath them. Right. Oh yeah. There was an enormous amount of high sea shots. Um, but the vast, like 99% of them were accompanied by a fireman's carry. Yeah. It looks like almost all the time they're shooting down there, they're hitting like these incredible firearms, whether they pick them all the way up and throw them, um, or they do like a more traditional shoot. And then.
00:36:45
Speaker
you know, kind of fall to their side and do it. So a lot of the stuff they're going for seems to be like, even when they're using more of like our, you know, American folk style sort of entries, they're usually going for like higher amplitude moves. Like, yeah, like one thing I thought was interesting, every entrance I saw to a snatch single, right to like an upright snatch single always ended in, you know, coming in, getting the snatch single,
00:37:15
Speaker
getting the loin cloth and then going to a lift every single time. Yeah. Yeah. And they, and because they just need someone to hit both, like four points, essentially both knees, both hands, and doesn't have to go to like a hip or back, they're very, very willing to just
00:37:33
Speaker
Pick someone up and and it's more of like a redrop, right? Like they're just putting it back down rather than a real like amplitude throw Although they had some of those there was some sick like arm throws too. Just yeah, that was a really good one in there Like not not even arm spin just like straight over the top arm throw that style, right? These guys are really strong for for for sure and yeah, there's not a lot of highlights of
00:38:00
Speaker
lesser weights, I guess, like lower weights. Everyone is still pretty big, but I did see a few where it was some smaller, small, smaller guys, you know, proportionally, I guess, like in relatively. And yeah, a lot more getting under under folks. I saw a little bit more of being willing to hit one knee on a shot. I think they're really avoiding hitting both knees because they don't want to get caught on somebody.
00:38:27
Speaker
And a little bit of back arch stuff going on There's there's a lot of Not just strength involved in this even though the guys are so big. They're they're doing some flexibility stuff They're getting into some awkward positions and scoring off of it Yeah, really really nice looking wrestling and looked a little bit different I think then the Mongolian wrestling and
00:38:52
Speaker
I think with just a couple rule tweaks, this would look a lot more like the Turkish oil wrestling. Once they get to like parterre, like a referee's position, I saw at least one instance pushing a knee down in the sand, looking at the ref and going like, Hey, like what the fuck what's going on? And sort of, so it seems like a bit of a gray area as to like, it seems like, I don't know, as long as you're
00:39:14
Speaker
working towards something. Um, it seems like they want it to be more definitive. So, uh, some of the stuff I saw from the, like the Turkish wrestling, I feel like we saw a lot of freestyle site par tear, like a lot of like crotch locks, um, and trying to like roll someone over their back exposure type stuff. Uh, a lot of the sort of, you know, better lack of a better term, Matt wrestling that I saw in the Senegalese wrestling was, okay, you got someone's back.
00:39:44
Speaker
They have both knees in the sand, both hands, they're surviving. I saw one where a guy's just trying to get a shoulder into the sand. He just pushed him over to where the one guy's just shoulder hit and then that was enough. Or I see a lot of times they actually pick them up and they basically just do like a mat return. Yeah, they just lift them back up again. And the mat return
00:40:08
Speaker
Um, basically counts as a win, probably because, you know, it's a little bit more surface area of your body hits the sand when you're on that. But yeah, you can Matt return someone straight down where they, you know, they land both hands, both knees, and that'll be pretty much in every case I saw, you know, that's a win too. Yeah. It's very high amplitude. Yes, it is.
Comparisons with Other Wrestling Styles
00:40:31
Speaker
Um, and I think there's also, cause we're watching it and can't, we can't understand what the announcer's saying or what, right?
00:40:37
Speaker
And the referee is definitely low. Like the referee is definitely watching those knees. Like you can tell. Yeah. And I think they're they just probably miss things sometimes because there's definitely been moments where it's like a split second. Right. And I wonder if they have a concept of reaction time possibly.
00:40:52
Speaker
I think they do. I think they must because I saw a lot of instances when I was looking at this where, you know, it'd be like takedown or say like front headlock position. I did see a little bit of front headlock position. It doesn't seem like they use it a lot. But every time they do the front headlock, they're pretty much always looking for they're they're basically always looking for a head in the whole finish and they're not trying to get around. They're just trying to get like the opposite drive in and get the opposite hip.
00:41:22
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I noticed they allowed them to do quick switches too. Like you could, if you put one down, one up, it was okay. So hard to say, you know, it could be the referee. It could be the particular style that they're doing or, you know, there's a lot we just unfortunately could not find out. And that was a little bit frustrating and left me feeling a little bit more thankful for some of the other information we had.
00:41:48
Speaker
on the other styles or also just, I think there's a little bit of complication to this style with like, is it one knee, two knee, like what's going on here? That we just didn't see with the others, right? Yeah. It's a little less simple and getting a little bit more towards like the folk style freestyle territory, right? Where the things maybe because of how much money is involved here and like how they're really trying to create like a competitive atmosphere.
00:42:17
Speaker
those gray areas start to crop up a little bit. Yeah, I don't know. Right. But maybe that's why I don't know. It definitely seems I think of every very folk style like we've gone over. I feel like this one has the most possibility. I feel like there is a lot of ways to win in this. I feel like, yeah, I think, you know, their main style, the way they want to win is kind of closer. Most of the competitors want to win, I think, in a way that's closer to like the Mongolian bulk.
00:42:47
Speaker
where they're trying to get knee picks judo throws upper body and like high amplitude stuff and a lot of lifts and they're trying to win with that. But it does seem like there is definitely room for competitors who want to win more on like a like a leg attack. Yeah. A little bit more of like a leg attack style. Like I think this is one where I don't know if it'd be interesting if like one of us was in there trying to
00:43:14
Speaker
I feel like if I, if I really had to, I could figure out a way to transition some of the like things that I know from folk style wrestling to like do this one and try to do a decent job, um, with like some of my leg attacks. Whereas I feel like if I ever did Mongolian folk, you know, I'm not an upper body guy. I'd be, I'd be rolled every time. Yeah. Like this one definitely, at least from our perspective.
00:43:40
Speaker
seems to leave the door open a little bit more for lower level attacks because, you know, it's okay if my leg touches the ground, right?
00:43:49
Speaker
I'd be, yeah, like, is an ankle pick viable? Is a low single or sweep single viable, right? Yeah. That kind of stuff is... I think it is. I think a low single would be really viable, actually. It is hard to say. I'm not certain, but it's possible. I would be very curious to see someone, like you said, someone with more of our background, jump into this and just try stuff.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah, see their reaction to it or how they would deal with it I don't know if you watch the same video I watched like a little bit of it because it was it was not uh, you know, it wasn't super useful but um, there's you know, like a classic vice video, you know where they get like just the most pasty nerd you've ever seen and like put him in a situation where he's like wearing the loincloth and trying to like
00:44:37
Speaker
do the Senegalese wrestling and they had them do it with like children. But I think it'd be fun. This is definitely one. I think this is my favorite one that we've covered so far. This is one where like I'm sad that it doesn't have like next year. I think we'll be able to watch the Mongolian wrestling like we're going to be at that. We're going to figure it out. We're going to get a stream. We're going to watch that shit.
Why is Senegalese Wrestling Their Favorite?
00:45:02
Speaker
But this one I'm like, oh my God, like
00:45:05
Speaker
Yeah, like is there how i'm gonna try to look more into how we can watch this because this to me I think like with the combination of like the entrances You know the like uh cultural musical and like poetic aspects of it And then just the actual wrestling I found to be uh, the most entertaining of any of the other ones so far Yeah, I I actually totally agree. Um, it's it's definitely my favorite so far too
00:45:32
Speaker
Um, I mean, I, I all watched the heck out of Mongolian wrestling. Uh, but this one was really, really nice. Um, it was very exciting. And because like we said, there, there seems to allow a little bit more intricacies. Um, it was more interesting to watch, I would say. I, I was more curious about what someone was going to do next with this one. Um, yeah, yeah, exactly. A little bit more variety. Uh, but yeah, it was, it was really cool. Um, and then just like as a quick side note, like I mentioned a little bit that
00:46:02
Speaker
at some of the local stuff, more women will be involved. I did want to mention, like, there doesn't seem to be a women's league at this higher level at all, where they're, you know, paying people out quite a bit. I guess there was an attempt back in 2013 to get one going, and that was attempted by a wrestler. Her name, like, kind of led the charge on her. Her name's Isabel Sambo, and she actually was an Olympian in freestyle wrestling.
Women's Participation in LAM Wrestling
00:46:31
Speaker
Um, so she's one of the, the very few that I found who was making the transition from more of this traditional style, uh, into freestyle wrestling. And obviously she's not the only one, but I would say she's certainly the, uh, the most, uh, prominent. She was actually the flag bearer for Senegal, uh, in, in Rio in 2016. Yeah. I think, um, I think I've been seeing, I think people have like mentioned it earlier too, uh, at like more recent world competitions.
00:47:02
Speaker
that like Senegal has had a fairly good women's team, or like we've been seeing them more often. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, and then on the like men's side of things, the only transition that really stood out to me was this Senegalese wrestling realm, it actually looks like a pretty good transition point to MMA. And I did see, I did see at least one or two Senegalese wrestlers who had transitioned and big giant strong dude,
00:47:31
Speaker
Through big punches like like they don't throw like little like test jabs like they throw hard but throwing big punches has good takedown defense and You know, we'll just and mostly just ragdolls people around the ring. So they would yeah, like this guy was just picking dudes up slamming them Oh, they stand up. Okay, I'm gonna redrop them real hard while they're down there I'm gonna throw, you know punches just like I would do in my regular Senegalese wrestling, you know got their back throwing punches from there
00:48:01
Speaker
Um, you know, get into guard. I'm big and strong. I'm still just going to throw punches. Right. Uh, and the, this, this particular fighter just didn't care anything about submissions or anything like that. It was just, I'm going to punch you and I'm going to slam you and I'm going to be heavy on top of you. Um, which is, you know, not a bad strategy in MMA. And that's why I was like, Oh yeah, this totally makes sense as a transition point. Yeah. These, these guys are like really, a lot of them are like really high level. It's really impressive stuff. Like.
00:48:32
Speaker
The sort of a lot of moves that you're like very recognizable, not just doing like crazy new things that only work in this folk style.
Learning More About LAM Wrestling's Organization
00:48:41
Speaker
No, I'd love to see. Honest. Oh, my God. I have like this vision in my head of like that, like that old his deadliest warrior, like history channel. But we just get like different folk style competitors from around the world together in each other's
00:49:01
Speaker
in each other's styles against each other. Like like I really want to see one of these Senegalese wrestlers versus one of the Mongolian wrestlers in a Mongolian style and a Senegalese style. I think it would be so sick. Yeah, I mean, especially like those two that you just said, like because we see so much similarities with those because they're both so big, they have similar like outfits, you know, similar rules where you're allowed to grab stuff, right?
00:49:30
Speaker
I would be very interested to watch that. We are also just getting to see a lot of athletes that don't get a lot of attention in general. So or that we just don't get to see very much of and you can really forget just how skilled people can be just within these other folk styles. Yeah, it was it was really cool researching this one. But once again, man, I just wish we could have got someone on here or at least talked with them beforehand who
00:49:58
Speaker
had a little bit more firsthand knowledge because I feel like I still have so many questions about some of the details and a little bit more of the perspectives from the wrestlers themselves. I'm going to put a link in the chat to a paper where they did a lot of interviews of wrestlers and it was a little bit more about what wrestling means to them personally and what it means for them to
00:50:24
Speaker
overcome poverty and things like that. But it's got some quotes from the actual wrestlers themselves that I thought were really interesting. But I really wanted more of that. I wanted to speak with someone who just has a little bit more firsthand experience, get a little bit more about what it means to the community because it is the national sport now. It wasn't always, but it has grown to be the most popular sport there.
00:50:49
Speaker
And yeah, like the woman I got to speak with briefly was just like, yes, everyone loves lamb and Senegal. Everyone. So sick. Which is and every time I hear this, like Mongolia is all about it. You know, like every time I hear that, I'm a little jealous. You know, so yeah, it's hard not to be, you know, it's hard not to be. Yeah, it's got to be so cool to be in a place where the the sport that you love is the most popular and important.
00:51:16
Speaker
Um, uh, to, to your friends and family and community, you know, as a wrestler in the United States, you know, you can have that in some ways, but you're, you're always kind of going like, oh yeah, you know, I, I, like, I sometimes don't talk about wrestling with new people because I don't want to, you know, get into the conversation, right? Uh, but it's nice when you meet someone that knows about wrestling and you get to talk about it with them and not have to worry about, okay, well,
00:51:41
Speaker
I got to explain this, this, and this if I'm even going to have this conversation, right? Yeah. But a lot of these folks don't have to deal with that. But yeah, I really wanted to learn more about like, who's the national body of this? Who puts on these fights? Where does this money come from? And just learn a little bit more that way. But it is what it is for now. Maybe we'll have to do another episode. Yeah. We're going to have to do that. Might have to Google translate and start messaging Ellie boy.
00:52:12
Speaker
Ask him where he gets all these clips, how we can, how we can watch it. You know, I mean the, in the comments, there's tons of comments on these videos, right? But they're all in French. Yeah. So maybe we'll have to, we'll have to dive in here deeper. And if, if we can figure out, uh, links where people can watch this, where we'll put it up, because that's part of what we're trying, we want to hopefully.
00:52:36
Speaker
I would want to get a thing going where, you know, every, grow the sport, grow, grow the sport where you guys can see, we're like, Oh, Hey, there's going to be Turkish wrestling tournament. Here's where you're going to watch it in what time. And we can all go over it. Uh, that's, that would be kind of a great thing if we could get that going with this podcast. Yeah. And then we can put down betting. Yes. Well, I mean, I think that's about it on this one, unless you got anything else to add. Oh no, that's it. Uh,
00:53:05
Speaker
Yeah, go watch it. It's really fun. All right, sounds good. Folks will have a really fun episode coming up next time. But until then, Sasha knows too much. But until then, folks, have a good one.