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Combat Submission Wrestling
When Erik Paulson was just a little guy, he used to tell his wrestling fanatic brother, "If you're a good puncher and kicker, nobody can take you down."

One day, Paulson's brother answered with a challenge: "You want to bet? A wrestler will always beat a karate guy"

So Paulson and his brother went at it -- on several occasions. " I could hit him a few times, but he could always get lucky and take me down, " Paulson remembers. "Later I started to realize that that he kept on getting lucky. I'd hit him, but I'd end up on my back. Then he'd get me in a side straddle or side headlock. From that time on, I knew in the back of my mind that wrestling was the thing I liked most."

Cut to the Present...

If you saw last year's World Combat Championship, that one-shot no-holds-barred event martial artists are still talking about, you probably remember Paulson. He the grappling expert who ended up fighting in the striking division. He did all right, too, until opponent James Warring entwined his mitts in Paulson's ponytail and refused to let go for nearly the duration of the fight. Man, that's gotta hurt!

Well, that was just one page out of Paulson's pugilistic portfolio. Since then he's made history by defeating Japan's reigning light-heavyweight shootwrestling champion, Kenji Kawaguchi. Paulson became the first American to take the title and the belt out of Japan. In case you are wondering: No, he did not prune his locks for that competition, because hair-pulling was not allowed.

Only 30 years old, Paulson already has an impressive martial arts resume that includes judo, boxing, taekwondo, muay Thai, and jeet kune do. He got most of his takedown skills from shootwrestling, which he started learning in 1989. Yorinaga Nakamura, an instructor from Japan, provided Paulson's introduction to the multifaceted art and has continued to guide at the Inosanto Academy, where both men teach.

Paulson also absorbed a lot of grappling truths from Larry Hartsell, a former student of Bruce Lee. "He did a few grappling seminars for me," Paulson says. "Larry helped change my mind about everything."

Paulson, who moved to Los Angeles in 1989, also took up Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Yet there was something about shootwrestling that held his fancy. "I was doing Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and I loved it, but Yori showed me all the other options I had," he says. "I went home and tried some of the stuff on my buddy, who was a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I made him tap with the ankle locks, and he was surprised as I was. So I stuck with it."

Paulson claims that shootwrestling's effectiveness stems from the way it gears its grappling toward taking a kickboxer down and its kickboxing toward keeping a grappler off. "Combined, they are a pretty good mixture" he says.

Because of this unique mixture of realistic combat arts, Paulson has been able to refine his grappling techniques. That means they're reliable moves for the training hall, the ring or the street.