To say that Matt Furey is controversial would be the understatement of the year. One thing that you have to give Furey credit for is that you know exactly where he stands on a number of issues. And although that's not always the most politically correct thing to do at times, who says you have to be "PC" anyway? His comments sometime insult people and he definitely has his share of critiques, but you have to respect everyone's right to openly state their opinions, especially when politicians are trying to limit our freedoms by attacking NHB. In the last few issues, FCF published an interview with Tony Cecchine, a man trying to revitalize the art of Catch-As-Catch Wrestling. Furey, who is also trying to promote Catch Wrestling, used to work with Cecchine on occasion, but their relationship ended on shaky terms. In Cecchine's interview, I asked him about Furey and, in true FCF fashion, it is only fair to allow Furey to respond to these comments. The purpose of this interview was to get to know Matt Furey, hear his side of the story and NOT to encourage any more animosity or to re-ignite any feud between the two of them. I got a hold of Matt Furey on June 14, 2000 in Tampa, Florida.

FCF: You are fairly well-known from the articles that you have written and from the Internet. Why don't you give your background to those who are not too familiar with you?
Matt Furey: I started wrestling at the age of eight and I have competed in wrestling since that age until the present in many different forms of wrestling. I've taken breaks from wrestling and competed for periods of time. The last time I competed was in Shuai-chiao, a Chinese grappling art. I competed last summer. In high school, I was a state finalist in Iowa, at 167lbs. Then I went to college at the University of Iowa and wrestled with Dan Gable and the Hawkeyes for three years. After three years there, I went to Edinboro, the University of Pennsylvania where I wrestled for Mike DeAnna and Bruce Baumgartner. I was the national champion there in 1985 in the NCAA at 167lbs. Following my collegiate career, I moved to California where I started a business. I got involved in various martial arts. I really liked them because I felt that they had a connection to wrestling, but there was something about what I was learning, at least from the teachers that I had, that always made me think, "man, how could this improve my wrestling if I were competing next year? And what if I did these exercises or had this advanced skill that I didn't have back then?" I always thought how would I have done. That led to me taking notes and putting out my first book, The Martial Art Of Wrestling, along with the videos in 1996, around the same time that I started training and competing in Shuai-chiao. I won four national titles and in 1997, I became the World Champion in Beijing. I beat the Chinese and Mongolian champ in the finals. When I got back from China, my interest in submission type of wrestling increased. Prior to China, I had worked on submission type of stuff. I had been doing that for a couple of years. Actually, after my book, The Martial Art Of Wrestling came out that's when people started telling me that I had to get involved in that because prior to that it was just different styles of Kung Fu. I certainly wasn't anything to write home about, just like when I first started wrestling and learning take down and throws. But anything I do, I do full out and with gusto and I put all my concentration, hard work and dedication into and I'm not the type of guy to say that I'm great now or that I'm "Super Hooker" or I'm the best or something like that. Even if I was, I wouldn't say that. But I have gotten a hell of a lot better than I did, even a year ago. I worked out with a various people who have done real well in submission types of tournaments. Now I live in live and train in Tampa, Florida, where I train with Karl Gotch, the God of wrestling in Japan, known as Kamisama [God of wrestling in Japanese]. He's the best teacher, coach, and technician that I've ever had. He's so far above anyone else that it is staggering. You got to understand something, Karl is not what he used to be when he was in his prime, but he's still no one you'd even want to mess with. He has had both of his hips replaced in December. Those of us who have seen him apply holds or put things on us and show how he did stuff and coach me, they're scared to death of him. We all say, can you imagine what he would have been like at 100%, even at 45, 55, or even 65 years old? It's scary. He's getting better and better all the time. Having two hips replaced is no easy ordeal, but I have been with him as a friend and a student through the whole thing and I am fortunate as can be, to have him out on the mat showing me things that are basically a treasure to anyone else.

FCF: Do you have any formal martial arts training?
MF: I was involved in Kuk Sool Won, a Korean martial art for about eight months. I didn't like the whole belt ranking deal, it was really commercial and it really started to make me not interested after about eight months. Then I got involved in Kung Fu. I did Shaolin Kung Fu and Long fist, and different types of Tai Chi; Chen Thunder style, Yang style, and Wu style. And then Shuai-chiao was the last style of Kung Fu that I was involved with, so it wasn't like I was involved for 20 years or something, but I do have a black belt in Shuai-chiao. They wanted me to test for my second or third degree, but I never really cared too much about those things, belts and promotions and those kinds of things.

FCF: Why would you go from something so physical as wresting into a generally less physical style as Kung Fu?
MF: There are so-called softer styles or internal styles, why would I get into that? I guess because I've always been interested in the internal, spiritual, or whatever you want to call it, style of the martial arts. It's always intrigued me. I always liked it. When I was in college and in high school I used to read books on the power of the mind and all this, it's always been a fascination of mine. To learn about it from a perspective and how you can increase your health, vitality and improve the functioning of your body and mind through Qi Gong, Tai Chi and Kung Fu. That I liked. I found that it helped my wrestling because the highest level wrestlers are soft. If you follow what I mean by soft. I don't mean flabby out of shape guys.

FCF: You mean technical guys.
MF: Yeah, they grab onto you and you know that you are being grabbed but at the same time, you don't know what they are doing. [laughs] They're not grabbing you and trying to rip your head off and muscling you. The best wrestlers that I have been on the mat with have a soft approach, where their knocking you around and beating you up and it's happening so fast that it couldn't be hard. Can you take a boxer like Sugar Ray Leonard and say that he is hard? I think that guy's fluid, he's soft, the way that he moves. That's the essence of any great combat man, the mastery of how he uses his body. The person who is not as highly skilled is the guy who muscles.

FCF: What style of grappling do you practice?
MF: Well, I practice Catch-As-Catch-Can or Catch wrestling, professional style. That's what I'm learning under Karl Gotch.

FCF: Why don't you give our readers your definition of Catch wrestling and the professional style?
MF: Well the folk style of wrestling like they have in the United States. You'll hear it called collegiate style or high school style is amateur Catch wrestling. We know this to be a fact because Farmer Burns, whom I consider the Grandmaster of Catch Wrestling, was a professional Catch wrestler. But what did he do? He set out and taught other pros and other amateurs. In fact, the first wrestling team at a high school in Iowa to win a state championship was coached my Farmer Burns. Tom Jenkins, another Catch wrestler, coached at Navy. He had several battles, not only with Farmer Burns, but with Frank Gotch. How could they be teaching something other than what they were doing? They just taught a watered down version. You weren't allowed to do all the submissions, so it was called amateur Catch wrestling, but they stopped calling it that and called it folk style, but most people call it collegiate style. The best example I can give you of a professional Catch wrestler is if someone is a professional boxer he doesn't just throw out the left jab and right hook, he has all of those, plus other things he does. He cheat with his elbows, he'll headbutt if he can get away with it. He'll hit you when you're in between the ropes if he can get away with it because the referee isn't going to disqualify you very often, except when you go out like Golota did to Riddick Bowe. [laughs] But I've watched professional boxing matches where the referee has repeatedly warned the boxer, but he doesn't kick him out of the fight. Maybe after 10 or 12 warnings, he'll say, "alright point deducted." Well, I'm making the same point about professional Catch wrestling, amateur Catch wrestling is the base. You've got the take downs, you've got the throws, and you've got the riding and pinning and all the controlling holds. But you've also got the submission, which they refer to as "hooking." And then you've got "ripping", which is the highest level, were really rough house tactics. And that's all part of Catch-As-Catch-Can wrestling. This is where I have problems, when you see something promoted as Catch wrestling that doesn't have one take down being shown, doesn't show any reversals, doesn't show how to wrestled from your side or from your knees, doesn't show figure fours, in fact, talks about all the positions of the guard, the mount, the side mount, etc., those are all Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu terms. That's not Catch wrestling. So that's where I have some really strong opinions on this matter.

FCF: You mentioned some of your instructors or coaches before, but can you tell us who you studied under?
MF: Dan Gable, an Olympic gold medallist at Iowa, Jay Robinson was an Olympian who was also at Iowa. He is the head coach at the University of Minnesota now. Chuck Yagla, Mark Johnson, head coach for the University of Illinois, these are all at the University of Iowa that I am covering. Lanny Davidson, who was a great coach of mine for one year at Iowa, then he went on to LSU with Kevin Jackson, and then LSU dropped the program and he landed at University of Oklahoma and Kevin Jackson at Iowa State. Then at Edinboro, I had Bruce Baumgartner, who is an Olympic champion and a three-time world champion. He was an assistant coach at the time, the head coach was Mike DeAnna, who was a four-time All American for Iowa and one of the most phenomenal wrestlers you'll ever see, just a phenomenal athlete. And in Shuai-chiao, I had Dr. Daniel Weng, Ted Mancuso for Kung Fu and Tai Chi, Adam Shu and then Karl Gotch.

FCF: What is your opinion of other grappling arts such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Sambo?
MF: You can only judge an art based on that art. You can compare it to other arts, but it's kind of difficult unless you're just saying we do this and they do that. Can you really compare and give an accurate assessment by comparing it to Karate? It's hard, they're both very, very different. My initial opinion of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was I didn't like it. The first time I saw any kind of Jiu-Jitsu was when Dan Severn was up against Royce Gracie in the UFC. I was totally appalled. A guy laid on his back for 15 minutes and he wins? [laughs] How can that be a victory? [laughs] It went completely against everything that I was taught as a wrestler and a guy in combat sports. To lay on your back was something that you just didn't do. Then I went back and watched the other UFCs and Gracie didn't fight that way in those. He went in and took the guy down and he got on top of him and he choked him out or arm barred him. He wasn't as passive. Then I got really excited and I liked it. I was a fan, I thought "man, this guy is great." Whether or not I liked some of the things he did, I liked what the guy did. I wanted to see him compete, whether it was to win or lose, I wanted to see this guy. So I started checking into Jiu-Jitsu. I wanted to do it. But I was kind of turned off by some of the people who practiced it who were wearing blue belts and thought that they were king of the world. Then I was turned off to it. So I never really got involved in it. I had a few exchanges, like I would teach some take downs and he would show me some submissions and stuff like that. Then I started learning some Sambo and different aspects of Sambo. I liked that because it was more wide open with leg locks and stuff like that. I thought this is cool. When I started learning Catch wrestling, that's when I got really excited because it had the amateur schooling that I had, you don't go to your back, and you're not simply going to fall down and that appealed to me. And all my take downs were still valid. Then they were refined with Karl [Gotch] because a professional is better than an amateur. If you go to a professional football coach and he should have better teaching skills than somebody from high school that is teaching. That's what really excited me, how much more refined the techniques were and how much easier they were to execute. But the thing is, is that I respect all combat styles. I respect Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Sambo and all that. I watched the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament in Florida, the Pan-Ams [Pan-American BJJ Tournament] and I thought it was great to watch. Some people said to me that you got to get in and compete in this. And I said, "hey, I don't even wear a gi." But that might be something that I want to enter in the future, to enter a BJJ tournament, even if I haven't been trained in a gi. I love competition of all sorts. So, to sum it up, my initial impression of BJJ was I didn't like it. My second impression was that I liked it. Then third and most important impression when I went to Abu Dhabi and saw the world championships and reported on it, it was great. It really opened my eyes. There is just so many different ways that BJJ can be done. You'll see guys fall to their backs and use the guard and be more passive, but at the same time you'll see guys that won't let you take them down. You have to work for it. Then you'll find guys doing that art that are really good on their feet and they'll take you down. What I then concluded was that it isn't a style thing, but it was a personality thing. That the way Renzo Gracie does BJJ is very different than Rickson Gracie does it. Or the way Rigan Machado does it is very different than the way Jean Jacques Machado does it. Completely different but their practicing the same art. And the same can be said about wrestlers. There are wrestlers that are the biggest stallers and are so boring to watch that you would never want to watch. And then there are guys that are exciting and you don't want to miss their match. That's how I knew that my initial impressions were wrong. I have friends on both sides. Steve Maxwell, who is a world champion in BJJ, is a very good friend of mine and some people have tried to paint a picture of me being anti-BJJ, but that isn't really true.

FCF: You are very outspoken and not afraid to openly state your opinion. There are a lot of issues that I have heard you comment on and I heard a lot of other people's reaction to those comments, so I'm going to play devil's advocate and ask you a lot of tough questions if you don't mind? Why did you leave Iowa and the tutelage of the legendary Dan Gable to wrestle your senior year at the University of Pennsylvania? Some people say that you could not win a division I championship, so you went to a division II school, where you won the championship. How do you respond to these detractors?
MF: Well, first thing that I would say is what have the people making that crack accomplished? They make like winning a division II national championship is like skipping rope in the park. Believe me, winning a division II national title in 1985 when I won it, was hard, ball breaking work, and nothing to take lightly. And the same can be said about division III, junior college title, and an NAIA title. There's different levels. I figured it out on paper, I had 39 wins that year. Of those 39 wins, that 96% of those victories were against division I competition. So they make it like everyone I beat was this no good, slob, when that's simply not true. When I was at Iowa, I won 80% or more of my matches, but I can't give you more accurate numbers, I'd have to put it on paper. I wrestled in division I tournaments from the first day that I went to Iowa till the day I left Edinboro. I wrestled in dual meets against division I competition. At Edinboro, we wrestled Iowa State, we wrestled Kent State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, West Virginia, Pitt, Penn State, I can go on and on. These aren't rinky-dink, hole in the wall colleges with guys that are skateboarding when they are supposed to be practicing. [laughs] The other thing that I will say about that is that was in 1985, this is the year 2000, come on. That was 15 years ago. It's basically an attempt to pigeon hole me and say that Matt Furey was only a division II champion. If I haven't improved in 15 years, then okay, I will bury my head in the sand and I'll never say another word. What their doing is saying the equivalent of saying that Bruce Baumgartner wasn't even a state champion in high school. No he wasn't, I think he took third. But he went on to win two Olympic titles, be in 4 Olympiads, medal in all four of them, won three world titles and wasn't beaten by an American in like 15 years. Did he improve after high school? I think so. And have I improved since college? No question about it.

FCF: A lot of competitors were insulted at your articles after the 1999 Abu Dhabi Championships. You initially responded to these critics by saying that you would compete in the following event. What ever came of that? Why didn't you compete this past year?
MF: Well, I think that you are getting a few of the facts incorrect here and I'm not saying this to put you down, I just want to clear the record. The very article that I did on the 1999 Abu Dhabi Championships was printed in my newsletter, G.A.I.N., Grappling Arts International Newsletter, and then it was taken and divided up into several articles and put into the grappling magazine that is put out by CFW Enterprises, which I also write for. In the article that I wrote, which was divided into 5 or 6 other articles because I did a lot of coverage for it, I said this tournament was my kind of tournament. And that, while there, I announced my intention that I wanted to go there next year and compete, and I had that in the article. And when I came home, I said the same thing. Now there are a couple reasons why I said that. When I came back from China, after winning the world championships in Shuai-chiao, in February of 1998, Guy Neivens from the Abu Dhabi group called me and invited me to go to Abu Dhabi and compete. I had just got back from China, I hadn't really been training for a couple weeks and the tournament was in a couple of weeks, so I said no. It was as simple as that. I was just getting my business rolling. I can make a lot of excuses, but the fact is that I didn't want to go because I wasn't ready. I hadn't trained in that and frankly, I didn't understand where Abu Dhabi was and what it was at that point. Then people came back and you heard all these great stories. So the next year, I was invited to go and cover it because I had my own magazine and I got excited while watching it and thought it was great. I'm sitting with Todd Hester, who is the editor of CFW and I asked him how do you think I would do because he had seen me work out. He said, "I think you would do very, very well here." So it wasn't like somebody read something that I wrote and got upset and I responded by saying something like, "okay, I'm going to go next year and kick everybody's butt." It wasn't like that. Now in December of this year, I gave a seminar in Philly, PA for Steve Maxwell and his BJJ school, who is affiliated with Relson Gracie. They loved it. This is all BJJ people and they loved it. They learned a lot and had a great time. It was one of the most enjoyable and memorable experiences that I have had in a wrestling room or whatever you want to call it. During the seminar, I wrestled seven guys, and good guys, from his school in a row. I had someone filming it, so I could send it to Abu Dhabi to Guy Neivens because that was one of the requirements, please take this footage and consider me. Invitations were not even sent out to anybody by that time. They were sent out a month prior to the event. And I tapped out every single guy that I had been wrestling with, with submissions that I had learned from Karl Gotch. And Steve is loving it. He said that he's never seen things done like this before, etc. When the seminar was over, we went out to eat, when we got back to his house, I called up Karl. I told him how the seminar went and that I had video taped myself rolling with seven different guys and that I had done okay. I'm not telling him that I killed everyone because I just don't talk that way and I'm looking at how I did and I'm saying that I did alright. I need to work on this and I need to work on that, etc.. And I'm telling him what I tapped the guys out with. At that point Karl was about two weeks away from bi-lateral hip replacement surgery. And he said to me that he would rather have me wait and not have me go to Abu Dhabi in February because he would be unable to help me while he is recovering from his hip surgery. It's not like he can get right out on the mat a week later and help refine the things he had been showing me before he went in for surgery. So, that hurt. For one, I'm NOT going to disrespect Karl and say you don't know what you're doing and I know what I'm doing and I'm going to compete. He basically left it up to me. But, like I said, he's my teacher. He's who I'm learning from and I'm going to give him that respect. But this is going to suck, guys are going to say that I'm chicken, that I'm afraid, but I'll eat it. I made an announcement and sure enough, they said that I'm scared and that I don't know what I'm doing, etc.. But the deal is that Karl wanted me to wait, not only because he would have more time with me, but because he wants me to give the best possible showing that I can. He wants to be able to say, "okay Matt, you're ready. It's time for you to go." So that's what I'm going to do. But to say that I'm chicken or I'm scared, [if that was so] I wouldn't be doing a Catch wrestling seminar at a BJJ school. That's like walking into the lion's den, if you know what I mean. If I didn't have anything worth doing, I wouldn't have dared to take on seven guys in a row. That would be like suicide because if one guy tapped me out, then I'm like nothing right? [laughs] I don't believe that, but you get me point. They are going to go "he's nothing, so and so tapped him." That's the bottom line, I WILL be competing, but I have to do it not only my terms, but Karl's also.

FCF: Are you guys gearing up for the 2001 Abu Dhabi?
MF: Well, I would like to go, but I'm not going to do what I did last year and say that I'm definitely going for two reasons, first, it's really up to the Sheik, Guy Neivens, and the selection committee and even if, like I announced only my intention last year, I would be presumptuous to say that I'm definitely going. I would like to go, but at the same time, if there's something better for me to compete in at that time, which I don't foresee, in terms of a Catch wrestling style professional match with me against such and such, then maybe I wouldn't go. But I'm all about bringing Catch wrestling back to life and maybe it cannot be brought back to the professional level like it was at the turn of the century, maybe it can be. But that's first and foremost my objective. The other types of tournaments are secondary, but I will do those types of tournaments if that's what I need to do to prove or showcase my abilities. But win, lose, or draw, people can count on me to go out there and give everything I have and compete as hard as I can. And when the match is over, if a guy beats me, then I will shake his hand and say "you were great today." That's part of being a sportsman and being a true athlete.

FCF: Okay, now let's get to the meat of the interview. First off, I don't want this to turn into a pissing contest or try to rekindle any animosity between you and Tony Cecchine. FCF wants to give you an opportunity to respond to Tony's comments, in a fair and equitable manner. I assume that you read the interview with Tony Cecchine in the last couple issues of FCF. What is your side of the story as far as why you stopped working together?
MF: I could go on and on with examples, but let's just put it this way. He misrepresented his credentials, his background and his experiences. Ninety percent of everything he told me, when I checked up on it, I found it to be flat-out false. I found his techniques to be show holds rather than real hooks. I found his stories about the history of Catch to be distorted so that he could make money. I found, as have other business people, that Tony will betray you in a second if it suits his purposes. He deliberately hurt and maimed people at seminars while demonstrating holds. This is something I have videotaped evidence to prove. His claims about his teachers are not true. He said his so-called teacher Stanley Radwan could tear quarters in half with his bare hands. This is something you can't even do with a pair of pliers in each hand. Now he claims that Lou Thesz is his teacher. Nothing could be further from the truth. In a nutshell, the guy has bastardized the art of Catch wrestling, teaching pro wrestling show holds that only work on lousy wrestlers or guys who just lie there. When I supposedly knew nothing about submission, Cecchine and I wrestled. There were two witnesses who saw this. We started on the ground and five minutes later he gave up and said, "That's the longest anyone has rolled with me in four years." That explains why today, he won't accept my challenge to a Catch wrestling rules match or even a demonstration of holds where the audience can judge who knows what better. He knows I'm training with the real deal and that is something he wants no part of because it will expose him. Inside of four minutes, a young Karl Gotch would have crippled me for life. There's a lot wrong with this guy saying he's a hooker, but he won't compete and prove it.

FCF: Cecchine also stated that you made a comment stating that you could not break any bones with submission holds and that was totally irresponsible?
MF: Let me tell you something. People get in an arm bar and say they got their arm broken, but they didn't get their arm broken. They got their elbow dislocated or they popped a capsule in their elbow. Somebody would say "Oh, I got my leg broken from a heel hook or an ankle lock, or whatever." But they didn't get their ankle broken…you follow what I'm saying? Now, I'm not saying that never, ever, in any circumstance, can anything not get broken. I will say this, I've never put on a submission hold and broken a bone. I've never seen anybody put it on somebody in practice or in a match and break a bone. I've talked with very, high level guys and they've said the same. I've talked with Karl Gotch and he flat out said that he's never broken a bone with a submission. You tear ligaments and you tear tendons. That's where the damage is. Now, let's say you could break a bone with a submission, his [Tony Cecchine] holds don't. On his video tape series, he has a couple of holds that he shows called a short arm scissors and a forearm lock. And he says that he can literally break the guy's forearm bone with these holds. Now if that's true, then why did two of my students, in San Jose, California, one was named Damon Ferguson and the other one was named Colin Naylor, beginners with not even a year of experience, lie there and allow him to put on a short arm scissors and a forearm lock on and they didn't even tap out. They just looked at him, laughed and said that it didn't even hurt. That's when Karl Gotch said that these are show holds, these aren't hooks. Now there are other people he will put those holds on and they'll tap out. But he's not breaking bones with them, I'll tell you that much. It's possible that a bone can be broken in certain situations, but every time that I've seen things broken, it is from a fall or it is from a strike. It somebody gets thrown, like Igor Zinoviev broke his collar bone or you'll see someone get kicked in the arm or in the leg and they'll get a bone broken from a Muay Thai kick. That's how bones get broken. In submission, you tear ligaments and you tear tendons. And all these people who said at the Arnold Classic, a guy got his arm broken in two places from a compression lock. I talked to John Saylor, they're supposed to send me the video tape of it. It's TWO MONTHS after, where's the video tape of it? If the guy got his arm broke with this lock, I WANT TO SEE IT! And if the guy truly got his arm broken with that, then I will amend what I said. I will say, "yeah, I saw a guy get his arm broken with this lock." Or if somebody got his leg broken with an ankle lock then let me see it on video. I can tell you that ligaments and tendons are what get hurt. And that's bad enough! If you get your ligaments in your knee torn up, completely severed, you're never going to be the same again. To me, a broken bone can be one of the best thing that can happen in some of these situations. To not be able to use your shoulder or your knee because your ligaments have been severed, that's pretty sad.

FCF: Cecchine also stated that Karl Gotch was a very good wrestler, but there are many other wrestlers that were better than Gotch. How do you respond to this comment?
MF: Well, it's funny. The first letter that Tony Cecchine sent me, when he sent his initial video tape, in the very final sentence of it, he says, "why is it that the Gracie's never challenged Karl Gotch or any of the other great hookers? Please call me sometime as I have some great Karl Gotch stories to tell you." That's his first letter to me in May of 1998. I still have it. Then he came to my boot camp in 1998 and everyone there can verify that all he did was stand around, holding court telling nothing but Karl Gotch stories and telling everyone that this guy is the greatest. He's the best hooker that he's ever known, etc., etc., etc.. And he talked about him as if they were close friends and had done things together and he trained with him and he knew him and he had spoken with him on the phone all these times. And I was fooled by that. He would say, "what I'm showing you is just the tip of the iceberg of Catch wrestling. There's so much more that's coming out later." And I saw what came out later, and it got worse. It didn't get better. So then I hooked up with Karl because I had all these questions. Here's a guy saying that he met John Pesek and that he learned the top wrist lock from him. We figured it out, the guy would have been 84 years old and it would have been the day that Pasek had died that he would have had to meet him. He said that he met him at a funeral in Cleveland. I found out that John Pasek never left his farm from Ravenna, Nebraska for the last thirty years of his life. And that the top wrist lock is the crowning jewel of Catch wrestling. Karl Gotch laughed and said that it's nothing but a set up for a shoulder lock. The old timers never intended for it to be a submission. He said that no good guy was ever going to get tapped out from a top wrist lock. So when I met Karl in April of 1999, I had all these questions. I didn't even tell him that Cecchine has these guys saying that this guy is not a Catch wrestler. I asked what is a Catch wrestler. He said, "you're a Catch wrestler." And he explained the evolution of it and how it was brought over to this country. [Gotch] just laid out a completely different picture. Well, what about Wigan and the Billy Riley Gym? I heard that you would just bring guys in and just beat them to death and if they came back…all of this stuff that I had, I'm sorry to say, been taking from Cecchine as fact and writing it on my web site as if it was truth. I felt ashamed of myself. How stupid could I have been to believe such an idiot, telling me all these lies. The good thing about Karl is like he always says, "talk is cheap, but money buys whiskey." Never has he ever told me something that he could not back up. He would say that Pesek wasn't even a top wrist lock guy. He was a toe hold guy. Karl can flip open a book and show ya. He can verify what he is saying. He's been a historian his whole life. He has a library of all these books. And I'd say, "well, I heard that Sambo got all it's leg locks from Catch wrestling," and he would go, "that's crazy! Sambo comes from more than 20 different forms of wrestling in Russia alone!" Then they added Aikido and Jiu-Jitsu and he got the Sambo books and he showed me. Then I thought, hell, what have I been hearing? So I reported what he told me and boy, did that stir up a hornet's nest. One of the things that Karl says, "only a fool hates the truth, but the world is full of fools." [laughs] Well, what I found out is when you tell people the truth, most people don't like it. I mean, in this interview I'm being more frank than I've ever been, but if I told everything I knew, I think it would be too much.

FCF: You made strong comments against carnival wrestlers, who are highly regarded by Cecchine. Tell us what you think about them and why do you feel that way?
MF: Well, if carnival wrestlers were all that great they would have been pro. One of the arguments is Farmer Burns and Frank Gotch, all of these men who Furey loves and adores were involved in carnivals. Well, the truth is they weren't. They were barnstormers. Barnstormers are not the same as a carny. A barnstormer was somebody like Frank Gotch, who traveled to Alaska, by himself, and took on all comers and came home with $30,000 in the early 1900s. It would be like worth millions today. Farmer Burns was the same way. They did get involved with theatre groups. But they aren't the same as carnivals were in, say, the 50s. These guys [carnival wrestlers] were involved with the carnivals because they didn't have the skills to be pro. In the 1950s and on, where you've got television, a star can be made in a month, Lou Thesz said that you can become a champion and make everyone know about him inside four or five weeks. What were those guys doing in the carnivals? That's not where the money is. So, the skills of the carnys who he [Cecchine] glories, "ooh, they knew so much and they were the great hookers," etc. Now we've seen what he thinks about Karl Gotch when it affects the bottom line. He says that Gotch is good, but there were better and Gotch never had any shoots and these carnival wrestlers had more shoots in a day than Karl Gotch ever had in his career. That's ridiculous! They weren't having matches with skilled wrestlers. They were fighting guys who got conned into the ring and didn't even know how to wrestle. That's like me saying that I had ten shoot matches today. I beat up five surf boarders, three skateboarders, and 2 soccer players. Big deal! You name one thing other than buying cotton candy or a caramel apple that isn't a con game [at a carnival]. So anybody that glorifies the carnival guys and says that these are people that he respects the most? Boy, that's a revealing statement. Somebody that fleeces the market for thirty years and these are the guys that you have the most respect for? As the nuns used to say in Catholic school, "birds of a feather, flock together." So if somebody tells me the people that they respect most are carnys, then, well, that says all I need to know about him.

FCF: This kind of goes off the subject, but do you ever plan on competing in NHB?
MF: I don't know, possibly. We'll have to see. In terms of submission, I've told you flat out that I plan on it, but no-holds barred, I don't know. There's a chance.

FCF: Do you work on your striking?
MF: Yeah, I do, but the majority of the stuff I work on is the submissions and the wrestling. Striking is not my forte, but it's not something that I completely ignore either.

FCF: Do you have any students that will or are competing in NHB?
MF: No, not right now. In San Jose, I worked with different guys at one time. I worked with guys like Brian Johnston, who fought in 3 or 4 UFCs and who is now a member of New Japan Pro-Wrestling outfit and is doing very, very well. I've done a seminar with Guy Metzger, down in Texas. He's a great guy and boy, he's got a club of really good guys there. And these guys respect my skills and talents and I respect theirs, but I don't have any NHB guys who are ready to step into the ring. But I'm not training anybody or searching for anybody to train either.

FCF: What are your future plans?
MF: Well, my main thing right now is that my wife just gave birth to a baby boy on Monday.

FCF: Congratulations.
MF: Thanks and so, you know how they say, "God first, family second, and everything else third," I'm not saying that. Well, I kind of am, I guess. The most important thing in my life is my family. And that comes first and foremost. After that, I'm looking at the competition in the submission arena and in terms of my business, I have my new book Combat Conditioning, which is basically already a best seller. I will continue on the same line, putting out first class, top notch information on conditioning for combat or fitness. I've gotten probably more from that than anything that I've ever done. Each day, I probably get 20 or 30 emails a day from people telling me how their lives have changed because of the book. How much it helped them and how they are able to do things that they never thought that they could do, much less at 40 or 50 years of age. Their grappling skills have improved or their fighting is better…that means a lot to me. And I want to continue along those lines. But, I'm not planning on putting out a Catch Wrestling video series. So, how can I be about making money with this thing when one guy's got 10 videos and I'm not considering it. It's not something that I'm going to do.

FCF: Some of the videos that you have out now have neck breaks and submissions. Wouldn't that be considered Catch Wrestling?
MF: Well, the video I have on neck cranks, yeah, that's Catch Wrestling holds. But those were put out almost a year ago. What I mean is that I'm not going to put out any more. Those are already out. Anything that I put out that has any kind of wrestling has Catch Wrestling, whether it's collegiate, which is what I went over earlier, that's amateur Catch Wrestling. I'm not coming out with a video series on Catch wrestling and neither is Karl Gotch. Period. And the reason is, if people want to learn, they can come to me and learn or come to my seminars. The way the art is being past on to me by Karl Gotch, for decades the only way he taught anybody, and still the same way, is they've got to do the conditioning first. And he's giving me his knowledge as quickly as he can. I mean, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. This guy has pasted on the conditioning, which that alone means the world to me. But he's past on the knowledge of Catch Wrestling, the professional way, in great depth and he's never held back. I can't say enough good things about him. I want to pass on the art the way that Karl is passing it on to me. Karl is not against me doing it in the future, he's said that, especially when these guys are saying that I'm just out to make a buck with this and I'm only out for the money. I'll show them that I'm not out for money. I'll say this, and this may sound bragadocious or whatever, but I think that people would be hard pressed to prove it wrong, there's nobody in the martial arts that puts out more free information on a regular basis on the Internet than I do. Every single day you've got the Furey Files, in which I put up information on training, on combat, and motivation. I got mattfurey.com, which is another one where I put up daily posts. Nobody does that like I do. I've been doing that since 1997 regularly, every day. Now some of it's off the subject, but it's still entertaining and fun and the vast majority is very helpful to people. And I'm going to continue to do this. I'm going to prove my value and create relationships with people all over the world and help them to become better athletes and get in better condition and become better fighters from the knowledge that I'm given.

FCF: Do you have anything inked as far as submission matches or coming up?
MF: Well, I'm not going to say when or where again because if I don't go for some reason, let's say my little boy has something wrong with him and I have to take him to the hospital, everybody thinks that's an excuse. If these guys think that I'm chicken or something, they can come and work out with me anytime. I'm in Tampa, Florida, my number is (813) 994-8267. If I'm so chicken, why would I say the types of things that I'm saying? Why would I go and give seminars where guys who are very skilled come and I have matches right at the seminar. I don't do it with every single guy or at every seminar or with every single person. But I'm far from being a coward. At the same time, I'm not going to say when and where until it's over. [laughs] And that's what I did the last time I competed in Shuai-chiao. I didn't tell anyone that I was going to be in the tournament. I just showed up on that day. I hadn't competed in a year and a half. That's what I'm going to do with submission, I'm just going to show up at one of these tournaments and it will probably be by the end of the year. And that's all I'm going to say and we'll take it from there. Or we'll have some old style professional Catch-As-Catch-Can wrestling matches, it will be a challenge match against somebody else and it will be video taped in a small place. Like in the old times, heck, they'd do it on the grass and a crowd of people would gather. It doesn't have to be in a football stadium where there are 30,000 or 40,000 people there. That's not going to happen, that's WWF. I would say by the end of the year you would be able to see me compete in some venue of submission, but where and when I'm not going to say.

FCF: Do you have a school in Tampa?
MF: I have a club basically. We have about 10-15 guys that train together regularly.

FCF: Is it just a place to train or do you teach guys there?
MF: Yeah, I teach classes out of there and Karl's there and he teaches. And another guy, A. J. Comparetto teaches out of there. He's a great guy. And he teaches us and the other people basically learn from me. Karl shows them conditioning and stuff like that, but basically you've got to pay your dues. He doesn't just show anybody throws, or takedowns or submissions. He wants to see what you're made of first. And if you stick around and bust your ass, he'll like you and he'll show you. It's not a money making thing that I do. My money making thing is my publishing business. My club, I charge a fee, but it's only because I have to pay rent. It's not a commercial space, it's just 10 or 15 guys that get together and train and we're all friends. There's a coach-student relationship there, but they realize that I'm a student of the game and I'm a coach and Karl's the same way. He always says, "once you stop learning, you're dead. You should learn until the day you die." And that's the way that I am, and that's the attitude that we want to pass on to anyone who trains with us.

FCF: Is there anything else you would like to add?
MF: Well, if people want to get in touch with me for my book on conditioning or any of my other products, they can go to my site, I have two of them, combatwrestling.com and mattfurey.com or they can call me and get a catalog at (813) 994-8267. Other than that, I wish all the readers of Full Contact Fighter all the best for the rest of the year and always. And I appreciate you taking the time to interview me and give me a fair say on this volatile issue. There's going to be some people that are not going to like anything that I have to say, but I think that they are going to be happy with it.

FCF: Thanks for staying up for me. [It was past midnight by the time the interview was over].
MF: Thank you.