Coreeda (Aboriginal Wrestling)
Australian wrestling in a ring four and a half metres across. It is a modern reconstruction built on pre-colonial games.
Quick Facts
AustraliaCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Coreeda (Aboriginal Wrestling)
About Coreeda (Aboriginal Wrestling)
Coreeda is an Australian wrestling style combining dance and combat. One distinction matters right from the start: sources agree that this is not an unbroken Aboriginal tradition, but a modern reconstruction created in the twentieth century, based on pre-colonial Aboriginal games. Those older styles are documented by name — among others turdererin, partambelin, goombooboodoo, ami and donaman are recorded — but died out as living practice. Coreeda draws on them, but is not their direct continuation — and this is exactly what tends to be left unsaid about Aboriginal sports.
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It is wrestled in a ring four and a half metres across. The contest has two parts: a dance part, in which the wrestlers imitate the movements of a kangaroo, and a wrestling part, in which a grip is taken on the shirt or the belt and the winner is decided by a throw. The dance is not an introduction but part of the contest — it flows into the grip and back again. No documented founder or year of origin exists. Coreeda is today performed mainly during NAIDOC celebrations, that is, Aboriginal culture week, chiefly in the western suburbs of Sydney. The sport is organised today by the Coreeda Association of Australia. A bout has four rounds of at most two minutes, in which an attacker standing outside the circle alternates with a defender inside it; the weight categories are named after kangaroo species, and teams are divided into a black and a red half after the colours of the Aboriginal flag.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.