Kurash
Central Asian jacket wrestling, at home in Uzbekistan. It is fought strictly standing, with no locks and no chokes; the referee's commands remain in Uzbek.
Quick Facts
UzbekistanCharacter & 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.
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About Kurash
Kurash is a Central Asian jacket wrestling style, at home above all in Uzbekistan, where it is attested for centuries as part of weddings and festivals. The rules are strictly standing: throws and leg sweeps are allowed, all action on the floor is forbidden, and the bout is stopped the moment a wrestler goes down. No joint locks and no chokes are permitted, which sharply separates kurash from judo, with which it is often compared. Wrestlers compete in a cloth jacket with a belt around the waist; the grip is restricted, which keeps the bout fast and legible even to a spectator who does not know the rules. Kurash took its modern shape at the end of the twentieth century: on 6 September 1998 the International Kurash Association was founded in Tashkent by representatives of twenty-eight states from Asia, Europe and the Americas, meeting at the first international tournament. The referee's commands remain in Uzbek, a deliberate choice to keep the sport's origin visible after internationalisation. Kurash first appeared at the Asian Games as a demonstration sport in Doha in 2006 and is today a full part of the programme of the Asian Games, the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games and the Asian Beach Games.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.