Lutte Contact (French Contact Wrestling)
A French contact-wrestling sport from the nineteen-nineties. It allows punches, kicks, throws and locks, but forbids elbows, headbutts and knees to the head.
Quick Facts
FranceCharacter & 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.
About Lutte Contact (French Contact Wrestling)
Lutte contact is a French contact sport put together in the early nineteen-nineties by Christian and Michèle Ribert of Orléans. Both had previously practiced Shorinji Kempo, and this shows in the resulting form: lutte contact rests on combining a striking part and a wrestling part within one rule framework. We have not been able to document the exact year of origin; the sources we found speak only of the early nineteen-nineties. The rules are the decisive thing, because they hold the entire point of the sport. Allowed are hand strikes, kicks, throws, locks and chokes. Forbidden are elbows, headbutts and knees to the head. It is thus deliberately broader than boxing and at the same time deliberately narrower than freestyle wrestling without weapons — the point is to let the two worlds meet, while cutting out the techniques that injure the most. Competitors wear an outfit derived from a kimono without sleeves. The sleeves are missing on purpose: the grip is taken on the fabric of the torso, not on the arm, which changes the whole wrestling part. Competitive history begins with the Golden Trophy, held since 1994. The sport is overseen by the Union française de lutte contact, and about forty clubs are affiliated with it, so it is a minority discipline with a firm but small base.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.