What in the world is “Shrimp Hardening”?

So if you watch any Japanese wrestling you’ll have probably run into this. 片エビ固め.

Those kanji sent me down a rabbit hole. Apparently it actually means a lot of things.

Ok first off that kanji means a pair. However “kata” also means shoulder but its a different kanji, 肩. So who knows which of those they mean. A pair or legs? A pair of shoulders? Shoulders?

Secondly, ebigatame, エビ固め, is definitely a shrimp hold, which is indeed a Boston Crab. Ebi, エビ, is shrimp. Period. Gatame, 固め, is also absolutely “hardening”.

So where does it get confusing? Well, it is absolutely a Boston Crab….

But… lets dork it up. I ran into a lot of stuff. Here’s the short version.

This terms comes from Okinawan wrestling. Like, real wrestling. They call it Tegumi. It starts like sumo where you run at each other to start and collide but then turns into throws and grappling. It actually pre-dates Karate. Apparently it had a famous practitioner named Funakoshi. Funakoshi also became the “father of modern Karate”.

In his autobiography, Funokoshi says, “One [technique] that I recall well was very similar to the ebigatama (leg block and three quarter nelson) of today’s professional wrestling. When I watch wrestling on television nowadays, I am often reminded of the Tegumi of my Okinawan youth”

What! A leg block and 3/4 nelson? Why sir, that is a fucking wrestling pin. It looks like this:

And just to REALLY mess us up, Sambo also has this term from Japanese… but its a knee bar!

So if the guy was talking about pro wrestling, it almost certainly was the pin fall… but maybe also the crab? Also, nobody pins people like that, but it does look similar to “shoot the half” “hook the leg” and all that noise. 

Then though, Fire Pro Wrestling move editor actually helps clarify even more. Kataebigatame for a single leg hook pin and gyakuebigatame for the Boston Crab. “Gyaku” meaning “reverse”. It doesn’t look like the reverse of a single leg pin but…. lets not ask any more questions. Which also goes for, why is “gatame” which means “to harden” used for a “hold”? Who knows, thats getting too deep into linguistics for me. I did see it comes from a judo term, 固め技, “gatamewaza” which just means “grappling technique” or something.

Anyways this got long. Bottom line, it means both a single leg hook pin and a Boston Crab (+ knee bar!)

Today we learned. Now go out there and dunk on people and pretend you already knew all this.