The Crab in the Cage

Crabs are not often found in MMA cages

One of my loyal readers sent me a link to a story describing the finish of a recent MMA match in England.  It seems some fighter won his bout using a classic pro wrestling move: the Boston Crab!  Here we see him sitting into position, cranking on the pressure. The article describes it as “an incredible pro-wrestling style Boston Crab submission!”

I made it look like he’s using the dude as a rocking chair.

I love when pro wrestling crosses over into other sports or pop culture in general.  And everybody understands the reference, and you realize that just about everybody secretly watches and enjoys wrestling (and maybe beats off to it.)  Here we see the Heel stick out his tongue and rock back further, causing his Jobber to slap the mat furiously.

Tap out or be broken in half.

If you watch the video available at the above link, you will hear the fight announcers screaming their heads off, just losing their shit when they see the Boston Crab applied:

“NOOO!  The BOSTON CRAAAB!”    

“Never… in my LIFE… have I seen ANYTHING like THAT!!!!”

“And the Walls of Jericho finishes it!”

One announcer refers to the move as the “Walls of Jericho”, revealing an even deeper awareness of the variation of this classic pro wrestling hold.  He must really dig pro wrestling!

Then Chris Jericho himself found out that an MMA fighter had borrowed his awesome finishing move and he Tweeted his reaction:

Jericho’s tweet went somewhat viral with many Twitter users posting responses that reveal how excited they felt seeing this common pro wrestling hold being used in the MMA cage — how much they’re clearly into wrestling.

Here are some of the posts from Twitter with my own reactions written as a caption underneath.

The fighter who was defeated by this “fake” rasslin’ move must have felt ashamed.  For my reader who sent me the link, it was precisely the loser’s embarrassment that made this scene exciting to witness:

“It’s so hot, so humiliating for the loser. The winner could have finished him easily in other ways, he was clearly in control.  But he chose to finish the guy in this totally humiliating way.  Love it!”

One user posted an animation of a big masked beast Boston Crabbing a much smaller, much weaker victim.  I didn’t know how to save the animation but I was able to capture this still image.

I think it’s a pretty hot image — the classic gear, the big guy’s over-sized arm, the use of a classic killer move.

I don’t watch much MMA fighting (not nearly flirtatious, campy, or sexually suggestive enough for my tastes), but I promise that if they begin to perform more classic rasslin’ moves like this in the cage, then I will watch it more (and probably so would a lot of other dudes.)