It’s a shame that Billy Robinson is a name that most MMA fans don’t even know.

In fact, Pro wrestling fans are more likely to have heard of the British-born grappler, probably best known for his great success in Japanese pro wrestling circuits of the 1970’s and his role in creating “shoot-style” and “shoot” organizations in the 1990’s. Those very acomplishments are probably enough to get many of us in MMA and jiu-jitsu to close our minds to this man. It’s our loss. He now resides in Arkansas — toiling in relative obscurity for the last several years as he instructing pupils in Catch-as-Catch-Can wrestling, a wrestling style hundreds of years old, with takedowns and submissions to boot.

Credited with helping train MMA legends Kazushi Sakuraba and Josh Barnett, Robinson is one of the world’s last living links to a long and rich wrestling history. While he became famous in typical scripted pro wrestling matches (some a bit more realistic than others), his Catch-As-Catch-Can wrestling is a legitimate style which developed long before Maeda crossed the Pacific Ocean to teach Carlos Gracie in Brazil, or Jigoro Kano founded the Kodokan Dojo in Tokyo. CACC has a heritage which several of our best fighters in the MMA world are looking to rediscover today.

In fact, earlier this month, Josh Barnett dedicated his win at a grappling tournament (somewhat ironically, a no-gi Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament) to Robinson. But it was a couple of videos that surfaced recently that got really caught my attention and offer that the movement to incorporate CACC into MMA may be finally getting a little momentum.

Randy Couture was interviewed by Affliction a few weeks ago, where he mentioned how he is incorporating a Catch-as-Catch-Can wrestling approach for his bout this weekend at UFC 109 against Mark Coleman. “I’m working on my groundfighting with Neil Melanson,” Couture says, “…doing a lot of Catch wrestling… kind of moving away from the jiu-jitsu mentality, working more to looking through a wrestler’s eyes and Catch wrestling and submissions as they come from wrestler’s positions. That’s been an ongoing process for the last seven or eight months.”

Then, last week, a video was posted on the Underground Forum of Robinson being interviewed following an earlier CACC seminar. He’s all class as he congratulates Barnett, describes teaching people how to learn and adapt in their training. He’s a bit less charming as he describes the superiority of his art, and grumbles about “jiu-jitsu idiots.”

In fact, halfway through the video, the strange claim is made of Masahiko Kimura learning the ude-garami, a staple from judo, from Robinson mentor Karl Gotch. This sounds more like bluster than history. But like the braggadocio of Helio Gracie or any other great figure, this doesn’t invalidate all the great technique there is to be learned from this man.

Want an example? Last year, Robinson also participated in an instructional video where he demonstrates the aforementioned double wristlock. The devil’s in the details. I’ve seen the similar Kimura/ude garami done many times before, but little motions from Robinson’s approach — the elbow and knee placement — still look fresh and new.

Robinson’s catch wrestling would seem an easy fit for today’s MMA — with so many athletes from wrestling making the switch to MMA. Why not incorporate a style with the same heritage as your wrestling base? The Couture interview leads one to consider that perhaps the likes of Sakuraba and Barnett could one day be the rule and not the exception.

But right now, that feels like another lifetime away. Robinson is now 70 and it seems unlikely he’ll see the day that Catch-As-Catch-Can wrestling stands next to the likes of jiu-jitsu, as in their famous challenge matches in the 1950’s. In addition to his work in Arkansas, Robinson has joined with Jake Shannon, whose Scientific Wrestling works to build a new beginning for the art — with books, DVDs, seminars and more.

From books to seminars, from concepts to practice, the man’s name is gettting out there again. Billy Robinson is catching momentum and the knowledge he brings can only help raise the bar across the grappling and MMA world.