Cradle of Filth by Neil Melanson
190 reviews · 4.98 / 5
Neil Melanson · Combo
The Catch Wrestling Formula by Neil Melanson has 123 customer reviews in this archive, averaging 4.97 out of 5. 97% are five-star and 0 are one or two stars. Reviews run from February 19, 2018 to October 10, 2025. All of them are published below in full, unedited.
great app
This was my first instructional and it absolutely changed my whole game. Review is a bit late as I watched this as a blue belt and am writing as a brown belt but this instructional does more than just show a series of moves. It helped me understand a new approach to grappling for which Neil provides great instruction. Using half and full stocks from every position, heavy cross faces and head control, cradle sequences, and much more. Fantastic introduction to a more violent style of grappling.
Upped my game significantly.
Coach Neil's awesome catch instructional gives us a unique, effective system to play around with and incorporate into our game along with his invaluable fresh insights into moves you thought you knew. Neil is the best--always enlightening and always refining techniques and tactics.
Neil is the man in Catch wrestling and is considered one of the top coaches in the game. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn some new techniques from a highly sought out coach!
Awesome stuff from Neil which has helped my top game!
great
I appreciated how he integrated other submission grappling systems into a highly technical and unique style.
Own the physical version and watched it lot of time in the last year. Worth every rewatch
Contains lots of cool unorthodox techniques you can use to terrorize your training partners pretty much as soon as you finish watching it. One of my favorite instructionals. Can recommend all of coach Neil's other videos, as well.
Neil is one of the greatest minds in our sport! His systems are hardened in pressure tested! Huge fan, I have nearly all of his DVDs + his book! The danger is in the details!
This is an excellent course that I enjoyed, and every part of it is great! Especially The shoulder pin series closed guard that I will use!
I asked my instructor at one point which person I should watch to emulate and learn from. He recommended Neil and I proceeded to obsessively follow him. He’s a fantastic grappler/teacher and his great strength is systematizing and combining different grappling styles together. Neil provides a lot of material in this instructional. I am particularly fond of the first “disk” where he goes over the whizzer. In my opinion, his teaching on the whizzer is worth the price of the instructional. That particular move has saved me several times. There’s a couple series here that he explores more in depth later on like the cradle of filth. Still, I think this instructional has a lot of gems that are worth studying. You can’t really go wrong with Coach Neil. Stay filthy.
This must be one of the first videos he produced. You can think of it as a tasting menu for the more focused videos he has since created. Though, the core of his game is right here, especially a nice cradle sequence that you can put to immediate use. Highly recommended. Trigger warning: most of this material will make you no friends in a BJJ academy environment. It is pretty nasty.
This series has some great detailed information. I immediately started using parts of the videos in all my roles. Would definitely recommend.
Neil goes through his fundamental ideas of how to control and submit the opponent. I presume this video would be setting the scenes for the other videos isolating the ideas for deeper studies.
One of the first instructionals Neil Melanson did, and one of the first I got. The sound quality isn't always great, but its easily understandable throughout. All the subjects covered in this DVD has been expanded upon with their own separate releases since then, but while here is condensed, its great material and easily applicable. Neil explain great and gives several different options and how they all flow into one another. This is a great DVD if you want to integrate catch wrestling but don't know where to start, since it gives a lot of different options, from the cradle to the Irish collar.
Bringing catch wrestling techniques to a BJJ mat has had great results. Adding these techniques to my already top game heavy BJJ game has felt natural and made my top game more diverse
This one has gold nuggets uncovered every minute of the instructional, and is suitable from beginner to advanced. As a beginner white belt with little mat experience, I used what i could learn from this to roll with higher belts (especially those with more traditional BJJ background) and give them a challenge. As a blue belt, I continued to use this to roll with even higher belts who would ask if I came from a wrestling background (I have zero wrestling background). There area some beautiful head and arm choke sequences that anyone would do well to drill and master. The instructional is like mini snapshots of Neil's advanced, multi-faceted grappling game - the slight glimpses of different aspects make it accessible to the beginner trying to pick up grappling quickly, and yet still invaluable as reference for the longer term.
Awesome series on some brutal catch wrestling techniques! Easy to watch, clear instruction and I've been hitting my students with these techniques in my No Gi classes :) Highly recommended!
really nice stuff here!!!
Everything from Melanson is pure grappling gold. Equal parts brutal and technical!
I have several of Melancon’s programs, this one is probably my favorite, tons of gold here!
A great Overview of some highlights of Neil's techniques. If you love this you'll love the rest of his instructions.
Really enjoyed this. Some nice explanations.
190 reviews · 4.98 / 5
133 reviews · 4.96 / 5
106 reviews · 4.97 / 5
105 reviews · 4.99 / 5
96 reviews · 5.0 / 5
91 reviews · 4.97 / 5
Every number on this page is computed from the 123 reviews above at build time, out of 87,673 in the full archive. See the methodology for how the corpus is collected and what is excluded.