The Japanese twist looks a lot like the abdominal stretch and therefore you’ll see people confuse the two holds all the time on youtube and on different women’s wrestling sites. The truth is though that by applying a Japanese twist, the attacker targets a different area of her opponent’s body and does it in a different way: by using her legs.

The Japanese twist is such a positively vicious-looking female wrestling hold, it puzzles me every time how a girl can get out of it.

The attacker bends her opponent (by delivering a belly punch for instance) and then gets her right leg over and around her neck, effectively catching the neck of the victim in her knee-bend. She grabs hold of the left arm of the victim and pulls it backward, while leaning back and pushing forward with the leg which is around the victim’s neck. The attacker can choose to just stand on her other leg, or she can wrap it around the victim’s supporting leg, in which case she is able to put more power into the hold.

For some reason it always seems to me like the attacker could rip the victim’s head clean off pretty much at will in this hold. A fully sunk-in Japanese twist has the victim bearing the entire weight of her opponent as she is subjected to extreme physical abuse.

Possible escape: on my part, I think the only escape from a Japanese twist should be through tapping out. In pro women’s matches though, the victim often escapes the hold, by simply collapsing to the mat or by having the opponent break it for some unknown reason.

Rating: the Japanese Twist should be an extremely efficient female wrestling submission hold. It looks positively vicious and it hurts like hell too. No female wrestler should ever be able to escape a well executed Japanese twist.

Courtesy of Sleeperkidsworld.com