Mbe'ere Traditional Wrestling

Ghanaian Wrestling

Member Organization(s)

Ghana Wrestling Association (GHAWA)

Introduction

Mbe`ere is a traditional wrestling in Ghana. The techniques involve grabbing, pulling, lifting, throwing, locking the opponent’s limbs, etc. However, grabbing the genitals, strangling, and biting are forbidden. The fights can be violent and keep until one will be floored. There is no formal ranking or grading system, but the winners receive respect from their peers and the elders.

History

The Gurune people of the Upper East Region of Ghana are traditionally farmers and shepherds. The elders recall that decades ago, Cattle grazing was the job of the young men within the clans. On the grazing fields, they induced the cattle to fight, after which the shepherd boys themselves engaged each other in Wrestling as a means to determine roles and share their food, which they pooled together every morning. In the fields, the winners always shad the best part and larger quantities of the food, and assumed the supervising roles leaving the losers to do the actual work of attending to the animals. The philosophy became established that the strong lead whiles the weak do the work. The strong get the best parts in life while the weak struggle. This is to motivate the weak to strive in the face of all odds to get stronger.

When the colonial veterinary services introduced vaccination for the cattle and other animals, all the clans would assemble their herds and move to the vaccination center several kilometers from their homes. The vaccination took several days and to kill time the shepherd boys took to wrestling between clans. Much later, the communities started wrestling between themselves thus begun inter-community wrestling for social entertainment. Mbe`rer is still practiced in many traditional Gurune communities purely for entertainment but the inter-community competitions have become very rare.

References

Ghana Wrestling Association (2017). WoMAU membership application form.

Musah Mohammed (22 August 2015). “The State of Martial Arts in Ghana”. WoMAU conference. Chungju, Korea.