Wrestling as a competitive sport has been recorded in Ireland as far back as the second millennium BC, when it featured as one of the many athletic contests held during the annual Tailteann Games.

[3] The mythical hero Cúchulainn boasted of his prowess in both hurling and wrestling, and was on one occasion enraged by an undead spectre mockingly suggesting that his skill in the latter area had been highly exaggerated.

[8] There appear to have been little or no attempts to moderate these violent aspects of wrestling from a legal point of view; as historian Edward MacLysaght noted in his account of the match, as the participant in a sporting contest Costello had little to fear in terms of official retribution.

[1] Bouts took place between local champions and challengers on a parish level, and those between the most well-known and skilled wrestlers could draw thousands of spectators from across neighbouring counties.

In particular, they claimed that, since the opening stance prevented the "bull-like charges, flying tackles, or other onrushes" common in other wrestling styles, Brollaidheacht encouraged participants to develop "deftness, balance, and leverage allied with strength, [which permitted] a man to win by means of skill instead of sheer might and weight".

[citation needed] Bouts drew large and enthusiastic crowds across the country, and purses of several hundred dollars were routinely offered for championship contests.

[13][14][15] Vermont continued to remain a significant force in the Collar and Elbow world throughout, with two of the style's most notable 19th-century practitioners, Henry Moses Dufur and John McMahon, hailing from Franklin County.

[17] These were largely the same as the Dufur rules, and specified the clear conditions for victory – a wrestler had to throw his opponent flat on his back, similar to the concept of ippon in judo.

[18][19] Although there are accounts of bouts being held in which the combatants were shirtless – particularly in rural areas during the summer months[12] – in its standardised competitive form Brollaidheacht required both participants to wear jackets or heavy shirts that could be gripped and used to set up throwing techniques.

At wrestling events in Dublin, a common method of issuing a challenge was to place a jacket in the centre of the ring and wait for a contender to step in and put it on.

Scufflers would circle each other throwing rapid-fire combinations of trips, taps, kicks, and sweeps in an attempt to off-balance their opponent and send him crashing to the ground – an extended exchange of attack and defense that one historian described as "footsparring".

[1] The demographic and cultural devastation of the former coupled with the oppressive restrictions of the latter resulted in an environment in which Ireland's native wrestling style simply could not be practised, ultimately leading to it fading from everyday life entirely.

A book published in 1908 by An Chomhairle Náisiúnta (The National Council), referring to both wrestling and handball, noted that "although both these pastimes have been on the Gaelic programme since its first appearance, neither has ever received any official encouragement.

"[25] Individual efforts were made to promote Collar and Elbow bouts in Dublin in 1906, but these were "spontaneous and isolated",[11] and the sport was entirely omitted from the largest government-organised athletics event of the period – the short-lived modern revival of the Tailteann Games held after the Irish Civil War.

[27] In his 1959 book Magnificent Scufflers, author Charles Morrow Wilson proposed that, even after Collar and Elbow had vanished as a standalone martial art, it continued to exert an influence on the strategies and techniques used in American collegiate wrestling.