I've always wondered how panantukan/pencak silat/kuntao has managed to continuously evade the bullshido investigators

[TheMaster]

I knew a bouncer at a race track who had legitimate kick boxing fights, but all he used to throw the drunks around was Silat.

I don't think it is any worse than any other non-sparring martial art. It's like poets who don't submit anything--whatever they write is fine.

I thought you said your bouncer friend was using aspects of it on the door.
Real life application > sparring.
And again, you are comparing weapons arts to unarmed combat sports arts.
Very silly comparison for obvious reasons.

 

[SummerStriker]

I thought you said your bouncer friend was using aspects of it on the door.
Real life application > sparring.
And again, you are comparing weapons arts to unarmed combat sports arts.
Very silly comparison for obvious reasons.

Obviously I mentioned his kickboxing experience because I thought it was relevant to his ability to use Silat on drunks. Silat isn't just a weapon art. It is also a grappling and striking art.

Real life application doesn't mean much because you might be doing application on weaklings.

One time when I was young, I was sparring this guy and I realized I was a lot better than him, so I started hitting him with Toph's earth bending moves from Avatar the Last Airbender. That doesn't mean I should open a gym and teach Toph's style as a sparring martial arts.

 

[TheMaster]

Obviously I mentioned his kickboxing experience because I thought it was relevant to his ability to use Silat on drunks. Silat isn't just a weapon art. It is also a grappling and striking art.

There has been discussion here about some Filipino arts that do sparring with padded sticks. The same could be done with Silat, sparring is something that many traditional arts don't do and often the practicioners may not be keen on but can easily be incorporated and make the techiques live. Obviously with weapons though you are highly limited in what you can train.

Real life application doesn't mean much because you might be doing application on weaklings.

Actually real life application means everything. Contrary to the common way of thinking, martial arts were designed for just this, and combat sports are a secondary simulation which can have practical uses obviously but it's the 'pavement arena' that counts. You may somtimes be fighting drunks but not always, and you dont have the luxury of knowing its a safe environment, 1 on 1 with a ref there to stop it if it goes badly so dealing with the adrenaline and fear can and still being able to keep your form is a different level.
Arts like Silat may have some fluff in them but theres plenty of practical methods there also and it's a complete art encompassing weapons skills.

 

[SummerStriker]

There has been discussion here about some Filipino arts that do sparring with padded sticks. The same could be done with Silat, sparring is something that many traditional arts don't do and often the practicioners may not be keen on but can easily be incorporated and make the techiques live. Obviously with weapons though you are highly limited in what you can train.


Actually real life application means everything. Contrary to the common way of thinking, martial arts were designed for just this, and combat sports are a secondary simulation which can have practical uses obviously but it's the 'pavement arena' that counts. You may somtimes be fighting drunks but not always, and you dont have the luxury of knowing its a safe environment, 1 on 1 with a ref there to stop it if it goes badly so dealing with the adrenaline and fear can and still being able to keep your form is a different level.
Arts like Silat may have some fluff in them but theres plenty of practical methods there also and it's a complete art encompassing weapons skills.

The only people who spar kali correctly are the Dog Brothers, if they are still around, and Krav Maga nerds. The largest organizations for kali sparring do this silly padded stick fencing where they trade shots as fast as possible like people in a machete fight in South Africa.

 

[TheMaster]

The only people who spar kali correctly are the Dog Brothers, if they are still around, and Krav Maga nerds. The largest organizations for kali sparring do this silly padded stick fencing where they trade shots as fast as possible like people in a machete fight in South Africa.

Pretty sure they do this as they are using the stick to simulate knife or machete fighting.

 

[SummerStriker]

Pretty sure they do this as they are using the stick to simulate knife or machete fighting.

I know if I ever get in a sword fight I'm going to be looking to trade.

 

[TheMaster]

I know if I ever get in a sword fight I'm going to be looking to trade.

FMA they aim for the first strike, "hit without being hit yourself". If its trained properly.

 

[SummerStriker]

FMA they aim for the first strike, "hit without being hit yourself". If its trained properly.

If God wanted me not to use my forearm as a knife shield, he wouldn't have given me two of them.

 

[TheMaster]

If god wanted me not to use my forearm as a knife shield, he wouldn't have given me two of them.

You are most likely gonna get cut in a knife duel. Better you control where you get cut, not them. Outside of the foream is about the least damaging area and most natural to block while you land a finishing strike with your own weapon.
Of course they don't train to get cut but sometimes there is no option.

 

[DoctorTaco]

If God wanted me not to use my forearm as a knife shield, he wouldn't have given me two of them.

Kimbo slice was explaining to the guys in the ultimate fighter house how knife fighting works in the streets. He said you wrap your shirt around your off hand forearm and parry/block with it and attack with your own knife. He had the scars all over his arms to prove it

 

[SummerStriker]

Kimbo slice was explaining to the guys in the ultimate fighter house how knife fighting works in the streets. He said you wrap your shirt around your off hand forearm and parry/block with it and attack with your own knife. He had the scars all over his arms to prove it

One of the "day people" who used to come into the comic store I worked at in the 90s (before 4pm with all the other downtown psychos) had the same scar and the same story. He said he always wore leather jackets for that reason.

 

[DoctorTaco]

One of the "day people" who used to come into the comic store I worked at in the 90s (before 4pm with all the other downtown psychos) had the same scar and the same story. He said he always wore leather jackets for that reason.

That’s funny- when I wear my leather all I can think about is how it fucks up my ability to box

 

[SummerStriker]

One time I'm at open sparring and I come up against this big guy, who I knew was a lot stronger than me.

Previously, I was in a random class with him where we were doing the escape from rear, under arm bear hug. I had based out, grabbed his wrist, and dropped low so that he was bent nearly straight over at the waist. Being several inches taller than me, this was a deep bend. The dude lifted me off the ground with what was basically all low back, like a good morning. Strong.

At sparring, I saw him flatline another guy. Strong man was getting pieced up, got mad, and hit him with a head down blast double leg like he was Goldberg in WWF.

We are sparring, I want to keep it light, but I'm slapping him up a little. He just isn't that good at sparring, and it is making him mad. So he looks around, brushes his hair like he's about to sucker punch me in a street fight, puts his head down and charges me like a bull.

I did an aikido circle step off line and hit him with the Silat cement mixer, slapping his arm up and head down like a circle. He spins so hard he's looking at the ceiling and has to shoulder roll backward, landing halfway across the room. He looks upset and confused, hurt even.

Anyway, if I had that shit on video I could have posted it and become the viral bullshido Silat master for having done the move for real on someone who meant it. But of all the things we recorded, that wasnt one of them.

Would it work on a good MMA fighter? No, they would use hands to set up a double, from closer, with a good penetration step. But it worked great on an asshole.

 

[Mick Dojang]

The nature of bullshido policing changed after 10-15 years of MMA

I remember in mid-00's TKD we were still happily denying reality and saying MMA was dumb meathead stuff that was beneath us, so the Martial Arts Reformation took a long time to trickle down after 1993.

But after say 15 years it was clear which martial arts available in the West worked and which didn't. Like there was no need to do a dojo storm on a karate dojo to figure out if they could fight, you knew they couldn't (these JBG-approved karate guys aside). So they just got ignored and the bullshido policing focused on dojo storming fake BJJ black belts or whatever.

Places like China maybe didn't get affected by this quite as much, so some CMA bullshido lived on until people like Xu Xiaodong started lighting up tai chi masters on camera. Maybe people had already started ignoring it like in the West, but there were still people like Xu who cared enough to expose it publicly.

The point is that if your style was outside BJJ/judo/wrestling/boxing/MT/kyokushin, the bullshido police just didn't bother with it after a certain point, as MMA had exposed what actually worked. So obscure (for Westerners) Filipino styles just didn't really appear on the radar for your average Bullshido beat cop like it would have if it was widely available in 1993.

e.g. if you saw an ad for a 9th Dan Grandmaster teaching you the dim mak for $50 a session in 2024, you wouldn't get angry because it's bullshit, you'd just ignore it. But I get the feeling during the 90s and early 00s there were still a lot of people actively trying to expose that stuff because it wasn't as well-known to be BS as it is now, so these guys were getting respect despite not having any fighting ability.

tl;dr it doesn't get exposed because these days people just assume its bullshit and go on with their day (not to say that it is bullshit or not, just that that's the default assumption, people just won't get invested in it)

 

[Tayski]

Pencak Silat and such martial arts are definitely being critisized by big MMA names like Cyril Diabate in France. He calls them bullshido.

 

[angkot]

Filipino martial arts / silat stuff are still selling out seminars and gathering large youtube followings with their very intricate sophisticated moves that have never ever been reproduced under any type of pressure.

I wonder why nobody seems to be picking up on this

I've searched extensively for silat fighters in action. There are a number of recorded mma fights with silat fighters and they are just kick boxing. None of their other techniques work so dont even try to use them

Because they hide under the name silat. Fyi silat has been in the sea games and asian games for ages & i think it try to make its way to the olympic. Silat in the asian games (ie sport silat) is just like CMA. It has form and fighting competition. The rule is similar to wtf with added punches, trip & takedown. No throws. It won't work in mma for sure but i can't call it total bullshido either.