This is the largest contact stickfighting meet on the East Coast since our benefit for Saint Jude's Children's Hospital in 2006 at Sifu Edgar Livingston's Chinese Health and Fitness Center.

You will see different intensity levels of contact here based on how much experience the fighters have. If it's a first time thing for a guy, we keep the contact level down, unless he is an acrobatic daredevil like the young stud in the black sweat pants, who is a tennis player and brought a high level of mobility from outside the sport of stick-fighting. You can hear other fighters joking about his base sport in the background, and his mobility brought out the best in the rest. This was his first meet after only three weeks of training. So contact level ranges from sparring to controlled contact competition, based on how real the fighters want it at that time. Note at about 7:30 that Red is briefing Black on combat levels before his first ever stick-sparring session. Black is a long distance runner who picked up a stick here for the first time.

Since it costs so much money and ass-kissing time to get invited to a Dog Brothers meet, we will do some NHB stick fights next year, instead of just FMA style.

The sticks used in these fights were light enough that they would only break fingers. There was a fight with heavy sticks that should be forthcoming, which brings a far different tone to the bout and makes it much less like fencing.

Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival