Between jogo de pau and the above, I could see it. Learn and spar with sticks, ritualistic dances with machetes to get comfortable around them, so on. If you got any insight or guesses about how this stuff might have worked or looked like, I'd appreciate it. I 100% agree with your rationale that the kind of person to become a professional classicist probably doesn't have the tools to correctly interpret combat sports. Same goes for the suckers who get into capoeira on this side of the equator.

-Baron MacBlast’em

…

Sir,

I have seen some such work and it is not without its merits. The inclination to dance rather than contact is implicit in the genetic Bantu condition. This is aggrevated by lack of training gear and development structure. Simply wearing coconut-backed mitts, towels on the shoulder and a hat, and sparring with dull machetes may have been an original form, such as we developed from scratch around 2000. It is, from what is gleaned from these and the other videos I have seen, like Asian martial arts, significantly degraded by lack of contact, stemming from lack of gear and lack of a drive to test the limits of existing method.

Note that the one man is wearing a shirt that claims Cimmeron “runaway” as the school, the same root of the tribal name Seminole, which was a multiracial fugitive refugee system. Keeping in mind that the weapon orginally faced by most such runaways was a musket with bayonet, and that only the officers had swords, it makes snese that wide circling tactics against enemies, and deft disarming tactics against feuding fellows or enemy officers, would dominate such a system. I for, one, would not want to fence with the fellow in the blue liesure shirt.

The back turning is not done well and indicates long separation from reality. One turns the head first, torso second.

What is your opinion on the apache knife fighting system?

Thanks

Best

Pb

[Paul Bing Ham]

…

Robert Red Feather reminds me of my Eskimo Father In Law who spoke Athapaskan, of a different dialect. Note that any such knife fighting system is ging to be forensically absed on horn, bone and stone knives and favor power moves, at the root. But, since the Apache feuded with the Spanish and Mexicans, who favored blade use, and had access to steel for 300 years before American firearms culture began to dominate ther combat space, I expect more nuance and Anglo borrowing than normally found in such systems. The system as presented is sound and is clearly absed on Spanish steel traditions with its focus on use of flat, spine and extented saber grip thrusts. I like it, and do note, that the instrctor’s desciple, is the same kind of man that pays for almost all indiginous blade instruction, from around the world, a cracker. I sense something in our gun culture longs for the honor that we lost when we swtched from crossing blades to man hunting.

The use of the mask is helpful. The blind fold is borrowed from wing chun. But, the use of the reverse grip is sound, though the footwork is very limited. The moving of the long hair back over the shoulders is a mistake, as it could turn the blade on a neck slash. The system is weak on high line and level change attacks, but, again, most sound on defensive doctrine. If a system is going to lack something, when focused on such a lethal close range weapon, I prefer it lack in the attitudes of attack, not in close defense. This seems to me a good sarting point for men who are heavily built and not as mobile as they once were.

About 30 minutes in one can see that the system suffers from the same problems as the Filipino systems, which is reflected in the boxing ring behind them, a tendency to focus on hand work and to leave one’s own hand and guts right in front of the enemy blade. This might refect Filipino influence. No matter, it reflects in any case the fact that blade fighting cannot be learned to any point beyond dressing one’s self as a plated meal for the competent blade for, without sparring. The form of instruction may not abandon the tribal identity, also common to any popular form, and hence the instructor may not be masked in a practical way and also serve the cult of competency that is martial arts formality. Therefor, the instructor’s bare face is not approachable and the student learns to have his face skewered or throat cut.

The back turning is unforgiveable, and is probably cinema based. The non contact sparring sequence that ends at 47 exposes easily killed knifers who do not clear the pocket after a stroke and do not close with a stroke to the hand. These men will have a very hard time cutting without being cut and stabbing clean, with the knife treated with high caliber firearm stopping power, which it in fact lacks. The desperate surge of a mortally wounded man who has not bled out yet, is not appreciated in the illustrations.

This video provides a rational interpretation of Spanish saber applied to close order knife work, but which falls far short of American big knife methods, seeming to linger in the same ciriculmn based mire as most small blade arts.

I was kicked out of the video feed by some economic vector. The old knife fellows seem pleasant in spirit, but, if in front of the men I am currently sparring with, “already dead.”

…

"The top has a hat stand, atop of which rests a tribal work hat with badge—it just occurred to me that I’m sharing a bed with a Fed."

So if I'm reading this correctly, you're the victim of a soft capture by a Tribal Fed?

Keep us informed of any new mind control techniques being applied!!!

And if you're burned at the stake in a ceremonial way, we expect video!

Don Quotays

;

Oh, Don,

The mind control techniques are mostly alcohol based.

I did not realize I was sleeping with a high status babe until I was at the White Buffalo Christmas Powwow and a half dozen feds in suits and indigine chiefs lined up to shake hands with her father, who introduced me as “James, my Son In Law.”

I turned to her and said, “I had no idea I was sleeping with the Chief’s daughter!”

Nine young persons, three braves, five babes and one Blackfoot psychobitch, all threatned to hunt me down and beat or kill me if I abandoned the Lady’s heart. I took this as a compliment.

I will try and avoid the stake! If not, Please, send in Don Alverado and his riders!