I was recently online searching stick-fighting videos. I was able to find a Dog Brothers highlight reel, some tribal stick-fighting from documentaries, a lot of carnival stick-fighting from Trinidad and Tobago, some armored European stick-fencing*, and some armored Filipino stick-fighting.

The European and Filipino formats were so heavily armored that no chance of injury existed. These events could not therefore actually be called ‘fighting’. However, these sporting activities were at least prosecuted with sticks. I could respect this activity, and am guilty of doing some stick-fencing myself. In fact I was stick-fencing [stick and dagger bouts] on Saturday. However, I was not armored, and was lumped up quite a bit, lumps that reminded me to improve my form.

In an earlier search I did find some German stick-fighting that was not heavily armored and featured some mixed weapons. Also, Korea and Portugal have some pretty serious armored fighting arts with heavy sticks that came up on my search. These are, in my mind, closer to long sword combat with wasters than to pure stick-fighting.

The Dog Brothers stuff was brutal. Although it is billed as ‘stick-fighting’, it is in fact ‘fighting with a stick or some other accessory’. This is the most brutal weaponry format out there and is a lot of fun to watch. I have done many bouts of this precise type and find a lot of common ground with the Dog Brothers. My only problem with the format is that it is intentionally made as brutal as possible, apparently to make it a higher value activity for those who engage in it. This has the result of shutting out a lot of potential interest and driving most weaponry people into the direction of ritual pillow fighting. I have lost count of how many East Coast martial arts people have declined to work with Modern Agonistics people because they equate us with the Dog Brothers. I suppose that is fine for Marc Denny who is a huge Conan fan and surely despises those soft scented products of civilized life…

A very interesting form of stick-fighting was carnival stick-fighting in Trinidad with zero protective equipment! The stick is four feet long and not heavy. The fighters employ a very conservative set of guards and the activity is highly ritualized and polite. It was essential ‘first blood’ stick-fencing.

One Dog Brothers video, a dozen tribal stick-fighting videos, and as many European stick-fencing videos, constituted the secondary stream of video information on stick-fighting. The primary stream consisted of two activities: non-contact stick training in Filipino Martial Arts; and armored point fighting with foam wands.

Two things irked me about this search, as I continually clicked on what was reputed to be stick-fighting only to be sucked down a non-contact rabbit hole: that the sympathetic FMA ‘instruction’ was called ‘fighting’ [Basically, if you are searching stick-fighting, and you see an actual stick and no fencing mask in the thumbnail it is a lesson, not a fight or even sparring.], when it was manifestly artistic instruction; and that the armored wand fighting was referred to as stick-fighting. There was not a stick visible in any of these videos. I am not griping out of ignorance or from a Dog Brothers ‘higher consciousness through harder contact’ ethos, but from experience.

I once entered an open competition hoping to fight with a stick against various opponents; particularly the invincible Filipino stick-fighting machines trained to a whip-like perfection by their grand gurus. What I encountered was a squad of martial artists who were dedicated weapon fighters, and who absolutely refused to fight with real sticks! It’s not like these were kick-boxers afraid to accrue hand injuries in some side event. All these guys did was weapons. Rico Arus was kind enough to rip me apart with a real stick. The funny thing was, the only real sticks in the building were in the possession of him and I. The promoter had advertised and collected registration fees for a stick-fighting event, and did not bring a single pair of sticks to a venue that seated 1,800!

The FMA masters at the event convinced Rico and I to fight with the padded ‘sticks’ first. The first thing I realized was that these were not padded sticks. When you pad a stick it becomes a club! Seriously wrap foam around a fighting stick and have somebody hit you with it. The padding will add mass and hence shock and the stick will punch right through it and still bruise you up.

Despite the fact that these make believe sticks did not behave like sticks Rico and I repeatedly scored ‘kills’ and ‘maims’ which were ignored by the judges, none of whom had ever fought with a stick. We were not permitted to win. Rico was particularly pissed that three twerps that he could have lined up and KO’d like a cat swatting mice, were even permitted to stand in there with him and be credited for the hits they scored after eating one of his three-stroke combinations on the way in. If he had been hitting them with a real stick they would have been in a fetal position in front of him begging for mercy.

Extra points were awarded for scoring a loud blow, so the fighters familiar with this form of pillow fighting were just attempting to score loud smacking blows, not lacerating slashes, position enhancing thrusts, or bone-breaking tip dumps.

Extra points were awarded for spinning while scoring, hence the bizarre spectacle of these guys twirling in while I slashed their spine below the shoulder blades.

The foam wand was shaped like a war club and seems to be the same make that I see on most of these armored wand fighting videos. The workmanship marks these as expensive and the look is very ‘sword like’. The fact is these ‘weapons’ share no forensic properties with a real stick [or rattan fighting vine]. I understand that the object is to avoid all possibility of pain or injury, both being counted as the same in the martial arts mind. However, these wands are so flimsy that defense with the weapon is not possible, as it bends out of the way of its incoming counterpart. Thrusts are also meaningless. One of these wand fighters charged me and I planted a thrust in his solar plexus, and watched in dismay as the thing bent like a clown’s balloon sword.

I understand normal pain-intolerant people not wanting to go Dog Brothers gonzo. But wand fighting is to stick-fighting what karate point fighting and Olympic TaeKownDo is to kickboxing. Armored wand fighting does not teach any weapon fighting lessons that could help a practitioner survive against an extension weapon attack, or conversely use a stick or stick-like object to defend against a larger or more numerous aggressor. This is analogous to the two kick-sports mentioned above, which teach nothing useful in terms of unarmed self-defense.

What is worse armored wand fighting teaches anti-skills. One learns to earn credit with a slap rather than punish with a slash, stop with a thrust, or injure with a tip-dump. One learns to hop around rather than check, block, beat or parry. One learns to commit to a poor position just to ‘tag’ an opponent for a point. It is not fighting, not fencing, not instruction...and does not involve a stick. Yet this is stick-fighting to the deluded postmodern mind. Well my father always said to look for the upside, so here it is.

A World of Lies can at least be free of physical pain and discomfort. Armored wand fighting is proof of that.

I mean no disrespect. But I have to ask. When I looked into stick-fighting back in the early 1990s I was told by well meaning martial arts people that the best stick-fighters in the world were Filipino, and that I, being a mere ‘Anglo’, would have no chance against a ‘Filipino master.’ Once again I was reminded by a racist world that I was genetically incapable of a certain manly activity. When I was a teen I had been told that only blacks could box, when in my twenties that only Asians could kick. Now, in my thirties, I discovered that only men of Spanish or Filipino ancestry could hope to fight with sticks and knives.

Well, I am fifty, and I’m still wondering where he is. I have seen two Filipino-Americans fight in events I was in. Alas I was paired up with their instructors, and robed of that peculiar sensation; of being hit with a weapon wielded by the hand of a member of the stick-fighting master race designed by God himself to whack people with a stick. I have been instructed competently by numerous very polite and proficient Filipino FMA instructors.

I wonder however, am I being patronized.

Do they just like me, and not want to hurt me?

Are they just taking my money, milking me like a cow, and making sure I don’t get hurt in the process?

Are they, after they attempt to impart some martial knowledge into my mind and body, sneaking off to some basement to fight death matches?

Please, Filipino Stick God, do not wait until I am sixty to punish me for competing above my genetic code. Pulverize my sagging flesh and break my bones while I am still young enough to take it for a round or two and then write about it. You don’t have to be dissuaded by pity. I promise I’ll strike back.

Good fighting.

The cultural nuances of these various stick-fighting and stick-fencing traditions are a fascinating complex, which I plan on investigating another time. For now, I would just like to make it understood that there is nothing inherently superior about stick-fighting as compared to stick-fencing.

I use the term stick-fighting to designate any activity where the stick is regarded according to the rules, as being exactly what it is, and that the combat is continuous, either to a submission or a time-limit. Stick-fencing is a pursuit that is not continuous contact, but stop and start in nature, which very often uses the stick to represent a blade, or uses a light stick to represent a heavy stick.

I practice both concepts under numerous formats, and regard them all as illuminating certain aspects of combat reality.