THE ART OF KNIFE-FIGHTING

The ad for the new Tommy Lee Jones/Benicio Del Toro thriller, The Hunted, recently caught my eye with this claim: "FEATURING THE FILIPINO ART OF KNIFE-FIGHTING!"I thought I knew everything there was to know about Filipino knife fighting from the newspapers: two guys in a bar, usually af-ter draining 27 San Migs apiece, start arguing over which bold star’s breasts are the most aesthetically appealing. Tempers rise, the knives come out. One or both of them end up covered in gore. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it an "art," but that’s the knife-fighting I was familiar with.

But it turns out there is a centuries-old form of martial arts called Sayoc Kali. (Sayoc is a family name here; my mother-in-law actually descends from this line, though I’ve never seen her wield a knife in self-defense. The Sayocs apparently developed the distinctive doubled-edged blade used in this skill. "Kali" is the Hindu goddess of destruction, among other things.) People come from around the world to learn Sayoc Kali, and it’s even taught in training centers throughout the US and Canada.

It’s not the first time I’ve been alerted to a new sport that could have only come from the Philippines.

Naturally, I had to see this movie. We caught a late show and soon got our first glimpse of the scary-looking blade (one side is serrated, apparently for slicing bone and tendon; the other side is for filleting). Benicio Del Toro, playing government-trained assassin Aaron Hallam, uses it to efficiently dispense with a bloodthirsty Serbian general in the first 10 minutes.

There appears to be a lot of cheek-slicing in Sayoc Kali, apparently the best way to sever the carotid artery which supplies blood to the head. That’s how Benicio and Tommy Lee Jones (playing grim assassin-trainer L.T. Bonham) go at it in the best scenes from the movie. They were trained five days a week by – you guessed it – a Filipino martial arts instructor named Rafael Kayanan. One great sequence shows the training camp, wherein Jones demonstrates how to slice and fillet an opponent in six moves, beginning with a slash to the femoral artery, across the face and throat, over the chest to the lungs, and ending with a deep lunge upward through the sternum "all the way to the backbone," which he refers to as a "Power Assist." All this performed with the flair of a Filipino chef deboning a chicken.

Whew. Who knew that dismembering your opponent could be so artful?

To be honest, the best parts of The Hunted involve knifeplay, which is extremely bloody and lethal. Yet there is also something skillful and even graceful in the lunging and swiping of the Sayoc Kali blade. I’m not sure if the sport is heading for Olympic competition anytime soon, though it would definitely perk up the games a lot.

When Filipinos are not perfecting the art of slicing one another up like chickens, they’re letting the chickens slash themselves to death. I visited my first sabong here in 1996.
While cockfighting didn’t originate in the Philippines (novelist Nathaniel West describes a Mexican bout in Day of the Locust), this country definitely has its own subculture devoted to combing and gaffing and pitting. Check out the Sunday-morning cockfighting channel, with all its low-budget ads for cock shampoo ("More Luster and Shine!") and special grain pellets guaranteed to turn your cock into a killing machine.

Folks here raise their prize cocks for years, become deeply attached to them, shower them with warmth, pride and affection. Then they place them in a pen where they are ripped to shreds. It’s a peculiar kind of industry, one that is partly all about betting, but equally about the strength embodied in these angry little fowls.

The thing about cockfighting is: if you blink, you miss it. Bouts sometimes go less than 10 seconds. Death is swift. Only the trained eye of the experienced bettor knows what’s really going on. Then money changes hands even more swiftly, the bell rings, and a new match begins.

They say Filipino kids get their first taste of the sabong and betting through a peculiar sport known as Spider Wrestling. This involves placing two arachnids on a stick, then crouching down and cheering as the spider smackdown commences. Apparently, dominion over a stick is very important to a spider, which will tear and spin and grapple with its opponent until one of them is dead. I’ve never actually seen such a match (these are typically back-alley affairs, though the money is substantial), but they’re very popular with Filipino kids, especially in the provinces where spiders (and the cogon grass they dwell in) are plentiful.

Unfortunately, killing spiders is not environmentally friendly, since arachnids tend to feed on disease-carrying mosquitoes and other bugs that threaten crops. But how else are you going to get your jollies in the provinces?

As what happens in the Philippines, an artful little subculture develops around such a sport, with kids (and adults) toting their spiders around in matchboxes, often colorfully painted or decked out with partitions to hold up to a dozen arachnids. Again, there’s a flair to the whole thing, which helps to fill up a lot of free time in the provinces.

Speaking of sports that attain a level of art, one can’t overlook the eminence of Filipinos in world billiards competition. Ever since Efren "Bata" Reyes became 9-ball champion of the world a few years back in Cardiff, Wales, Filipinos have racked up impressive victories in a sport that doesn’t get much respect. Unfortunately, billiard champions are often ignored by the snobbish sports world. Pool halls don’t hold much cachet, and there are no big corporate sponsors for 9-ball tournaments.

But the thing is, whatever one may think of billiards, Reyes has earned a special status; he can stand among the country’s heroes, at least its sports heroes, because he attained his ability and honor the hard way: through honest talent. And the Philippines can use all the honest heroes it can get.

Another indigenous sport which has spread to training centers in the US is Arnis, a local form of stick fighting. Two 25-inch rattan sticks are employed in this sport, which is useful for self-defense or just for showing off your stick-twirling skills. I researched Filipino Arnis on the Internet and learned of classes being held by one Remy Presas at the American Karate Studios in Delaware. The center, the web site notes, was "the first school to teach Modern Filipino Arnis in Delaware!" I had not been aware that there was a crying need for stick-fighting skills in Delaware, but I made a mental note to avoid going there on future vacations.

The neat thing about these sports, when offered in the United States, is that they always come with a guarantee that they are taught by a bona-fide Filipino instructor! I think this is good: turning a skill that has marginal daily use in your homeland into an exotic financial bonanza in a foreign country. More power to Mr. Presas.

There is one other Filipino sport which I’d never heard of, but again, the powers of the Internet proved invaluable. It is the art of the Dumog, or Filipino ground-combat fighting, which today is chiefly confined to Negros Island. The Majapahit Martial Arts Association International gives a brief history of the sport on its website.

Apparently originated by farmers who used the skill to wrestle stubborn carabao into submission, it developed into a unique training and combat program that is now chiefly displayed during celebrations of the saints and local harvest festivals. The Dumog expert (or "Dumoguero") typically has "a well-built body with sturdy legs and broad shoulders," much like a wrestler’s. They attain this physique through rigorous training that involves – I’m not making this up – slamming themselves into trees over and over again. This method of developing the shoulders is called the "Power Push," and the Dumog trainee does this "until he is tired and then stops." Another exercise involves bending a large branch with bare hands to strengthen the arms. Finally, the "Head Butt" move requires the Dumoguero to ram into a banana tree until it is wrestled safely to the ground.

And what is the practical purpose of this skill, you may ask? Well, there are still plenty of carabao around Negros that require discipline. But more than that, the Dumog is still popular in local competitions, apparently to establish who is the better tree-wrestler. And it’s not without its financial rewards. Winners, according to the informative website, may receive "a dozen chicken eggs, a fighting cock, a sack of rice, a sack of corn, one gallon of coconut wine, a bunch of bananas, two dozen coconut fruits and many others."

Again, the Olympic Committee should take note.

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