Martial Arts, Baras Style

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April 1, 2010.

As we were approaching the National Highway from Baras en route to Morong, I noticed a statue of two men fighting using their legs.

The text under the statue said that this is sikaran, a school of Philippine martial arts that heavily uses foot-fighting techniques and hails back to the 1500s (that's a few years before the Spaniards arrived in Cebu!). I couldn't understand the rest of the text, so I visited trusty Wikipedia to learn more about the fighting style. Farmers in Baras used to play sikaran inside a circle; the first person who sets foot outside the perimeter marker loses the match. This sounds like Japan's sumo wrestling except that it's a kick-boxing, not a pushing, match. 

The martial art would have been lost were it not for the efforts of Col. Meliton Geronimo, whose father is one of the last champions (hari) of sikaran. Col. Geronimo founded what is now the World Sikaran Brotherhood of the Philippines in 1958 and made the game known internationally.

Comments

  1. rochie cuevasApril 3, 2010 at 9:16 PM

    Bibs, parang capoeira ba ito?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carlo CuevasApril 4, 2010 at 1:31 PM

    hindi masyado. parang taek-won-do. ang common lang sa kanila, nag simula yung art sa streets/bukid. ang malaking pagkakaiba nila, straight-forward ang approach nito unlike capoeira na may theatrics and music.

    ReplyDelete

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