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#5 ESKRIMA
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Country of Origin: The Philippines
Eskrima is the ancient Filipino art of beating the piss out of your opponents with embarrassingly small wooden sticks. For centuries, it was used by the Filipinos to beat each other senseless, but when Magellan arrived in 1521, some Filipinos decided to diversify by using it to beat foreigners senseless.
The style involves teaching a variety of lightning fast strikes, grapples, and disarming moves that are equally effective when using the traditional eskrima sticks, knives, or bare hands, the philosophy being that the lack of a weapon should never come between an eskrimador and the ability to murder people.
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The sport of modern eskrima has two varieties. One takes place in gyms and the competitors wear full body armor with face masks and is usually decided by points. The other version takes place in cock fighting pits, where they use metal bars wrapped in a thin layer of foam rather than wooden sticks and can be decided by points, by knockout, by broken bone, or by triple disarm.
Eskrima in Action:
When peasants practiced their style of eskrima, the scrawny rice farmers would, and still do, take on a 1600 lb. water buffalo, meaning they could probably make any WWE star squeal like a little girl within seconds, an event worthy of Pay-Per-View.
One famous eskrima victim was famous explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
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After he converted an entire village to Catholicism, a rival tribe attacked. After being stabbed in the face with a spear and then hamstrung, the tribe attacked with sticks and eskrima'ed him to death in a display so brutal, the Spaniards executed anybody they caught practicing eskrima for 450 years. It only survived because it was disguised as a dance. A disturbingly violent cockfight of a dance.
www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/martial_arts/eskrima.jpg" alt=""/>Country of Origin: The Philippines
Eskrima is the ancient Filipino art of beating the piss out of your opponents with embarrassingly small wooden sticks. For centuries, it was used by the Filipinos to beat each other senseless, but when Magellan arrived in 1521, some Filipinos decided to diversify by using it to beat foreigners senseless.
The style involves teaching a variety of lightning fast strikes, grapples, and disarming moves that are equally effective when using the traditional eskrima sticks, knives, or bare hands, the philosophy being that the lack of a weapon should never come between an eskrimador and the ability to murder people.
www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/martial_arts/eskrima2.jpg" alt=""/>The sport of modern eskrima has two varieties. One takes place in gyms and the competitors wear full body armor with face masks and is usually decided by points. The other version takes place in cock fighting pits, where they use metal bars wrapped in a thin layer of foam rather than wooden sticks and can be decided by points, by knockout, by broken bone, or by triple disarm.
Eskrima in Action:
When peasants practiced their style of eskrima, the scrawny rice farmers would, and still do, take on a 1600 lb. water buffalo, meaning they could probably make any WWE star squeal like a little girl within seconds, an event worthy of Pay-Per-View.
One famous eskrima victim was famous explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/martial_arts/eskrima3.jpg" alt=""/>After he converted an entire village to Catholicism, a rival tribe attacked. After being stabbed in the face with a spear and then hamstrung, the tribe attacked with sticks and eskrima'ed him to death in a display so brutal, the Spaniards executed anybody they caught practicing eskrima for 450 years. It only survived because it was disguised as a dance. A disturbingly violent cockfight of a dance.
