You mean, they listened exactly to what was being said by a bunch of guys going to the USA/West to make money and who embellished and made stuff up about the martial arts they exported in order to make more money and/or gain more students and other such promotional stuff? I'm just saying that the people who introduced Eastern martial arts into the West may have had more sensationalist stuff, and that what they're saying might not actually be the same as what the martial artists actually in Asia say/think/believe, which is why you hear superpowers and all that stuff, whereas martial artists actually teaching in Asia might not be into that sort of stuff.

It's a bit like when some Filipino martial artists brought eskrima/arnis outside the Phils, to the USA, they promoted it and called it "kali" and everyone in the outside world calls eskrima/arnis "kali" even though actual eskrima/arnis practitioners in the Philippines don't even know what the word "kali" is. Except instead of just making up names, those guys importing Eastern martial arts might've made up superpowers and whatever.

Also, using the boxer rebellion as a representative of Chinese martial arts traditions is like using deranged African militias tendency to wear outrageous headgear or believe in invincibility potions (cocaine) as an example of that region's martial arts. I mean, here, local people also believe in lucky charms and amulets, or at least they used to in the past, but that doesn't have much to do with the local martial arts here and bringing it up would be silly.

What's with the Falun Gong? Doesn't everyone in China think they're total nuts?



Since when has martial arts technique usage depended on the seasons? This is, like, the first time I've ever heard of martial arts practitioners being beholden to the seasons, climates, or spirits. Where's this from?

I thought Bruce Lee just got into trouble because he was teaching gaijin, and he was incorporating techniques from all sorts of schools, rather than defying the Celestial Bureaucracy.



My entire statement, which you dissected line by line in typical SDN debate fashion was:

I'd argue that without the superstitious/medicinal/religious aspects, the promotionist bullshit, and the Hollywood pop-culture sensationalism, there really isn't much difference between the actual techniques of Eastern and Western martial arts. Some of the aikido maneuvers I've seen (and been subjected to) are pretty much identical to the postures of some Greco-Roman wrestling statues (that I saw in pictures).

Maybe it's because of inter-exchanges. Or, maybe it's because despite all the spiritual mumbo jumbo you deride, the originators and practitioners of those Asian martial arts were still pretty methodical and sensible about the actual techniques used to break arms and punch faces, and there's only so many ways to do an arm bar or something (which explains why despite divergent evolution, an aikido/arnis armbar takedown thing looks very much like its Greco-Roman wrestling counterpart).



Ah. Yeah, those fencing clubs and boxing clubs. I don't know much about European fashions and such, but that does make sense.


Uh, samurai actually did use guns and in fact even imported European cannons. I think the reason why they were eliminated was due to politics during those turn of the century reformations in Japan, rather than their fighting skills.

The knightly religious martial arts thing is very interesting and, again, sadly underexposed. We see martial arts monks all the time, but we seldom see depictions of these whole knightly religious orders. Which is unfortunate.

At least with this thread, we can hear more about these things and gain better appreciation of underexposed European arts.

---

shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!

@shrrrrrooooooomyyy
"...which you dissected line by line in typical SDN debate fashion..."
Now since you objected to the style of my last reply, I'll change and see if you feel less assaulted.
RE: the west misunderstand Qi
Nope, again. Those same "masters" that you talked about going to the west and making stuff up, their ilk are doing the exact same thing in china. In multitudes and much more prevalent, in fact mostly they tone down their message in the west.
The two examples I gave you are extreme, yes, but they both happened in china and they were not some random flukes. Its like saying that there are no indian gurus in india its only in the west that they spew their nonsense. People are gullible everywhere, there is no reason for your claimed discrepancy.
Of course 'masters' will do stuff to gain students that's their whole income base. But to claim that that only happens in the west is naive.
I'll give you an unrelated example that might interest you since you mentioned arnis/escrima (never heard it called kali but I'm on the other side of the pond from the US), in my late teens I was training filippino stick fighting "modern arnis" and Ernesto Presas would come over for an event in Denmark. So of course our teacher talked up this "opportunity" about meeting a real master etc so we packed our group together and traveled there. I think that we were some 350 students mostly from scandinavia. In the middle of it suddenly Ernesto wanted each group to show stuff leading to the next advancement. So everyone went in front of him and did the next level stuff, then he proclaimed that everyone had been so skilled that they had earned their next level. Everyone, including me, got this nice paper which he put a bloodied print on etc. Then his assistants came to collect the money. Yupp, he had refused none so that he could take the upgrade fee himself. I remember doing some sketchy math in my head coming around to 150'000DKK ($19k back then), plus extra from the higher levels, the invite etc so probably some $50k at least. Talked to some germans and he had done the same to them. So scamming the local orgs from their fees and raking it in himself. My teachers where both really emberassed and apologized to us all.
A year later one of my teachers went over to train with them directly, when he came back he told us that they used the same scam all over the place. Turns out that that was SOP.

@Falun gong
Yes most chinese think they are nuts.

@seasons
Chinese astrology + wushu. The shaolins mentioned it during their introduction lecture.
@Bruce Lee
Right, one controversy was vs gaijin, another that when he created his own "style" he said that quick and easy is best and removed almost all reference to the supernatural. Win Chun wise that was a huge rebellion.
@Removing stuff & similarity of techniques
Aikido looks almost like nothing else on a competitive level. I can guarantee you that it is not similar to pankration nor arnis. While I have not trained in pankration or any such wrestling I've trained in both aikido and modern arnis. While you might find similarities in individual techniques I tell you that the training is simply not the same. Its practitioners don't look the same and competitions is completely different. If I have not misunderstood something completely pankration wouldn't be concerned about the opponent at all. Especially when you look at the use of fists and knees in those amphoras.
@ methodical and sensible
Agreed on paralell evolutions depending on human physiology. Also agreed on the crosspolination, especially since both west and east traded with india for so long.
@derision for spiritualism
Sorry if that is how it comes across. Personally I find japanese and chinese martial arts a lot more fun because of their rituals etc. So I do not really feel a dersision vs eastern martial arts. What I dislike though is why asian martial arts must make so many stupid claims like lots of those surrounding Qi/Ji/Chi. Its like when you meet someone who wants to discuss Spetsnaz, you know their going to spew non-related bullshit eventually.
@samurai and firearms
Yes I know that their armies employed firearms??? What did that have to do with anything? Have you seen the pics from the Satsuma Rebellion? Have you seen the difference in attire? How 'modern' do you find the 'modern armor' Tosei-gusoku? They still used and trained with outdated equipment even after their opponents had updated theirs. This was directly because of traditionalism. Some of them where even opposed to give Tanegashimas to their peasant troops. Their fighting skills is not in question so I don't understand why you bring that up??

It wasn't simply politics that forced them to wear Tosei-gusoku and daisho to a firefight.

If your point is that you want me to express more grayscale, then accepted but I tried to be short.
@religious knights as underexposed.
You do see them but you probably don't recognize their origin. Any RPG that have paladins etc are derived from them. Also lots and lots and lots of western movies showcase them. But how they trained etc is mostly lost, there are no manuscripts etc. So just like with roman, frankish, norse, etc, we mostly have it from secondary sources, ie scholars witnesses instead of masters teaching their craft. But some of those sources are really good, so we have had to upgrade our thinking about how they trained and fought several times.

Sorry about that, was in an unwell mood at the time.




Ah. Hurm. Could it just be a systemic thing used by shoddy overbearing practitioners to snag in gullible people everywhere, then? I could imagine these nonsense people trying to impress and convince saps in their homelands as well, and I could imagine local practitioners not prone to BSing just rolling their eyes at this.



That just sucks. And I'm kind of embarrassed at that, since I'm a Filipino and my countrymen are apparently doing that kind of BS that would reflect poorly on us. I mentioned eskrima/arnis since I'm actually just getting into it (and hence why my perked curiosity prompted me to start this thread), I'm learning Nicklestick Balintawak and our Grand Master just came back from Russia and his son is in Europe and such, and there are foreigners training here from time to time. I hope that those Modern Arnis Ernesto Presas guys don't, yeah, end up sullying the rest of us, and I'd like to think that other arnis/eskrima masters going to teach in Europe and abroad aren't doing this kind of thing.

Anyway, I'm still a super-novice and am just in my first week, though I'm having a hell of a lot of fun with it.



That's insane. Or, well, just weird. Does the lunar calendar actually dictate what forms they use in combat? What the hell.



Ah. Here I was just thinking that it was other masters getting pissed of him teaching foreigners, and not giving due credit to the other styles he got his techniques from.



I didn't know that you were into aikido and arnis. That's pretty awesome.

Yeah, I was just referring to the individual techniques. Aside from that, I'm pretty much ignorant. What is pankration concerned about?


I'd like to think that the stupid claims just come from a lot of silly people, and that those who actually know their shit are pretty meek and humble as opposed to rambling about superpowers. Its just the loudest loudmouths get all the attention, I guess, and the real guys pretty much stay quiet. Which is unfortunate.


Oh, I thought when you said "because they refused to change tools", you meant that they didn't use guns and were just sticking with swords while gun-armed guys mowed them down, ala The Last Samurai. I was mistaken again, so consider the point retracted.



I mean, yes, we see all the knights and paladins and such, but we don't really see all their methods or techniques, there's no emphasis in that, all we see them is stabbing people in the face and having adventures. Whereas in Asian martial arts movies, we see an emphasis in the techniques and all those styles and dragon crane judo stances and so on. Which is where the whole cliche of "Western combat is all rah sword swinging, whereas Asian combat is all sophisticated with all these so-and-so-techniques" comes from, because as you said a lot of stuff was lost or forgotten, and just not practiced any more, whereas in Asia you've still got moldy old guys practicing centuries-old martial arts.

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shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!

All I know of pankration is cursory remarks, but as I understand it it was as fairly brutal form of Greek full-contact competition (most city-states had the rule of 'no gouging, no biting'; Sparta did not have such a rule) with a fairly rounded repertoire; there were locks, throws, kicks, punches and holds. It was one of the Olympic Events in Greece and would spread to Rome and used in competitive sports. The fight would end when the opponent was beaten, either by unconsciousness, immobility, death, or tie as decreed by judges.

As the sport was competition-based as well as military, it seems to have been pretty pragmatic. There is no mention of supernatural elements in conjunction with pankration that I know of. The significance of locks and submission holds further points to the pragmatism of the form; we see the same thing in MMA.

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"Travelers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves."
--Chinua Achebe

Fuck you and your @. Use the quote function you prick. I'm not reading that shit.

I was about to reply that maybe it was forgotten because in western cultures the role of the knight was heavily linked with class (What with horses and armour not being cheap at all), but as I came to write this I remembered that groups like the Samurai where heavily linked to class. That is not to say social mobility in either was impossible.

That got me to thinking that maybe Eastern Martial Arts training is more widely known about since if you where training in martial arts there was a good chance that you did not have access to the weaponry the groups like samurai had, i.e the peasentry, whereas in Western medieval culture when a "low-born" commoner came across a noble warrior the plan was "Knock him down and stab him in the eye".

Edit: This is to say that eastern lower classes would have more reason to remember the martial arts than western ones would. If this makes any sense at all.

Then you are a complete fucking idiot since the very next row explained why I didn't - GTFO wanker.

@Shroomy
Oh, I'm not "into" anything anymore. Work, wife and kid tend to do that. and even back when I was young and had some stamina I was always looking for something new instead of sticking with something. So I'm more of a serial dropout/failure when it comes to this stuff. Also I never liked taking an unecessary beating, so all those "effective" arts like boxing is not for me. If so I'd much rather be suited up like in arnis with the ridicilous red-foam-suit or kendo etc. Viking reenactment is great fun, there you get to have a shield that usually takes the beating for you.
But that also means that I have a couple of anecdotes for just about anything related since either I myself or someone I know have practiced it at some point in time. Add to that a big nerd factor and I also know lots of useless tidbits that makes me no good whatsoever except in topics like these.

Stick with stickfighting (pun intended) for a while even if you only do it on/off. It will really help your reflexes in a way you wouldn't get from other types of martial arts. Later on you can try something else on top, you're still young.

"Does the lunar calendar actually dictate what forms they use in combat?"
Yes and no. Its like this, most of their styles/techniques have an element (fire, water, earth, air, metal) then those elements have a season. So a fire technique would be "better" in summer. Or sometimes the reverse, to fight X you need Y. Like rock paper scissors. Its very heavy in Tai Chi Chuan for instance. Also why some Chi gong excercises should be done in the morning and some others in the evening.
I glossed over at the time so he might have explained in some detail that eludes me now but that's the basics. Hmm see if I can find some...
Yupp right here you can probably google fu up some more.

Actually I think it's all about brand-names and getting promotion out at the right time. Fact: America is a media powerhouse, and was a media powerhouse since the invention of mass media. Fact: America also had lots of troops deployed overseas, and did lots of business in the far east due to how WW2 turned out.

These troops and businessmen spent a lot of time immersed in far eastern culture, and began shipping back some traditions. They brought back sushi, samurai swords...and martial arts, too. They did this because far eastern martial arts were exotic and new and surrounded with an entire culture and mystical halo that was still alive and sustained.

Like any brain bug, this grew and grew, and eventually found its way into the media, where it formed a vicious feedback loop between public perception and reinforcement of this perception by people who tried to feed the public what they thought the public wanted to see. Eventually, the common people became interested in studying and practicing martial arts due to growing up with karate movies and ninja legends and all that. The hype started to self-perpetuate (students wanted to learn karate, so people taught karate and hyped it more, same for other styles/schools/whatever), along the way spawning a counterculture or several countercultures concentrating on MMA and similar sports. People who practice "military" martial arts or MMA often go on and on about how superior their styles are to those kooky over-ritualized far eastern schemes. And sometimes they are right, because, say, Krav Maga was made for killing and mangling people, with practicality in mind.

However, we have this function for a reason. Please use it from now on.

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Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------------
"You know, you insist government is depraved for not legislating against what we can see on newsstands, or what we can see in an art exhibit, or what we can burn in protest, or which sex we can have sex with, or a woman's right to choose, but don't you dare try to regulate this deadly weapon I have concealed on me, for that would encroach against my freedom!"
- Sam Seaborn
------------------
Et si omnes ego non

That sounds about right.

I think part of what I was getting at you sort of cover in your second paragraph, that far eastern martial arts where alive, or at least in a more prominent state that many "dead" western martial arts.

Up until WW2 and the invention of mass media was there a specific reason as to why western martial arts "died out" whereas eastern ones survived and, in some cases, flourished.

Could this be down to the technological and organisational advancement of the west ahead of the east? Japanese troops in WW2 where drilled in Bushido (Or at least the governments view of bushido) but where they drilled in martial arts (Other than those considered to be needed as a soldier)?

@ Spoooonist ( ):

Ah. The arnis I'm getting into, Balintawak, doesn't really use armor at all and isn't really into the tournament scene since they emphasize more... utilitarian or practical maneuvers and also include holds and locks and such. One anecdote my friend told me was when a balintawak guy was challenged into a sparring match by a guy from another arnis school, the balintawak guy was armorless while the other guy was in protective gear, so the balintawak guy grabbed the other guy by the facecage and threw him down and such.

So anyway, they kind of emphasize control more, since when training, neither of you wear any armor, so you've got to have speed and strength and control to move effectively while avoiding hitting someone.

---

shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!

Well, if the same soldiers or businessmen swarmed all over rural Georgia, they could probably pick up some traditional Georgian wrestling and such. Depending on how exotic they considered the culture, and how much hype the practitioners of the art actually use, it could've become as big as far eastern martial arts are today, with the right promotion.

The more fantastical spiritual elements hyped by (some, possibly not all) teachers of far eastern martial arts lend themselves well to urban legends, though. Like other people said, european practicality is a bit...barbaric in this respect.

@ Shroooomster ( )
Are there schools of arnis/escrima that does not have holds and locks??? I thought they all did.
Why would this Balintawak be more "utilitarian or practical" because they don't do full contact practice? I don't get it? Unless its injuring/lethal techniques it should be the other way around.
That is a bad anecdote. First, why would anyone agree to do full contact sparring without protective gear? Especially when the other dude has? If they where close to equal in level the guy without protective gear wouldn't stand a chance. Secondly taking hold of protective gear would leave you exposed to all kind of abuse plus be really bad form. (akin to grabbing hair when training against a girl for instance) (or going for the fingers if someone don't wear gloves)
So the only conclusion would be that they only had a single stick each, they where not of equal level and that the one guy was being a dick. Neither of which speaks well for the one delivering the anecdote.
This is counterproductive reasoning. Well it depends on what you want really. But if its the so called "effectiveness" you won't get it without full contact sparring, and you don't want to do full contact sparring without protective gear.
While if you are just looking for "fun" it doesn't matter.

But these are the sort of claims that I disagree with. If they had been straight with you they would have just said we don't do full contact here and we don't train with protective gear. (Probably due to costs etc).
But instead they concoct some bs motivation for it, which simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny, about them being "better" for not having it. Its this prestige that people put into it that I just find sad.

So most stick fighting schools I've seen over here mix it up, 9 out of 10 lessons is no-contact ordinary stick fighting training, then 1/10 you put on the gear and train full contact and have smallish sparring competitions etc (also good for teachers who can show off). That way you can have all the fun you want + getting a little practical practice. (Without being a dick).

This leads into two anecdotes-
1 In a fight if you have trained too much "point" karate (ie stopping before the hit) then you will be at a terrible disadvantage vs someone who have trained full contact karate. Same style, same level etc only diff is one has muscle memory of stopping the other not.
2 Police/Army training - where they have had to change training practices because of muscle memory. The obvious being training knife-disarming, it used to be that one would be the attacker the other the defender for a couple of minutes, so after each turn you give the knife back and the attacker attacks again. Turns out in stressed situations the muscle memory was to first disarm and then hand the knife back to the assailant. Not good. So nowadays they put in other transitions so that it will not get stuck in muscle memory. Like alternating, having a bucket each or throwing it away.

Well, the anecdote of the face-cage grabbing was, yeah, kind of dickish. I think the two guys, the one with the gear and the one who face-grabbed, were friends or something, explaining how the guy got away with such a dick move. I heard it from third-hand.

I'm gonna have to ask about the whole full contact sparring thing. Their techniques are more into the whole injuring/lethal side, which also doesn't lend well to tournaments, since they told me it wasn't for sport or tournaments but for survival in street fighting and such.

I may have confused some of what they told me, confused the "no full contact practice/sparring" with "we don't do tournaments with other guys because our moves aren't legal" or something. I'll ask.

I'm still a total noob in eskrima, but yeah, actually moving my fatty ass and callousing my hand and getting my shit ruined in a myriad of ways has been hella fun.

---

shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!

In the red corner @ Shrooooom-meister

Off course, obvious in retrospect. Stupid of me.
I'm curious, once you have a couple of classes under your belt please do a report back on what you have been training. To me, so far, it sounds like standard tough guy dojo speak and I'd love for my prejudice to be wrong. This since it's assumed that you have a stick so the whole injuring/lethal thingie can be pretty much summed up as - first go for the hands, then go for the face, once you have a facehit go for the head a couple of times... Which you train the best through full contact sparring.
Everything else is just fun, ie you getting to know the stick and training your body & muscle memory.
Yupp agreed that stickfighting was a lot of fun. Tip for the callousing/blisters is to take a small bandaid/tape and put on the softtissue between thumb and finger. Blisters bursting aint fun next time around. Also consider getting some padding for your knuckles depending on how "un"controlled your training mates are.

They're extremely well controlled and the training uses the agak method. Like this and this. I think they have more to worry with me, as an uncoordinated new guy swinging at them, than I do with them.

My knuckles do hurt, but that's because I kind of squeeze my stick very hard when going through the motions, like reflexively or something.


They're training me so far on defensive moves and are working to sharpen up my reflexes. I'm being introduced to the first groupings. I've had 9 sessions so far with them and I'm getting faster.

These guys are pretty legit. I mean, I'm in Cebu, Philippines, which is one of the places where modern eskrima originated from and I don't think non-legit guys would last long here.

Last Sunday the training yard was full of burly shirtless Spanish guys training with the guys here (our master's son just returned from Europe) and supposedly in December a lot of the guys from the foreign chapters are coming over. Our master himself just returned from Moscow. Have you ever heard of Nickelstick Eskrima?


From what I understand, they emphasize building up on speed, reflexes and finesse and technique before going into full contact strength stuff.

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shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!

Thanas, since me and shroomy et al have gone far off the history angle, if you can be bothered maybe we should split this to OT?

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Read through that methodology, nice, really nice. I really like the one with students training beginners etc. I've often found that the best way to become better at something is to try to teach it.
I also like that they start with the defensive stuff etc.

The squeezing thing usually goes away over time, lots of beginners do that. Its easier to get rid off if you practice "kata" at home, ie the 1-12 strikes and parries. Then after each, stop, think, go through if your stance and grip was "good". In practice you usually are so full of impressions you don't get time to correct small stuff like that.

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Haha, funny stuff... Just for fun I checked out my old teachers, turns out that they renamed the school to a kali school soon after I left it.
We had two teachers one who was nice and that I really liked, then we had another who was too 'tough' for my tastes, ie if you can't taste blood you have not done enough push-ups. He was also the guy who went to the Philipines to study. Turns out that he won a lot of stuff etc
http://kalisikaran.com/wordpress/om/pun ... -skalberg/
So apparantly he took over the school renamed it and went ahead and won a lot of competitions. My oh my.

I'll split the hijack as soon as I have some time.

---

Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------------
"You know, you insist government is depraved for not legislating against what we can see on newsstands, or what we can see in an art exhibit, or what we can burn in protest, or which sex we can have sex with, or a woman's right to choose, but don't you dare try to regulate this deadly weapon I have concealed on me, for that would encroach against my freedom!"
- Sam Seaborn
------------------
Et si omnes ego non

Yeah, the master basically said that the ultimate gauge in how much you've learned is in being able to teach others. The guy teaching me is a friend who's been learning there for a year now.

God, yeah, I think I'm gonna go buy my own sticks soon. I was holding off on buying them since I was worried that I might end up not going through with it or quitting, the sticks would just be left uselessly in the closet, but I'm having a great time learning so yeah, I'll get some sticks. I need to be able to practice at home.

---

shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN!
Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook
Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic
Pink Sugar Heart Attack!

Back on the historical topic, this is a list of manuals that the Arma & Herna have online and which are re-enacted in training.
http://www.thearma.org/manuals.htm
http://hemaalliance.com/?page_id=310
Glance through them they are quite fun.

One thing that you will note is another one of those pragmatic/barbarian thingies that I adressed earlier and that is the weapons. Whenever a weapon became outmatched tech wise, that school of training would disappear in europe. This because each technological advantage would have a new type of training associated. Then over 40-50 years that effect would sweep over europe depending on origin. It would also have an effect on unarmed training since mostly unarmed training was how to protect yourself against armed assailants (as bandits usually are armed). So as we go along the centuries you trained with or without armor, with or withour shield, with greatsword, longsword, halfswords, smallswords, rapiers etc. Axes and poleaxes have their lineage etc.
Not so in asia, where ancient weapons remained in use and actively trained upon throughout the centuries.

In yuro you'd even have new tech facing new training spawning new tech. One example would be that if a blade is straight and mostly use the point you can quite "easily" grab the blade with a leather gloved hand. This became so prevalent in yuro that two techs arose, the serrated blade - just pull back and his hand is gone, and the decreasing blade. So another 30 years down the line - all those (mostly italian) blade grabbing training techniques where gone. With a small nostalgic revival some 50 years after that when the blades had gone back to straight.

Then there is no lasting "respect" shown to old masters techniques, instead all pay homage to the old but always update them. So each school would branch of through each generation. etc

So the manuscripts that we do have all go out of fashion very fast (compared to asian counterparts).

"Oi kick arse, for th'lawd!"

And just think how much scarier nuns would be with ruler-fu.

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[quote=]Put book front and center. He's our friend, we should honour him. Kaylee, find that kid who's taking a dirt-nap with baby Jesus. We need a hood ornment. Jayne! Try not to steal too much of their sh*t![/quote]

From what I remember, hasn't most of the decay in martial arts in "the west" (i mean Europe) been focused on western and some of Central Europe - i.e. Ukraine, the Balkans and Russia still have strong 'native' martial arts traditions? Also I'd say martial arts are different than street fighting, though street fighting -can- lead to forming a martial art (someone mentioned such in this thread)

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"Opps, wanted to add; wasn't there a study about how really smart people lead shitty lives socially? I vaguely remember something about it, so correct me if I'm wrong. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that I'd rather let the new Newton or new Tesla lead a better life than have him have a shitty one and come up with apple powered death rays."
-Knife, in here

What does this talk of decay mean exactly, anyway? Every city of any decent size has always had a few boxing gyms, and every high school and college has a wrestling team. I mean you should listen to a bunch of "classic boxing" enthusiasts argue over the relative strengths and weaknesses of fighting and training techniques from a hundred years ago versus now.

I think part of it is that boxing and wrestling are somehow viewed as "not really" martial arts by some people. They're relatively informal, often associated with the lower classes economically, and they don't have a big body of mysticism to make people think they're cool.

So people just ignore the existence of these 'western' martial arts, or think of them as just a slightly improved version of the usual sort of mindless grappling and punching that completely untrained people do in unarmed combat.

Missed this, so a late response.
1) there is/was no decay, instead there were adaptions and improvements
2) the eastern yuros does not differ with any significance vs western yuros. See my earlier posts above for examples.
How so? Training and application is different, yes. But what do you infer by implication?
For something to be a martial art I'd argue that they at least have regular training and a basic concept of how that training works.