WEKAF Style Sparring, Opinions?

you sum up the entire problem in britian in one sentance, the judges dont know what their doing so the fighters dont need skill to win and just stand toe to toe and hit each other.

 

Hey Folks,

Using WEKAF gear, especially the helmet, allows you to train effective and powerful headshots on an unwilling opponent. Fencing masks and foam headgear can't hold up to the same punishment as a WEKAF mask and provide the same level of protection. The body gear also allows someone to practice hitting on their partners without the risk of serious injury. One of the sparring excercises that I like to do is to have one person armed with a padded stick wear the body protector. Their opponent is armed with a live stick and the WEKAF helmet. The person with the live stick is going for power hits and combinations. The one with the body gear is training that other person by finding and "stinging" openings in their defense with the padded stick. It's important to train with the gear for combat more than competition.

Like others have said, what you get out of sparring has a lot to do with how much you put into it. If you don't train realistically as John said, then you do yourself a disservice. When you allow your training partners to train lazily then you do them a disservice as well. During a tournament if somebody is fighting realistically, then I fight back the same way. But if they begin to do sacrifices and the like, then I "aim for pink" and get the parts the armor doesn't protect so well (thighs, wrists, traps, tri, bi, ear, etc). Those are all legal spots in competition. Not only does it keep them honest, but it keeps the game honest. For those of you who think that WEKAF competition isn't painful, I weigh 190lbs and I'll be competing in the WEKAF regionals this fall. I can show you otherwise.

No system is perfect, and WEKAF has its problems. The number one problem with WEKAF competitions is the lack of expert judges. I believe that most of the judges do the best that they can but many of them have not even read the rules and are not equipped to judge. One recent evolution in the US is the absorption of multiple head blows in sacrifice to get one good body shot that makes a lot of noise. This is being addressed internally within WEKAF as "lack of defense" and people are now dinged for it. Just like sparring, you benefit from an organization in proportion to your contribution and I don't mean money, but effort. That effort can be through complaining, participating, attending votes, etc. This last June when I was in the Philippines for the WEKAF championships one of the things that I thought was making a lot of progress was overcoming cheating and unfair judging. Change is slow, but with effort the system can be made better. Myself, I have a lot of hope for WEKAF and I see it as more of a good than a bad. I don't think it's the "end all be all". It's just a piece of the larger picture, but it can be valuable and has been for me.

 

The problem of bad judging and biased decision has raised it's ugly head since WEKAF began, in the past the British team had a reputationof being fair and un-biased, but I am affraid I have to agree with Peter on this one, they too have gone down that ugly road, I am affraid it may be a case of if you can't beat them then join them.

Now I have held possitions in WEKAF for many years, from secretary, to treasuruer right up to Vice President, I was world tournament Director in Manila in 1994 and I was still battling the same problems then that are still happening now. So to say they are trying to correct it I just say, yep, same old same old.

I also hate to say this, but from the report I had of the last World Championships that were held in Cebu last June it was not the Philippines that was responsible for the vast majority of the cheating that was going on it was in fact the US contingent. So much so that a senior US member of the Board was more concerned about making sure his son won a title as opposed to making sure the event was run fairly.

The rules to ensure that fairness is given to everyone are already in place in WEKAF, I know because I helped re-wright many of the rules with GM Diony over the years, the vast majority of those rules have been in place since 1996. Trust me I know the rules inside out and backwards, the rules are there, it is just that a large portion of the senior members do not want them to be enforced or their pals would not win jack.

the other problem is that there no longer seems to be any characters that fight within the rules but also try to fight as they would without the armour, People such as Frederick Con Con, Percival Pableo, John Harvey, Danny Guba, Lucy Bracken (O'Malley), Eva Canete, Neil McLeod, Steve Wolk, Sharon Burns and dare I say it myself. All of these people were inovators, they looked at the fight as though it was real, they played within the rules but they also had their own signatures / personal style often pulling of techniques and moves you deem impossible under pressure, they also stretched the rules to the limit and are remembered by all who have been in WEKAF throughout it's life, many are still talked about and still feared by them even now though they no longer fight. Most of these ex-fighters look at WEKAF now and just frown with disappointment.

The majority today just do what I call stick bashing because that is what is winning them points. I never stick bashed and neither did the fighters I have mentioned in this thread, they all used the skill of the art as if it were a real fight, they always fought as though they had no armour on, even the late GM Momoy came to me one day and said, it is nice to see someone fight old style, which was the best compliment I ever recieved. Even though I and the other fighters I have mentioned never lowerd themselves to the majority of the stick bashers they still managed to win more titles than most, I myself won 3 Worlds, 5 European and 32 British titles, so you see it can be done without stick bashing, it is just a matter of whether the majority want to win with skill and tallent as opposed to win at all costs, I think the majority just want the title regardless. I have found the Filipino's only cheat against the stick bashers as they don't mind losing against someone who has good style, they will even praise you afterwards. To make a point, my wife had a large Filipino following even when she fought and beat Filipino's and some of the following were Grand Masters of the art.

I have losts fights to politics too you have to accept that in any sporting organisation, I can remember one fight where the guy only hit me 6 times in the whole bout and I chased him around the ring beating the hell out of him, but lost because my face did not fit that year I lost, but hey, it's only a sport.

The reason I left WEKAF in GB in the end was because of the constant political back biting which was not just aimed at me, but also my family which was taking it a bit far, as well as this the politics and cheating I could see was on the rise, and until it resolves it's self then I will have little to do with WEKAF in Britain.

WEKAF has it's place and is a very good format for the promotion of the FMA as a whole, when it get's it's act together that is, from time to time it has got it's act together and has made a great impact on the FMA, I know, if it had not I would not have spent and lot of time, effort and money promoting it through-out Europe, but it seems to go in cycles, one year it starts to get it right, then the next it reverts back to the bad side.

Untill WEKAF can become constant and become a more fairer organisation it will only grow so far then level out, I beleive it is now leveling out, if it gets it's act together then it will become the biggest organisation in the world and who knows it may even show case in the Olympics (by the way they have said that every year since 1992 too).

WEKAF has a lot of potential to attract more styles which it did in the early years, but it's worst enemy is it's self and many see it as being biased to just one or two styles, rules are also there to stop this happening but are they enforced, no I am affraid they are not.

The fairest year I expearianced was the year they actually trained up non FMA participants who had little or no knowledge of the art at all, they were by far the fairest jusdges I have ever come across and were tottally un-biased and took their role as judges seriously, and they were all Filipino's. And before you say it, I lost that year fair and square to a very tallented American firghter who's name slips me at the moment (sorry mate old age plays on the brain)

When you have rules, you will have some who use them for the good of the sport, some who use them to their advantage in both good and bad ways and others who totally disregard the rules, the majority of the judges in WEKAF are either current fighters or ex-fighters so to say it is down to a lack of expearianced judges is a falesy, it is down to expearianced judges being biased. Trust me I know, I have seen it and I have personally tried to fix it, but there is only so many times you can try to fix something before you give up on it, and I think I spent enough time doing that, in 10 years time, many who are new to WEKAF may well have the same opinion as me unless of course WEKAF sorts it's self out, then you will see many of the old school come back like myself who are waiting in the back ground and try to promote WEKAF once again including many of the other styles who were involved in the early days in the Philippines who now avoid WEKAF.

Regards

Pat

 

People are not criticising the event, they are cirticising the players and judges, many of the judges are in fact the players and ex-fighter and this does have a bearing on peoples veiws of the events as a whole.

The majority of the critics are ex-fighters themselves. How often do you hear a player saying it has been a realy enjoyable day and I have had a great time even though I won nothing. Very rare. But I have heard it on the rare occasion that judging has been fair throughout an event.

regards

Pat

 

To make my point a little clearer I have a little story for you that always makes me chuckle.

In 2000 as well as marrying my wonderful wife in Cebu, fighting at the world championships and coaching the British team, I was also Vice President of WEKAF and one of the head adjudicators.

As head adjudicator I was incharge of one of the four rings that were being used on the day, my job was to try settle arguments over suspected cheating and to stop any rule infringements I seen during the day and apply and action I deemed appropriate at the time.

Well part way through the first day I noticed that the main coaches of the Swiss team were how shall I say, showing favoritism in certain areas. One bout during the day involved a Brit guy fighting a Swiss Guy, now I was watching the fight and what a fight it was, both fighters seemed to be going at it big style and both fighters were not only hitting, they were blocking and evading. It was one of the better fights of the day.

The fight ended and both fighters looked very tired, a few minutes later the result was announced which even surprised me, with this one of the cornermen flew into a rage as he did not agree with the result, as was my duty I put the result on hold and called the judges to the table and asked the cornermen of each team to also approach the table. As I was trying to sort the mess out, for even I knew who had won the fight, one of the cornermen carried on shouting and ranting at me, now he had been responsible for some of the cheating himself during the event and was so tied up in beleiving that because he had cheated that someone else was looking for payback, namely me. Oh how wrong he was. I had got so tired of his shouting as he was making it very difficult for me to make a fair decision that I flew off the handle.

I turned to him and shouted so loud the whole stadium could hear me, "You stupid fool, I am actually defending your fighter". He thought that because I was British, I was automatically going to back the British fighter, Oh how wrong he was. Yep you got it, it was the Swiss Cornerman. Eventually he realised his stupidity and tried to appologise, but he had caused so much disruption that the only fair decision I could make was to ask both players to fight and extension round and I replaced al 3 corner judges as I knew 2 were not exactely be un-biased. Luckely though the Swiss fighter won the extension round, only just though.

The Swiss guy try to come up to me later and appologies for his stupid behaviour, I said that's was fine but if I seen him act like this again or carry on being biased when he was judging (he did not realise I had noticed his biased behaviour throughout the day) then I was remove him from the event and building.

The problem lies here, when someone in a possition of authority e.g. Judge and or coach decides that they will do anything to ensure that their players or those they hold favour with win at all costs they naturally assume that everyone else has the same mission in mind, and when others see that people like this are behaving in such a way and for the majority of the time they can and do get away with it, they say well, if he is getting away with then I will to, after all why should he ensure his players win at all costs at the expence of my players, now we have entered a spiral downwards.

The main problem is that everyone has the best intentions at the begining, but one bad apple starts to spread the rot amoungst the barrel, there are a small few people within WEKAF that are constanlty striving to keep it fair, But as it stands at the moment they are fighting an uphill battle, for the vast majority are forcing themselves down the hill against them. Until the attitude of the players, coaches and judges change and they insist that fairness in the main key to participation and not winning at all costs then I am affraid WEKAF will still be trying to answer the same questions in 10 years time.

Many have tried to change WEKAf for the better over the years and have given up in the end, and there are still one or two still left in WEKAF who still strive for this ideal, but they are loosing allies fast and I feel they too will eventually give up the fight, unless the players themselves take charge and force change, if this happens as i have said before, there are many who have been involved in the past just waiting in the background to give a helping hand.

I beleive WEKAf has is not living up to it's full potentual as yet and their are a few out there who are happy to keep the Status Quo, once this minority of bad apples are rooted out, WEKAF will become bigger and better becuase of it and will I beleive become the biggest and most respected FMA organisation in the world.

regards.

Pat

 

Pat wrote> People are not criticising the event

Actually Pat, as a former participant too, I have heard a lot of criticism about WEKAF style events. The comments referred to the heavy armor and light sticks. I'm surprised you have not heard anyone refer to WEKAF play as "michelin men" or "pillow fights".

I agree that the criticism should be of the players and officials. This is what I stated from the very beginning.

John G. Jacobo
www.swacom.com

 

mr. omalley,

could you explain why a few of the rules are in place at wekaf?


no thrusting or butting

no striking with any part of the body

no checking to the face

no sweeping or throwing

no more then two consecuitive strikes to any target area

it seems like with these rules it can quite easily turn into stick bashing.

thanx

 

A lot of these can be put down to safty, thrust could run up the armour into the throat etc. Sweeps and throws im not to sure on, but again in all that armour saftey again. No more than 2 consecutive strikes was to stop the 'stick bashers' and to attempt to encourage skill in makeing use of more than 1 or 2 strikes.

 

Not if you know where to hit its not. Leg shots sting, nothing like being hit with a pillow.

 

2 strikes

Hi SF,

I believe the 2 strikes to any area then move on was brought in because in early tournaments people were repeatedly striking the same area, i.e. head, to the point where the audience were getting very bored. So the rule was brought in to help make things more interesting from the spectators point of view.

Bill

 

Well actually I have heard this mentioned more than a few times, but always by people who have either never tried it (so their opinion don't count really) or those that have done it Once and got their butts kicked.

Those that have regularly participated in WEKAF bouts know full well that the armour is not heavy and if your hit right your bones break. I know I had a few and dished out even more.

I still send my students to the WEKAF events as I know it is a good training ground for them, but I do tell them not to take it too seriously as at the end of the day it is only a sport. And if luck is not on your side that day and the judges take a disliking to you because of where you come from, then you ain't gonna win anyway. So treat it like fun and enjoy beating people with big sticks.

Best regards

Pat

 

I will do my best

Thrusting and butt striking used to be allowed in WEKAF events in the early years and I used them to great effect, so great that many of my opponents ended up injured, I have seen guys end up in hospital and on several occasions the sticks peirced the grill and passed down the side of the head just missing impailing the players eye, WEKAF was lucky that no one got killed, so they were taken out in the interests of safety. Much to my dissapointment but I understood the reasoning behind it.

It's a STICK FIGHTING tournament to show off your stick fighting skills, if you want to kick and punch go in the ring with Thai Boxers. The other reason being many people would ignore the use of the weapon because of the armour in favour of kicking and punching hence you may as well leave the stick out side the ring and just kickbox.

Have you ever been checked to the face with one of those helmets on, I have and ended up with a damged kneck (people have to get up for work in the morning), When I was training many years ago I took part in a sparring session wearing the armour and it was agreed that all blows counted, after my initial blow with the stick, I punched the guy in the face guard, knocked him out, borke his nose and he was left with grill marks across his face, again the use of checking to the face would detract from the use of the stick, many would ignore the weapon, close in and just check continuassly. Safety and style.

For throwing you can go do Judo, if you have a stick in a real stick fight with no armour, what are your chances of being able to throw someone? Very minimal I can tell you. As for Sweeping, again this used to be allowed in the early years and I again was a great fan of it, and excellent exponent of this technique was GB's John Harvey, he was very successfull with it. But again more and more people where ending up with cracked knee's and bruised spines (bit dodgy eh!) so in the interests of safety they again where taken out. Oh by the way, the Sweeps, Thrusts and Butt Strikes were objected to by Richard Bustillo at the time when he was on the Board of Directors and he really pushed for it, I disagreed as did others but as WEKAF is a democracy the majority rules.

Ah this one is easy, imagine someone just continuassly tapping the same spot, no skill their eh, but you can block, evade or counter and hit the same strike in retaliation as many times as you like, for you are doing 2 seperate moves, it also encourages you to use combinations (which takes skill) as opposed to just tapping the snare drum like a boy scout. This rule is there to encourage the use of combination skill and it makes for a better looking fight too, even boxers don't just jab for 12 rounds, they have crosses, hooks and upper cuts used in combination, imagine how boring boxing would be if both fighters came out and just jabbed for 12 rounds?

That depends of the player, do you want to win at all costs? then become a stick basher. Do you want to win with skill? then try to fight as though you had no armour on. remember it is meant to be a safer way to test your skill, it is not completely safe, you do get injured and on occasion seriously, but if you have a safer version then the more and more people are willing to participate and hence the art grows for not everyone has the courage or the willingness to go old style, thats human nature. The orriginal purpose for WEKAF was to find a safer way to spar on a global scale in order to promote the FMA to the world, and it's doing a good job at it, could do better, but still it is doing OK.

Regards

Pat

 

Sorry mate, but the rule has always been in their from the beggining and in the early years the pace was not as fast as it is now, simply because you were allowed to foot sweep, thrust and butt strike, this made the fight more middle to long range for if you got too close you either got hurt or you were footswept which meant you lost a point (3 lost points for a combination of anything back then and you were disqualified), It was when the thrusts, butt strikes and footsweeps were taken out in 1996 in Los Angeles that the fight moved closer, for amny it became a Corto Game, for the few old school people it meant their middle and long range skills had to improve, the close in hitters got faster because their was no fear of Thrust, Butt or Sweep and the 2 shot rule came into it's own, that is when the stick bashing started and the rule had to be enforced for the first time. I blame Bustillo for being too safety concious, but the Americans live in fear of being sued so I can understand his reasoning. Bustillo was also one of the Guys who demanded Kali be put in to the name of the federation to attaract the USA market, before his insistance it was going to be known as World Eskrima Arnis Federation WEAF, so go figure.

Reagrds

Pat

 

2 Strikes rule

Cheers Pat, my understading of the reasons has been corrected.

Sometimes these forums actually can add to your knowledge

Bill

 

That's kind of the point

thanks for the info Pat

 

I am just but a book of the rules, sad really, but helped me walk the fine line between legal and ilegal know what I mean

And no probs Laban, you ask and I shall waffle

 

I didn't realize they'd removed the punyo, sweeps, and thrusts. But then, I stopped competing around 1994.

I remember the thrusts were kind of a problem because they sometimes rode up the opponent's armour and underneath the neck guard on his helmet, hitting them in the throat. (A friend of mine ended his day that way at our first tournament. In Catonsville, Maryland.)


Stuart

 

And that's why they have been removed, shame though I loved using them.

 

I'm more surprised by the punyo and sweeps than the thrust. Saw first hand what was wrong with that one.

 

Oh the punyo, how I loved the punyo, mind you I cracked a freinds sturnum in a sparring session with one once, ouch! hehehe.

I loved finding the soft spots in the helmet (you know just behind the ear muff) and a kidney shot was a favorite of mine, stopped the corto guys getting too close.

The main objector to the footsweeps was Arif Shakh from India who claimed many people in his country were being swept to their knees and cracking their knees, I argued that to do that they must have been doing it wrong. But Richard Bustillo induced so much "watch out me may get sued" mentality that a slight majority voted them out, Jeez he really got up my back at the WEKAF rules meetings, if he would have had his own way, we would have ended up having a looking competition, had many an argument with him over rule changes, thank god he only won 2% of them.

I much prefered the old days in WEKAF (not trying to sound like an old man) when the rules were basic and you could do a lot more, the rules then were more geared towards skill as opposed to who could hit the most. But sports develop and change over the years and still enjoy the occasional spar, and the newer rules have made my hitting faster so something good has come out of it I suppose. But as I keep saying, it's just a sport, dont take it too seriously.

regards

Pat