WSOF 12

Discussion in 'MMA' started by belltoller, Aug 10, 2014.

  1. belltoller

    belltoller OffTopic MonstreOrdinaire Supporter

    Its become a rare occasion that I can even tune in to a boxing match or MMA event these days, with a demanding family and all; much less actually watch more than a few moments of it.

    Tonight; however, I was fortunate enough to see at least half of the WSOF 12. I had to stop 2 fights from the main event to attend to things and when I returned, I noticed that there were 8 minutes left and the main event had just started its 'Tale of the Tape' segment.

    I knew it would be a quick finish and a quick glance at the fighter's resume's already told the rest of the story.

    Luis Palomino - BJJ Black Belt and Capoeira Black-Belt (didn't know they had BBs in Capoeira till this evening)!

    Where are ya gonna go wrong with that?

    I warn't disappointed. It was a quick finish in round 1. It wasn't a Capoeira move per se, but I am always amased at the power these MAists can generate; whether its being applied in standard MT low leg kicks or their own Martelo (a term I learned this evening) speciality.

    If you are a Capoeira enthusiast ( or just enjoy nicely executed MMA ) do yourself a favour and catch the WSOF 12 main event.



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  2. Bozza Bostik

    Bozza Bostik Antichrist on Button Moon

    I can't add to the MMA/fight discussion, but yeah some capoeira styles have BBs. Angola doesn't have belts at all, but Contemporânea does. I'm not sure about Regional. Different groups use totally different colours for the same grade, so it can all be a bit confusing if someone tells you they are a red belt or something.

    I'll have to look out for that match.
     
  3. belltoller

    belltoller OffTopic MonstreOrdinaire Supporter

    Makes sense that there are regional variations and flavours. Obviously it came from the need to disguise a combat art with the appearance of dance. There must have been a MA that served as the skeleton of Capoeira.
     
  4. Bozza Bostik

    Bozza Bostik Antichrist on Button Moon

  5. dormindo

    dormindo Active Member Supporter

    Nope, no black belts in capoeira angola. There could be such in contemporanea, though to be honest I hadn't heard of it (but the world of contemporanea is quite large). I've heard of black cords, though none of the contemporanea groups I've visited (I've not trained in it) had them.

    As Lily says there are no belts in angola (well, there may be a few groups, like Capoeira Palmares, but a great deal of global capoeira angola outside of Brazil seems to be of the Pastinha lineage and none of those use any belts at all).

    It's not regional variations per se: capoeira regional and capoeira contemporanea, though strongly associated with Bahia, are variations of the same root of capoeira, as Lily has mentioned. The whole family tree of how regional and contemporanea developed is a long story.

    The whole disguise the art as a dance thing doesn't seem to have much support in the history, as documents show that even travelers from Europe that saw capoeira saw some martial character to it. Also, it seems that when capoeira was finally outlawed, other African derived cultural expressions were also outlawed. Prior to that, though capoeira was repressed from time to time, there were also times when capoeiristas could openly practiced.

    Now, after the outlawing of capoeira in the 1890s and the stamping out of the artform in Rio, the locus of the art moved to Salvador in Bahia. Though repressed there, many openly practiced it and it doesn't appear that many, if any, used dancelike capoeira moves to hide the martial aspects. (Veering into personal opinion here): If anything, it would seem more likely that a group of people practicing capoeira seeking to avoid discovery by the police would, if they didn't just flee outright, simply begin practicing one of the many other dance forms common in Brazil. After all, by the 1890s and afterward, many police themselves were familiar with the art, some having trained in it, as had a number of political figures. That story about hiding things in dance still persists, though.

    Indications from historians that have worked on it are that the skeleton of capoeira was likely the Central African martial art/game known as ngolo/engolo. If you read the work of T.J. Desch Obi (a brief sample of his work is here: http://books.google.com/books?id=EK...ombat and the crossing of the kalunga&f=false), he argues that ngolo was the root of it, but he goes on to say in his book Fighting for Honor that it was likely blended together with a headbutting game played in the same region of Central Africa where engolo was practiced. If you're interested, I'd recommend his book as well as the book written by Maya Talmon-Chvaicer and the article by John Thornton on warfare in Central Africa.
     
  6. belltoller

    belltoller OffTopic MonstreOrdinaire Supporter

    Ah...thanks for throwing light on this. Mind you, it was one of the television announcers who said that Palomino had BBs in BJ and Capoeira. At least I thought I heard him say that, though I'd have to look at the transcripts to be certain.

    Anyroads, it is intriguing and it suggests that ngolo would have (presumably) developed independently as a martial art. The east-Asian MA's are so intertwined/mutually influential it is difficult to tell sometimes, which begat what. I would think [ an MA developed on the African Continent] unlikely to have been 'contaminated' from outside influences to the degree the others have been.

    Thanks for the links! (Boris' as well)

    BTW, here's a very brief highlight from last evenings fight...

    [ame="www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y65FEmNuL4"]www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y65FEmNuL4[/ame]
     
  7. Bozza Bostik

    Bozza Bostik Antichrist on Button Moon

    According to wiki he does have a BB, it would be a black cord though. As said, some styles do use coloured cords and some the black is high or highest.

    Just to give you an idea of the confusing mess that capoeira cords are. You'll notice black cord is the highest in the second link (Grupo Capoeira Brasil). And it seems they follow the Asian styles more when it comes to colour order:

    http://www.zumzumzum.com/cords/Aruande_Cord_System.jpg

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AeL6uXAHf...cE71bk/s1600/cordas+grupo+capoeira+brasil.jpg
     
  8. dormindo

    dormindo Active Member Supporter

    He probably did say it. I remember seeing in Jet magazine (was in the checkout line at the grocery store) that Wesley Snipes had a 'black belt' in capoeira. Had a good chuckle and then paid for my food.:)

    I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'independently', I guess. From what Desch Obi has researched, it appears that ngolodeveloped in a climate where there were other armed and unarmed fighting arts that would have formed the basis for the martial training of warriors. The unarmed arts, however, seemed to have been practiced largely as martial games for earning respect, determining prowess and accruing honor. The games (ngolo, the headbutting game and a slapboxing type of game called kandeka if I remember correctly) were played separately but were conflated by those from the region who practiced them (and many would have been familiar with more than one game, apparently) when brought to Brazil into the early form of what we now know as capoeira.

    As for development within the region, Desch Obi's argument is that ngolo is a martial game not only played by the people in the Kunene river valley region (where he tracks the origin of it, or, perhaps, an origin of it), but was also known and played in variant forms by neighboring peoples (I suppose those people may have been linguistically, ethnically and culturally connected, I don't recall if his work goes into that in detail). Don't know if that is the same as the regional diffusion of Asian MAs, but I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't some similarities (at least in the way that diffusion happened in the pre-industrial era).

    Environment apparently had some impact on fighting tactics in the region. Thorton (whose works deal more with armed conflict, but do touch on unarmed tactics) suggests that the lack of an abundance of wood of the type serviceable for arrows helped to shape warfare in the region to become close quarters, melee combat where hand to hand (or weapon, of course) was common and evasiveness in hand to hand was necessary. Warriors carried very few arrows and fired those off in the beginning of battle before closing in. The need for evasiveness is thought to be related to displays of nsanga (sometimes called sanguar), a form of 'dance'/'war dance' where one displays their agility in mimicking close combat with an imagined opponent. Nsanga is thought to be part of the ngolo game. So, environment may have shaped warfare which, in turn, made a particular principle of combat one of the prominent features of an unarmed fighting game. It isn't the most airtight argument that a historian can make (some argue back and forth about the impact of the environment on certain human activities), but it is a good one, and an intriguing one.

    Lastly, cultural and spiritual/cosmological factors influenced ngolo. Apparently, the reason that people stand on their hands in capoeira is tied into this. When I first started capoeira so many years ago, I remember hearing that people would do handstands and kick while in handstands because their hands were chained (I admit to never having thought, back then, about how difficult it might be to attempt handstands and cartwheels while one's hands were chained). However, historical documents in Brazil demonstrate that enslaved Africans were far more often chained by the feet (to prevent them from running away) than by the hands. Well, Desch Obi (and James Sweet) suggest that inverting one's body by standing on the hands was tied into spiritual ideas in West Central Africa (Kongo/Angola region) that physical inversion was a way to draw on spiritual power from the realm of the ancestors (a realm that was this realm's opposite and, hence, upside down). Desch Obi goes on to argue that people saw inverted kicks from handstand (or other low and inverted positions) as being 'spiritually' powerful. These symbolic moves entered the corpus of the ngolo, he argues, and became the basis for the rather unique inverted kicks of capoeira (well, okay, I guess there's Taekkyon, too ;)).

    Thanks! I'm wondering if there is any footage of him anywhere playing capoeira. I've seen one video of Anderson Silva, so maybe I'll see if I can find one of Palomino, just for curiosity's sake.
     
  9. belltoller

    belltoller OffTopic MonstreOrdinaire Supporter


    That's certainly an interesting take on it - yeah, someone brought this up in your new Capoeira thread - the Rabo de Arraia - is this the correct name for the kick we are referring to? - sorry - was thought to have originated from the necessity for the manacled slave to defend while encumbered in this fashion.

    I'd not even gotten so far as that.

    All I know of the subject could be put in a sewing thimble with room left over for a finger, but something tells me that the way you off-the-cuff put that clever and seemingly obvious assumption under the null/alternative hypothesis framework as you did in your post here shows some rather frighteningly original thinking. :bow1:

    As for me, its off to primary school I'm afraid, lol.
     
  10. dormindo

    dormindo Active Member Supporter

    Thank you, but it's just the result of having spent so many years at this and having a particular interest in the history. That and my training as a historian has led me to be able to couch it in terms better than the 'me no believe crazy stories that me used to' that I would probably have otherwise used.:)
     

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