Kampfringen to Boxing

European historical unarmed fighting techniques & methods

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Joshua Immanuel Gani

Kampfringen to Boxing

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Sat Nov 05, 2011 3:25 pm

Strange it is that the Europen culture in two hundred years from 1500s,almost lose their Kampfringen, I hypothesize that the Kampfringen
became a more hitting martial art just like Jujutsu also,

this is because of firearms, heavy armor no longer worn, so more hitting techniques is added because of the possibillity of fighting armored opponents decreased sharply.

It in this sequence:

Middle Age and Renaissance: Kampfringen

1600s: Petter's manual (last of the Ringen manual or not), Pascha's manual contains lot of hitting techniques.

1700s: Hand fencing manual (I forgot who wrote it) heavily influenced by Pascha's Ringen, James Figg become the first boxing champion and boxing at that time allowed grappling and throwing (maybe influenced by Ringen).

1800s and 1900s: grappling and hitting below beltline forbidden and then we see the boxing as it is today in 1900s and later.

So Kampfringen is in direct lineage to Kampfringen, it does not evolve it change! so why boxing lose their grappling techniques ? making it a not so good MA anymore ?

So is it with wrestling, in medieval age and renaissance it is still MA, but later in Baroque Era, it is seen as unrefined and it become these

1800s: Cornish/Lancashire/Cumberland etc, Catch as Catch can, Greco- Roman, Freestyle.

1900s: Professional Wrestling, Smackdown sucks

2000: Revival of Kampfringen
Last edited by Joshua Immanuel Gani on Sat Nov 05, 2011 9:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Sal Bertucci
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Postby Sal Bertucci » Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:52 pm

Well,

It went from Combat, to Duel, to Sport.

Sports try to make everything as fair as possible so that it can be a test of the skills the sport encourages.

Joshua Immanuel Gani

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Sat Nov 05, 2011 9:49 pm

So Kampfringen is the backbone of the WMA becauseit is the forefather of Boxing and Wrestling, it branch off in 1700s and 1800s,

However, Boxing elements in the Kampfringen (Ringen) is younger than the Wrestling/Grappling elements, you will see little hitting in the Fechtbuch, but you can see the Chancery hold and Full Nelson Hold in Talhoffer's manual, I was surprised looking at this I think Full Nelson is from the 1800s.

So you see that Kampfringen become sport too fast causing most people to think that there is WMA while the EMA is still a fighting MA.

maybe if you guys combined Catch as Catch can Wrestling with Glima,Boxing, and Savate, you will get something like Pankration,

I also wonder where do Pankration go to in Middle Age, and from where Savate come (little kicking in Kampfringen)

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RayMcCullough
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Postby RayMcCullough » Sun Nov 06, 2011 2:12 pm

Sal summed it up good. Combat to duel to sport.

There is still a good bit of striking in Kampfringen.

"maybe if you guys combined Catch as Catch can Wrestling with Glima,Boxing, and Savate, you will get something like Pankration,"

How would we know what pankration was? It we can't know what it was, then how can we compare it to something else we have put together with anymore accuracy than anyone else? Plus, I train in ARMA because I want to study Martial Arts not Martial sports.

Pankration disapeared in Greece long before the middle ages. As for savate, it is appears to have been a sport that was later applied to Martial Arts as opposed to a Martial Art turned sport.
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Joshua Immanuel Gani

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Tue Nov 08, 2011 8:31 pm

Maybe I will never a live person in Indonesia practicing Pankration ( far away here and not popular here) but I know it from books ( one by James Arvanitis title " MU TAU" it looks like savate with locks of catch as catch can wrestling,

You guys can differentiate of course that martial sports is not martial arts however several martial sports can be turned into martial arts easiliy

Example :

China: Shuai Jiao (sport), Jiao Li ( martial art in Zhou dynasty)

Greece: Pankration, Pammachon

WW1 combatives: Jujutsu is still not fully known so the combatives is a mix of Catch as Catch Can wrestling, Greco Roman, Jujutsu, and Boxing


So I forgot the first time I entered this website, but Martial Sports often changed into Martial Arts.

Farmer Burns say that the holds in Catch as Catch can wrestling is as good as most Jujutsu holds some even better. ( of course no choke holds in wrestling, no sword hand strikes)

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Corey Roberts
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Postby Corey Roberts » Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:53 pm

Catch has chokes, that's why it's called "catch as catch can" because no specific holds or lock are barred. "the sleeper" is the catch name for what is referred to as a rear naked choke in BJJ circles. I believe the "guillotine choke" as it is known in MMA/BJJ circles is a "front head choke" in catch.

Martial arts tend to become sportified and seperate into different branches over time. For instance the first recorded English Bare-Knuckle boxing champion James Figg competed in "boxing" at a time when grappling was permitted in the matches, also fencing, boxing and wrestling were all taught together in Figg's day, these three elements of what once was the Science of Defence split into three separate things until they were no longer integrated and became sportified to the point of non-recognition from their original forms.
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Joshua Immanuel Gani

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:21 am

I believe the guillotine choke is called chancery in CCC wrestling.

Why most WMA turned into sport and most EMA is still real MA?

When you fight using Ringen as your MA, how do you attack the enemy and how do you finish him? (suppose you live in the Middle Age in life and death situations, maybe stomping on the face or chokes or stabbing with dagger)

Most manual I see is like two person grappling obsessed with bringing their opponents falling on their backs, but the enemy will not be defeated with just falling,right. So what is your opinion on this?

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Postby LafayetteCCurtis » Wed Nov 16, 2011 6:48 am

Joshua Immanuel Gani wrote:Why most WMA turned into sport and most EMA is still real MA?


Seriously? Most Eastern martial arts have been sportified too. The karate you see in Olympic matches is neither the kind of karate a real fighter would have used to defend himself on the street nor the kind of karate taught in the original traditional Okinawan schools. It's the same case with pencak silat--the kind of moves you see these days in open competitions (are you watching the SEA Games?) are nothing like the brutal and varied moves you see in the schools that still teach non-sportified techniques. I'd know--I'm an Indonesian too, and far from ignorant of what's happening in the local martial arts scene right now.


When you fight using Ringen as your MA, how do you attack the enemy and how do you finish him? (suppose you live in the Middle Age in life and death situations, maybe stomping on the face or chokes or stabbing with dagger)

Most manual I see is like two person grappling obsessed with bringing their opponents falling on their backs, but the enemy will not be defeated with just falling,right. So what is your opinion on this?


That's probably because you've only seen some (not all) of the illustrations from any given manual, and without the proper textual and intepretative context at that--so you're not getting the whole picture of the variety of techniques and finishing moves available to the medieval wrestler. There's no shortage of standing grapples, locks, and throws in Fiore, for example, or Paulus Hector Mair (to pick two examples from different time periods and different schools/sub-schools of medieval and Renaissance martial arts).

In many cases, however, the finishing moves aren't described because they'd be obvious. In cases where you managed to throw or trip your opponent to the ground while you remained standing, you'd have the freedom to kick him in the cod or stomp on his face (or just run away) while he's still dazed and winded from the fall. When both of you are on the ground but you're in a dominant position over your opponent, you could get him into a pin/lock or just pummel him senseless--though, given the fact that the average medieval or Renaissance free man nearly always went around with a knife, the most intuitive solution for them might simply have been to draw the knife and stab the opponent before he could reverse the dominance. (I think this "just stab him" solution was also brought up in another recent discussion about the lack of explanation on finishing moves in the groundfighting chapters of some medieval and Renaissance grappling/wrestling manuals).

Joshua Immanuel Gani

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:20 pm

Sportified MAs are mostly suck I think.

I know that Silat have turned into a sport( I think, most Indonesian think that Siat are antiquated with a lot of myths in it), maybe becauseit need to popularized in the world. My mother has always said to me that Silat today is more like dancing than a real MA (most of it is true, right)

Maybe only chinese Martial Arts that is not really sportified, I still have manuals of live MA that is designed to really kill someone.

I also think of stomping on the neck as finishing moves in Ringen, but I'm sure it is true, because Medieval Age is a brutal time for everyone.
I think I have seen much of the Ringen manual, but not the complete picture because it is not drawn in steps so make learning it pretty funny.

Is Auerswald manual good? How about Durer's Ringen book?

I have more advanced throws in Jujutsu books I read, but I like Ringen
also, simpler movements.

Maybe combining both will be good idea! :D
Last edited by Joshua Immanuel Gani on Thu Nov 17, 2011 2:18 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Sal Bertucci
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Postby Sal Bertucci » Thu Nov 17, 2011 12:00 am

"but they are stupidly brutal not clever brutal"

I'm going to give you the opportunity to re-state this, before laying into you.

I suggest you take it.

Joshua Immanuel Gani

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Thu Nov 17, 2011 2:17 am

If you don't like that, Sorry for that!

LafayetteCCurtis
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Postby LafayetteCCurtis » Tue Nov 22, 2011 5:11 am

Joshua Immanuel Gani wrote:SMaybe only chinese Martial Arts that is not really sportified,


No, no, no. Traditional and/or practically-oriented schools still exist, but most Chinese martial arts taught both in China and in the West have been as heavily sportified as anything else. Wushu is even explicitly described as the sport version of gongfu (kung fu).


It would also be very inaccurate to call medieval methods of personal combat "stupidly brutal;" in fact, "cleverly brutal" is exactly what they're like, with a large variety of techniques and sequences developed to deal with both armed and unarmed situations.

Joshua Immanuel Gani

Postby Joshua Immanuel Gani » Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:43 pm

I'm sorry, but I think I have been misunderstood. "Stupid" doesn't mean any negative connotation, I use to mean that medieval martial art is very simple and straightforward.

Not much ground wrestling or complex locks. :)

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Postby LafayetteCCurtis » Sat Jun 30, 2012 4:09 am

Probably because many of the complex techniques seen today in unarmed BJJ/MMA would have been redundant in an era when most free men carried some sort of knife or dagger and would have been able to resort to it for a quick final blow without much need for ground-and-pound or the like. Even then, though, we do see a fair amount of submission locks -- go check facsimiles or translations of the actual wrestling manuals themselves rather than just condensed summaries in Web articles or blogs.


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