Ultimate swordfighting - GATKA

[ariel]

I do not doubt the fighting abilities of Ukrainian Cossacks (Zaporozhskaya Sech), and fully appreciate the originality of the Ukrainian culture including "hopak". However, the facts are incontrovertible: there was never a specialized Slavic martial arts system in the sense of Japanese, Chinese, Filippine, or Indian. Ivan Poddubny was a superb professional wrestler, a World Champion, and Ukrainians are right to be proud of him. However, he was a Greco-Roman wrestler, and not a practitioner of a (mythical) "Ukrainian" style.
One can ask a question why the martial arts systems employing legs and feet for striking all come from Asia ( with the possible exception of Capoeira), but that would be another discussion. Even French boxing owes its origins to Asian techniques brought from the Far East.
Enthusiasm is good, but one should stay within the realm of factual knowledge. Each culture has something unique and no culture should claim universal coverage. This is the beauty and the greatness of the human race. Germany produced the best composers in the world, but never had a major painter. Good enough for me.

[Rivkin]

Dear Yustas,

Your post greatly depicts all the problems with "ukranian" fighting styles - you have no idea which weapons cossacks used even 300 years ago, but somehow fighting moves of sarmats, scythians and ancient slavs is a common knowledge. Even the borders of alanic and khazaric tribes is a highly disputed issue, never mind the weapons they used, yet somehow one can see in hopak the sparkle of early arian pride.

Concerning "islamic" and other martial styles, they have often the same problems - a lot of them started when a bunch of ultra-nationalistic kids suddenly "discovered" ancient fighting traditions (concerning how the discovery was made they usually refer to some guru who lives on the island who somehow "inherited" this tradition from ancient Arians).

First of all, all Steppe fighting styles included horsemanship and the use of weapons from the horseback. But horses are not too common in modern cities, so martial arts "experts" simply skipped this most important part of original Steppe warfare traditions. Most of them also skipped such paramountly important weapons as long spear (too uncomfortable to train in Dojo), bow (again not good for cities, plus too complex), muskets (we are _martial_ artists not reenactors) and so on, and so on. Result is good for nationalism, but bad for history.

[Yustas]

Mr Rivkin,
I can assure you, that my knowledge of cossack weapons is greater than you think. An a questions in another thread was about sabres only.
To make long story short-here is a stand with display of most of cossack weapons from few hundred years ago.

http://www.museummilitary.com/?p=10&s=16

Question, is it bad to love your country and culture?
And i'm surprised that it turned in to personal offence. I thought people here are more friendly and open minded.

[Andrew]

Everyone cool down, please. Immediately.

Let's remember this forum is visited by folks from different cultures, speaking different languages.