By Joel B. Belinan
Last week I focused on four personalities that give us inspiration doing our training routine at Burnham Park. This time I would like to answer some comments that we used to hear from curious park goers, passersby or even those wanting to test certain individuals in the group. Many of the comments were pleasant, some were nasty ones, while others were purely out of curiosity. Admittedly, at first, the nasty comments irritated me and it was hard to resist the urge to talk back, but so far I never had to do it. Here are three of the most repeated ones:
1) Apay nga ag en ensayo kayo nga ag boxing or agkickboxing, apay boxer wenno kickboxer kayo? (Why do you train like boxers or kickboxers? Are you boxers or kickboxers?).
2) Boksing boksing, kara-karate apay adda laban na dayta iti balan ti paltog? (Boxing boxing, karate karate, can those go against the bullets of the guns?)
3) Pakitang tao lang dagita, imbag to pay nu adda kaykayada? (They are just showing off. I don’t think they are really capable.)
There were times when irritation ended up with a little sparring between one of us and an outsider with the latter sustaining a busted nose or having difficulty to breathe and had to raise his hands to give up.
The purpose of the group’s martial arts routine at the park is to keep ourselves fit or healthy. As I said before, for us poor people, exercise through martial arts is the simplest and cheapest way to stay healthy. Though we have members who come from the rich or even super-rich class.
Now let’s tackle the comments above.
On the first one, yes, most of the ones playing with us are boxers, kick-boxers or karate players. Most of my co-trainers were either boxers or kick-boxers or karate fighters during their younger years. On the other hand, many of the young ones are active fighters in their schools or gyms. And they do not necessarily play in one discipline only. They are either in boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, wushu or even in traditional martial arts like pencak silat, or karate or the ground games like judo, jujitsu or wrestling. This is something that we should be proud of our fighters from the Cordillera. But there are others in our Burnham Team who just play for fitness or for health reasons.
On the second comment, I should answer it this way, we do our martial arts routines as a means to keep our health and fitness and that we are not for violence. However, when provoked to the point where we had to defend ourselves physically, surely our members had always been much better than those with no training. While it is not a sure guarantee that a practitioner will always prevail, he has a big advantage. And for those talking about guns, be sure to say that when our members from the police or military services are around. I remember one guy who made such nonsense comment when a policeman friend who was around responded by asking, “Do you have a gun? Is it licensed?” Sensing that our friend was a police officer the guy suddenly blushed and immediately apologized, adding that he didn’t have a gun. In short, people who talk too much are those who don’t have anything to brag about.
On the third comment, it’s common from our kakailians and lowlanders alike. There is still that old notion that playing martial arts in public is a form of bragging. Yes, it is an old notion. I remember in the late 80s when two Japanese Aikido instructors came to Baguio to officiate in a belting promotion. They jogged around the city with us in their complete kimono with their haka uniform (a traditional Japanese dress and uniform for martial arts teachers or Sensei) and without shoes at that. (For us, we had our jogging shoes of course), and we never had that notion they were showing off.
While I could easily just let such comments pass, some of my friends sometimes just had to accept the challenge. One early morning upon arrival at our favorite spot, two guys were already having a sparring session. Based on what I saw on the first round, they were not just in a light sparring from how they were swinging their hands and their body language. On one side was a tall and lanky guy who obviously was not from this place and on the other side was a friend who, although much shorter, was a veteran boxer. During the break after the first round, I told them to take it easy and just have a friendly spar. However, by the time they started on the second round, the tall guy aggressively attacked the shorter veteran with all his might which may have caught our guy in some parts of his body. This might have infuriated the shorter guy who responded with a one two combination on the tall guy’s floating ribs and on the face that caused him to almost fall. I immediately stepped in and stopped the fight and the tall guy seemed to be very happy it was stopped. Had I not stopped the fight, the tall guy would have surely got a good beating. Because, by the looks of things, the tall guy lacked the technique and stamina to really box, let alone with the veteran short guy.
In another instance, a guy who happened to be one of our Muslim brothers came directly to our group and was challenging one of us for a sparring. Sensing that the other guys might get angry and would not control their strikes, I volunteered but I said that it would be in muay thai or kickboxing. He refused, saying that I was bigger and he could not kick. He instead directly challenged Sensei Edwin Aliong who happened to be a veteran professional boxer, a 10 rounder during his prime. He is also a veteran professional kick-boxer and the founder of Universal Martial Arts, Inc. based here in Baguio. While Sensei Aliong was quite small, we were all smiles as we knew what will surely happen. At the start of the first round, the challenger launched an aggressive attack both on the body and head but were easily avoided by Sensei Aliong. The challenger seemed to have had some basic boxing lessons but could not be compared to any of our small guys based on how he was handling himself. Sensei Aliong sensed this from the start and thus just played along with controlled counter punches. At the end part of the first round, the challenger however again launched an aggressive attack but a counter to his floating ribs by Sensei Aliong knocked him down to the ground. When I asked him if he wanted to continue, he shook his head and smiled, saying he had enough. He described the punches of Sensei Aliong as very strong and very fast that he could not even touch any part of his body.
In conclusion, here was another guy who thought that watching some movies or tournaments and having had simple lessons gave him the capability to challenge martial arts practitioners.
With this simple introduction of our Burnham Park Team, I invite anyone to come join us and sweat it out. For more, view my fb page: Martial Arts for Health and Fitness. Or our fb group’s: Burnham Park Team.**
