Hello:
I am a Jugador de Garrote (Instructor of Garrote Larense), with sixteen years of experience in the art that you choosed to call "Garrote Larense", and I rather call "El Juego del Garrote". I becamed very happy to see that there are some american folks interested in this contact discipline. I read every post written here, and I would like to tell you some things:
* Anyone that is skeptical about the seriousness of a discipline like the one we are talking about, or about its teachers, should not be considered an unrespectful person, because that is the approach that I will advice anybody to have. In the case of people like kuntawman, he is right when he does not trust anybody only by the things said, he wants to see the facts. Many martial schools, arts and instructors have been created for the satisfaction of the ego of those who claim to be the ones with the ability to teach.
* For those talking about filipino influence in Venezuelan Stick Fighting System, I would only ask them to find the name of a spaniard guy, registered in history, that had the chance to navigate to both sides of the world by those years, because I am pretty sure that they will never find not even a case. Filipino influence in el Juego del Garrote is ZERO. Whoever said that, is a filipino martial arts practitioner that had received a little bit instruction of Garrote, but wants to appear as an instructor, teaching a self made style.
* I studied the art with a Master called MercƩdez PƩrez, he died sixteen months ago, he was a beatiful human being, but he was nothing more than a peasant all his life, he never travelled to any place outside Venezuela, he did not have even attended elementary school, he was poor in money, the onliest martial art he saw (by tv), but never practiced, was western boxing. His art was pure, and I learned it that way from him. I have a lot of videos of him, and some of my training partner also have many. The venezuelan fighting art known as "el Juego del Garrote" is a very refined, and reliable art.
* As for me, I had the opportunity to train Kali here in Venezuela, I respect that art a lot, because I can see the efficiency that it has, but I never participated in not even one class, because I wanted to keep my stick fighting backgrund as clean as possible, to avoid coments like those that I had read at this forum. I trained Bujinkan Ninpo until I met Garrote Larense (3rd degree black belt), then I became involved with other martial arts like Free style wrestling and brazilian jiujitsu. As you could notice, no filipino, or any other kind of stick fighting training besides Garrote.
* Western martial arts are rich, just watch a MMA event like UFC, the predominant arts are boxing and wrestling, along with brazilian jiujitsu (a western interpretation of ancient japanese jiujitsu), russian Sambo, and the very asian Muay Thai. So, please, don't think that only asian cultures developed fighting arts.
* Venezuela is not the only southamerican nation that has stick, knife or machete fighting systems, but is a country that has a bunch of people keeping its martial art from fading away. One tip about Venezuela, is that it was the first spanish province to declare independence from Spain, hence, venezuelan had to fight a lot, later, when Venezuela became a free nation, venezuelans went to other spanish provinces to fight for their independence from Spain. Venezuelan warriors fought for generations, they didn't have bombs, or tanks, all they had were spears, blades and percussion weapon, isn't logical to guess that they mastered those weapons?.
* Contact me trough
[email protected], and visit my academy's web site:
www.garrotelarense.org.
Stay well,:ultracool
Livio Girotto
