Stick-fighting

Stick-fighting, stickfighting, or stick fighting is any of a variety of martial arts which use simple long slender, blunt, hand-held, generally wooden 'sticks' for fighting; such as a staff, cane, walking stick, baton or similar. Some techniques can also be used with a sturdy umbrella or even a sword in its scabbard.

Thicker and/or heavier blunt weapons such as clubs or the mace are outside the scope of "stick-fighting" (since they cannot be wielded with such precision, so sheer force of impact is more important), as are more formed weapons such as the taiaha used by the Māori of New Zealand, and the macuahuitl of Aztec warfare.

Although many systems are defensive combat techniques intended for use if attacked while lightly armed, others such as kendo, modern arnis and gatka were developed as safe training methods for dangerous weapons. Whatever their history, many stick-fighting techniques lend themselves to being treated as sports.

In addition to systems specifically devoted to stick-fighting, certain other disciplines include it, either in its own right, as in the Tamil martial art silambam, or merely as part of a polyvalent training including other weapons and/or bare handed fighting, as in Kerala's kalaripayat tradition, where these wooden weapons serve as preliminary training before practice of the more dangerous metal weapons.

Stick-fights between individuals or large gatherings between sub-tribes where men fight duels are an important part of the anthropological heritage of various cultures, especially tribes such as the Surma people of Ethiopia, where donga stick-fighting is an important cultural practice and the best means of showing off to look for a bride, nude or nearly so, and their more warlike neighbors, the Nyangatom people, who fight duels bare-chested, the aim being to inflict visible stripes on the back of the adversary, using not plain staffs but sticks with a flexible, whipping tail-end.

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