Fencing...

[White_Savage]

...is a good white sport, though I will admit the black/japanese Peter Westbrook is one American who has done extremely well, the sport is still dominated by European whites.

It is perhaps considered unmanly by some. While it's not football, boxing, or UFC, it's certainly as physical as golf or tennis. It's probably the most combative thing you can do with near zero chance of injury.

It reguires lightning speed and pin-point accuracy of the purest sort on both offense and defense.

(The points of the swords in motion are actually moving faster than the human eye can see!!!) So much for the slowness of whites.

While the little electric box and silly rule interpretations have tarnished fencing as a "virtual duel", there are efforts to return it to it's original spirit.

In it's Classical form (www.classicalfencing.com), it is a condensed view of many lessons of sword-fighting and combative movment that Europeans have painfully learned over the last thousand years or so.

It is also a good starting gate to learning about historical and native European martial arts systems (www.thearma.org www.theaemma.org) It is good to know that not only are caucasians as physically capable as blacks, they were also as capable as orientals of devising sophisticated methods of personal combat.

The spirit of dignity, honor, and graciouseness found with the best teachers and salles d'armes is a welcome relief from the atmosphere of many sports and a good example of the white way at it's noblest. All in all, worth a look as exercise or sport for the racially concious person.

 

[IceSpeed2]

Unmanly, tell that to some guy during the Enlightenment
in a bar. Be curious to see his reaction. The sport is
reminiscent of a critical error in European history when values that
make up today's civilization and society came into inception. I
heard during the Olympics that a black champion was pushing the sport
in a ghetto. Whites are not being included in this European sport
that is part of their heritage as much as blacks. I have looked
at some sports offered at the YMCA, and fencing was primarily offered
in communities with large black populations.
Edited by: IceSpeed2

 

[Bronk]

Fencing's reputation as unmanly is silly, though back when I was in college I bought into it because so many drama students were also fencers.

As late as the 1930s fencing clubs were very popular in Europe and the members used to go at each other with the raw blades and no masks. Fencing is a combat sport.

 

[White_Savage]

Yeah, my fencing class and BJJ/MMA class are at the same church gym back to back, so the fencing always warms me up before getting down to to the rough stuff...so much for fencing only being for pencil necks.

Also, my fencing instructor was a boxer back in the day. He's 67 now, but he can still run, swim, and hike with twenty year olds, and kick my butt with foil in hand any day of the weekEdited by: White_Savage

 

[White_Savage]

Just some things I looked up on the net, in case anyone's interested in fencing at all or Westbrook and his student's relative performance in particular.

Needless to say, the man and his academy have gotten more media exposure than ANY fencer, ever, and we all know why. But here's their real performance record:

Westbrook was born to a black father and a Japanese mother while the former was stationed in Japan. Growing up in New Jersey, he fought often until his mother put him in a fencing class. He dedicated his life to saber fencing. Those who know fencing will read a certain signifigance into that. Saber can be fenced in a very realistic and thus artistic manner. Or it can be fenced in the usual competition manner of today, i.e, the sideshow of fencing. Honestly though, when I've seen footage of Westbrook fencing, his form looked more classical than most, so I must commend him for that. Must be the Japanese in him. Anyway, our half-Japanese friend did win the U.S. men's saber championship 13 times, which is impressive, but you must remember that America is basically the bush-league of fencing, as is evidenced by your typical American's knowledge of and attitude towards fencing. At the Olympics, he managed a Bronze, which once again is a fine achievement but the black man's special superiority in fast-twitches, reflexes, fast-twitch thinking or whatever way they're suppossedly so damned better than us, did not allow him to win out against whatever Europeanoids won Gold and Silver. He moved to New York City and opened an academy aimed at directing his blacker brothers away from street thuggery into fencing, a course of action which many would deem admirable (this is when the media started drooling over him), but which I think is more likely to harm fencing than to dramatically improve the streets of New York.

If it takes off anyway. One of his students, Keeth Smart (love the inability to spell names in the standard manner, don't you? And the surname is a misnomer from everything I could tell about the kid from his interview), became and excellent college fencer, in fact, he became the first American male to be ranked the top saber fencer in the world. Oddly enough though, he competed in both the 2000 and 2004 Olympics and did not medal, which leaves me wondering what the exact standards to be named the "Top Ranked Saber Fencer" in the world are.

 

[Realgeorge]

Howdy White-Savage! Excellent Posts!


For those of us with little exposure to fencing, can U recommend where one might find a small measure of televised fencing? I bet it would be most entertaining.


During my misspent youth at a military service academy, I had the chance to watch our Fencing Team a bunch of times. The fencers sure seemed to be having a good time. The saber folks were so quick that I would always miss the "touch" that was the deciding point in the match

 

[White_Savage]

Yeah, saber like that.

Thing about saber vrs foil and epee, the latter two are point weapons, and a thrust is pretty much a thrust. If you hit with enough pressure to put a visible bend in the blade, you'd have caused a deep wound with a sharp. However, all cuts are not created equal. You can barely "tap" someone with the edge of the sword, and that has to be counted as a "cut", or even with the flat side of the sword is counted as a "cut" in modern competition. So that makes the game funny.

I'm not saying you have to take a baseball-bat like swing to be effective with a sharp cutting weapon, but a certain amount of impact, combined with a drawing slice as the weapon hits it's target, is nessecary to make an actual wound with the edge. I do test-cutting with my swords and knives on animal carcasses from time to time, and there's a certain knack to it. You can't just hit.