Jon_B

You sure you're not a mestre?

Neltharius

Be nice if I was. But one can't politically become a mestre until after training in Brazil, which won't happen anytime in the near future.

Paco

Nel, who's your mestre? What group?

Anyway, the san da guys hardly let their [boxing] hands fly and hardly went for the grapple. No wonder they fared so badly against the capoeira players.

I noticed that the hands were low most of the time, an easy way to get knocked out if the kung fu guys had faster hands or feet. It seemed to be a friendly sparring match, let's not forget galopantes, cotovelos or cabecadas- all of which would have ended a real fight quickly.

A lot of people out there have the misconception that a capoeirista is going to dance and look pretty thru the fight. Capoeira nao e brincadeira, nao e so ginga de corpo E MALANDRAGEM! Capoeira is trickery!

Neltharius

Mestre's a guy by the name of Will Pruitt. Not your typical martial arts instructor, which is why I admire the guy so much. I'll actually have to disagree about cabecada. Attacking with that at the right time is effective, but the majority of the time people (at least in my grupo's roda) miscallibrate distance and get themselves in sticky situations (i.e. I now have control of their head). Otherwise, yes, the san da guys definitely needed to be a little more aggressive.

sunfist

I finally retired from Capoeira (angola), but also have a few years in KF as well as Karate. My experience wasn't in the glitzy academia's but down in tha barrio. There you'll find guys and girls who do, what I always called REAL capoeira. Especially if you can hook up with a roda around Savannah, GA or Dallas or Chicago. In the south they used to call it "Knocking and kickin". Also in Puerto Rico they do a street from of fighting using capoeira.
As I said in another post, capoeira is a lot of fun, and a great exercise. You can use it well as a fighter IF you are malicious...cunning and mean. Here you'll see chicas wearing these snap down brim caps, but with razor blades sewn under the bill of the cap. Also razors are carried and used by both men and women. Part of capoeira? Who knows. Capoeira was for survival originally and that is all these guys and chicas think its for today.
Jogo Bonito capoeira!!!
sunfist