Monday’s Martial Madness: How to Make a Martial Art Out of ANYTHING

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, Gurg learned that he could stop his neighbor, Brob, from taking his portion of mammoth by hitting him with a stick just below the eyes.  Somewhere else, some other prehistoric dude found poking Zur in the eyeball helped him impress the local prehistoric babes.  Since then, humans have found numerous ways to hit, kick, maim and otherwise kill each other.  Some have organized their techniques into whole systems.  Some of these you may know: kung fu, karate, tae kwan do, and that barbaric sport pigeon-do.  Never heard of pigeon-do? It’s by far the deadliest martial art known to man, even worse than krav maga.

Pigeon-do is proof that anything you can imagine can become a deadly martial art style. As shown in the video below following your opponent around and mimicking their movements will render yourself invisible before you deploy your deadly beak strike.

To make a martial out of anything all one needs is inspiration from life, a ranking system, and a bank account.  The master that developed pigeon-do had the sagacity to realize that the movements and behaviors of the common pigeon can be used to disable and disarm any opponent.  In this system students are ranked according to how much time they spent among the pigeons.  The more time spent under the auspices of their exalted martial models, the more pigeon poop they’d get on their gis.  Obviously, only the one’s with strongest stomach, or no sense of smell become masters.  Unsurprisingly, the creator of Pigeon-do lives in a closet somewhere in New York City.

Let’s say, as a child, you dreamed of joining the Bolshoi Ballet.  You studied and studied for the entry tests only to be rejected because you lacked that certain je ne sais quoi.  I mean your pirouettes and step-ball-chain just didn’t have moxie.  You’re disappointed, perhaps enraged, that you wasted so much time in positions one AND two only have your dreams dashed by some hoity toity God-like smarty pants.  Who do they think THEY ARE??

In your woebegone state, and after much pondering, you decide you’ll show THEM by inventing your own martial art based on those sick dance moves you learned, why let all that hard work die at the hands of evil judges?  No, you decide to cash it all in and go for broke.  After a few YouTube tutorials on how to make YouTube tutorials, you slap a webcam on the wall and Voila! You are now a master martial artist in your own style.  

This system use the elastic in their dance pants to identify rank.  The more slack in the pants, the higher the rank.  Reportedly, know one knows exactly how many people pay to learn this style, but that doesn’t matter, with a half-baked ballet skills, and a dream this could go far.

In my final example I turn to that mid-1970’s quintessential pop song, “Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting” by Carl Douglas.  Only, someone forgot to turn on their hearing aid while scoping out the local libraries collection of classics and heard “everybunny.” This lead to a secret underground movement of devotees that burrow into their master’s teaching every week.  Local legend has it that the children’s game Patty Cake has become so deadly among the students the town council issued an ordinance to limit the fur-driven rage of Bunny Fu.

And there you go folks! What kinds of obscure martial arts have you heard of? Let me know in the comments below!