The dog pound - stickfighting

Men's Fitness, August, 1998 by Mark Jacobs

Iron John? Big wuss. Real me, say the Dog Brothers, beat the crap out of each other with 30-inch clubs.

Underdog is flailing away at Dog Steve with a pair of 30-inch sticks before the watchful eye of the Crafty Dog and his canine cohorts. "Stop backing up!" Top Dog orders as Dog Steve charges forward, slashing his club at Underdog, who is backpedaling furiously in an attempt to avoid massive head trauma, broken bones or a kidney-popping thrust into his bare body.

"Swing harder!" Crafty Dog barks as the two fighters crash together - Underdog attempting to dig the end of his stick into his foe's exposed leg even as Dog Steve tries to crush Underdog's larynx in a chokehold.

Imposing rattan sticks clack together, African drums beat a primal counterpoint in the background, and the assembled crowd of 200 dog lovers woofs its approval. We're in the middle of a public park on a delightfully sunny California afternoon, watching two combatants trying to cave in each other's skulls. What could be better?

One man's cruelty to animals, after all, is another man's extreme sport. And things don't get much more extreme than Real Contact Stick-fighting, brought to you courtesy of the mangy Dog Brothers, a grassroots martial arts group whose biannual semipublic gatherings follow a Robert Bly kind of philosophy, bringing men together to rediscover their male energy through combat.

Except, as Crafty Dog puts it, "Bly was pussy-whipped. There isn't enough testosterone in his stuff." Testosterone isn't a problem when fighting Dog Brothers-style, except when you take a stick to the groin.

Sticking it out

In the bizarre melange of the martial arts world, stickfighting occupies a particularly esoteric niche. For decades, it was practiced largely by Filipinos, who originated and evolved the sport from their country's traditional tribal warfare techniques. As any Filipino martial artist would be proud to tell you, it was a stickfighter who offed Magellan when the explorer made the mistake of visiting their islands on his world cruise.

But impaling people on sticks is a hard tourism sell. So in recent years the Filipinos have modified their methods. The last public "death match" was held in Hawaii in 1948. Since then, attempts have been made to turn stickfighting into an internationally accepted martial art. Rules were drawn up for competition, and the sport has gained a certain amount of acceptance in the United States, particularly in California. But tournament competition requires that fighters be heavily padded to prevent injury.

And if you're a Dog Brother, that just isn't any fun.

Years of the dog

The group's pedigree goes back to New York in the late 1970s, when a young student named Eric Knauss discovered Filipino stickfighting between classes at Columbia University. At 6[feet] 4[inches] and 215 pounds, Knauss had the size and instinct for combat. His instructors (Leo Gaje and Tom Bisio) trained him in hardcore stickfighting techniques and turned him loose. Knauss eventually moved to the West Coast, where he won numerous tournament championships and gained a reputation for insanity throughout California martial arts schools.

During what he calls his ronin, or wandering samurai phase, Knauss would visit schools at random, humbly asking if they trained with weapons and whether they'd like to do a little friendly sparring. Of course, his idea of friendly sparring was to wear no protection save a light head guard, and to go at it until one man surrendered or was rendered senseless.

"I only had a few takers," Knauss says, still slightly surprised. "But there were four or five who thought like I did in terms of getting to the core of what really works in a fight. It wasn't until I met Marc Denny and he took me to meet his teacher [the legendary Dan Inosanto] that we were really able to take root. That's how the Dog Brothers started."

But things didn't really get off the ground until 1988. Needing footage for their first instructional video, a half-dozen combatants met for three days of nonstop stickfighting in San Clemente, California's Rambless Park. Denny, a former attorney, showed up wearing cleats for traction on the grassy surface. Someone commented on what a crafty dog he was.

"I went home that night and picked up a Conan the Barbarian comic book," Denny says. "Conan was leading his band of mercenaries into battle, yelling, 'Come on, ye band of dog brothers!' It seemed like a natural name for us."

Denny, himself an Ivy League graduate and the group's guiding force, remained the Crafty Dog. Knauss, the best fighter, was dubbed the Top Dog. There were Salty Dogs, Shark Dogs, Sled Dogs ... a whole litter of stickfighting crazies who gained an underground cult following within the martial arts world, though they avoided publicity for obvious legal and practical reasons.

"Our mission has been to stay off the authorities' radar screens so we don't get shut down," Denny says.

Despite this, the Dog Brothers' videos, released through Panther Productions, the world's largest distributor of martial arts videos, have been wildly successful. The tapes blend instruction and fight footage and have risen to No. 3 on the distributor's sales charts, mainly through word of mouth.