A vision for arnis

A rare meeting of minds took place the other day, when Harbour Centre owner Mikee Romero and arnis pioneer Roland Dantes finally met for the first time. The two lovers of the sport known as Filipino Martial Art (FMA) worldwide have both been seeking relentlessly for a means to help revive the sport that has all but died in its own country.

“Since I was young, I have been seeking the ultimate form of arnis, the purest form of the sport,” says Romero, who has trained with different kali, arnis or escrima camps for more than half his life.

“All the forms have merit. Now, they need to be unified.”

It was with great disillusionment that Dantes, a movie star and the 1969 third-runner-up in the Mr;. Universe contest won by Arnold Schwarzenegger, left the country two decades ago. Dantes aimed to form a national sports association in the sport that would be all-inclusive, where everyone learned from everyone. Sadly, he was outvoted by his fellow officers in the arnis association.

“It was a very sad day for me, because I saw no hope for the sport,” confesses the two-sport Hall of Famer.

Dantes moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he started teaching foreigners our way of stick fighting. Gradually, he expanded to other countries, becoming an honored master throughout Europe and the United States, and a unifying influence. He also trained law enforcers how to disarm and combat assailants with weapons, using the various techniques in kali, escrima and arnis. But he wanted to do all those things back in the Philippines.

Dantes soon came back for a long stretch to see what could be done.

Arnis Philippines was all but an old boys’ club, with no way of getting in. No election had been held since 1986, when his friendship with Raymond Velayo was shattered by differences in agenda.

Today, with arnis having grown by leaps and bounds almost everywhere but the Philippines, it was a sad irony that the land of its birth would die first.

“This is a sport where many great Filipino warriors have trained,” said Dantes, referring to historic Filipino heroes such as Lapu-Lapu and Gabriela Silang who, among others, developed their skills in kali, arnis, escrima and their derivatives in order to fight oppression and battle for freedom against foreign occupation.

The plan now is to gather all the great Filipino kali, escrima and arnis masters, and get a consensus about what to do with the sport.

Since the inactivity of the NSA, all the great teachers struck out on their own, finding success here and in other markets such as the US, Australia, Europe and parts of Asia.

“We will respect everybody, because they are our treasure,” Romero declared. “If they fight among themselves, what will they bequeath to those of us who wish to learn what they know? It would be a big loss for that knowledge to vanish from this earth.”

True, many of the older masters have passed on either here or abroad, leaving a void in the richness of arnis.

Now, Dantes and Romero are putting out the call.

“We want to gather all the masters of the different Filipino Martial Arts, and bring them all together here,” Romero proposes. “It will be a convention, reunion, homecoming and sharing. It is, above all, a brotherhood.”

Romero even takes it a step further by suggesting that the group invite Dan Inosanto, the Filipino who taught Bruce Lee arnis, and continued Lee’s own sport, jeet kune do, after the legendary action star died under mysterious circumstances three decades ago.

“It will also be a great way to get practitioners to come out and reveal themselves, and for them to meet the greats of the sport.”

Dantes goes even a step further.

“The young martial artists will have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see living history of the true Filipino sport,” adds Dantes, who formed the Philippine Council of Kali, Escrima and Arnis Masters (PCKEAM) five years ago. “With the proposed bill of Sen. Miguel Zubiri making arnis the official Filipino sport, you will definitely see a surge in nationalism.”

And the Filipino would be able to hold his head up high in front of anyone in the martial arts world.