Junkie Podcast. Your weekly dose of knife news and information
about knives and knife collecting. Here's your host, Bob The
Knife Junkie DeMarco.
Welcome back to the Knife Junkie podcast. I'm Bob DeMarco. On this
edition of the show, I'm speaking again with Rolando Garcia III
and continuing our conversation about his study of the bladed martial
arts, bowie knives, navajas and all things knives and
knife fighting. You know him as Rolando Escutada on YouTube
and Instagram where he shows off his collection and skills
and features deep diving episodes on the origins, designs and
combative methodologies of the world's edged weapons.
We'll catch up with Rolando for some more fascinating knife talk, but first, be
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Rolando, welcome back to the show. It's a pleasure seeing you again, sir.
It's always a pleasure to see you, my brother.
Wait, before we get into the conversation, I. I want to say at Blade
show, you had your cat. You were walking around with you. Yes. And.
And he looks. He or she. She looks so much
like my gray cat that I, I was going to try and wrangler her
and show her off. You. But you know, wrangling cats is not always the
easiest thing. No, it's a very tough job.
So just to remind people if, if it's been a while since they've seen the
last episode we spoke, describe to people
what the Escotada methodology is. Yeah, so
the, the system was something that I was, that I had ended up Codifying
and still very much in its evolution. And when my two
instructors, my first one is my father and from whom I received
a good portion of my martial arts training, a lot of it is in the
Filipino martial arts. But he did expose me to judo, Ne
Waza and Sam Wing Chun. He was also a judo brown belt in the
Philippines. But a good portion of my own training comes from
his Filipino martial arts, specifically the these Felicissimo
Dizon Filipino martial arts. And he's like one of
those great instructors that not a lot of people know about.
He's often mentioned in the same breath as a grandmaster,
Angel Cabala's who was, who basically taught him,
right. And also Kalis Illustrisimo founder
Antonio Tatang Illustrisimo, the Great swordsman. So I got the
Felicissimo d' Zone curriculum from him. Then I got
my jeet Kune do and Filipino martial arts, Brazilian jiu
jitsu, savate buoy, knife instruction, naba, all
of these great things from my great instructor, senior full
instructor, Armando Basulto, who at one point was the
east coast regional director for Paul Vunak.
So yeah, he's a, he's a Vunak guy. So
from him, you know, I got a lot of that. But
there's a third piece to my estacada system, which is the health and
fitness piece, because you know, I basically came up in, in
the professional world in health and fitness, starting as a trainer, but
ultimately in executive leadership in some of the top brands in the world.
So the estacado system is really emerging of
both the combative benefits elements of martial arts,
but also the health and lifestyle optimization. I feature
mostly the combative and martial aspects to it on YouTube
because there's a lot of great interest there. But there is,
as Greg Cook, who's the founder of Functional Movement Screen, once said,
there's a reason why a lot of ancient Chinese masters focus so
much on their weapons training, especially into their
older age, because weapons training is a type of
anti aging. And as a middle aged man, this is very important to
me. Yeah, hear, hear. I like the
way you describe it. You definitely got a really solid
foundation from your father early on and then you went off and explored the
world literally and figuratively with
martial arts from. All around the world. And that's one of the reasons, besides your
charming personality and your warm presence, that's
one of the reasons I love talking with you because you have a lot of
knowledge behind the fighting methods,
behind bowie knives, navajas, these weapons have been fascinated with
My whole life. Thank you. Thank you for the kind words, my friend. I always
enjoy talking to you. Absolutely. So recently, I know
this just from following you on Instagram and YouTube. You had.
You went on a pretty amazing Illustrio
Kali venture. Tell me about that.
Yes. So I've always felt there was something
always just super functional and super direct about the
Illustrisimo system. I was in. In. I was exposed
to it initially by my instructor, Armando Basulto, but the some
of the primary concepts and some of the primary techniques, then some of
it later on with somebody who had studied with one of
the main instructors of Illustrisimo, Mangromi Macapagal. And I
studied it a little bit with Roy Harris, the Jiu Jitsu
black belt. But he is actually first and foremost a bladesman.
That's how he sees himself. Jeet Kundo Man. You know, he was
actually the vice president for
Progressive Fighting Systems under Paul Vunak. So that's how I got connected.
It was through Armando, then Roy. But my first,
excuse me, real training in Illustrisimo
was under Burton Richardson. I did maybe about two, maybe even
maybe three. I don't remember anymore. But it was 15 years ago. And
he really opened my eyes into not just the
intricacy of the system, but just the directness of
it. And he was the one who brought home that this isn't just a
Filipino martial arts, this is a bladed art. And
it took me a while to really absorb that. And I'd been
following Guru Arnold Narzo for the past 10 years on his
YouTube channel. He is one of my favorite instructors in practically anything,
is a very, very thorough individual and really knows how to
display it. And I've messaged him over the years, you know, just briefly here and
there. Hey, I'm in New York, you know, are you ever going to come, ever?
Please. And if you do, and I believe this is his first New York stop.
And I was so impressed not only with
Guru Arnold Narzo, but also the other
Illustrisimal guru, Guru Vico Perrine, who you and
I briefly, briefly ran into when we were standing at the MAR
booth. He was there. Familiar. Yeah. And I was like, whoa, whoa, I gotta
talk to him. But he was like, he was in and out, you know, and
people were talking to him, but he assisted. And I was so
impressed by it. In that one. The content
was just so well organized. There was a sense of progression and
regression. So they provided a wonderful learning
experience. And this is something that's very rare in martial Arts in
terms of workshops, because sometimes it can be a little disorganized. It's more
of an introduction to the system rather than, here
are the fundamental skill sets that you need in order to
then progress you into the intermediate in advance. And I
got a little. I would say it was three hours, but I got this
wonderful broad picture of it. And it was in addition to
some of the knowledge that I'd received from Armando Roy Harris and also
Burton Richardson. Yeah, I remember Burt Richardson. His.
His Modern Martial Arts regular
column, Bert Offerings. Yes. And then his videos on the
beach. Man, I was like, this guy's living the life. How. How would you
define Illustrisimo, you know, to someone who might have
a. A glancing knowledge of Filipino martial arts? Yes. I
would say that, number one, it is a Filipino martial arts. It is
strictly Filipino martial art. Number two, unlike most
Filipino martial arts, it is unapologetically a bladed
martial art. So the first thing they introduce you to
is a Filipino blade. And I'm going to. Since
I have it handy here, I'm going to use as a very good
example. This guy has seen
so much video in the past few months. This
wonderful Adam Boyce designed tops
ginunting the X16. And one thing
that I did point out in some of my. Probably my first. I think
it was my first episode on my YouTube channel, and it was
wonderfully illustrated by Guru Arnold in the
workshop, is that a bladed system, like
the Illustrisimo system, is
differentiated from other Filipino martial arts because of the
handle ergonomics of the sword. I'm gonna quote
paraphrase Guru Arnold here in that, and I
made similar observations, but I'm gonna take it primarily from the
workshop. He talked about how the stick has a
circular handle. Right. And when you
have a circular handle, the wrist can have a lot of
play. So you can do strikes like the Redondo,
where it circles like this. So you can hit with the back of the
blade, and you can even hit with the side of the blade. But it's
because it's a rounded stick, for as long as it has some sort of impact,
it's okay. But if you're taking a look at a blade,
there's a greater consideration for its makeup and design,
because there are parts of it that are really sharp, parts of it that
are not, parts of it that are a little stronger because it's a little
wider and maybe even a little thicker, and parts of it that's going to
be a little thinner. So you're not just going to block
and not think about where it's going to land because your sword
can break. But the third part of it that I love that
he highlighted because of that edge alignment is
so critical in Illustrisimo that their entire
posture and where the hand aligns through the shoulder
is out of respect for the fact that the
edge of the sword is pointing in a very specific way.
And as a result of it, I'm of the mind that
their postures and biomechanics and their motor control
is negotiating around that specific
piece of the sword. This is not something that you see with stick based
martial arts. And as a result of it, when you look at an
Illustrisimo person, they move always with the edge
forward versus a stick oriented person may take
a sword like this and they start doing more stick based like
Redondo Witttix, they start to twirl. And Guru
Arnold actually addressed this. He said, you know who a stick
based Filipino martial artist is? You give him a sword, they start twirling
it. And I was like, yeah, that's true. That's actually true because
that's the first thing you see. So because those are
the. To me, you know, to me those are the
main features of it. They have a lot of emphasis with the
espada idaga, also with the, with the knife as well. This is a
very wonderful example of what a good daga is. This is a
Calvin Richardson designed. Work, work, tough, steadfast.
L the large. This, you know, if you have something like
this, it's beautiful. Compare, you know, and you have it with an
X16. This is a beautiful combo. This one I'm going to do a review
of very soon. But Illustrisimo, they have a
wonderful template. I'm going to say template, not style,
but they have wonderful templates. So that whether you're
beginner, intermediate or advanced, there's a way for you to
progress or regress your skill set, depending on
your level of comfort and your level of proficiency. I love
this system very much. It is also very different from the
Kabbalah's system, but also very different from the DSON system.
Very different principles, but just something I really
adore and I really enjoy learning and I hope to continue to
train in some in this system for the rest of my life.
So something that always was on top of mind
for me when doing stick. More stick work
in, in the Kali I did, which is illustrationo
or I should say
Guru Dan Inosanto Lacoste. Yeah, Innocento La Cost. Yes.
Was, was whenever I was doing something stick I was
conscious trying to remain conscious of where that edge would be because for
me, the stick was always a proxy for the blade.
Yeah, I always have blades on the mind and, and, and it always
did kind of occur to me. I guess you could do a wit tick, for
instance, but you'd be slapping someone with the side of the blade. And is that
efficient? Is that worth your energy when you're, when you're fighting someone
with a sword? Probably not. Unless you play out class. Yeah,
probably not. So you, you mentioned a template versus
a style. Yeah. So it's, it's. I
love the question because I think that there, most
styles are really a collection of techniques, right. You
know, this is, there's offense and then there's defense.
This is the basic offense, this is the basic defense. Then
we show you intermediate, then it show you a little bit more advanced.
So a system really tends to be a collection
of, of knowledge or a collection of techniques. And the reason why
Bruce Lee was very anti style is that
what tends to happen with a system being a collection of techniques is
that there's, there's a lot of lost context in it, meaning it's
combative application. And if there is a combative application,
it's usually against someone of a similar style.
Right. You're really only fighting like judo, which I love.
Really, they only tend to train against other judo people. Right, right.
And there's this throw and then there's that throw, and then before you
know it, once. The problem with the system is that people who are in a
system, they have preferences. Well, I like this technique
and I like chaining this technique with that technique. And I'm going to
reference Brazilian Jiu jitsu. You're if before you know it, I'm gonna
build a game around my triangle, which becomes an
omoplata, which becomes a back tape. Right. Or you'll have
guys who are like, okay, you know, I'm going to be a little more, you
know, I'm going to fake the pulling guard, then take the ankle and then get
on top. Right. But then it becomes a matter of you just taking your
favorite techniques and then you say,
well, I don't care for the rest of it. The rest of it is garbage.
So now you have people out there with black belts and instructorships who are passing
on incomplete knowledge. So it's not a knowledge transmission.
A template is when all of these techniques are
contextualized. So a good example of this, and this
is what I loved about the how it was taught in Illustrisimo. It
Reminded me of Shinkage. Shinkage Two man set.
And whenever you're doing a two man set in Shinkargiryu,
when I was training in it, I thought my brain was exploding
every time I went to class because I would draw be stopped. And sensei
or one of my senpai would say, this little detail here, move your
hand here. And I'd say, why? Why is my hand there? Let me
demonstrate. Before you know it, there's a difference between getting the sword slapped
out of my hand versus me getting thrown, right?
So when you have a template, you have context.
And then once you have that context, sensei or senpai can
walk in and kind of go, let me show you this. Let me show you
this, man. And then before. So now there's a context so
that the variations can be inserted, Right? Versus
Technique one, Technique two, Technique three, and then repeat.
Illustrisimo was like this. I loved how they progress. This is
Retirada. This is the footwork. This is the Redonda. Now
we're gonna put these together. And this is how the guy is going to attack.
And then this is how the guy's going to attack. Now I'm going to do
it this way. And before you knew it, they were progressing you
through not just the combative application, but the
knowledge itself. You were experiencing the knowledge. It was so
well executed because it wasn't just pattern
recognition. It wasn't like just memorizing a multiplication
table. It's them actually putting me through a
learning experience or like an lms, like a learning management system.
It. And they answered all of our questions. I mean, I'm going to
have this. I'm going to put this little asterisk. Since they're Filipino and I'm
Filipino, I'd say 70% of the attendees were Filipino. So
every now and then I'll say something in Tagaloga, sir,
which means, what does the technique planchada mean? And then everybody, all
the other Filipinos will go, you know, oh, he speaks
Tagalog. And Filipinos are we. When we hear our
mother tongue, it's like music to us. So we all kind of. Oh, we drop
everything when we hear it. And it was kind of like that. And they would
answer like, they would have these beautiful smiles and it would just go, oh,
panchata, this is what it means. And we'd all kind of go, oh,
yeah, I get it now. So it was very enjoyable. I highly
recommend it. I can't wait for them to do this U.S. circuit again.
Okay, we're Going to talk about the knives. You. You teased a
few of them. But before we get to that, I know that you've been
really looking deeply and this is something I was mentioning up front. You don't
just show off knives. You. You really make studies of them
and you. You create actual episodes, not just
short videos. And I really appreciate that you've been really
investigating or going down the
tomahawk rabbit hole lately.
How, how similar are
the thought processes between fighting with a
knife, for instance, or a short sword, and fighting with a tomahawk.
So the first thing to consider with the tomahawk, it's basically a
Filipino martial arts. Stick with. And this is. I'm going
to show you the. The RMJ
Shrike. Right. I love that. Yeah, this, this is so
beautifully done. It is so light and. But it's like a stick. Like
you're holding a stick. There's some narrowing to it. And it was
intentionally done because they want it so that if
you're fighting this way, you're doing your angles and, I don't know, you're surrounded
by enemy combatants and you're just fighting off everybody. Even if it spins
in your hand, you won't feel a difference between
hitting with the spike versus hitting with the tomahawk and also with the
beard. So it's so wonderfully done by
Rian Johnson. This is a wonderful gift, but it
handles a lot like a stick. But,
and I mentioned this in one of my episodes, the fundamental
advantage of a tomahawk like the rmj.
Right. And also the other one that is
truly top tier, you're looking at the Winkler
R and D designed by mastersmith Daniel Winkler and also
Tuhan Rafael Kayanan of. Of Psyop Tactical Group,
is that. You see how this one is multi sectioned. Yeah. Right.
Versus this one, which is straight.
The fundamental advantage of a tomahawk
versus, let's say, let me take out one of my
wonderful knives here. Okay. And this was cool because this
is the Jeff Schaefer Schaefer chopper buoy.
It's really hard to say Schaefer chopper I
end up butchering like Shaper Chaffer, you know?
Well, and his episode is on today. His Forged in Fire episode. Oh,
yeah. It's tonight. Yeah. So I'm, I'm. He's such a cool guy.
And he's the knife maker for Master at Arms, James
Keating. Oh, yes. So I'm. I'm
really dealing with a heavyweight here. Right. So you have
this wonderful buoy, and when I spoke to him about it, I Said,
hey, this is wonderful, but it handles a little
bit like a Barong. He goes, yeah, I've always kind of wanted to build
a Barong, but I don't think that was his intention.
But I think a little bit of the Barong came out of this. But if
you compare it to a tomahawk, you see how much bigger this chopper is. Look
at that. Yeah, that is so intimidating. But the fundamental
difference is this has a multi section graph
grip. So I can go from long, middle,
and then short range. I cannot do that
with a buoy knife because the handle is fixed.
So once I handle a knife, this is it.
I'm stuck here. Unless I'm super
ambidextrous under pressure in high threshold
environment, I'm pretty good at it, but I'm not gonna bet
on it If I need to let go and I need to
multi section. Why is multisectioning important? Because
a fight is dynamic. It's very fluid. Before
you know it, it's one people, one person, two person, three person. And
sometimes, and we know this in the Philippines, we have a term called
agawan. They fight for it, right? And what
tends to happen is that now you have to kind of hand it off. And
Felicisi Mudizan's system of Muhara is about,
if one, if I get injured on this hand, yeah, I gotta hand it off,
but I gotta hand it off in a way where if I grab anywhere,
I'm not gonna end up mistakenly doing something stupid like this,
right? So the fundamental advantage of the
tomahawk is where I land. If I have to do
this, I can hand it off, but it also changes the range. The thing I
particularly love, and I think it was intentional on the part of
To Han Raf Kayanan, is that this curve right here
lands exactly right where my hand is.
And this part of it, the spike, does not bite
into my flesh. So what I've started to do,
which is to integrate it with the Muhara curriculum of Kabila and
Tagalog. Kabila and means to switch. Sometimes you get into
this kind of fight, but then you hand it off here. And now it's a
bit of a karandit. It's like a karambic.
Yeah. So you're here, fight, fight. You're getting into a fight. I love
this part of it because this rounds off and it
fits right under the mandible. Why is that important? Because
since it's rounded, if I try to come off of it, because I'm
applying forward pressure, it, if I keep following him,
by rounding it, it's hard to come off. I've tried it on several
people and I've had them do it to me. All they have to do is
this, this and this. It's hard once that forward pressure is applied.
This is different with a straight tomahawk because there's a way to just
come off of it because the angle is incorrect. But if I apply forward
pressure. Angle, angle, getting close. Forward pressure.
Or I can come down here. Forward pressure, right. But if I go one, two,
I'm going in. And then forward pressure, switch it off
to here. I go low, right? I go low down here
while I control with half plumb up here. Now I can secure. Now I
have the person and. But this was designed for a.
The military personnel. So it's not like I have to hold the
person in the street because I'm carrying a Winkler R and D on me. But
it just so happens that if you had to go, go, go, go, go.
Switch to your sidearm. Go, go, go. You. You just fell into that
situation. Go, go, go, bathroom, sidearm to it. Now you're in this position.
Now you can use this to strip. This isn't like some sort of official
curriculum. If it is, I didn't receive it that way. This is just me
integrating what I know of the Felicisi Modiza
Mohara template and applying it to a tomahawk. That's why I love
the tomahawk. I've been exposed to other systems as well.
There is a lot of hand switching, but the R and D
is a very, very good way of integrating it.
And the other one I want to show you because I'm really getting into it.
Andreas Tius, he created this one, is a
prototype. I. My most recent episode is of this
one. Yeah, this is a TRC Viking axe.
Yeah, I know this it. But what's
crazy is that normally Viking axes,
this is mentioned in De Cuerdas a little bit where there's like a
clock system. So you have noon, you know, nine o', clock, three o'. Clock.
But this was also highlighted in the Illustrisimo system when Guru
Arnold taught it, like, you know, noon, 11, 10, all the way down to
here. In. In the Illustrisimo system, they have
a type of strike called al dabis. And aldabis
is when the sword goes past that horizontal.
And now it's down here like seven o', clock, eight o'. Clock. And now you're
coming on the groin, the femoral, the knee, it's like all the way
inside, right? And what tends to happen
with heavier swords like the one I was just using
that plays into the Illustrisimo system. This beautiful
Viking tomahawk because of that extra beard does
not have that meaning. Typically a Viking axe
is a little heavier. So when I do this it's gonna keep falling towards
a seven o', clock, eight o' clock angle. Andreas
did something. It's not completely full tang but
he did it so that if I go here it stops neutral
right parallel to the horizon. And this is an
important detail because now I can use some of the
Barong template because the Barong template tends to come
in here and then I fulcrum across or I come
in here and I fulcrum across. The thing I. The thing
I love about this is that he made that.
It's the balance of it in such a way where even if I hold it
here there's a substantial different distance between the spike
and my flesh. So I'm never worried about this.
Like me poking myself accidentally because he balanced it
so well. Uh so this. So having
this Viking axe, slightly curved handle RMJ
shrike with a very straight handle and then when you have
the fantastically multi segmented but
angled R and D wrinkler to me is
that spectrum of the type of Tomahawk methodologies that
are available to us. And that's where my studies are taking me right
now as it relates to the tomahawk. And do you have a preference?
I don't yet. I. I'm. And it's because.
It's because I. I've studied Musashi for so long
and his main admonition is never have a favorite
weapon. Never. Never. And it's. And his.
His logic and it's so practical is that
you can be jumped at any time and if you're jump and
your mind goes to your favorite. But you left your favorite at the house or
in the car or you loaned it to your best friend. But.
But you're not so favorite. But very handy. You know.
Brand new tomahawk from Andreas Tritius is there you're going to
hesitate and when you hesitate that's when they get to jump on
you. I. I read that somewhere recently. I think it was a. It
was detours. The silat master, he said that the
idea of silat is never let the other guy build his momentum
because when he attacks there's going to be a second and a third. And if
you're still looking for your favorite he might be on the fifth attack.
Right? Yes. But. Yeah. So you don't want that so be,
always be ready with what happens to be around you.
Yeah. And don't regret not bringing the huge navaja. You
might just. I know, I know. And I happen to have the navaja
here. And yeah, it's the more modern one.
So this one is the Espada Espada xl, which is a very
great approximation of the traditional Nevaja in terms
of its size. But a big part of my study around this is
again, handle ergonomics. It's, I
believe, one of the few, if not the only knife designed
where a big part of it is this wonderful tail.
And this tail here, you know, I've, I've explored it and
there's a lot of it that has to do with, okay, you know, you can
two handed. Okay, that's fine. If you need that extra reach,
that's fine. Being able to swing across, that's fine. But
a big part of my exploration now is, well,
I only recently remembered because I, I, I used to
run a, a big school, Jeet Kune Do School,
and I didn't realize so many of my students were like in Special
Forces. So every now and then I'll get a message and we got to talking
about, well, what are you carrying? And we got to talking about, well, what,
what's favored, what's not. We talk a little bit about the sock tea,
what's available to them. And I am working
a little bit with Dirk Pinkerton around the
culprit, right, because you introduced me to him, right. And the culprit really
stood out because if you take a look at the handle here, right, you see
that, that little thing going on here, this little bend
that comes from the navaha,
right? You have this. Why
is that important? It's important because there's something
about, when you draw, there's something about this
little portion that kind of helps, that helps with that
draw. And I'm kind of exploring that right now.
It seems to be a thing that's,
that designers are working with like the Civivi Modern
Hunter. I saw Melissa Backwoods feature it recently on her
Instagram and I was like, hey, look at that, look at the tail, what's going
on there? Right? For the eight series.
Yeah, yeah. So you take a look at that, right? That same thing, that kind
of hook. So I'm exploring what that design means in terms of the
draw, in terms of the retention. But there's something else going on with the
Navaja in terms of just how
this is a bit of a curve, there's a
Bit of a curve downwards. Right. And if I'm not mistaken, I
think the bond talk, it used to be called the bond
talk. I think Raf Kayanan designed it originally for Dan
Winkler, where that curve comes down.
And that's critical because not only does it allow
for a better draw, it's better alignment with the bones
for the thrust. So I'm doing a lot of exploration and a lot of conversation
with Dirk Pinkerton in terms of, well, if we were to do something,
what would that look like? But I think it's going to come down to
something like the navaja structure. It's going to be some, you know, we're,
we're going to be working off of the culprit, but also what the navaja structure
is. But at any rate, the point of all this is. Yes, you know,
I'm very deep into studying nowadays.
Tomahawk bowie knife, Navaja
illustrisimo. As you can see, the. Well, it
warms the cockles in my heart that you're working with Dirk Pinkerton, who's. I mean,
to me he's, he's an incredible maker and designer. But the two of
you together sounds like a match made in heaven. Something I love about the
navaja is this. I have an old one right here.
Oh, is, is. Which one is that one? Is that a joker or. No,
no, this is something my brother got me. It's
Albania. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I like,
not so much on this because it's so large, but on the
large size espada. I like that you can put your.
You have this sort of sub hill thing and it goes into your
palm in such a way that on a thrust
connects with your arm. Yes. How else to put it? But you can really back
up a thrust with the structure of your forearm.
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's a. There's a lot going on with the navaja
and it's, it's a very unique knife
methodology. Yeah. Last time you're on, you explained
a little bit of the cloak and dagger aspect. Yeah, yeah.
You think that that translates to modern day? It's.
It really does and it's some. It's one of the
definitive features of the Estacada system in that there's
a very great study in what I call lead shoulder
dynamics. Because if, let's say, which knife am
I going to work with here? You know what, let's. Let's work with this one.
This, the one that we've been talking about quite a bit.
We're looking at the Bobby Rains firechild. And he calls it the Fire
Child because it's an homage to the Hell's Bell.
And you have really. What defines
weaponry as it relates to position, right? Position
and posture. In my system, we have an
acronym called dapat, D A, P, P, A, T.
And DAPAT in Tagalog means must. So these are the six
musts. So there's a distance, angle, posture,
position, attribute, and timing. So when we're talking about
your position and your posture, we're. We're talking about several things,
but one of the key features is lead shoulder dynamics,
meaning you only have really three of them. You have
the weapon forward, you have the weapon square, the
shoulder squared, or the weapon in the back.
And now whatever happens to be in this hand, you
know, now you're looking at very, very different dynamics. Right.
So when we're talking about,
you know, how cloak and dagger comes into play, what you. We're
really talking about is, well, which shoulder is doing the leading,
Right? Why is cloak and dagger something still
so prevalent? You know, I think you might have heard
this. It's. I. And if I'm not mistaken, it could be from
the jailhouse. The. I forgot the
piper, or not piper, like Whiz. Is it 52
blocks? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that one. I. I forgot how many
blocks there are, but I think it's 52. I think I could be
wrong, but they have something called sewing machine. And
sewing machine is the weapon is in the back,
this is in the front, and this goes up
and down and up and down. And
that's with what's called rear shoulder dynamics, meaning the
weapon is in the bag. This stood out to me. I
was. It is 52 blocks. And what stood out to me was
when Guru Arnold was talking about this in
the workshop, not the 52 blocks itself, he said, you know, in the
Philippines, he said, if they're gonna kill you with a sword,
they're not going to come at you like. It's like it's a Filipino stick
with it forward. When he demonstrated it, the sword was in the back like this.
And it's just marching towards you like this, right?
Yeah. So. So. So the concept of cloak
and dagger is really about the weapon is in the back.
And what that does is that the lead shoulder actually
either draws an attack, right? Draws them in so that they're
out of position, or pulls them into a different kind of
range. There's a. It's also part of one of the forms
in the shin kagery. I believe it's the. I think it's the
Ito Ryodan two man set, where the sword is here,
and then they lead with the shoulder when it's really like, hey, come here and
come get me. And then, wow, they do something fantastic with the
sword. So the cloak and dagger concept is less
about the cloak, but how the weapon hand is in
the back. And now you have this whole other template to work
with. So the. Essentially, the cloak is a. Is a shield
or a way to protect the arm, but it's also a way to hide the
knife. Yeah, it. To hide in the one
that every now and then I play with. I think I saw Bobby do this
a couple of times where you do a back cut, snap
cut, back cut, snap, cut. And then you do. This is in salvat. This is
called decalage, where you turn your body, like,
completely 90 degrees to the guy. So back cut, back cut.
See the right shoulder here? Back cut, thrust, snap, cut, whichever. But then
there's a movement I do sometimes, you know, in sparring, where I do a
decalage, which is from savat. Now my shoulder's leading
this way, and the bowie knife is tucked over here.
Now you're not sure is it gonna
thrust up, is it gonna reverso, or is it gonna back cut?
Or worse yet, as I hear now, I switch it off to the left.
Yeah. These are explorations. These are explorations. And these are
things I've seen inspiring. And I'll share the story with you.
I believe the term for it in the Navaja is called the. The pasara Soto.
Passata. Soto is when fighting. Fighting, not only do you
switch hands, you change levels. So you pretend to trip.
You're like, oh, I'm gonna trip. And then you go. You stab him this way.
And I'm not gonna say which tournament this was, but
this Navajo methodology worked so well that
every guy that we threw into the knife tournament, they altered first
place, really. But it was. It was specific.
I remember it was specific. It was on the vaja. It
was. Nobody held it, like, in. Nobody did ice
pick. You know, it was like we would do some of the
Reve, some of the Passata Soto, but I didn't train that team. That was my
instructor who trained that team. But it was. It was specific. It was. And there
were pictures like, ah, they're like this, right? It was. It was
really cool. But that goes to show that this idea
of lead shoulder dynamics, when you're thinking weapons, it's
not all always with the weapon in front of you.
Sometimes that lead shoulder will square up.
This is a little more Filipino martial arts. I'm actually doing an
Illustrisimo posture here. This is a Mohara posture.
The slight variation here, this is where the
hands are equal to each other for a closed position and the edges
in front. The Mohara system, Dizon system.
This goes to the back, it's a little lower and the hand is lower. So
now it's a bait. Because now you don't know if as you come
in, right shoulder, I cut across, or as you come
in, I cut across, but then I switch to the left. Right. It's, it's
a very, very different, unique system, but it's always a
play on. Am I weapon forward shoulder,
Weapon shoulder forward, square shouldered. So I can do
some empty hand, some checking hand, live hand, or is it
the weapon in the back? And I've found that this
tends, this position tends to be, at least to my knowledge,
very prevalent in the Navaja, But I have recently seen it in
Shinkargariu, but also recently at the Illustrisimo.
Workshop and the prison fighting. So, yeah, 52
blocks. Yes. So it's 52 blocks. So it's kind of a
deceptive way of going about it because it's, pardon me,
harder to detect what's happening back here than
appear forward. It is. And it's a,
it's, it's a, it's such a unique study because now you,
your biomechanics, it, it gets confused like,
well, what's my footwork now? And which hand do I go with for
a moment? When I do it for a moment, my brain just kind of says
reset. Right. It's like for a second, like you're watching tv and then the TV
kind of goes off for a second. Yeah. And he kind of wake up. Oh,
I'm, I'm here now. Right. It's. The brain doesn't necessarily
process it as easily. Right. To go from here,
doing my thing and then boom, to go from here.
It's. Now you're like in a completely different template. Not style, but you're
in a different template. All right, so you had out the
fire, you showed us the Shaffer chopper. I want. And
you also have one called the Osprey, I think, which. Oh, yeah, I want to
see that in a second. But just take us through the design of this fire
child. And is this a collaboration with you and Bobby Rains? No, this is out
of his brain. As much as I'd love to say, yeah, I collaborated on
that. Sure. I gave him my two Cents. Now, he, he debuted
this at the Blade show. And it, he, he
pretty much showed me how he thought. And I'm glad because
he'd been watching my videos, you know, being a
big fan of Bagwell's, and he came to Blade show,
and he was like, hey, I want you to see this. This. It's the Fire
Child. I was like, whoa. You know, And I posted it on my social
media. My face. Wow. But he kind of pulled me aside.
There's something else going on here. I said, well, what's going on?
And it's the handle and what he had done. If you take
a look at it, one, the handle curves
a certain way. So now that curve
fills my hand. So this is a man who is very
much not just into the edge design, which is so beautiful that
you have this slight convexing here, V
taper here, but the thing that gets me. And look at that Spanish
notch. Look how beautifully he aligned this here
so that if a knife happens to get caught, that's it. It gets wrenched, right?
Yeah. But what he did, and this is where his ingenuity is, and
that's why I, I, I just enjoy his work so much,
is that this handling here, he did something
special. Notice that there's like two, two
butts to this handle. There's the front, and then there's a back.
What this does, it's so subtle. This
one back here lands on this part of my hand. So when
I do my thrust, it's supported right, right about
here. When I snap cut and I snap cut forward, it
slides up on my hand, and then it comes back, but it
stops on the fleshy part. So he designed that way.
The front part is the real kicker. He showed this to me at Blade Show.
He said, when you do a back cut, go to what we call the back
cut shelf because it's wide, and then it
narrows. So when I'm about to back up, my hand slides up here.
That means that instead of gripping from my
pinky, it now goes to my index finger and thumb,
and that's the bicep line, the pulling. So now when I
back cut, I go from extension. When I'm here, now I'm pulling, which is the
exact mechanism for back cut. But then he said, let go of your
pinky. And you see that front butt over here? Now pull off
this. It goes straight into a snap, just with a pull
of a pinky. So it's like, boom. You eat it.
And the. When he sent this to me,
the first five minutes, after five minutes of Flowing with it. I had to put
it down because my motor control, my nervous system
was just enjoying that dynamic in the hands so much. It was
moving, in my opinion, too fast. It was moving
too fast. My. The. I. I messaged him and I said, you know,
the legs on, the hair on my legs and my. My neck, they're all
standing because I didn't expect, one, that level of
speed, but also, number two, that level of
ergonomic support. So if I need to back cut, it just goes.
It just naturally falls here, and it fires the
bicep line. Wham. Like this. So it's a pulling mechanism, but when
I'm about to snap cut, it lands on the mechanoreceptors. Boom.
And now it fires the tricep line. And that bicep.
Tricep dynamic made my nervous system so happy.
It's like, dude, like, what. What is this? This is most,
like, extra customized for you. I had to put it down.
I had to put it down. I thought this is. And I messaged him. I'm
not. My body's covered in goose pimples because I'm
not used to. To this kind of
detail. So do you think. I don't know if you
can answer this, but do you think that if he were to make, you know,
multiples of that, which hopefully he is. That hopefully this is a new model.
Is it reliant on the deer
horn or the deer antler? Or would he be making this also out of wood,
but making the shape of the head? Because it seems like a stroke of luck
or. Not that it was luck, but he saw the right piece of antler, and
it's like, oh, this is perfect for this use. Is this
something that he would replicate. In wood or whatever? We're talking
about replicating it because this is technically the second one he made.
Oh, okay. This is the second firechild. And because the first time he
let me handle the one he made, the first prototype, I couldn't get out of
my head after the blade show, I was messaging. He's like, dude, I can't get
this thing out of my head because of how.
Because of how intelligently it allowed me to access
the Bagwell Keating back cut template. Again,
there's that word template, right? It allowed me to.
To do it so easily and with such proficiency.
I would like to. I know he can scale it. I
don't know if it's something that he plans do,
uh, in wood. So.
Okay, this is a. This is gonna sound strange, but it. It's a question that
Just popped into my head. If you had to duel heaven to the.
You had to duel with a knife. What would it be
with all day? That one. All day. And I. I
know because I paid for it heavily back in the days
when I was just an upand coming jeet kundo practitioner. And
we sparred. There was a lot of sparring, sparring with the nabaja,
sparring. The buoy wins hands down. And I'll tell you why. Because
Bill Bagwell said it to me very well. He said, look, I am.
This was when he was coaching me over the phone. I don't know why he
picked me, but he just said that I'm nervous. I'm always
nervous about teaching this because it takes 30 minutes
to teach anybody this, right? It's. That's. It's the whole
thing. I can back, cut, snap, cut, thrust, reverso. Little bit of
footwork, little bit of biomechanics, and that's it.
So the ease of disseminating the knowledge,
the knowledge transmission is easy. But the second one, this is something I
experience. It doesn't matter where you're some sort of,
you know, super advanced savat guy or super advanced
fencer or super advanced jiu jitsu guy.
It or you're just brand new to martial arts.
You put something like this in someone's hands and you teach them that
template, they're devastating. And I was on the receiving
end of like, maybe a couple of those sparring sessions where my
instructor Armando kind of whispered in it, do this instead.
And it was a technique from Dwight McLemore's curriculum, the
hanging guard. And for those who don't know, the hanging guard is
when it's kind of like mountain man, right? When. Where the false edges this
way, but instead you hold it this way, like way above the head
like this. And I looked at him, and he was.
I believe he was a US Army Rangers, and
it's a really, really great guy. And
Holzback. Mike Holzbach. That was his name. And he held it like this.
And everyone knew the buoy was my thing. And I was just,
what is this? Oh, my God. He nailed me with that over and over
again. I was like. I was like, bro, like you. How long have you been
here? A couple of months. But that's. That's the thing about the buoy
is that if you have a certain template and you have
a certain buoy, even if you're a beginner, you have
access to it versus a Bali song, okay? A Bali song. That's
not the easiest Access, right? Or a Guinun
ting sword. Not the easiest access. You might use it like a frying pan,
because that's all you know, Right? But a buoy knife, strangely enough. Hey,
here, here, here. Couple of back cuts. Here's a snap cut. And stay away
from his knife. And you're good. It would be a. It would be a buoy
knife all day. Okay, before we get to the Osprey, tell us
how this works. Like, what's the attack for? Oh, so here's what's
nuts, right? I was. I still remember it because I was like,
I'm gonna. I'm gonna lean back here a little bit so you can see.
So pretty standard, you know, you hold it in front,
edge forward. Some people like to keep it low. But the idea
behind the hanging guard is that you hold it way up here,
right? And then the live hand is way out
to the side here, this way. So you're. You're fighting a guy like this,
and he's pointing the buoy knife right at you.
This is interesting because this is a position also from
French Lacan can de combat. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I
won't get into it, but the. The term for this, the quasi tet. So you
do something like this, and you bend your. You bend your back, and then you
can reach maybe an extra two feet. But from over here,
it looks like you can't reach. So he's primed for this
kind of cande combat hanging guard position.
And the idea behind it is that I invite. This is open.
Yeah. Come at Breen, girl. I got you. You can even back at me to
my head. Anything that comes between this
hand and this hand, as he falls in,
all I have to do is drop.
And anything that comes this way, this drops. So it's coming in.
But then anything that comes through, I swipe across,
and it's. It's this type of gunting. Yeah.
So the movement is fake. Fake. Come out here and then.
And you just. You just take everything. And then if you happen
to miss that, you go to a snap cut. Then you go right back to
this handguard. I ate that all day. I ate that all day. All
day from Michael's back. And I was just. You freaking guy, you.
But then, of course, later on, he showed me, and then Armando showed me.
It's like, oh, no. It's. It's. It's this. This is how you set it up.
I was like, you guys. You did this without me? How dare you? But.
But it's part of the. It's Part of the learning process, especially when you. When
you're not familiar with it at first and it looks goofy to you. Yeah. I
was like, what is. What is that? Right. But it's in Macklemore's book, like the
Hanging Guy. You should review your notes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Got to check him out. Macklemore and not the musician.
What's the Osprey? Bowie. Oh, boy. Christopher
Linton. So you have. All right, so first and foremost, this is a big part
of what my buoy studies are right now. Right. So you have the standard
one, and this is your standard buoy
model, which is in line with the Bagwell
Keating template. Back cut, snap cuts. Right. Very
European in terms of its mechanics
and very much a lead shoulder. So the weapon is in the lead.
Right. Then when I had my conversations with Jeff Schaefer
about the chopper buoy and how some of it lends itself to the
Barong. So this is more of a buoy Barong.
So, you know, it's not just buoy, snap cut, back cut,
snap cut. In fact, if I back cut, it turns all the way in because
of its balance. I back cut. You see how it comes all the way in.
Yeah. Whereas most booty knives, if I back up here, it snap
cuts forward. This one comes all the way in. So it allows me to
do these types of fulcrums. Right. It allows me to
do these kinds of movements. That's from the Barong.
So then my good buddy Ryan Burkhart
at rmj, he. He loves to send me items, and every now and then,
just. I just. I just kind of want you to, you know, check this out,
let me know what you think. I kind of want to, you know, see how
your mind works. So Christopher Linton at Osprey.
So you had the classic buoy, The Buoy Barong. Well,
buoy Barong, Kukri. Ooh. This is
intentional. There's. And I'm doing an episode on this. He.
I sent him my Q and A, and he answered it. There's
a lot of intentionality. And just as a little
side note, I tend to feature makers
on my channel who have hyper intentionality,
basically, in each aspect of the knife. It's not just something
that's sharp and pointy and, you know, if you throw it at a car, the
car explodes. You know, something like that. It's. It's. There's something
around the understanding of the art. A good
example of this is a Damon Lusky. That guy is a jiu
jitsu black belt, but also studied Di Cuerdas under Mike
Janice Marshall blade concept. Chris
Linton, you know, walked me through basically every inch of
this in the Q and A I sent him. So now you're not just
looking at a buoy back cut with a
barong. Now you have kukri. And now that's,
that's very different. You're looking at different
mechanics, different stances that you will not see. If
I try to do it with a dedicated Bagwell
Keating buoy, it won't apply because it's the
balance points of difference. The mass is different, there is a recurve.
So now this is something that I'm studying, but
makes me ask this question, which is when you're talking
about large knives or medium swords or short swords,
what templates are, are, are available to us
that we can integrate? So we're not just treating any
knife as a knife or any sword as a sword, so that when we pick
something up, we know, oh, I know what to do with this, I know what
template to use with this, and I know what mechanics to do with this. And
that's what I love about this. It challenges me to look at
how I can integrate this into the templates. I know,
man, that just looks utterly wicked with that recurve. Look
at that. Fuller. You know, it just makes it so crazy
light. Right? There's a beautiful aesthetic to it. This
is. No, it's not sharpened, I thought it would be, but this
beautiful fuller, which makes it lighter.
There's. You see that hooking again here, right? That's a beautiful handle there.
And you see how it has a kind of, I call it the double butt,
where there's a butt in the back, a butt in the front. So you can,
you can change so that the hand can go here and
the, or the pinky can go here. So you have all of these
dynamics in play. It's something that I'm
still very much exploring. And by the way, it came in this. You
ready for this? Look at the sheath. I know
you know, this, this isn't just any old chief.
And then. And look how beautifully it just matches up.
It's a, it's a true, true worker. Look how,
how discreet that is, right? How beautiful.
And I'm, I'm of the mind that if you receive something
this beautiful, your, your training and the thought that
you put into it has to match the training and thought that they
put into the making of it. The best swords makers, at least
the ones from what I understand, the ones from Japan, when they were making it,
they were thinking about the samurai, like the one they were building it for.
And. And the samurai. The samurai's job is to
live up to that level of craftsmanship so that
they earn the right to hold it. And I treat
all of these wonderful nights that way and swords that way.
So what do you have coming up? I know you're working on an episode for
that, but what. What are the knives that you're hoping. I don't know.
That you're hoping to explore in the next. In the Often.
You know what? One thing that I've really been looking at, and I had
a good conversation with Ed Calderon about this, is that what are you going to
do if he had something like this? Yeah, right. These. These smaller
ones. The one I'm kind of obsessed with. And I
did an episode, the one with.
The one with the Safemaker, but it featured
Bruce Lee walking around with this spike that was his push dagger.
Zach Wingard. Oh, yeah. Without any. I don't think he
had any realization that Bruce Lee carried this, but ended
up making something. This is the
Wingard Dick pic. I'm not crazy about the name. I've told
him, hey, I'm not crazy about the name. Right, Right. Look at that. See?
Yeah. I love this thing. This thing is marvelous because
it's so utilitarian. Right. I. I saw Scott
Baldwin do a short recently, you know, where he took in. I was like.
He was breaking up some ice with it. I was like, look at that. But
I'm going to give you a little sneak preview. So what if you hold
it like this? This one is Captain Obvious. Right. But if you take a look
at how Bruce Lee would have used the Bill G with the ijab.
Right? Yeah. So now you. This is his eyab.
But. But then there's something else to think about, which is thin.
That's my favorite way to hold this. Yeah. This is like. Yeah. Why is this
one your favorite? Because I like the. The
punya aspect. Right? Yeah, exactly. The. The reverse
grip style here. But then you have this. This front portion
is very sharp and punch with it, but also reverse
back fist with it. Yeah. And. And you know how common
thumbing is in boxing, right? Yeah. This. It's very common.
So you just do one of these jabs. This. So you
have an extended thumb, basically, but here
you have an extended finger.
Yeah, it is, right. It's. It's. These things are just utterly wicked.
Yeah. There's Tomas. Tomas Ellas and
I. Tactical Tavern. We were joking about this at one point,
and I said, you know, Bruce Lee carried this, right?
No, I didn't know you were talking about it. And then I did my Bruce
Lee impersonation. I said, see, I take this finger and I put
it in your eye.
Every now and then we'll text each other, he'll go, I put this finger in
your eye. Well, that's the best
impression I think I've ever heard of Bruce Lee.
Tomas. I mean, Rolando. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
As we wrap, I also recommend the Back Ripper. I love
that. Oh. Oh, my God, I love that one. I
love that one. And. And he carries it around in his pants all the time.
I'm not quite there, but it's always handy
at my desk just in case anyone comes in who needs to be
vanquished. I love that. I did an episode, I forgot it
wasn't the back scratcher, it was a different one. But that curve, that back spike.
Yeah, it's what it does is that when you do this, this cut
over here, right, it's like a reverse pion. But
what happens is that if you do this right, the edge will miss. But
then if you bring your wrist up a little bit, you bring it
up a little bit, this back hook, it curves down, it catches the guy.
It's wild and wild. His. His tools are really
cool, but that one, I like to use
the. The biomechanics from
Zulu stick fighting. I think his stuff
lends itself well to the zulistic fighting methodology. And that one, specifically,
Zulu. What don't you. Okay, we're gonna have to get into that another time. Another
time. Hey, man, thank you so much, Rolando. I
appreciate you coming back on. Oh, my pleasure. You'll be back. You'll
be back. This is an ever everlasting conversation, I think.
Thank you. Yeah, same. I. I think so. Because you're a martial
artist, you can. You can tell that. Take a look at the, you know, like
your. Your back wall, all your swords there, you know, and you know
how martial artists are. You. You and I could just keep talking about this. This
is just what we love, and I. It is indeed. Yeah. And I always
thank you. I'm always grateful to you for bringing me on. I always enjoy it.
It's my pleasure. And for those of you who are patrons, we're going to
continue this conversation another 10 minutes, so definitely stick
around, Rolando. Thanks again, sir.
Do
you use terms like handle the blade ratio, walk and talk, hair
pop and sharp, or tank like. Then you are a dork
and a knife junkie.
There he goes, ladies and gentlemen, Rolando Escutada. Love his work.
Check him out on YouTube, Instagram and his his really
bottomless insights into all these things that we love.
Yeah, check it out. His Bowie collection is insane and he's
got some great collection videos you have to check out.
All right. For Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying until
next time, don't take Dull for an answer. Thanks for listening to the
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