It just stands to reason that if people had the balls enough to fight with axes they also would have no problem engaging each other unarmed be it for sport of self preservation. Unfortunately we do not have much in period representing unarmed combat in the Carpathians for the Brigand era…we do have some for surrounding areas that we can look into, plus there is undoubtedly gems buried in the mens dance movements as well just as there are in the axe dances for that particular weapon.
We could always look towards the modern Russian Arts such as sambo or systema for ways to learn how to fight with an eastern European flavor or even just for general movement…of course dance would help as well. This article is not going to teach you sambo or systema, those are things best sought elsewhere. We are just going to focus on early images and concepts of personal unarmed combat that we can find evidence for. Mind you that training in one of the above arts will be very helpful in understanding the movement and combat theory that we will try to uncover here.
Grappling
We have a fairly detailed account of an axe fight in Southern Poland that degenerates into a grappling match posted on the main site here. Note the way the guy on top controls the hollow of the bottom mans left elbow and slides his shin along the crease of the bottom mans right thigh/hip area….all seen in modern Sambo. A repost of the illustration:
We also have the illustration at the top of this page that is rich in grappling detail if you have done any of it yourself. The unarmed fighter has a hold of the axe mans collar and it trying to throw him back over his thigh while the axe man has grapevined his opponents left leg in order to keep himself from being thrown. once again all of these things are common moves and tactics in modern Sambo. Personally I find these two illustrations to be fantastic and without a doubt in my mind I believe the artist knew his subject well.
In Kazimiers P. Tetmajer’s “Tales of the Tatras” in the story called “Old Waltsak’s Daughter”, Jasiek, one of the main characters, as part of his initiation was said to have had to wrestle all comers for four days straight. Definitely showing how important the sport/art of wrestling was in the Brigand culture.
Trinta
In the close Carpathian neighbor of Moldova their exists to this day a style of wrestling known as trinta. There can be no doubt that this style played a rold in the birth of the Soviet art of Sambo. Click here for a detailed English language article on the sport.
Eastern Slavic Styles
It is rather hard to find out much about Eastern Slavic styles here in the west, we can assume some of them left their traces in Sambo but it is hard to narrow everything down in that composite art to it’s core arts including the large contributions from Judo as well as western European wrestling styles.
There is one particular style of East Slavic wrestling that focuses on a one handed grip. The contestants would grip each other on the collar or lapel usually with the right hand (our illustrations shows a left handed grip) and without a time limit they would strive to bring the other wrestler to the ground. If the grip was given up by a wrestler he lost the match. A strange style of wrestling indeed but perhaps it makes more sense as an adaptaion to wrestling with weapons where you may have only had one hand free.
I believe the eggs on the ground were the prize for this particular match.
Wrestling using the belt for grip was also popular with the Eastern Slavs, it is theorized by some scholars that this may have come from contact with Turkish tribes where this style of wrestling is very common. This is also common in trinta as well.
We also have historical evidence on non-fixed grip styles of grappling among the Eastern Slavs where grips were taken with both hands on the belt, jacket and parts of the body. Once again very similar to modern sambo.
Grundbirkozas, Hungarian wrestling
A traditional form of standing wrestling where the goal is to lift your opponent for 5 seconds or push him out of the ring three times. It is most often done by children in the modern age but used to be more widely practiced among adults. Here is a clip of Children doing this.
Fisticuffs
The tradition of fisticuffs or wall fighting goes back to the time of the Rus’ and perhaps further. Young men would meet on frozen rivers on Fat Tuesday and form two walls or lines, the lines would rush each other and try to break through…so in essence we have team fistfighting on ice.
As you can imagine, fighting on ice changes things quite a bit and simple body mechanics need to be one of these changes, attempting to fight like one would on a non-slick surface will often cause the fighter to meet the ice in an unhappy way….so the method of throwing strikes in these wall fights had to be so that the footing would not be as important as the movement of the rest of the body. In this style that still exists in some forms today, the strikes are thrown with more of a wave motion. This would be a good time to seek out a systema of ROSS practitioner if you are interested in looking to this style of striking further.
