Q. What is your view of sport eskrima?

A. Sport competition is the closest to real [a real fight] that one can experience. However, the quality of tournament stickfighting depends on the quality of the referees and the judges. Good and impartial tournament officials are vital to maintain the integrity of a stickfighting match. In my experience promoting full contact to my students, mutual respect between competitors is every bit as important as any win.

Q. In the Cabales Serrada Eskrima system, what is the training methodology for building a fighter?

A. The basis of it is in offense and defense. In offense, the goal is to create an opening by creating a reaction. In defense the idea is to close the distance with the opponent to reverse openings in one's own defense.

In sparring a practitioner utilizes duelling concepts which are part of the Advanced Training in the art. Among those are picking and reversing, as well as reversing reversals. Defense is the beauty of the art. In many tournaments my students have experienced players who only ared for offensive movements. So, I made defensive techniques the first priority because anyone can hit, but it takes a trained practitioner to block.

There are six drills designed to prepare a student for sparring or fighting.
1. Lock and block
2. Flow sparring
3. Advanced Reversing
4. Picking
5. Reverse Picking
6. Reverse Reversing.

The only other system that I have seen that also uses the concept of faking is Kali Illustrisimo, which calls it enganyo.

Q. So would it be fair to say that while a student might practice an individual drill for a long time, in an actual combative engagement the application might take place in a split second?

A. [Smiling] Yes.

Q. So what would you say were the formative experiences in your life before you began to practice Serrada?

A. Bruce Lee was my idol [laughs]. Both my father and my great-grandfather were martial artists. My father studies Goju-ryu karate and boxed. Before I studied eskrima, I studied Goju-ryu karate from the age of seven on until my early twenties. My grandfather was an eskrimador from Cebu.