Pankration

[Carl]

Does anyone in the WMA crowd know any place to find info or source material on Pankration, I have seen the Integrated Fighting website but I am looking for just Pankration not a hybrid of lots different arts.

BTW Colin do you have any updates on Bob Charon's Book?

Cheers

Carl

[Colin]

Sadly the material on pankraton available in this country is very small. Jim Arvanitis does a nice, but brief history of pankraton in his book. Afterwards he jumps into techniques with Greek names, but does not correlate any of it to source material or even show the same technique on numerous ancient artifacts. I've not seen his DVD so I cannot tell you whether he shows any parallels. I was vaguely hoping some of my overseas acquaintances would take photographs on these artifacts when I pointed out resources they could use.

A book with a title along the lines of "Combat Sport in the Ancient World" is the best resource I'm aware of at the moment. However I haven't pursued my research into the same for quite a few years now.

If you ever do a tour of Greece, Great Britain and the like you could probably see something far more useful.

I'm not sure if the Grey Lynn club is still going or not, but that's just modern mixed martial arts using the name. Friendly bunch though. This is pretty much the state of pankraton today. At least they call it modern though

As for Bob Charron's book, sorry no update. I was hoping to meet Bob in Australia in a couple of months, but I've blown my budget

[Carl]

Thanks Colin

That is a shame, I have found some teasing tidbits on the web (Jim Arvanitis is one CRAZY looking dude)

I am looking for the path less travlled here other than Fiore and Talhoffer so are there any other sources of western grappling arts that you could point me to. Catch as catch can wrestling, or maybe Glima.

cheers
carl

[Colin]

For Catch as Catch can wrestling you have the ubiquitous Farmer Burns exercises. Apart from that Catch as Catch can wrestling is still practiced today. Not that there any visible practitioners in this country, but some exist over the ditch in Sydney.

Glima is a touch harder to find resources for. Supposedly a group exists in Whangarei, but I've never been able to find them.

[Carl]

cheers colin