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By Perry Gil S. Mallari
Reporter
He was a doctor, a novelist, a
poet, a sculptor, a painter and a lothario. He was also a swordsman,
deadly with both rapier and arnis sticks; a highly regarded pistol
marksman; a body builder with experience in wrestling and judo; a
freedom fighter and a wanted man. Our National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal,
hailed, as “The Pride of the Malay Race” was a Renaissance man.
Yes, Rizal honed his brawn and his blade as much as he did his wit
and his word.
Rizal did not become a superb
physical specimen overnight. He was frail and sickly as a child.
This probably prompted him to study the art of buno (wrestling) from
his uncle Manuel to strengthen his body. This skill he once used to
defeat a bully in class.
Rizal’s love for the combative
arts stayed with him until he became an adult. At 18-year-old, in a
letter to Enrique Lete, dated November 27, 1879, he says, “My
hands are shaking because I have just had a fencing bout; you know I
want to be a swordsman.”
As a student in Madrid, he
practiced fencing and pistol shooting with the Paterno brothers
namely Pedro, Maximino and Antonio. Rizal was a pretty good shot as
indicated by his correspondence to Antonio Luna that narrates,
“Speaking of shooting, I am sending you a target containing 10
bullet holes; it was seven and a half meters from me. At twenty-five
meters I can put all my shots into a twenty-centimeter target.”
Rizal had also dedicated himself
to weightlifting and bodybuilding. While he was in Germany, Dr.
Maximo Viola recalled Rizal lifting great weights under an
unaccustomed diet in an effort to defeat the best weightlifter of
one gymnasium. Unorthodox his approach maybe, Rizal succeeded in the
said goal.
In his brief sojourn in Japan in
1888, he witnessed and learned the art of judo—newly created at
that time by martial arts master and educator Dr. Jigoro Kano. Rizal
later taught judo to the members of the Kidlat [Lightning] Club,
which he founded in Paris. In London, Rizal trained in boxing with
the sons of his friend Dr. Reinhold Rost.
Rizal’s patriotism was evident
even in his study of martial arts. While being adept in Western
swordsmanship and pistol shooting, he made sure that he was also an
expert in arnis, the indigenous fighting art of his Motherland.
Arnis, which uses weaponry training as a primary mode of instruction
was among the subjects Rizal taught to the boys of Dapitan during
his last days.
Rizal nearly fought three real
duels in his lifetime. The first was when he challenged Antonio Luna
for uttering unsavory remarks against his love interest Nellie
Boustead. The second was when he challenged his bitter enemy of the
pen, the Spanish scholar Wenceslao E. Retana for writing a malicious
article stating that his family was ejected from their lands in
Calamba for not paying the rent. The third was when he challenged
the Frenchman Juan Lardet for accusing him of cheating in a business
deal in Dapitan.
His duel with Luna was aborted
when the latter apologized and through the intervention of his
compatriots in Madrid. Retana, however, simply backed off after
learning of Rizal’s fighting prowess. The Spaniard later became an
avid biographer of the national hero. Like Retana, Lardet retracted
his allegation and declined the challenge after being advised by
Captain Ricardo Carcinero, the Spanish commandant of Dapitan, who
knew well of Rizal’s fighting abilities.
It was perhaps Rizal’s deep
knowledge of the martial arts that prompted him to exercise extreme
prudence in plotting the steps of the Philippine Revolution. This
was evident in his dialogue with Dr. Pio Valenzuela, an envoy of
Andres Bonifacio’s Katipunan that says, “I will never lead a
disorderly revolution and one which has no probability of success
because I do not want to burden my conscience with an imprudent and
useless spilling of blood; but whoever leads a revolution in the
Philippines will have me at his side.”
Jose Rizal was indeed the
personification of the term “brain and brawn,” a fighting,
thinking man.
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