Weapon based martial arts are exciting to watch, and fighters who train in these deadly styles are truly a brave lot, but there's something so cringeworthy about fighting with a machete.
Maybe it's because machetes are made for chopping through trees so they do nasty things to human flesh, or maybe it's because I associate machetes with Jason Voorhees and Central American drug cartels.
But in Haiti machete fencing is not only a popular martial art with roots in agriculture- it's an important part of history that dates back to the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804.
National Geographic spoke to machete fencing master Alfred Avril about Haiti's unique and deadly cool martial art, revealing how the machete became an important symbol of Haitian freedom.
The Haitian system also prefer to keep the blades pressed against each other. This is to control the other person's blade by pushing it away from the defender's weak spots, and also to feel where the next attack will come from the moment the attacker moves his blade. This is also practiced with free handed styles like in Wing Chun (see Enter the Dragon where Bruce Lee was fighting a white guy, hands pressed against the other).
You know, knife fights with machetes are pretty dangerous for all combatants, so you should finish it as fast as possible. So while I find this Haitian style intriguing, I must criticize it for having too much blocking and parrying. In Kali, we target the attacker's hands or arms when countering. Why parry his blade when we can cut off his fingers while stopping his attack? All it takes is one or two chops and he can't grasp his machete anymore.