Chausson
The Marseille leg game of the 18th and 19th centuries; high kicks with a hand on the ground and slaps instead of punches.
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Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
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About Chausson
Chausson, also chausson marseillais or simply the Marseille game, was a French way of fighting with the legs that survived through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the port world of Marseille. It takes its name from the light canvas shoe worn for it. It differed from Parisian savate in the height of its kicks: the fighter often supported himself with a hand on the ground or held on to rigging, which let him kick high and still keep his balance on a rolling deck. Hand strikes existed but were delivered with the open palm as slaps; a punch to the face counted as an insult belonging to a duel rather than to a game. That distinction between play and insult explains why chausson stayed for so long outside the category of brawling. In the first half of the nineteenth century the Marseille and Parisian traditions merged, and Charles Lecour added punches taken from English boxing; out of that came today's savate, or boxe française, in which chausson ceased to exist as a separate practice. It survives mainly as a historical term and as part of the story of savate's origins, and some clubs reconstruct its earlier shape. Neither a founder nor a year of origin is documented, since this was a folk practice without codification, and this page therefore gives neither.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.