Conrado Tortal
Filipino master of Pekiti-Tirsia Kali, grandson of the founder Norberto Tortal, who developed the family system in 1930–1936 and passed it to his grandson Leo Gaje.
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PhilippinesBiography
Conrado Tortal, given the title Grand Tuhon, was a Filipino master of the family system Pekiti-Tirsia Kali, whose tradition dates back to 1897. According to one source he was born in Tigbawan in Iloilo Province on the island of Panay and later moved to Negros Occidental. The same source gives 1897 as his year of birth, exactly the year the system arose, and we therefore regard it as uncertain. We have not been able to verify the year of his death.
He was a grandson of Norberto Tortal, the founder of the system. According to family history, Norberto taught the system to his son Segundino, and Conrado inherited it from his father as the chosen heir among five brothers. The same source states that in published duels he defeated the Lizares brothers in 1928 and Tansiong Padilla in 1933, and that he was the first police chief of the city of Victorias.
In 1930–1936 he further developed and refined the system. Pekiti-Tirsia is a purely combat, not sport, system emphasising edged, blunt and improvised weapons and the destruction of the opponent together with the counterattack.
Leadership after him passed to his own grandson Leo Gaje, described as the sole heir and guardian of the system, whom he trained from the age of six. In 1972 Gaje introduced Pekiti-Tirsia to North America. In 1997 the centenary of the system was celebrated in Subic Bay in the Philippines.