Silat Suffian Bela Diri
Bruneian family silat of Maul Mornie: close-range blade and knife work practiced through seminars, without competition.
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BruneiCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
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About Silat Suffian Bela Diri
Silat Suffian Bela Diri, abbreviated SSBD, is a Bruneian silat system associated with the name of Maul Mornie. The term bela diri means self-defense in Malay, and that is also a precise description of what the system is about - it is neither a sporting nor a ceremonial silat. Mornie began practicing the family style at the age of twelve under his grandfather and great-grandfather; later, while studying engineering in the United Kingdom, he added Japanese jujutsu. It was precisely this combination of the family Bruneian lineage with experience from a different environment that gave the system its present form. The focus of instruction lies in fast, economical solutions for self-defense and in weapons work. Seminars work with a training knife and other weapons, among them the curved karambit knife, and the same movement base applies to fighting both with and without a weapon. The year the system arose could not be verified, and so the year field remains empty; sources say only that once word of Mornie's style spread and people from various countries began asking him for instructional videos, within about a year he was teaching seminars across Europe. Mornie now lives in Cardiff in Wales and leads SSBD seminars around the world. The system thus spreads chiefly through seminars and video rather than through a network of clubs with regular attendance.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.