Suntukan
Unarmed striking component of Filipino martial arts: punches, elbows, headbutts, and limb destruction techniques.
Quick Facts
PhilippinesCharacter & Origin
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.
About Suntukan
Suntukan is the unarmed striking component of Filipino martial arts, built around punches, elbows, headbutts, and shoulder strikes, to which sikaran adds low kicks and knee strikes. It appears under several other names — pangamot, mano-mano, tumbukan, and panantukan; the last of these spread in the West through the lineage of Dan Inosanto, though it is not the original Filipino term. Suntukan is an integral part of arnis, and it is generally held to have developed out of it: it arose as a last resort for the moment when an opponent gets too close or a fighter loses their weapon. That origin is exactly what gives it its particular character. The footwork is triangular, the same as in knife fighting, and the hand traces paths borrowed from eskrima. Lucky Lucaylucay summed this up by saying that Filipino boxing is exactly like knife fighting, except that instead of cutting with a blade, one strikes with a closed fist. A signature technique is gunting, literally scissors, meaning the simultaneous stopping of an opponent's limb together with one's own strike, along with what is called limb destruction, where the blow targets the bones of the attacking arm. Alongside this stands dumog, Filipino wrestling that works with controlling and choking points. Suntukan earned the nickname dirty boxing because its techniques were never softened for safety and were never adapted to fit competition rules.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.