About Us
Sparring Club was lauched as a nonprofit endeavor to help martial artists organize sparring sessions. Outside of street fighting (not recommended) or organized fights, there is a lack of opportunities for martial artists to test and refine skills outside of your home gym or school. Sparring Club was created to fill that void. While we welcome mixed martial artists, we are especially concerned with promoting and preserving the integrity of traditional martial arts systems. All martial arts have been forged through a constant process of testing ideas and using experience as the primary means to assess the practicality and efficiency of training and fighting methods. Respecful, productive sparring with other sincere martial artists in your area is one way we can all support each other's growth and develop solidarity in our local martial arts communities.
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Our goal is to promote integrity, practicality, and solidarity throughout the global martial arts community. Before launching our network, we established a sparring club in New York City in 2013 to test the concept of organized group sparring sessions with martial artists from various backgrounds. After hosting several successful and productive sparring sessions in New York, the group expanded in 2015 to form another branch in DC/Maryland. Now that the concept has been tested and the process has been fine tuned, we are confident that local sparring clubs are capable of offering a challenging, rewarding, and often eye-opening experience that - if organized and managed properly - can be a great asset to any local martial arts community.
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Our Inspiration: The Forgotten Practice of Beimo 比武
SparringClub.com is inspired by the arranged fights that took place in the 1950s and 1960s in Hong Kong. During this time, it was a regular occurrence for martial artists to arrange fights with artists from other styles in order to test their skill. These matches were called “beimo” 比武 (also pronounced “biwu”). These “skill test” fights were usually private and often held on rooftops where they could fight without the interference of the general public or the police. Unlike today's prize fights, these skill test matches were not intended to be spectator events and were only attended by a small fews.
Our intent is not to duplicate these fights (which often had no rules) or to create some type of underground "fight club". We recommend sparring with protective gear, holding back some power, and having volunteer referees present to enforce rules and regulations. It is the spirit and integrity of beimo that we seek to revive. Martial arts have become far too academic. These days you can walk into any bookstore or go online to countless websites and find books and videos detailing the inner-workings of just about every martial arts system in the world. There are self-professed (and sometimes world-renowned) “masters” who have little or no practical fighting experience. The internet is flooded with forums , blogs, articles, intellectual discussions, and heated juvenile arguments comparing fighting styles, training methods, etc. All of this chatter isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there is one simple truth that far too many people seem to be ignoring: Everything works…until you try it. Despite how much you “know” about any martial art, the only way to truly assess your abilities as a martial artist is to repeatedly test your skills against unpredictable, uncooperative opponents.