Doce Pares
Doce Pares (Spanish for Twelve Pairs) is a Filipino martial art and a form of Arnis, Kali and Eskrima, that focuses primarily on stick fighting, knife fighting and hand-to-hand combat but also covers grappling and other weapons as well. In reality, the stick is merely considered an extension of the hand, and is meant to represent almost any weapon, from sticks to swords to knives to anything else you can place in your hand and use as a weapon in the modern context. Doce Pares was founded in 1932. Following the death of Ciriaco Cañete in February 2016 and Dionisio Cañete in August 2021 there is only one surviving Doce Pares Supreme Grandmaster, Danny Guba. History In the late 1920s, Eskrima attained a high level of popularity in Cebu City, the second largest city in the Philippines. In 1932, the most renowned eskrimadors, mainly from Cebu, founded Doce Pares as a society to promote the only original native martial art of the Philippines. The name Doce Pares is Spanish, taken from the Twelve Peers or Paladins of Emperor Charlemagne, whose legend (Doce Pares de Francia) the Spanish transmitted to the Philippines through popular literature and theater. To mirror the Twelve