[battlefields]

Today I attended a "Thai Festival" at Parramatta, as I am interested in the culture, food and of course, their national sport. I was drawn to the advertised "Muay Thai" demonstration.

While waiting I noticed two fat white guys wearing the silk uniform commonly associated with kung fu. My Bullshido sense began buzzing right around the time I noticed a few people seemingly associated with the fat "sifu's" wearing similar shirts, all with Eye of the Eagle written on them. On closer inspection the shirts read "self defence", "kickboxing", tae kwon do".

I was pissed off, I came to see real Muay Thai, not some LARPers pretending. Well, that is exactly what I got, but with a hip and groovy sound track. They performed basic poomsae, poorly, then the fat sifu performed some kung fu form, sloppily. There was the usual compliant fighting, some pad work that was woeful and finally, the only thing that was Thai, they did the dance done before a fight, once again, poorly.

I decided to check out their website, www.eyeoftheeagle.com.au to see what they were all about.

Nowhere does it say they were trained in Muay Thai, yet they must have claimed as much in order to perform at this "festival".

Some of the claims seem embellished. Some of the styles I've never heard of (not that that means much). The sifu Bill claims a dan ranking in "karate", not specific. There are a few dan rankings, but not much in the way of verification information.

I'm not 100% if this is Bullshido, as I do not have the google fu to track all the crap down, but if some of you aren't doing anything, wanna check it out?

[Wandering Yun]

"LiuHe BaFa" and "Water-Boxing" are synonymous, so I'm not sure why it's listed twice in the Martial Arts Styles section. I'm not sure how "Fitness and Weight Loss Techniques" are a martial arts style. Plyometrics? In that samesection, fitness (or a variation thereof) is listed twice, as is self defense which is a little odd since you say that you saw no evidence of either from their demonstration. I think they are just looking to sort of pad the list for marketing sake. As a side thought, they could have added internal breathing, flexibility, and a whole slew of other pseudo-mystical activities.

The first class is free. You could always check it out if you have some time to kill.