About Perry Gil S. Mallari

Perry Gil S. Mallari has been a practitioner and researcher of the Filipino martial arts for the last two decades. His single stick method of escrima bears the stamp of approval of Ignacio Mabait an old-school escrimador who was also a former eight-rounder boxer. Manong Ignacio, a product of the juego todo (all-out stick fighting matches) era, has employed his escrima while fighting the Japanese in Manila during World War 2. Realizing the connection of Filipino escrima and Western fencing, Perry studied the art fencing with the foil in the early 1990s under Socorro Olivan at the then Quezon City Fencing Club ran by Celso Dayrit Jr. Dayrit’s father Celso Sr. is the father of sports fencing in the Philippines. Perry considers himself primarily a largo mano (long hand or long range) fighter because of the influence of his Western fencing training. Perry also practices hilot, the Filipino healing art of bone setting and therapeutic massage.    While concentrating on the FMA, Perry also cross-trains in other martial arts whenever his schedule permits. Perry believes that the principle of body mechanics is the uniting factor of all martial arts.    A professional journalist by profession, Perry’s column “Martial Talk,” published every Sunday in the Manila Times is the only column about martial arts published in a national broadsheet in the Philippines. He is also a regular writer of the Rapid Journal, the country’s only martial arts magazine for the past 11-years. His articles on the FMA is a regular feature of fmapulse.com a US-based website aiming to unify the global FMA community.