How shallow or deep is the talent pool in Savate considering it's such a small sport?

L

Livingenergy

Banned
Banned
Joined
Jul 6, 2020
Messages
808
Reaction score
297
Does anyone know anything about this? What about the coaches' technical knowledge?
 
I always wondered why savate never became a thing when kickboxing came to Europe. One of my old coaches had a savate background but never really talked about it, the gym itself was all based around muay thai so the rest of us students thought he was just a kickboxer. He had just as legit striking skills as any of the other instructors. For some reason he only competed in boxing. When we asked why he just said competitions required funny uniforms, this was before internet so nobody had a clue what the uniforms looked like, or what savate was.
 
Dece said:
I always wondered why savate never became a thing when kickboxing came to Europe. One of my old coaches had a savate background but never really talked about it, the gym itself was all based around muay thai so the rest of us students thought he was just a kickboxer. He had just as legit striking skills as any of the other instructors. For some reason he only competed in boxing. When we asked why he just said competitions required funny uniforms, this was before internet so nobody had a clue what the uniforms looked like, or what savate was.
Click to expand...

Ok but what about my questions?
 
Livingenergy said:
Ok but what about my questions?
Click to expand...
You aren't likely to get an answer. Nobody here follows that sport or even knows how to. It's not really on anyone's radar here. You are likely to have better luck searching Google or their may be a Facebook group or something.
 
Snubnoze707 said:
You aren't likely to get an answer. Nobody here follows that sport or even knows how to. It's not really on anyone's radar here. You are likely to have better luck searching Google or their may be a Facebook group or something.
Click to expand...

But what would your (rational) guess be in regards to small fighting sports in general?
 
Snubnoze707 said:
Common sense - Small Sport = Small Talent Pool
Click to expand...

I know, that's what I thought too but then I also thought that maybe the people that it attracts are truly passionate and particularly good at it (cuz why else would you choose to practice such a small sport?) and the talent pool is not so crappy after all.
 
Pure savate gyms are rarer and rarer. These days in France you mostly find gyms which combine all the kick-fighting arts under one roof: Muay Thai, Kickboxing, "Full Contact" (which is the American style kickboxing with kicks above the waist), Savate etc. I'd say there's probably like 20 pure Savate clubs in the whole of France if that, and you're luckily to find even 1 savate club in neighbouring countries, I think there's like 3 or 4 in the whole of the UK and a handful in Germany and Italy.

So yeah I think it's quite easy to figure out how "deep" the talent pool would be then.
 
The most recent 75kg French national champion announced recently that he was moving to K-1 rules, here's the national title fight to get an idea.



There is always a few good guys and there's been attempts in recent years to put on pro events (KFWC Savate Pro) even inviting people from other disciplines to fight in Savate (Kiria, Delval, Stetsurenko...) but it's still very confidential.

France had some really good fighters in the discipline but it barely ever gets covering, here's an old fight i I like a lot.

 
Last edited:
Tayski said:
Pure savate gyms are rarer and rarer. These days in France you mostly find gyms which combine all the kick-fighting arts under one roof: Muay Thai, Kickboxing, "Full Contact" (which is the American style kickboxing with kicks above the waist), Savate etc. I'd say there's probably like 20 pure Savate clubs in the whole of France if that, and you're luckily to find even 1 savate club in neighbouring countries, I think there's like 3 or 4 in the whole of the UK and a handful in Germany and Italy.

So yeah I think it's quite easy to figure out how "deep" the talent pool would be then.
Click to expand...

Did the sport ever have any "golden era" with a gym in every neighbourhood?
 
Dece said:
Did the sport ever have any "golden era" with a gym in every neighbourhood?
Click to expand...

There were definitely more Savate gyms before Karate, Muay Thai and MMA became popular. Now a gym "in every neighbourhood", I'm not sure about that.
 
Tayski said:
There were definitely more Savate gyms before Karate, Muay Thai and MMA became popular. Now a gym "in every neighbourhood", I'm not sure about that.
Click to expand...
I don't think it's true. Savate in its present form is younger than Karate and Judo in France and it's always been a niche sport, but it is growing. Even in the 60's and 70's, Judo was the popukar combat sport in France.
 
spinup said:
I don't think it's true. Savate in its present form is younger than Karate and Judo in France and it's always been a niche sport, but it is growing. Even in the 60's and 70's, Judo was the popukar combat sport in France.
Click to expand...

Savate (boxe française) has been around for far longer than Karate and Judo. There was almost no "dojos" when my grand dad and his mates were young (Judo was just about starting in France) however there was plenty of "boxe anglaise" and "boxe française" gyms. It became more unified with a proper federation in the last few decades but it's far from growing in popularity.
 
Last edited:
Khonda said:
The most recent 75kg French national champion announced recently that he was moving to K-1 rules, here's the national title fight to get an idea.



There is always a few good guys and there's been attempts in recent years to put on pro events (KFWC Savate Pro) even inviting people from other disciplines to fight in Savate (Kiria, Delval, Stetsurenko...) but it's still confidental.

France had some really good fighters in the discipline but it barely ever gets covering, here's an old fight i I like a lot.

Click to expand...


I don't know near enough about martial arts to evaluate whether that match is high level fighting/kickboxing skills or not....what do you guys think?
 
I trained it a couple times in France. They were pretty good at stomping your leg kick with the flat of their foot. Hurts, lol.
Also they are very agile and bouncy and don't chamber much so they can surprise you.
 
KBE6EKCTAH_CCP said:
I trained it a couple times in France. They were pretty good at stomping your leg kick with the flat of their foot. Hurts, lol.
Also they are very agile and bouncy and don't chamber much so they can surprise you.
Click to expand...

I'm aware of those things. What about my questions though?
 
Can anyone recommend where can I watch the recent Savate fights?

I don't know any Savate promotions/organizations that show recent fights
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Forum statistics

Threads
1,237,080
Messages
55,466,313
Members
174,786
Latest member
plasterby

Share this page

Back
Top