Martial arts trickster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term martial arts trickster was created in the late 1990's, though who actually invented the term is still in debate. The shortened, and more widely-accepted term "Trickster" generally refers to someone who practices the art of Tricking, ie. extreme martial arts tricks, flips, and aerial moves for show and demonstration.

1 Origin
2 Reception of the term
3 Resources
4 External Links

[edit] Origin

Tricksters have become more popular since the launch of two websites in the late 1990's: Yellwboy.com, and Bilang.com. Yellwboy was the nickname given to Tom Duong, who managed the website and showcased videos of his and his friends' Tricking sessions. Tricksters featured on the website included Tom Duong himself, Chris Devera, Steve Terada, Jon Valera and others. The other site in mention, Bilang.com, was a more informative Tricking website and explained the basics of tricking as well as featured samplers of International tricksters from various tournaments and video submissions.

Early 2002, Club540.com was launched to allow tricksters from all over the world a chance to upload videos of themselves tricking. This was a chance to give/receive feedback as well as introduce people to the world of tricking, which, at the time was still relatively isolated to various martial arts schools that housed "tournament-hopping" competitors. These competitors would attend numerous tournaments during a given season, and between/after events would hold mini competitions among their peers (aka. tricking sessions). Club540.com networked with Bilang shortly after Yellwboy went offline to promote tricking to non-tournament-goers, and has expanded to a near-worldwide niche/subculture.

[edit] Reception of the term

The term "trickster" has gone back and forth from being a positive term to a negative term. Martial artists who include kicks in their tricks tend to look down upon the "backyard trickster"; the practitioner who has little to no martial arts background, and performs mainly flips or twists as tricks.

Recently, since early 2005, non-martial arts tricks have evolved significantly and have been more widely accepted by martial artists as "impressive tricks", and more non-martial artists are including kicks in their tricks. For example, in the late 90's a butterfly twist (360 degree horizontal spin) was considered very complicated, then sometime in 2003, it was frowned upon because "everybody was doing it, and it didn't contain a kick". Currently, there are numerous non-martial artist tricksters doing boxcutters (Swing one leg up and execute two full horizontal rotations (720 degrees), followed by a hook kick)(Some trickers has done a double hypertwist - A 720 butterfly twist landed on the other leg, making the rotation in the move around 900 degrees), as to appeal to both sides of the trickster culture.

Lately, especially in the mid-latter part of 2006, tricksters are becoming more challenged and more extreme. There seems to be less "hating" on what's appropriate to consider tricking, as tricks are becoming more and more unobtainable and more desireable.