Savate

French Boxing

Member Organization(s)

Introduction

Savate means ‘old shoe’. Practitioners usually fight with kicks but they can also hold weapons such as a sword, dagger, pole, cane, etc. But in modern sports, players wear gloves on their fists like kick-boxers. As boxing techniques were added in the development process, savate was utilized for training French soldiers. It was a demonstration sport in the Paris 1924 Summer Olympics.

History

French Boxing is a combat sport that first appeared in the nineteenth century under the names of Savate and Chausson, but which soon became known as French Boxing. It started out in the streets in bad neighborhoods, and in a few decades become the sport of the aristocracy (the 1850s), be at the forefront of French sports (1900s) and after a long period of sleepiness, flourished again and progressing from year to year.

Now the French Federation of Savate (FF Savate - established 1975) is promoting the martial art and organizing world championships.

References

Jean-François Loudcher. History of savate. University of Bordeaux, 2008.

“SAVATE & D.A - HISTOIRE”. FF Savate.

World Martial Arts Museum. Chungju, Korea.