Great Britain Savate Federation

If you could go back in time, say a couple of hundred years or so, onto the streets of old Paris, France, you might very well find thugs and hoodlums settling their differences with a street-fighting style which they called 'La Savate' (pronounced sa-vat). This was simply a slang term, which meant 'old shoe' (or 'old boot'). They used the expression because, when fighting, the main emphasis was to kick one another with their ordinary everyday shoes or boots on. In addition to kicking, they also slapped, wrestled and head-butted, and were also not averse to gouging and biting it seems. What they didn't do, however, was to punch each other with the closed fist, in the manner of English Pugilists. In fact, the practise of fist-fighting was originally considered to be unusual by the French. For example: One bemused French traveller, who had previously visited England during the earliest part of George I.'s reign (1714 - 27), wrote in his memoirs:

Whilst Savate was originally regarded as a method of street-fighting, as time went on it gradually started to become systemized. The very first 'official' Savate training establishment 'Salle' was opened by Michel Casseux, aka Pisseux (b. 1794), in 1825. At the time, however, Savate still suffered from its past association with street thuggery, and the like, and initially tende

d only to attract those of ill-repute and the lower social classes. Never-the-less, things steadily improved, and the art began to attract a higher class of patronage. It is said that the author Alexandre Dumas fils (1824-95) - son of Alexandre Dumas père (who wrote 'the Three Musketeers') - and the French romantic Poet, Théophile Gautier (1811-72), also undertook lessons.