Martial Arts / Boxing
In the earlier 1800’s and 1900’s, the community practiced the Bahala Na Multi-Style Escrima martial arts which is a combination of styles such as Original Giron Escrima System of Grandmaster Leo Giron, the Serrada/Largo-Mano/Decuerdas System of Maestro Dentoy Revillar and the Muti-style combat techniques and concepts of Maestro Dexter Labonong. This style focuses a lot on combat training but more on the Grion and SLD system. Martial arts was important to the Filipino culture because the style that the Filipinos use was from the older tribes and traditions that they use to practice and it was a way for them keep these traditions a lot. It was also away for them to keep these traditional arts in their culture as they migrated over to a new country.
There has also been many Filipinos that have made a lasting impact and became big names in the Filipino community. Benny Casing was a graduate of Edison High School who practiced boxing and his record was 26-3. In 1956 he won the Golden Gloves Championship in San Francisco. Jimmy Florita was a Stockton native who fought in over 70 fights from California and Hawaii. There are a lot of lasting impressions in the Stockton community. Many were heavily involved and headed different boxing and martial arts gyms.