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Episode One - Suri Stick-Fighting in Ethiopia
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Watch our exclusive interview with Wolé to get a real insight into what it was like to stay with the Suri in Ethiopia and compete in stick fighting.
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Exclusive - Wolé on stick fighting
Watch our exclusive interview with Wolé to get a real insight into what it was like to stay with the Suri in Ethiopia and compete in stick fighting.
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Exclusive - Video diary footage
The athletes show us Ethiopia and seem to be suffering from a lack of food
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Preview - Ethiopia and the locals
The athletes arrive and meet the locals
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Preview - Local traditions
The athletes are introduced to some of the local customs
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Preview - The competition
The athletes witness the competition for the first time
Suri Stick Fighting
The six new Athletes landed in East Africa for the first leg of their year-long, worldwide trip, without a clue what would lie in store for them.
The Athletes arrived in Benchagi, becoming the first Westerners ever to visit the village. The hostile, gun-toting welcome from the locals began to shake nerves, even before their first glimpse of stick fighting.
Suri stick fighting:
The world's most brutal form of stick fighting. It's insanely dangerous; no outsiders have ever before taken part.
The idea is to use a seven-foot pole to knock your opponent down, draw blood, or make him give up.
As far as the rules are concerned, that's about it.
Training and Rituals
First up was an introduction to the tools of the trade, from trainer Arbulla. The sticks are known as donga, roughly translated as 'gentlemen's equipment'.
After several training sessions, Arbulla selected three Athletes to progress to the Sagine: Ed, Murray and Wolé.
With their final training session out of the way, the Athletes were faced with a local ritual.
Tribal scarring is seen as a right of passage for the Suri men, a sign of manhood. Whilst Ed and Murray faced the blades, Wolé was not prepared to be marked – having been cut by a witch doctor in Nigeria as a child.
The Final Competition
Crazed by bloodlust, Wolé struck Murray in the head during the opening fight, temporarily forgetting the 'no head shots' rule. During a few moments of confusion, Murray was announced as the winner. Moments later, Arbulla declared the headshot ‘accidental'.
The two would fight again. In the rematch, the wound-up Wolé made sure that there would be no doubting the result, and took the tie with ease.
But Murray had little time to feel cheated, as he had to step straight back into the ring to fight Ed - ending in a draw. Murray was out!
Meanwhile, Ed faced Wolé in the decider. Although Ed appeared to dominate the battle, Arbulla's say was final – and he called another draw. Tribal rules set the standards in Last Man Standing, and the first competition was over, with Wolé declared the winner.
The next challenge - wrestling in Burkina Faso
There are no upcoming episodes of this programme.
Six intrepid athletes travel the world to compete against the most remote tribes on earth at their own sports.
Production Blog
Production Co-ordinator Tim Pyke takes us behind the scenes in Ethiopia.
About Ethiopia
Ethiopia is one of the world's oldest countries, landlocked and located on the horn of Africa.
It is steeped with traditions that date back over 3,000 years with recent findings suggesting that the area around the capital, Addis Ababa, was where the first humans began migrating from.
Find out more about Ethiopia:
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites
Locations: Series Two
The journey for series two:
Ethiopia > Burkina Faso > Nepal > Brazil > Bhutan > Kamchatka > Philippines > Sumbawa > India > Papua New Guinea
© MMIX
Comments
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I love Last Man Standing
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So glad Last Man Standings back, awesome program!
However this episode showed that unfortunately racism is a naturaly occoring phenomenon. It was obvious that Ed won but they handed it to Wole as they saw him as one of there own.
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Your absolutely right deanbtc, black people get an unfair advantage in remote Ethiopian stick-fighting tournaments; this proves that all the moaning and groaning about racism in the rest of the world is so very silly. I mean, that more than makes up for the inequalities experienced by black people in almost all other spheres of life around the world would'nt you say?
So, why don't we just give all this P.C. nonsense a rest and provide all black people with free flights to Ethiopia so the can stick it to the Man. Right on.
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@DeanBTC
That opinion says more about you than it does about the judges.
Remember that the footage is severely edited so you didn't see everything that the judge(s) saw. Secondly the spirit in which you fight is very important so flinching or otherwise behaving in an "unmanly" fashion will see you lose. There's also the fact that the Suri don't see race in the same way that you do and a British guy of Nigerian extraction is just as alien to them as a Swede or Korean would be.
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To be frank. I dont think Wole won. the truth is that Ed was better.
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yo buddy,
iv just heard your blog on the lms website.. and its really true that only us 12 guys know what really goes on when your there and its cool that you have such a balanced view..
I still regard you guys as heroes because you went into it truly blind, at least we had a small preview from what you guys did..
I understand how the whole laughing at the throwing up thing,could be presumed as disrespectful,which it was! It was just an accumilation of everything generaly the cherry on the cake..
no sleep!
no food everyone loosing over 1.5 stone
training in extreme mid day heat
absaloutley battered and the prospect of absaloute destruction
knowing that you have to be respectful at all times,
a whole strange filming aspect.
and then making yourself sick..
it was just a downward spiral, i think laughing was just a self defence mechanism.
It was just hell of a predicament, one which i dont think anyone apart from us can understand.
oh yeah i was asked to talk about tribal racism, theres no doubt that when we rocked up into the Suri tribe they regarded Wole as a physical God they simply had never seen anyone like him, and what everyone has to remember is that this tribe had no concept of travel, electricity,even what the cameras were for, what is time?how old are they?,they dont care and trying to explain an ocean, no chance..
white folk especialy the ginger haired chap were just consided weird and unnatural, and then theres Wole a man 3 times the size of them, a real life hercules.
If this is a form of racism its an individual personal opinion all me and Ed knew was that no matter how hard we fought we were never going to win!!
This is not to detract from Wole whom would of prefered a fair fight, however it was never going to be judged with equality.
It was a harsh and very painful introduction to tribal rules!.
however the competition goes on, lessons are learnt and wounds dressed.
Anyways i hear your studying law in London, i hope its all going well, speaking to Gary we should meet up for a coke and a smile sometime..
Hope your well
all the best
muzz
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I just watched this episode again, particularily the ED/WOLE fight. If you watch it in slow motion Ed gets in so many more hits, he really gives WOLE a thrashing. Both Ed and Wole know who the true winner was, Wole was clearly uncomfortable with his win and hung his head when he should be celebrating.
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I've just watched the latest episode of LMS (Sikaran kick-fighting) and was disappointed to see the final result be decided by poor refereeing and thought back to this episode. From what is shown here it seems clear that Ed won and whilst TV is always going to be an edited document the reaction of the onlooking athletes and the crowd at large tells you all you need to know. As for the two combatants, just look at the difference in body language - Ed is of whooping it up doing his victory dance whilst Wole is hunched down and seems for more surprised than expectant when he is told he has one. Tribal rules it is but this seemed a blatantly poor decision by any stretch of things...
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I have to agree with Ark Ash. The crowd, the combatants and other LMS contenders knew who had won.
Disappointing that the last episode's victory decided the winner. It is quite clear that Ed had won four of the contests and didn't receive the victory that he deserved both in the Stick Fighting and the whole event.
It was clear that the natives had chosen Wole as their favourite whatever was going to happen. It was in the bag for Wole from the beginning.
It's disappointing that this occurred, because Ed was at a disadvantage due to his size and Wole's - for the most part - size worked for him.
It has to be handed to Wole though, his stamina in the endurance races was colossal and only matched by Ed's analysis of events techniques.
Perhaps there should be independant arbitors next time to deal with obvious discrimination.
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