Black Combat Arts Institute.
AFRICA · LIVING · REVIVED
Besua
A gripping wrestling style of the coastal region of Cameroon, practised by the Douala, Malimba, Pongo, Mbôô and Abo peoples, in which any contact of the body with the ground means defeat — even a stumble caught by the hands.
ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
A grip-wrestling style of Cameroon's coastal region, practised by the Duala, Malimba, Pongo, Mbôô and Abo peoples — the estuary world whose contests bind the villages of the coast.
THE GAME
Any contact of the body with the ground means defeat — even a stumble caught by the hands. The whole game is the defence of verticality.
PLACE IN THE FAMILY
The besua radicalises the vertical pole: not the thrown back, but any ground contact at all. By making the standing body itself the entire stake, it isolates in its purest form the principle that runs through the family — equilibrium as the true terrain of the duel, the fall as the only sentence.
SOURCES
Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984, doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.
HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY
MALO, Olivier. Besua. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/besua [accessed date].
RELATED PRACTICES
→ Massing — Same coastal-Cameroon logic
→ Wesuwa — Bakweri variant of the complex
→ Mêsing — Any ground contact means defeat