Black Combat Arts Institute.
AFRICA · EXTINCT
Essoda-lubié
A standing wrestling style built on leg hooks, practised by the Kabyé people in Kabyé country (Yadè), in Togo. Falls onto the buttocks or the back count as a takedown.
ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS
A standing wrestling of the Kabyé people of the Kabyé country (Yadè), in Togo, one branch of a dense wrestling culture whose contests order the age classes and the cantons.
THE GAME
Built on leg hooks: falls on the buttocks or the back count as the takedown. The hooked leg, not the lifted body, is the game's signature weapon.
PLACE IN THE FAMILY
With the evalas, the seu and the tata-lubie, the essoda-lubie shows a single people distributing the wrestling art into specialised games, standing hooks here, ground fighting there, initiation elsewhere. The family's logic in miniature: one internal grammar, many codified declensions.
SOURCES
Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984 [Capoeira and the Black combat arts: erased history, invisible techniques (1905–1984)], doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.
HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY
MALO, Olivier. Essoda-lubié. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/essoda-lubie [accessed date].
RELATED PRACTICES
→ Tata-lubié, Kabyé wrestling of the same canton
→ Seu, Kabyé ground-fighting body
→ Evalas, Kabyé country wrestling