Grand Master's Viewpoint

[Uncle John]

"It ain't the arrow, its the Indian," it doesn't matter what style you study its all in the person that does the study. If you want to be good stick with it, good will come, or at least you will be all that you can be. Who can beat up who from what style? I suppose if you have to know, train and go try I'll go and watch and take notes. Tigers and Dragons..There are a lot of very mean Tigers these days that can't wait to prove themselves, they have yet to realize that because they are Tigers they have achieved their goal. I guess the winning makes the Tiger not the training to become a Tiger. Dragons are the teachers. There are good Dragons and bad Dragons. A good smart humble Dragon is the way to be....Pass it on

 

[Uncle John]

Now I'm going to tell you a funny karate story. My student John Sullivan from the Unv. of Arkansas who along with being a 5th dan is a comical genius. His students have won so many times I guess to him it was no longer in the winning but the enjoyment of the martial arts. So Master Sullivan entered the weapons kata with a toilet plunger....and won the division. True story.

 

[Uncle John]

Some times the idea is lost in the in and now martial art world that all styles of the acient times had one mission, To Protect Yourself. In its purest form it was meant to kill an enemy. Of course Funikoshi made Shotokan a Karate Way or Do, but before that Okinawans who were deprived of personal weapons developed the art to the point of being able to punch through bamboo body armour with a punch. I tested this on a full grown Military Policeman wearing a modern ballistic vest with an acrilic insert. At his request I hit him right in the solar plexus. It bent the acrilic plate and took the MP to his knees. He was a good Joe and once he regained his composer he said if it wasnt for the vest it would have killed him. I admitted to him that I struck him at the point of Kyo, the void between inhaling and exhaling which is a techneque I learned in GoJu Ryu to preform the Ikkenhesatsu or kill with one punch. First time I ever got to try it, but it must be perfect, it works just fine. If the MMA guys ever learned this there wouldnt be many of them left.

 

[Uncle John]

To tell you the truth I never had any trouble with Karate Kids in the DoJo same goes for the rifle range. Parents would bring their children to me and say, "I can't do anything with him." I thought to myself, "What do you want me to do numskull, beat up your kid for you." So as time passed I became the caring parent. I'm not a baby sitter and a dojo is not a romper room, although many a young sensei, sabunim, sifu and guru has turned their training hall into one for the money. The parents will pay too mainly for the day care program. Sorry not this old Shihan. Now the street kids come and knock on my door and ask if I will come outside and teach them. They come from all styles and I dont care, because they want to learn. My point is using just one of my students as an example, but there were many. Her name is April Morris, she trained from about age 12 to 17 and made a Black Belt with me. She took that motivation, came from a single mom to a millionair in the cosmetic world. My Black Belt, God Daughter invented a lip glose that helps women lose weight. I invite you to check out Express Effects Cosmetics so you can see what proper motivation can get you if you stick with anything.

Of course I had the little tuff guys that were convinced that karate doesnt work so they want to try what they know. Ok, well there is the Jr Black Belt, knock yourself out. My Sempie knew not to hurt anyone and just let the kid burn himself out trying to lay one on the Jr Black Belt. After that they either quit or stay for ever.

 

[rooster]

Some times the idea is lost in the in and now martial art world that all styles of the acient times had one mission, To Protect Yourself. In its purest form it was meant to kill an enemy. Of course Funikoshi made Shotokan a Karate Way or Do, but before that Okinawans who were deprived of personal weapons developed the art to the point of being able to punch through bamboo body armour with a punch. I tested this on a full grown Military Policeman wearing a modern ballistic vest with an acrilic insert. At his request I hit him right in the solar plexus. It bent the acrilic plate and took the MP to his knees. He was a good Joe and once he regained his composer he said if it wasnt for the vest it would have killed him. I admitted to him that I struck him at the point of Kyo, the void between inhaling and exhaling which is a techneque I learned in GoJu Ryu to preform the Ikkenhesatsu or kill with one punch. First time I ever got to try it, but it must be perfect, it works just fine. If the MMA guys ever learned this there wouldnt be many of them left.

Hmm, there are a few problems with hitting a person at point of Kyo. For one, they basically have to let you. I have been in many different martial arts over the last 20 years and have competed at high levels and have never seen any person who can do something like what your are talking about in competition over and over again. I have seen broken arms, legs, I've seen guys drop from side kicks and even a ruptured liver but NO ONE HAS DIED FROM ONE PUNCH. Now you can talk about how you don't want to use this against people but I thought that with modern mma people would have realized things like the death punch or five point palm exploding hart punch is just a myth people made up to claim their style is better than others. Now I am not challenging your martial arts credentials, just the punch mentioned. I also tend to think a true "Grand Master" would be so humble he would not tell you he is a Grand Master. Why do you have to say that, let your technique speak for itself. Maybe you could pm me your schools name and I could check it out, I'm always looking for a good school, too many McDOjos now days.

 

[Bayoupiper]

Now I'm going to tell you a funny karate story. My student John Sullivan from the Unv. of Arkansas who along with being a 5th dan is a comical genius. His students have won so many times I guess to him it was no longer in the winning but the enjoyment of the martial arts. So Master Sullivan entered the weapons kata with a toilet plunger....and won the division. True story.

John L Sullivan?




.

 

[Uncle John]

Should have known that was comming, there is alway one. But thats OK Im retired now so let me have my say if you dont mind. Kyo is really easy to do if you know how, and its not all that difficult to learn or teach and yes you can do it in compitition if you train for it just like anything else you train for. Its just another thing that works if you make it work.

OK so Ill show you how. You already know what it is and everyone in the martial art has had the wind knock out of them so you know the results. It is better done with a loudmouth drunk in a defense situation than a karate tournamet because you can time the stike perfectly. Just let him have it when he reaches the end of his sentence he will reach Kyo at that time and it wont take much. You catch him when he is about to intake a breath, and of course you control the techneque so you only knock him out.

Yes it is very difficult to hit a moving trained martial artist in a tournmant at the point of kyo. Why? well if you havent noticed its kinda hard to hit any well trained martial artist with anything, all things being equal. Common sense would tell you Ikkinhisatsu was developed for combat and not a tournament when things were not equal. So killing a soldier on the battle field (reguardless of the time line) is different from the sport.

If you pull off a Kyo knock out your going to have to hold up the victory sign with one finger. However if say an MMA fighter took the time to really get into this there may verywell be a death. This is due to the fact an MMA ref doesnt stop the fight when one man goes down.

As far as my qualifications it doesnt matter, it is humble enough to say who you are, I hope I didnt offend your ego by exsiting, but this argument and many like them have been going on forever.

 

[rooster]

In an mma fight the ref may stop it if the person goes down(depending on the strike). Also I still don't see how strikes to the head (what is most likely would happen if a person got dropped from a body shot) would kill the person.
How convenient you are retired.
I am not easy to offend but i do try to dispel any rumors, like the death punch. Here is a famous vid of something along the same lines.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jf3Gc2a0_8&feature=related[/ame]
I am very respectful of the martial arts and believe with focus, the human body is capable of what would appear to be super-human things, but the death punch is not one of them. Mma has made it clear, there are no secrets in martial arts.

 

[Uncle John]

Police, shooting and martial arts, if you take a shooting course it will make you better if you already know how to shoot. Then you must practice all the time to insure you dont lose the edge. I made Black Belt about a year after I joined the Army so MP school in 1973 was interesting they had the Joly Green Giants for instrutors. The techiques were easy but efective and I still use and teach them today. Trouble is unless you do it all the time in a respective kwoon, dojo, or whatever it aint gonna work guys. I go down to the range a lot, I pick up my Marlin 1897 22 and shooting from the off hand position, split a playing card at 20 yards. Is is Zen or just practice, well both are the same.

I believe that if you are not spontaneous what ever you have been taught is useless. Therefore if you cant do it, the training was either too brief or you didnt practice.

Take about 12 soccer moms and put them in a womens self defence class for a week, make sure you charge them some ungodly price because you the instructor needs to pay his electric bill. In the end you have 12 women that will know nothing a week later but will have a good story to tell.

Take that same groupe for a year and send them to the shooting range the archery range and a dojo three times a week for a year and you will have a dirty dozen bowhunting sharpshooting asskickinn mommas ....any questions?

Same thing with paper tiger police, I wont say COPs they hate that. You have the PR-24 8 hr course with two extra hours to be an instructor, maybe 6 to 8 hours in unarmed self defence and two minutes on how to use tear gas so you can see how that feels then of course you get Tazed that hurts and now you are an expert. You absoulutely have to qualify with your weapon once a year and I will venture to say most dont even clean their weapons year by year. Thank God for Glocks. They spend even less time on report writing or interviews.

Now if you mention putting on a Gi about one in one hundred will actully do it, the rest will meander around and say all that karate stuff doesnt work anyway. The ones that do put on the Gi really do become good instructors and then they are asked by the Paper Tiger Chief to teach all the new police by the book and none of that fancy martial art stuff.

 

[Uncle John]

Well Roster your from Lake Charles Im sure you know Shun Hartley he has a certificate on his wall signed by me. Im going on 57 but I still work out, I made 10th Dan when Lou Ellison passed away last year he was 69. The fight you showed was an old man fighting a man at least 30 years his Junior, kinda dum if you ask me. Neither one looked very good. Your 60 miles away come and dispel the myth, history says it works you say that it doesnt. They were fighting death matches in the orient long before MMA, seems like a few were killed there. The original rules of MMA were no rules I agreed. Now not so much as you can play the rules. But as far as Ikkenhisatsu and striking the point of Kyo if a verbal explination is not enough I would be glad to show you, just like I would anyone it is only a slight discomfort but it certinly gets the point across, no real secret anyway.

 

[Uncle John]

OK Rooster I see what you mean now that I looked at the other tape on that old red belt throwing everyone around with out touching them. That to you would look pretty stupid. But it has been around a long time. It is rather easy once again if you know what you are doing, nothing more than a palor trick...when you get here Ill show you how that is done too. Ill through in the three types of Ki too in case you are interested we will have a good day. Hey I forgot about the Dim Mak the Death Touch damn we will do that too, you are gonna love it, shall I Bar-B-Q or do Italian.

 

[rooster]

Well Roster your from Lake Charles Im sure you know Shun Hartley he has a certificate on his wall signed by me. Im going on 57 but I still work out, I made 10th Dan when Lou Ellison passed away last year he was 69. The fight you showed was an old man fighting a man at least 30 years his Junior, kinda dum if you ask me. Neither one looked very good. Your 60 miles away come and dispel the myth, history says it works you say that it doesnt. They were fighting death matches in the orient long before MMA, seems like a few were killed there. The original rules of MMA were no rules I agreed. Now not so much as you can play the rules. But as far as Ikkenhisatsu and striking the point of Kyo if a verbal explination is not enough I would be glad to show you, just like I would anyone it is only a slight discomfort but it certinly gets the point across, no real secret anyway.

I do know Shun Hartley. Not very well but I trained with a few of his black belts about 10 years ago, some were trying to make it onto the olympic team. He is one tough little dude. His Marine days had alot to do with that. I don't really care who he has a certificate from and again I am not questioning your martial arts past.
I agree neither person is in the video is very good but the point is modern mma is far more advanced in regards to fighting and defense than any other single martial art, and there is no one strike/move that can kill someone in general. Does a shot to the gut hurt. Yeah. Can it drop a person, sure. Will it kill most of the time. Not even close.
On a side note, belts have never mattered to me. Royce Gracie who I like vary much (because the Gracie family put it's money where it's mouth was) said "a belt only covers 2 inches, it's up to you to cover the rest." With that said the idea of respecting your instructor (or upper belt) so much you won't best him in competition is crazy.

 

[Uncle John]

Shun Last I knew was an E-6 in the Army National Guard, didnt know he was in the Marines Ive known him since he was about 12 his instructor was Eddie Carrilo all three of us took world championships in 1984, which now means nothing Im old. They were Tae Kwon do and yes he is tough. that was the year one of my students was attacked by a knife weilding idiot in Friedburg Germany, one jump spinning back kick and the bad guy was dead..broke his sternum. The Poliezi termed it a self defence thing and sent my student back to the USA. He was last known to be in the delta force. During Desert Storm I was once again stuck in Germany. A young officer came in and told me they had captured a member of the Republican Guard and he attempted to stab the officer with a hidden bayonet. One of my third degree black belts killed him with one side kick. During a actul match in Thialand another one of my third dans who was in the Navy at the time entered a Thai Kickboxing Match he kicked the guy in the neck with the first lick and DRT. He sent me the victims trunks which I have in my trophy room to honor both fighters thats three one kick kills which I didnt really want to bring up but you forced the issue so now you know.

The most powerful kick I have ever seen was John Cadelli of Ft Smith Arkansas, at the time I thought I was pretty good. John put his foot inside a brand new everlast body punching bag with a front kick. The greatest martail art feat I ever saw was my teacher Lou Ellison fight a Bengal Tiger, he made me sleep with a bobcat for 5 days just to watch him do it.....its a Cherokee thing you wouldnt understand. Now was it bar-b-q or italian you never did say?

 

[rooster]

I'm not saying I don't believe the examples you say but they do seem far fetched. Here is a clip of Bas Rutten kicking a crash test dummy, at no point do they talk about death due to his kicks. Now a broken rib COULD puncture a lung, but any death resulting from one strike is a freak accident. We are talking about duplicating a strike time and again that will kill a person. If Bas can't do it you would be hard pressed to find someone that can.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGjPnLjvvrs[/ame]

 

[Safari]

John, do you remmeber 1974, are you in the pictue?. Look at the Feb. 73 issue page 57. I admire your work with the handicapped hunters, good job.

http://books.google.com/books?cd=1&as_pt=MAGAZINES&id=4NYDAAAAMBAJ&dq=John+Simeone&q=John+Simeone&as_coll2=+issn%3A0277-3066+

 

[Uncle John]

It is August 1985 under Sgt John Simeone Black Belt Magazine, That is the tournament that Shun Hartley, Eddie Carillo, Vicki Orman, Mike Orman, Manuel Knight, Bo Jacobs and a lot more From the US Army Team, hell I wrote that article...Karate Spirit column. Almost forgot about that thanks, No I didnt make black belt until 1974 I was 5th Dan in 1984 when the tournment took place BBM didnt print the article until 85.

Due to my clearence in the Army I couldnt be in the lime light too much. I had a jelous plt sgt that hated karate and was a complete drunk always tried to pick something with me. Later we were picked as body guards for high ranking officers. Then I became an Army detective (MPI) and all the BS stopped. I retired at Ft Polk in 1993. i was also the Chief Director of the Armed Forces Karate Association and wrote the sport rules for the game back then. The World Martial Arts Assn addopted them and Dua Gu Kim wrote me in the History Book I still have the Budda he gave me for Christmas it protects my gun case. Any way enjoy the article it was one of my first sports articles.

Ok Rooster if you want to see the photos of me sleeping with the Bobcat and Lou fighting the Tiger they are at Foremost Hunting.com in my profile photo collection, along with being my karate master Lou was a Cherokee Medicine Man so frankly I went through two kinds of tests in the martial arts, they were not fun. Now I teach the 4 winds tribe Cherokees as a Blood Brother. A little far fetched you have no idea....

 

[rooster]

Well I don't believe he fought a tiger. He may have played with one but people do that all the time. He may have even thought he was fighting it but chances are the tiger was playing. A tiger weights around 400 pounds and in a real fight a person may not die but would be badly injured. As for a bobcat, I knew a guy who raised one from a baby and it slept with him every night. Those are not the stories that I am referring to. The ones where your students have killed people with one hit are the far fetched ones.

As far as meeting I will be training 6 days a week for the next 5 weeks so I won't be able to make the drive to Leesville but you are more than welcome to come to the school I train at currently, I'll pm you the address and times. I know it's an hour drive but honestly if you can do what you say you can do I would love to see it. Thanks.

 

[Uncle John]

Your right Rooster because well you are Rooster and Rooster knows everything you have a nice day. You have basically called me a liar and certainly looking for trouble, all the true makings for a fight kinda like a Rooster in a barn yard strutting his stuff. Sorry not me Im not training MMA fighters, never really been interested. Nothing else matters.

 

[DuckYou]

It was probably not the best way to title the post. It is also best to not get into the whole "my kung fu is better than your kung fu". Everyone is biased in one way or another.

 

[Uncle John]

You certainly have a point there, But frankly I know a lot of grand masters and they pretty well think the same way. MMA guys are a different breed from traditional martial artist like a different culture. I have yet to mention the style I do only those I study. Opinions are based on years of experience, not who is the master. In order to hurt a highy trained MMA fighter I would have to train a person like say Brock Lester (if I got the name right) about six moths on nothing but a perfect strike. It would take that type of power to tip over an MMA fighter. Personally as a sport I think that type of hard combat is too much for any fighter and this has been reflected by many.

In countries where human life means less, if one of these guys wants to give it a go by all means, but I wouldnt do it repeatedly as something like that is more akin to sport Russian Rulet, and yes they do that in some places. 20 years in the military has taught me when to say enough is enough. So if you want to beat each other up fine with me. I have no intention of teaching advanced killing techniques to sport fighters anyway. Somehow this disbelief that such things exsist maybe a good thing, because the general attitude displayed by many MMA fighter is more akin to championship wrestling than any martial art Ive seen around the world. So finally there are technieques that can be done to kill with the bare hands. As with anything else they dont work every time. There are and have been in the past Death Matches in countries where life means very little.

As far as all the styles there is only one rule like that of a gunfighter, the quick and the dead. Raising the stakes to its highest level we have the ultimate fight Nuclear War, something human beings finally had to say enough is enough, with MAD mutually assured destruction. Anything less than that and someone will always be the bully, its just human nature.