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CHAPTER 1

THE NEED FOR TRAINING AND TESTING

I’ve had a fascination with the martial arts ever since I can remember. Growing up in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, I was constantly exposed to martial arts at a very young age. I can still remember going to Japanese samurai movies when I was four or five years old and dreaming of one day practicing martial arts like “the samurais.” At age nine or ten, my friends and I would never miss the Chinese Kung Fu movies that played in several theaters in old downtown Chinatown. We would catch the bus every weekend and savor the experience of a “bloody Kung Fu movie.” I would later go home and practice whatever moves I saw in the movie and try to build some of the fascinating Chinese martial arts weaponry.

At a young age, I had already completed making plywood hook-swords, dart-shooting staffs, miniature shuriken boomerangs, sword catchers, and many more ingenious devices I saw on the silver screen. The construction of all these devices of destruction was encouraged by my creative dad.

Finally, at age 13, I was allowed to formally study martial arts. I was very excited to start my martial arts training with my father’s friend who taught Wado-Ryu Karate a few blocks from my house.

From the first day I started Wado-Ryu Karate, I fell in love with the martial arts. I wanted more, and while living in Hawaii, I studied many martial arts systems, including Cha-3 Kenpo, Tai Chi Chuan, Zen Meditation, Chuan-Fa Kajukenbo, Escrima, Judo, Aikido, Boxing, Kickboxing, Northern and Southern Shaolin, Monkey Boxing, Pa Kua, Hsing-I, Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Wing Chun, Internal Shaolin, and whatever I could learn from friends and relatives who studied other martial arts styles.

The beauty of living in Hawaii for me was the wide range of cultures, which brought a rich mixture of martial art traditions, readily available for whoever wanted to practice. Living in the friendly climate of Hawaii, I was always able to train, compete, and exchange ideas with other martial artists from different styles. The Hawaiian environment allowed my martial arts knowledge to expand and let me know that there were a lot of martial arts out in the world to explore.

After reading a magazine article in 1976, I traveled to San Francisco to explore a new martial art from Japan called Taido. This art woke me up to another dimension in martial arts. When I returned to Hawaii, I continued to train with more enthusiasm, recharged from the recent trip to San Francisco. After tasting new ideas from what islanders call “the mainland,” I then attended the legendary Aspen Academy for a month and got exposure to many different martial arts systems.

Returning to Hawaii to work and go to school, I knew I had to go back to the mainland to study all of the other martial arts that were available there. In 1980, after I graduated from the University of Hawaii, I returned to the mainland (Los Angeles) and started to study all the martial arts systems I had read about and now had a chance to study. It was in Los Angeles that I studied Kali, Capoeira, Savate, Tai Mantis, Wrestling, Boxing, Fencing, Wing-Chun, Pencak Silat, Thai Boxing, Gymnastics/Tumbling, Eagle Claw Kung Fu, Judo, Ju-Jitsu, and Shootwrestling, just to name a few! The diverse and eclectic atmosphere of Los Angeles drew martial artists from all over the world to this martial art mecca.

I had adopted the Bruce Lee philosophy of “absorb what is useful” to learn as much as I could about other martial arts and to look for the good and the bad of each martial arts system. I started to cross-train in different systems to develop my own personal fighting style.

A big martial arts reality check came when I became a police officer in 1981 for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. During the police educational process, I quickly found out what did and did not work on the streets. Theory and practice met the streets of L.A., dojo, and home training.

Becoming a police officer further stimulated my martial arts growth because the job exposed me daily to life-and-death situations, situations in which split-second decisions needed to be made regarding whether to use force and, if so, what type and how to use it. I was confronted daily by the lessons of which martial arts techniques did and did not work on the street.

While a police officer, I studied boxing and won more gold medals in boxing than anyone else in the history of the California Police Olympics. Competitive boxing gave me a newfound appreciation for boxers and the rigors they must endure to be on top of their sport! The contact is very real and cardiovascular conditioning is vital, as opposed to the practice and training of many “deadly” martial arts systems.

Flighting for the gold medal in the 1984 California Police Olympics against Wayne Valdez of the LAPD. I won the gold that night.

My philosophy is that I will not say I’ve studied a martial arts system until I have put a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears into the system. Only then can one make an honest evaluation of the system. Then the system must be tested in a free and unrestricted environment where the attacker can strike at you with any type of attack.

San Diego-Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Boxing Team, the “Green Machine,” at the California Police Olympics, 1992.

I continue to hold this philosophy to this day. Too many martial artists say they have studied a martial arts system when, in reality, they have only put in a few hours of “sterile” practice. Beware of the charlatans!