Martial Arts News Roundup
Martial Arts News Roundup |
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Karate Champ 1; Mugger 0 by Jon Sattler Naysayers, beware: Karate is a valid form of self-defense. The Telegraph of Great Britain is reporting that an Italian woman used her championship-caliber skills to end an attempted mugging:
The Forbidden Kingdom, a martial-arts epic starring Jackie Chan and Jet Li, arrives September 9 on Blu-ray and DVD. The two-disk special edition set includes extras on the making of the film along with iTunes and Windows Media Player files so you can play the film anywhere.
Dear Friends, It is my unfortunate task to announce the passing of a Masters Hall of Fame Alumni Hanshi Sid Campbell; we will mourn the passing of a great martial artist. Hanshi Campbell was known for his quick wit, passion for the martial arts, and his humor. He will be greatly missed. His family has lost a dear loved one, his students have lost their teacher, the martial arts community has lost one its leaders, and the Masters organization has lost a great friend. For more information on Hanshi Campbell; go to www.sidcampbell.net. Hanshi, my prayers are with your family. Daniel Hect Masters Hall of Fame CEO
by Raymond Horwitz According to coverage at NBCOlympics.com and Yahoo! Sports, Black Belt Hall of Fame member Steven Lopez (Competitor of the Year, 2000) has added a bronze to his cache of Olympic medals. His record includes two Olympic gold medals and four world-championship titles—and he hadn't lost a match since 2002. Some controversy arose, however, when his team leader Herb Perez filed a protest in response to a docked point in Lopez's quarterfinal match against Italy's Mauro Sarmiento. His brother Mark, 26, and sister Diana, 24, made their Olympic debuts in Beijing. On Thursday, August 21, Mark won a silver in the men's 68-kilogram category while Diana earned a bronze in the women's 57-kilogram group. The Martial Artist’s Guide to the Olympics by Jon Sattler With dozens of sports and more than 10,000 athletes scheduled to compete at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, trying to navigate through the thousands of hours of Olympic coverage can be a Herculean task. To help you find what you’re looking for, we put together this simple martial-arts guide to the Summer Games.
Dates: August 9-24 Location: Workers’ Indoor Arena Fencing Dates: August 9-17 Location: Fencing Hall in the National Convention Center Judo Dates: August 9-15 Location: University of Science and Technology Beijing Gymnasium Taekwondo Dates: August 20-23 Location: University of Science and Technology Beijing Gymnasium Wrestling Dates: August 12-21 Location: China Agriculture University Gymnasium Pocket-Sized Chuck Norris Battles Communists by Jon Sattler If Gamesoft’s upcoming cell-phone game delivers on half of the promises in the press release, we could be looking at the greatest Chuck Norris adventure of all time:
Gamers with camera phones will also be able to paste their faces onto the bodies of Norris’ soon-to-be vanquished foes. If the project stays on schedule, Norris will be coming to a cell phone near you in August 2008. No word yet on whether Mike Huckabee makes a guest appearance.
by Jon Sattler and Edward Pollard When MTV decided to take an out-of-shape teenager and transform him into a tournament fighter, they turned to taekwondo instructor Chan Lee. During the five weeks of filming for the reality-show Made, Lee not only helped his student earn his yellow belt also showed him how to clean up his life—literally. We spoke with Lee recently about his experiences on the show, the importance of self-discipline, and the transformative power of traditional arts. Tell us about your student, Ryan Watkins. The child I got was your typical sedentary teen who likes video games. He was 5'5", 261 pounds, and we had to turn him into a martial artist. What was the learning curve like? Regardless of skill, as long as there’s a will, there’s a heart, there’s a passion to doing it, anything is possible. Ryan really did step up to the plate, really showed up to try his hardest. Maybe he wasn’t athletically gifted or had all the skills you look for in a martial arts fighter, but he had the heart, and that was the most important key. I think it would have been an impossible task if he didn’t have the stomach for it, but he really had a try-hard attitude and just wanted to learn everything I was teaching him. As a teacher, you’re supposed to find what a person’s strong suits and weak points are and maximize that. I used his weight as an advantage in the fight. I’m not going to have him do a back kick or spinning kicks.
Exactly. It was all about maximizing his center of gravity and making him a better fighter. He’s not the type of guy who’s going to get out of the way of the kick. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to move into the kick. I developed a strategy for him in a short period of time to help him become a good martial arts fighter. And then, at the same time, I helped him outside of his life. There’s a reason why his life became where it’s at right now, and so I helped him develop a disciplined mind and attitude outside of the school. All that had to be congruent. You can’t just be disciplined about learning the martial arts. You’ve got to be disciplined in your personal life and other parts, as well. Otherwise you’re just a weekend warrior. Absolutely. I think we did a great job conveying that. I got him to clean his room, and it was an absolute pigsty—garbage everywhere. You don’t just look at someone’s room and go, "Oh, it’s kind of dirty." It was like, "How the heck do you actually live in this thing?" It was that bad. He was not paying attention to his immediate surroundings and the results of his behavior. If you put a frog in boiling water, he’ll jump right back out. But if you leave the frog in the water and slowly turn up the temperature, he won’t notice. He’ll eventually just boil. I think a common theme in anybody’s human condition is that you get used to your own stink, eating badly, treating your family bad or whatever it may be in your life. I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve bore down on someone who needed extra help. I’ve been doing martial arts for 30 years now, since a kid, and I’ve had different perspectives from being a top competitor at one point to being a teacher, just a student—I was a white belt once. Teaching is my first love. That’s why I run five schools here. Martial arts is a tool to help people become better. And so when you hear the words dojung or dojo, it becomes a reflection, a test tube where you can practice discipline, courage, confidence and all these other things that you want to happen in a safe environment. And then all those successes you have in the dojo or the dojung become a reflection of other areas outside of here. As you develop more courage here, you become more courageous in other areas. You become more confident because of it.
He had two tasks. Our first task that we made him do was get his gold belt for the tournament. The second task was to actually enter the tournament and compete. We had him compete in three things: forms, board breaking and free sparring. It seems like an ideal transformation crucible. It becomes a part of who you are. Once you become a gold belt, a green belt, a black belt, you become what that rank signifies. You become a black belt forever. It’s like when you become a marine, you’re a marine forever. You’ve had that experience to get to that point. If you’ve had a great school and a great teacher that is able to teach you that, it’s beyond the kicks and punches. It’s the discipline that went behind that punch. It’s the confidence that you had behind that kick. That’s the incredible transformation that you get when you learn the martial arts. Karate Teacher 1; Car Thief 0 by Jon Sattler While reality-based experts would say that you shouldn’t engage a criminal to protect your possessions, it’s hard not to cheer when you read stories like this. According to ABC15, a 71-year-old black belt in shotokan karate single-handedly stopped a car thief:
We’re guessing the students at Chomicki’s dojo are extremely well behaved.
by Jon Sattler and Sarah Dzida Dr. Craid D. Reid—our favorite martial arts movie guru—brought the Shaolin Temple to Washington D.C.’s doorstep. On Saturday, June 14, Reid presented three kung fu films about the legendary temple at the National Geographic Museum opening of Shaolin: Temple of Zen—Photographs by Justin Guariglia. When it comes to chronicling the evolution of kung fu cinema, Reid has the ultimate insider’s perspective. In the 1970s, Reid became one of the first Western stuntmen to appear in a Chinese martial arts movie and is now a fight choreographer for American production companies. In other words, we couldn’t agree more with National Geographic’s choice for an expert, which is why we’re working with Reid to create The Ultimate Guide to Martial Arts Movies. But back to the screening: The flicks they picked come from Shaw Brothers Studio, one of Hong Kong’s most beloved and influential martial arts moviemakers. Here’s National Geographic’s rundown of the films:
Reid’s equally enthusiastic about the Hong Kong classics. “These are three of the best martial arts films made during the 1970s, and 36th Chamber of Shaolin is in the top three of the best martial arts films ever made,” Reid told us. “The fights are superb in that you can see what the actors are doing, and they don't rely on special effects or fancy editing; these stars are legitimate martial artists. The fights are shot wide angle, and [there are] up to 20 techniques per shot. No one today does that anymore—not even Jet [Li] or Jackie [Chan].”
by Edward Pollard Ryan Watkins wants to stop living the lazy life of a video-gaming couch potato and get some discipline by being made into a fleet-footed karate kid. Chan Lee is the owner of JK Lee Black Belt Academy and four other martial arts schools in town. Along comes Made , MTV's self-improvement reality show that follows teens who wish to be "made" into singers, athletes, dancers, skateboarders and now martial artists. With the help of an expert in the field of their chosen new identity, they try to attain their goals. Each episode documents the process and progress of one teen over that period. Several months ago, MTV selected Lee to be the martial arts coach during the ninth season of their Daytime Emmy Award-winning series, Made. The episode premieres Saturday, June 14, at 4 p.m. ET/PT. (For an inside look at Watkins' transformation, check out the October 2008 issue of Black Belt.)
at the Box Office by Jon Sattler Israeli commandos battled it out with anthropomorphic kung fu masters at the box office the weekend of June 6, 2008. In You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Adam Sandler plays a former Israeli spy who fakes his own death so he can work in New York as a hair stylist. Zohan put up a good fight, making $38.5 million, but it was DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda that brought home the biggest purse, earning $60.2 million. Panda, the critically adored animated film, features Jack Black as Po, a lazy yet enthusiastic panda on an unlikely quest to become a martial arts master. When we caught up with Black at a press event, we asked him about his martial arts influences. “My hero right now is Stephen Chow,” Black says. “I love Kung Fu Hustle; that’s probably my favorite kung fu movie of all time because he mixed the martial arts with comedy in a really creative and great way." Black also revealed how Po’s character and attitude resembled his. “Po’s a younger version of me [in that he’s] a daydreamer and positive, but also insecure in that he doesn’t have all the kung fu skills,” Black says. “That reminds me of my early days when I was having fun with theater and acting but was also insecure.” Kevin Taylor: Record Breaker by Jon Sattler Everyone’s got a few talents they’re particularly proud of. Some people sing. Others paint. Kevin Taylor breaks bricks. Taylor—who is the president of the World Speed Brick Breaking Association—will be on NBC’s America’s Got Talent on June 17, 2008. For a preview of his performance, we offer Taylor’s record-breaking display of destruction, which was shot August 2, 2007, at the Metro Beach Metropark in Michigan. But be warned: Seeing Taylor break 584 bricks in 57.5 seconds could cause intense hand pain.
by Jon Sattler Previous episodes of National Geographic Channel’s Fight Science answered the question: Do martial arts masters possess superhuman abilities? While their test results may seem incredible, most of us can’t strike with the force of a 35-mile-per-hour car crash. So how are mere mortals supposed to defend themselves? In Fight Science: Fighting Back, scientists use dozens of motion-capture cameras and crash-test tools to analyze the effectiveness of common self-defense tools and techniques. And to ensure that the scenarios were realistic, National Geographic brought in experts like Israeli Defense Forces commando Amir Perets and former UFC heavyweight champion Bas Rutten to participate. The episode premieres Monday, June 9, 2008, at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
by Jon Sattler To raise money for the victims of the Sichuan earthquake in China, philanthropist Yu Panglin is selling Bruce Lee's old house in Hong Kong. But here’s the kicker: Following Lee’s death, his home was turned into a “love motel.” We’re guessing something was lost in translation. In other Lee news, Tony Award nominee Bartlett Sher has been tapped to direct Bruce Lee: Journey to the West, which will be coming to Broadway in 2010. Paste magazine reports that "the plot will interweave Bruce Lee’s ascent to stardom with Chinese mythology about the Monkey King. The musical is also intended to weave Chinese pop and culture throughout." We’ll let you know as soon as they decide who’ll play the jeet kune do master.
by Jon Sattler While most action stars don’t measure up to their on-screen personas, Dolph Lundgren is the real deal. In addition to holding a third-degree black belt in kyokushin karate and winning the European championships, the Rocky IV star served as the team leader of the 1996 U.S. Olympic Pentathlon Team, earned a Fulbright scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and retired from the Swedish special forces with the rank of conscript corporal. Lundgren recently spoke with our managing editor, Edward Pollard, about Brazilian bare-knuckle fighting, the Zen effect of traditional martial arts, and getting his rib cracked by Black Belt Hall of Fame member Bill Wallace. When did you begin competing in tournaments? I started in the late ’70s when I was a kid. I read about guys like Bill Wallace, Joe Lewis and Benny Urquidez. Did you ever get to train with any of them? I trained with Bill Wallace after I came over here. I sparred with him in the late ’80s and he was still very tough, a very good fighter. He’s the real thing, for sure. He cracked my rib with a side kick one time. He really has that killer instinct when you spar with him. I met Urquidez on the set of Rocky IV. He was pals with Sly [Sylvester Stallone]—they knew each other. The Rocky thing was such a big deal in those days. Sly was in his late 30s and I was in my mid-20s, and people showed up and we had the ring. Don King would show up with the latest fighter sometimes, and Sly would spar with his brother Frank once in a while. It was fun. I was just a kid standing around obeying orders, being a martial artist. I didn’t say much if I wasn’t spoken to. Did you spar with Stallone? Yeah, we messed around a bit, and he was actually a pretty good fighter for an actor. He was in good shape and did all his stunts—nobody stood in for him. Plus he had to direct, he wrote the thing and produced it. You have to hand it to the guy.
I do a little bit. I was on a mixed-martial arts show hosted by Bas Rutten. I met Kimbo Slice, the street fighter—nice guy. Are you going to put him in a film? Yeah, maybe I should. He’s a tough guy. He’s got a real look. Those are real courageous guys up there. I’m sure if I’d have been around when I was that age, I probably would have done MMA, too. What about Semmy Schilt, the K-1 World Grand Prix heavyweight champ? He’s technically very good and very tough. I mean, what are you going to do with a guy like that [in the ring]? Somebody suggested I put him in a movie, too. I’ll write that down now, as a matter of fact. I’ve been thinking about it. I read that you were considering doing a project in Brazil. Yes, I’m still thinking about it. They used to have bare-knuckle fighting there way before MMA. People were betting on fights and getting hurt. The genesis of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. It’s what the Gracies were thinking about. They probably took it from the streets and then created their kind of way of doing it, which is more civilized. Out there, they just fight under a bridge for the [entertainment of the] traffic going by, and they have cameras and people bet on it. So I have sort of a hot idea for a movie or something like that. That’s something that I’m thinking about. I also read that you’re deep into the pentathlon. I’m into the pentathlon as a sport because I was practicing it for this film as part of the U.S. Olympic team in 1996 and I hung out with the guys there and helped them out a little bit. I haven’t been as close to it as I used to be, but I still follow the sport. It’s one of the original Olympic sports created by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. It’s five different sports, so it has the most multitalented athletes: swimming, shooting, running, horseback riding and fencing. It’s an officer’s military sport. Everything I do. Do you really fence? I used to fence in college when I was doing taekwondo. I was doing boxing, fencing and I took it up for that movie, Pentathlon. I noticed fencing was first introduced in the Stockholm Olympics. You’re right, and you know who came fifth? Lt. George S. Patton. It’s totally military, based on the Napoleonic career. You start out on a horse, and when your horse gets shot, then you have to use your gun, then your sword, then you have to run and swim to deliver the message.
Yeah, I used to love to read it when I was in Sweden and I first got into martial arts. That’s where I used to read about Lewis, Wallace and all those guys. I still remember there was a picture of my instructor at the time, Brian Fitkin. He was fighting in the world championships in Long Beach, [California], when I was a white or blue belt. The U.K. team won then and it was a big deal for a little Swedish kid, of course. He was one of my role models, too, my sensei. What I like about my traditional training is that I’ve got all the traditional aspects of the martial arts because I trained in them for 10 years. It took me about seven to get my black belt, so all the meditation and the katas were done in due time. When I train, even by myself, I will do a kneeling meditation for a minute at the end just because it makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I’m back at the dojo when I was a teenager paying respect to my teacher. That’s part of it for me, too. So you connect to a timeless part of yourself, the part that is untouched by the brutality of life. It’s the Zen effect of martial arts that makes the humble man more courageous and the boastful man more humble. That’s what it does if you treat it the right way. That’s what’s beautiful about it. That’s what I try to take with me in this business and in my life from martial arts. (For the full story on how Lundgren became a martial artist and movie star, see the August 2008 issue of Black Belt.)
by Jon Sattler Cuba, we’ve got some good news and some bad news. First, the good news: Cuban judo champion Yurisel Laborde won a gold medal at the Pan-American Judo Championships in Miami. Now, the bad news: No one from her team has seen her since she packed her bags and left them a note on Sunday, May 11, forcing the Cuban team to return home without the two-time world champion and 2004 Olympic bronze medalist. This isn’t the first time Florida has swallowed up one of Cuba’s Olympic hopefuls. Back in March, seven other Cuban athletes disappeared, this time at the Olympic soccer qualifier in Tampa. The Miami Herald reports that Laborde will seek political asylum. Even if she is successful, Laborde will not be able to finish the long immigration process in time to compete for the American team in the 2008 Summer Olympics, Team USA President Jose Rodriguez says. |
