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Eric "Top Dog" Knaus
Photo Credit: www.dogbrothers.com |
In honor of Eric "Top Dog" Knaus' 57th birthday, I'm archiving an old series of posts of his to the now defunct "Eskrima Digest" mailing list. He didn't post much to the Eskrima Digest, but when he did, it was GOLD! For the sake of Filipino Martial Arts history in the USA, I've included a followup post by Tuhon Bill McGrath.
Happy Birthday Top Dog!
Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest
Fri, 12 Feb 1999
Vol 06 : Num 064
Subject: Some DB/PT Background, Part 1
From: Eric Knaus
To: eskrima-digest-owner
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 1999 12:11:42 -0700
Bark!
Top Dog here, for
this once delurking to set the record straight concerning the claim,
which pops up from time to time, that Pekiti Tirsia fighting in the
1970′s was the same as Dog Brothers fighting today. To state matters
gently, this claim is an overstatement. Perhaps a bit of history is in
order. Be warned! In order to work in some names I feel deserve
recognition, I may be pretty lengthy.
Most of the
fighting done in PT from 1976 through ‘ 81 on the east coast was done
with Tuhon Leo Gaje in Jamaica, Queens in an alley behind the building
that Leo lived in at the time. Tom Bisio and I would take the subway
there and train all day Saturday and then return for more of the same on
Sunday. Our fights at that time were with the heavy Kendo masks which
were all that we had available at the time, and what I would consider
LIGHT rattan sticks.
On the surface,
it sounds similar to what is being done today ….. The only thing I would
like to see brought back from those “good old days” of is that we did
not wear any hand protection, and in that vein for the last couple of
years I have been wearing only some baseball batting gloves that Marc
gave me. They offer no protection at all from stick hits, but do mostly
protect my hands being grated by my opponent’s mask when the fight
closes. And it should be noted that Arlan goes gloveless sometimes. I
would also point out that in my opinion, given the weight of the sticks
used today and the lightness of the brand of street hockey gloves worn
by Marc, and some of the others, at least equals what we were doing in
the 70s with regard to hand gear.
I loved the
fighting part of training and Leo made a point of separating out
students according to their aptitude – I was singled out by him to be a
fighter. Tom was by far a better technician. He had superb body control
and stick movement. He was my original instructor (as I was his original
student) and to this day I still do the footwork drills and stick
warm-ups that we practiced in Morningside Park so many years ago. Tom
and I had a certain blood lust for the Truth in what we were doing and
the drills that Leo showed him (I did not start training directly with
Leo until after being with Tom for about 6 months) we in turn dissected,
digested and then either adapted or modified to fit our own evolution.
Our favorite
drill was knife sparring which we did with long (12″) wooden knifes with
points (another thing I would like to see brought back) that could and
occasionally did impale the fencing masks right through to the eye. That
was a blast! These masks, however, were never a regular part of Leo’s
equipment when we stick sparred. In fact, there were several times when
we would have to wear full body armor (which I hated!) for “safety
reasons”.
The way the
fencing masks came about was that Tom had originally trained in a part
of the gym of Columbia University where the fencing team had their
practice sessions. Tom noticed these old beat up masks that the fencing
guys used for target abuse and either asked (or didn’t ask, I never
asked) if he could use them for his stick training. The original gloves
were another design of Tom’s and they consisted of a gardener’s glove
with a piece of surgical tubing over the index finger and thumb.
Occasionally, we would bring out a pair of Kendo gloves but they had
simply too much padding and made quick movements difficult. Besides,
everybody in the group wanted to feel the real deal and wearing all that
protection was considered a detachment from the “Source”.
There were
roughly 12 of us that formed the original core group and of that, Tom
was the leading man whereas I was roughly 5th or 6th in line. Billy came
along about a month or two after, and while I was around was more of a
student of Eddie Jafree’s than Leo’s – but that changed when Eddie went
back to Indonesia and Leo took him in.
If anyone
exemplified PT at that time in terms of fighting, toughness, skill and
grace it was Tom – by far. And it was with Tom that I took the first
steps towards what we would eventually call “Real Contact”. One of the
first major show case moments for the PT group on the east coast back
then was the Playboy Tournament in Great Gorge, N.Y. This is where I met
the legendary (even then!) Dan Inosanto for the first time and it was
the first of many matches he would referee for me over the next several
years. There are some good stories to tell some day.
The protocol in
the tournaments of this era was very similar to what WEKAF and other
tournament-oriented styles do today – lots of body protection, no
grappling and the emphasis on striking a la Fred Flintstone with not too
much concern for blocking or other defense. Even though all the
fighters were encouraged to show technique, everyone knew that the more
you hit, the more points you would get and the better the odds to
advance to the next round. I don’t remember the judges ever giving much
weight to realistic defensive skills and every one knew it and the
fighting showed it. Other subsequent tournaments had their nuances in
terms of rules and armor but for the most part they were the same and
remained so for almost all of the 80′s and into the early 90′s. Marc has
shown me some footage of Alan Sacetti’s tournament and I would say that
it is a definite advancement over previous tournaments.
Anyway, I knew I
was born to fight and pursued the “bleeding edge” of fighting technology
as much as possible with Tom – he had a remarkably open architecture to
martial arts in general and a “let’s-find-out” approach to anything
that seemed far fetched. Tom was lightning quick, and his body type was
quite different from mine – while I am long and lanky, he was much
shorter, had long orangutan arms, a long body and relatively short yet
very athletic legs (to which I attribute his precise footwork) and a
mind that was constantly searching and absorbing anything it came in
contact with when it came to training tips, body movement, power – you
name it. Its no surprise to me that his path has taken him into other
arts, including healing. The healing path, I should point out, is that
part of his evolution that I admire most particularly in how it
retrofits to one’s fighting art and ultimately one’s life. My healing
art is hand reading – it’s different from Tom’s but integrates in the
same way.
The common ground
was that we wanted to know what would really work under fire and what
would not.. This, of course, led to a lot of experimentation and the
development of drills that would isolate a certain aspect of movement.
“Fighting” with Tom (not that we actually fought that much, and in fact,
we never faced each other in a tournament) was not the “brutal action”
that many have seen the Dog Brothers Real Contact tapes but much more of
a dance, a match of high speed and precise chess movements where few
pieces are exchanged. It was much more of a carenza, beautiful to watch
and even more beautiful to do. Curiously, not once did any type of
grappling enter the scene. We had assumed that if you wanted to stop a
grappler, you would simply whack him either in the head or hand as he
entered. It wasn’t until I moved to California and began to really
escalate the fighting, did I find out how naive this was.
After Tom won the
big tournament in the Philippines, we continued to train together
regularly. Fortunately, we both attended the same college, Columbia,
where he was one year ahead of me. And after his graduation, we lived
less than a block apart for several months before I decided to move to
California.
End of Part One, Part Two to come in about a week
Bark
Top Dog
Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest
Sat, 13 March 1999
Vol 06 : Num 108
Subject: DB/PT History Part 2
From: Eric Knaus
To: eskrima-digest-owner
Date: Fri, 12 Mar 1999 10:15:05 -0700
Sorry for the delay.
DB/PT History Part 2
Upon arriving to
California I first went to Dan Inosanto’s “Kali Academy”, which he had
with Richard Bustillo in Torrance. I was expecting to encounter the
Mecca of FMA in Southern California and hoped that I could continue
exploring the fighting path that I had started in NY. Dan, of course,
was The Man and all roads led to and through him. Even as JKD people
were criticizing him for training in the FMA, FMA people were
criticizing him for his choices with whom to train within FMA, most
certainly including one Leo Gaje. But Dan, as always, just followed his
own path.
I enjoyed Dan’s
classes very much and liked the open architecture of his thinking just
as I had liked that quality in Tom Bisio. I also found the school
heavily “cliqued”, and everyone thought I was nuts when I brought up the
notion of fighting full bore with just fencing masks and light gloves.
There were frowns and looks of incredulity when I explained that it
wasn’t that bad and after all isn’t this what we were ultimately
training for? Needless to say, I did not get any takers and in fact
several of the senior students would make back handed comments regarding
the crudeness of PT and, ipso facto, me.
Fortunately, I
found out that under my very nose at work was a guy, Rod Kuratomi, who
was at that time the top weapons practitioner of his school in Japanese
Karate as taught by Master Kubota (I don’t think the spelling is right
but he’s the guy who for years advertised in Black Belt showing him
hitting the back of his hand with a hammer and his shins with a bat for
tempering purposes – now that’s nuts!). Rod’s specialties were the
tonfas and the shinai and he turned out the be at a similar point in his
training as I was with mine – he wanted to go forward but had no one to
do it with. Now at the time, the party line within the FMA Community
was that the Japanese styles were too stiff and lacked the flow that the
more nimble FMA’s were known for. I remember hearing from several of my
constituents, PT’ers included, that the staff, bo stick or the samurai
sword was “really easy to fight. Gee, all you have to do is X block and
hit the hands.” And in the case of the tonfas, all you had to do was
keep them at long range and take pot shots, or so it was believed.
Conversely, according to Rod, the Japanese regarded anything that was
not Japanese as inferior and easy to defeat, plain and simple. But he,
as I, could not find anyone within his own group who could say that they
had actually sparred/fought against a “foreign” weapon outside of their
tribe.
Well, we started
rediscovering territory for both our groups with each evening of fights
we had. We found that the tonfa’s were limited in range but could easily
knock the wind out of you or break a rib, jaw or anything it hit IF it
could survive bridging the gap. He used a very heavy set of tonfas
(later I found out that they were of his own design and not standard
issue) and consequently I used a matching stick. For the most part, the
stick held serve due to it’s offensive fire power – although the reality
is, you will get very few pot shots in – and some adroit footwork. As a
result of fighting this weapon I REALLY began to appreciate the side
stepping drills that Tuhon Leo and Tom had taught me. The shinai and
short staff, however, were a different story. Let me tell you, forget
X-blocking for anything other than a last ditch effort to give you just
enough time to get your ass out of the way of the next furious swing. I
found myself cursing everyone within PT, FMA, JKD – you name it – for
their audacity to think they could espouse the virtues – and supremacy –
of the stick versus all weapons without ever having done so themselves.
It was a real eye opener, one I recommend for anyone who wants to know
the truth about their stick and their grit.
The moral of that
episode was to not take anyone else’s word for it but your own. It was
clear to me that NO ONE in the various MA circles I was in – P.T.
included – had come much closer than lip service (with the exception of
Tom) when it came to knowing how to really deal with this type of
movement and force. I have fought several other weapons since but the
truth is , a long, sharp, pointed weapon in the hands of someone with
good formal training is tough to beat – especially when it’s longer,
sharper and more pointed than the one you’re using – no matter what
magical style you, your cohorts or instructor(s) may practice. Yes, the
stick(s) can do well against something like a shinai or longer weapon,
but what everyone was missing was that you had to go against it to
understand what the drills and the manongs who HAVE worked against it
are trying to tell you.
Even more than
one’s art, the willingness to put one’s self to the test is the defining
moment of a martial artist who is really looking for the core reason as
to why he is there in the first place. Without this willingness –
curiosity if you will – there is no growth, no evolution and like any
organism, one’s interest will run a short course and then abandon the
mission for a less resistant path.
I used to bring
Rod to the Kali Academy on the weekends and fight to illustrate the
point that you can’t just take someone else’s word for it, our path is
one of constant exploration. Although there were no takers in those days
(1981-82) , after a few sessions I had fewer detractors and my
reputation as a fighter, for good or bad, was starting to grow. On the
flip side, Rod was not able to return the favor (i.e. of going to his
dojo) I think because they were much more closed to outsiders than they
are now – I think. Rod received the highest promotion he could get for
weapons at his school and eventually enrolled in the LA Police
Department (he spoke Japanese as a 2nd language and was recruited for
their Asian Community liaison program) where he is to this day.
But returning to
the Kali Academy, it was there one night that I met David Wink– a
student of Leo’s who had done some sparring, and Paul Vunak. Typically,
it was crafty Leo who had gotten me there by saying, “I’m doing late
training with Danny and have someone there who wants to fight you.”
Coincidentally, this involved my picking him up at the airport. While
there, David Wink arrived and we caravanned down to the Kali Academy and
there met Danny, who had Paul Vunak with him. As we were about the same
size , Leo paired up David and I first, but as I was putting on my
fencing mask Leo whispered in ear, “Go easy, its his first fight” which
was not what I had understood when Leo lured me into being there. “Sure”
I replied, and then began to hit David in the head.
In a moment like
this, you get a deep read on what someone is made of and David was made
of the right stuff. After those first three hits to the head, he caught
on real fast. Neither of us were wearing gloves, and the sticks we used
were closer to what is used today than what had been used on the east
coast. It was later determined that I broke his thumb and my middle
right knuckle is different to this day. It was a great fight. Tuhon Leo
was pleased. After two or three rounds, we took a break. While I was
doing a Harlem Globetrotter thing in the corner with my stick, David
went over to Paul and asked him for a go. But Paul said he wasn’t
feeling well and so David and I went on for several more vigorous
rounds, it was the beginning of a great friendship.
David, Rod & I
went through a period where we got together a lot to fight. David
learned what Jack London in “The Call of the Wild” called the “law of
the club and fang”. He had started by believing what he had been taught
about defeating the shinai, but after getting cracked and speared by it a
couple of times, changed his mind, after all. What do you do when the
facts prove you wrong? I change my mind and so did he!
Leo had asked
Danny to give me a key to the Kali Academy, and David and I would often
go there and have at it. I would date this as the time when David and I
became ostracized by east coast PT for going off the deep end. I confess
that this irked me a bit. At one point, Tom Bisio came out and joined
in the merriment, and was impressed with David’s level. This was around
the time that Tom was beginning to explore other things, including his
healing. Speaking of healing, David and I, who were fighting 3-4 times a
week at this point, noticed that the more we fought, the quicker we
healed. Interesting.
End of Part 2, Part 3 by next week
Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest
Tues, 30 March 1999
Vol 06 : Num 128
Subject: eskrima: DB/PT History Part 3
From: Eric Knaus
To: eskrima-digest-owner
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 15:46:35 -0700
The logistics of
the rest of David’s life brought this period to a close and I entered my
“ronin” years. The core point here is that was necessary because I
could not find anyone with whom to play, from either the PT crowd, or
the Kali Academy. So I began to roam the southern California martial art
countryside looking for like-minded people. I was in sales at the time
and delved into my sales skills to encourage people into having a go at
it. If I was to have any chance of success at this, fencing masks were
out of the question and so I built a pair of hard helmets that could
withstand a baseball bat and I tolerated heavy gloves on my playmates.
Rarely did I fight a stick- rather it was a litany of various martial
arts weapons; a lot of nunchuks, sai (yes, the metal ones!) tonfas,
three section staffs, bokken swords, etc. Most of these sessions were
well short of fighting, but were valuable in helping further my path.
Many little stories here, but none relevant to the point at hand.
Through
serendipitous events I met Chris Markus of the Kali Academy and Paul
Vunak’s group down at UC Irvine one day and he and his training partner
Bill Gaye came to play. Bill and Chris said that Paul had discouraged
them from sparring with me, but they came anyway. Around their third or
fourth time they brought Marc Denny along, who was also training with
Paul at the time. Marc had seen the bruises on Bill legs from one of our
sessions and was intrigued that he was not dead.
I sensed there
was some competitiveness between Marc and Chris so I felt it my duty to
throw them together in the cage, shake it up and see what would happen
(I tell this story in DB1 in the section about the cavemen strike BTW).
Marc, who’s skill level was behind Chris’s at the time, promptly
jettisoned the fancy stuff and went with raw, deal-with-it power. This
was my first memory of Marc—Caveman/redondo/repeat.
Marc and I hit it
off. Oddly enough, we were both Columbia University alumnae, and he
picked up some handreading from me as a vehicle to pick up girls. One
evening when I was doing one of my periodic rants about nobody to play
with, he suggested that I come up to the Inosanto Academy (Danny had
opened his own place by this time) with him where he was training. Paula
Inosanto let us stay after classes were over and have at it. This was
the beginning of what came to be called the “After Midnight Group”. For
whatever reason, it was unlike the Kali Academy (certainly less
clique-ish, Tony DeLongiss helped me with the whip for example) in that I
began to regularly find people to play with. Mark Sanden (the future
Puppy Dog), Mark Lawson (future Shark Dog) Mark Balluff (future
Mongrel), Tom Meadows, Carl Franks of Hawaii (our first exposure to
BJJ), Burt Richardson (future Lucky Dog) and sundry guests made
appearances. It was during this phase that we began to return to the
fencing MASKS. There were some really ratty, pre-Ralph Nader ones on a shelf, MUCH lighter than the HELMETS of today, and that's what we used. The sticks began to get heavier and with the advent of street hockey gloves (which also were lighter then than now) we had truly minimal gloves to use too.
Marc and I met Arlan at the 1988 Umpteenth First Annual National
Championships in San Jose, CA and Arlan flew out from New Mexico soon
thereafter to play. That bloody shot of a thumb tip that some of you have
seen he did to Marc about 15 seconds into their first fight. Marc's Akita Zapata resonated to him (This was not a given--he had pinned George Hock to the wall by the testicles once) and we knew we had found a player.
Things continued in this backyard vein until Marc, who back when he had
been Paul Vunak's business partner had been pivotal in putting together
Paul's deal with Panther Productions and thus had entry with Joe Jennings,
(the president of Panther), somehow persuaded Joe to let us loose with his
$50,000 betacam cameras. On camera was George Hock, former SEAL, whom Marc had introduced to Paul and who had opened the door for Paul with the SEALs.
The result was on
Memorial Day Weekend, 1989 we fought for three days (actually Arlan,
Mark Sanden and I sneaked in an extra day of fighting the day before
against Marc’s direct orders not to get dinged up before the shoot!) to
have fight footage for the instructional series now known as “The Dog
Brothers videos”. These three days, which we call the “Rumble at
Ramblas” after the park in San Clemente where they took place, were when
all of us began using the lighter fencing masks except Burt, who was
beginning to look for movie work and was worried about looking dinged up
in advance of a big audition he had coming up so he wore a hard helmet.
This is why I was willing to step on his head in our fight as seen in
DB1.
Which brings us
to the point of this whole meandering reminiscence. The starting point,
while undeniably was with PT, had evolved far beyond where I would have
gone had I stayed strictly within that discipline. What began at Rambles
was the change from sparring to fighting and the birth of the pack.
Fighting non-stop for three days was for all there a transformational
experience.
This was just the
beginning. As you will see in the second series, in the 10 years of
fighting since then the fighting has grown. The volume of fights on the
part of the regular players is considerable. Arlan, Marc and I one time
tried to figure out how many fights it has been. Our best guess is that
Marc is somewhere around 125, Arlan at least twice that, and we were
unable to guess how many I’ve had.
Certainly PT is
always a hot bed of fighting spirit and a fecund source for the Dog
Brother tribe (myself, Sled Dog, Dog Loki, for example), but so is
Inosanto Blend, and so is DBMA—and so can be any style. One can be PT or
Inosanto Blend, or DBMA or any other system/style and become a Dog
Brother.. And certainly we do not claim to be the first or only to have
ever played at this level. Let this be clear! The art was created by men
who went further than us. Of course there have been those in their
backyards have truly aired it out—although the number of these is
probably far less than the number of those who claim to be such.
The people within
the PT group of the 1970s were explorers to point (you had to be at
that time because sticks were so unknown) but more into taking pot shots
at any other martial art that may have threatened or otherwise
challenged their “superiority”. The mentality was much akin to a first
year practicioner of any art (i.e. “my art/instructor can kick any one’s
ass, therefore what I practice is the best… etc”). Had I stayed in that
vein without pushing the envelope, I seriously doubt real contact – as
it was rediscovered and made somewhat socially acceptable by Dog
Brothers – would have happened and FMA in the US today, with the
exception of a true handful (Danny speaks of Narrie Babao of San Diego
for example) would mostly still be a group of loosely associated
fiefdoms without a realistic sense of what they are doing and more
importantly, why they are doing it.
Specifically what are some of the differences between the old east coast PT days and the DBs of today?
There is a much
larger tribe committed to exploration of truth at a more consistently
intense level. Even when compared to the handful who fought without
gloves in the old PT days, a hand shot today hurts more because the
sticks are heavier and the power level of the fighters is greater. And,
by the way, Arlan sometimes fights without gloves, and I would say that
my baseball batting gloves qualify as such too—their purpose is only to
protect my hands from being scraped bloody when I punch someone through
the fencing mask—they offer NO protection from impact. Overall, the gear
is less, and the quality of the fighters, visitors included, is higher –
in great part by virtue of having seen us do it.
More weapons make
their appearance. In the old PT days, it was ONLY single and double
stick. In DB Gatherings we have staffs, (including hardwood) nunchuks,
whips, tapado, bokken (hardwood, edged and pointed) tonfas, three
section staffs—all of which were seen in the first series and in the
second series you will also see chains, (one of those ninja ones with a
weight on the end) and sickle (!) as well. Quite a difference! Grappling
is part of the fighting. When weapons are not bladed, grappling can
happen and it doesn’t care whether you like it or not. And this is not
just Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Marc has led the way here, not only in
introducing grappling and in introducing BJJ, but in the development of a
distinctive DB approach that draws upon both BJJ, the FMA and even some
Bando Python.
The state of mind
is different. Billy McGrath is right when he describes the old days as
sparring, and wrong when he applies the term to what we do today. Even
though there are “No judges, no referees, no trophies” © the fighters
today seek victory. Don’t let that “Higher Consciousness through Harder
Contact” © fool you—you can get unconscious too. It may not be a death
match, but the UFC and the World Combat Championship did not turn us
down for “sparring”—they turned us down for being “just too extreme”.
My opinion and
experience is that what we did in PT in the old days was sparring.
Certainly the hits by the better players sometimes were plenty hard, and
certainly there were injuries, and certainly the few who played could
fight and no doubt still can, but there was a level where it did not yet
go. This is not to say that PT does not produce people who are capable
of stepping onto the DB field and doing well, quite the contrary, Pekiti
Tirsia certainly does. Tuhon Leo Gaje made me, and he has made others.
I have ignored
the gossip by some that my seguidas are not done right. However, what
gets my hackles up, what I will not ignore, and what has triggered this
most long-winded diatribe is the mumbled claim from the back rows of PT
that reaches my ears from time to time that what the Dog Brothers do is
no more than what PT did in the old days. I was there and I am here. It
is not true.
The Dog Brothers
put it out there in plain sight in an open forum and we have been doing
so for 10 years. There is no claim of invincibility. All of us lose
sometimes- including myself. But we’re still at it and we let it speak
for itself. I’ll be there on May First.
Bark,
Top Dog
Inayan_Eskrima/FMA-Digest
Sat, 13 Feb 1999
Vol 06 : Num 065
From: "BILL MCGRATH"
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 1999 12:57:59 -0800
Subject: eskrima: Minor corrections in PT history
I just wanted to correct some minor points in Erik's otherwise excellent
post on his early days training with Tom Bisio and Grandmaster Gaje.
Erik wrote that "Billy came along about a month or so after" ...he began
training with Tom... and "while I was around was more of a student of Eddie
Jaffri's than of Leo's."
I think it would be more accurate to say that Erik first met me about a
month or so after he started training with Tom. Some background should
clarify things. Grandmaster Leo Gaje came to the U.S. in 1972. Frank
Ortega, Mike and Danny Ducalas were among the original group Leo taught back
then. In 1973 Leo moved around the corner from my house in Corona Queens,
NY. In addition to his adult class, he was teaching a small group of
teenage boys out of the garage of his apartment building and charging $2.00
a week. My parents could not afford to pay for my classes (this was 73
remember) so I had to wait until I turned 14 and could get a paper route to
pay for class. By this time inflation had caused the price to go up to $2.50
per week. I began training with Leo in February of 1975. In the summer of 75
Leo dropped the garage class and I moved into the general class which was
held in the basements in a number of Filipino businesses.
Up until my moving to the main class Leo had me training on footwork and
empty hand techniques. At the same time as this Leo was making frequent
trips giving seminars in other cities. This is how Erwin Ballarta and Akmeed
Bouraca began their training when Leo gave a seminar in Detroit in 1975. In
the summer of 1976 Leo moved the class to the Philippine Consulate in
Manhattan. I believe that this is when Tom started training. Erik is right
when he says that Tom was Leo's best student and I think all of us expected
Leo to one day put him in charge of the system. (I think I am where I am
today more due to longevity and a good memory for technique than for
anything else).
I think the thing that creates confusion about PT history is that Leo would
often have 2 or 3 classes going on simultaneously in different parts of the
city. In 77 he moved into a large apartment building and got me a job as a
lifeguard at the healthclub's pool there.
The guys I trained with in Leo class at the healthclub were usually
different guys then the ones I trained with in Leo's classes in Manhattan
and different still from the guys I trained with at the school Leo taught at
in Jamaica Queens. It was not unusual for Leo to place a different emphasis
on techniques given at each location. Weeknights I would often have dinner
with Leo and his family and he would give a different emphasis in informal
after-dinner workouts then he would in regular classes. I think he was
simply being a good teacher and giving each group what he felt they needed.
This may explain Leo's emphasis on finesse in Erik's training. After a few
months with Tom I am sure Erik was hitting with good power and Erik never
had a problem being aggressive, so Leo worked with him on strategy and
technique. If you remember me playing badguy in magazine photos of
Grandmaster Gaje in the early 80's you can see how skinny I was. Therefore
Leo had me work on power developtment hitting the heavy bag and tires. I
was always more interested in knife work than tournaments so Leo had me
specialize in knife technique. If he liked you then you got not only what
you needed but what you wanted as well.
Erik also mentions that at the time he thought I was more of Eddie Jaffri's
student than Leo's. From the time we first met Eddie in 77 until I moved
with Leo to Texas in 1982, I spent about the same amount of time training
with each of them (Eddie shared an apartment with Leo and his family for a
time in New York and their living room was often our training area for both
Penchak and Pekiti),
Erik is right though when he says that, for most people, tournament sparring
was different than that done "in house". Fighters tended to do what they
believed would win them the tournament and depending on who was judging that
often meant hitting your opponent as often as you could with little regard
for anything else (The exceptions being Tom and Erwin who always showed the
greatest amount of technique and finesse in their sparring. Every technique
they learned you saw come out whenever they spared). During in house
sparring however, Leo always emphasized treating your opponent's stick as if
it were a blade, so you worked on hitting without getting hit. Another thing
he emphasized was that you shouldn't get tied up too long with one opponent
because of the danger from a second opponent. Therefore while he taught and
allowed takedowns during sparing, any finishing technique on the ground had
to be completed in 3 seconds. This didn't allow any time for most grappling
techniques so finishers on the ground were mostly strikes. Armor for the
advanced guys usually was just a Kendo helmet (good front protection but
side and top protection was just a half inch of canvas). On our hands we had
football armguards which left half your fingers and all of your thumb
exposed. At the time it certainly felt like we were hitting hard.
I remember Erwin Ballarta getting lifted completely off his feet by a thrust
to the groin from Akmeed in the 77 tourney and that he landed on the floor
like a deadman. I remember it taking several minutes to revive him. I
remember Warren Brown getting a Witik across the side of the head during a
1980 tourney that penetrated the Kendo headgear and the blood that ran down
onto his chest from the wound. I remember Mike Franciotti telling me of
getting hit on the top of the head by a punyo that had the same bloody
result. I remember stick "hickeys" and knots on my head. We must have been
hitting pretty hard because I remember several knockouts during stick as
well as knife sparring and the heavy steel bars on the Kendo headgear
constantly getting bent out of shape.
I hope none of my comments are taken as an attempt to diminish the Dog
Brother's contribution to stickfighting. I think Erik's greatest
contribution was to open the eyes of many people (especially those who never
had spared full contact before) to the need to go "all out" to stop a
determined opponent and to use every weapon and technique available. Erik's
groundwork with the stick has opened up a new dimension to stick fighting
that the blade oriented classic FMAs were lacking. The Dog Brother's
gatherings have done for all FMAs what used to be done only in house against
members of your own style, test yourself against another without having to
adjust your technique to please a tournament judge. I think Erik and I will
have to "agree to disagree" about how hard Pekiti-Tirsia people hit in the
"old days" but we can still agree that Erik and the Dog Brothers have done
for stickfighting what one system looking out for it's own interests would
not have done-raise the bar for everyone.
Regards,
Tuhon Bill McGrath
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