An Uchideshi Experience: Chapter Eleven
Martial Arts, Wholesale Frauds, and Occasional Shams
The world of martial arts is a very small one, especially once you’ve been inside of it for a while. It’s a family, a brethren, a belief system, a social arena, a physical activity, a creative outlet, at best a means of moral education, at worst a ladder for political positioning.
When a person first enters, everything seems magical. The desire to work hard and be disciplined is often strong during the first few months, and progress quite rapid in learning the basic warm-ups, rolls, falls, kicks, punches, throws, locks, or whatever is included in the syllabus of that particular martial art.
But the three-to-six month fizzle will eventually set in, when students realize that their initial, invincible enthusiasm must give way to a lifestyle accommodation. It’s simply necessary in order for long-term progress to be made in an art.
Martial arts in this sense, engrained in a lifestyle over a long period of time, have the ability to even tempers, shape fundamental attitudes toward life, and act as an extended family, aside from the host of physical gains readily available.
After several years, many people acknowledge that they probably couldn’t stop training if they tried, or when a layoff is forced (an injury, for example), some wonder what they ever did with those blocks of time before martial arts came into their lives.
Certainly, this kind of extended commitment will give your techniques a maturity and refinement that comes only through experience, but long-term training doesn’t necessarily equal perfection.
When confronted with the all too common question of how long it would be before a student’s techniques were “perfect”, a noted aikido instructor asked the student if he had ever found the perfect way to, ahem, tend to his bodily functions. The student, not expecting such a personal example to be drawn, was a bit puzzled until the master explained that long-term training is not about perfection, it’s about just doing it and moving on. Just put on your hakama and train. Some days will be better than others, that’s just the way it works, and doing your best with the necessary task at hand is all you can expect to do. Isn’t that how everything gets done?
When martial arts are a priority in life, a significant amount of time, muscular effort, mental energy, and monetary resources are given for technical knowledge, experience, aches, and bruises. It’s almost masochistic, and far too often, in an outsider’s perspective, absolutely detrimental to your well-being. “Why would you pay to be thrown around and beaten up?” Of course, they’ll never understand unless they do it, and even when some people try it out, it simply isn’t for them.
That’s understandable. I’m sure that rugby is a hell of a sport, a fun workout and all that, but watching rugby players hurl themselves at one another without pads seems like brutality, plain and simple. Not only do I fail to feel the faintest twinge of excitement toward rugby, if I were to step on the field, I would feel a very real sense of terror and fear the imminent injuries. On the other hand, watching people on TV getting choked out or their joints locked gets me all worked up. What’s wrong here?
We all have our specific interests, and we can’t expect everyone to like what we like. I’ve had a lot of friends and acquaintances over the years who I feel would have really benefited from the martial arts. Whether those benefits would’ve been physical, emotional, social, or a combination is pretty much moot. They didn’t want to study. I threw out some pretty persuasive arguments, but none of them bit. They just weren’t into it, and I had to respect that.
You can’t force anybody to come and train, but I feel as martial artists, we do have a responsibility to give accurate information, encourage those interested in training, and warmly welcome them when they arrive. Nobody wants to cast themselves in a poor light, so going into an unfamiliar environment like a martial arts studio (possibly without previous exposure to the customs and traditions) is really going out on a limb for a lot of people. If we could just ease that transition from speculator to observer, then from observer to participant, it would be good for the martial arts community as a whole and society in general.
I would have loved to been able to receive an introduction like that back in junior high. Instead, I ended up getting snowed by who guy that sat next to me in Spanish class. He told me about taking something called tae kwon do, and not knowing anything about anything at that age, I asked why he wasn’t taking karate instead. “No way man, tae kwon do beats karate. Karate is how to hit ‘em, tae kwon do is how to hit ‘em where it hurts.”
What can I say? I bought it, and the sad thing is, I still recall the scene after 10 years, because I was so happy to have somebody who had some experience, who obviously knew what he was talking about, tell me how it really was in the world of martial arts, a mysterious world I thought was “cool.”
For those who do make that leap and start learning, the reasons for doing so are as varied as the practitioners. Some people do it to keep in shape, others for a family activity. Many begin as method of learning self-defense, over time it may function more as a social club, frustration vent, focus center, or safe haven for simply getting away from their spouse (though few are honest enough to admit to it!). Whether reasons are sympathetic or esoteric, it doesn’t matter. All individuals, friends, and family are welcomed to the Brotherhood.
From an outsider’s perspective, it can all seem very strange, almost cultish. In a broad view, the martial arts community acts as a network of ritual centers around the world. How “American” is it to have foreign, often mystically tied traditions and customs, subservient behavior, and movements drilled to the point of robotic response being celebrated by society?
The goal? Automatic action without any kind of intellectual analysis. Why? Hesitation may occur, and from that, crucial opportunities may be lost. We train to act first, think later, etching the movements into our neuromuscular memory and letting our minds clear; struggling to become empty, entirely devoid of thought.
Some very conservative fundamentalist religions don’t like all the bowing and “mystical mumbo-jumbo” of some martial arts. Some involved in those organizations find a way to train anyway, perhaps shaking hands instead of bowing, or keeping the whole thing under wraps. The others? Well, they just miss out.
Like in any religion, belief system, or political movement, there are always leaders and there are always followers. A lot of people really like their respective positions, leaders usually like being leaders, students like being students, and many students don’t really want to graduate to becoming teachers themselves. A few do, but many don’t because there’s a tremendous amount of responsibility that goes along with such a position
Unfortunately, some people put their faith in charismatic individuals who may not actually be reputable. They may appear to be reputable, with lists of credentials, but who really takes the time to check them out? If you’re just getting started in martial arts, it’s hard to even know who to begin to contact in order to investigate somebody.
If you’re a person who’s looking hard for something, and you want to believe, you may wind up taking classes from the David Koresh of karate. I’m serious, if people want to believe, there are individuals out there willing to take your faith and manipulate it for their own ends.
Every so often in the news we see religious cult leaders abusing their power, usually when the ramifications of their teachings spill into the public arena. They do it through different methods of psychological manipulation, from playing on the follower’s fears, guilt, and faith in God to outright brainwashing and isolation. All of this is usually accomplished without any physical abuse or threat of physical abuse. Unless they’re really far gone, most people would realize they’re in the wrong place if they’ve just taken a beating from their religious leader.
I doubt the disciples of Jim Jones feared his physical prowess, but martial arts students have to contend with that extra variable. Some martial arts teachers have managed to manipulate their students with a simple recipe: a slab of low-key physical intimidation, marinating in sweet reverence and trust, then sprinkled with mysticism to keep it all unattainable. If your instructor is skilled at mixing these ingredients, the end result can be intoxicating.
The physical power these people possess, coupled with the height of the pedestal students place them on makes it very difficult for curious individuals to honestly probe the validity of their instructor. A friend of mine, Michael, did investigate his teacher, and was horrified at what he discovered. When he told me, I was also surprised, since I had bought into this man’s projected image, beginning with a movie based on his participation in a secret martial arts tournament, then buying his book, which chronicled his never-before-told stories as a spy for the CIA.
I thought it best to let Michael tell his story, in his own words, and although some names have been changed or omitted, I have fought to keep this interview verbatim and free from reinterpretation. Keep in mind that Michael is a former police officer, a black belt in Hapkido, and a certified G.R.A.P.L.E. instructor under the Gracies. Let’s listen to what he has to say:
So how did you start training under The Instructor?
“My best friend Brian began training and asked me to come and check out the classes he was really enjoying, so I went down and he was in North Hollywood. He was only, I don’t know, 8, 10, or 12 blocks from the high school I went to, and so I started taking lessons there with him.”
Was it expensive?
“No, it was reasonable, I mean, no more, no less than the average martial art [in the] area. The Instructor was really, really, really a good people person. He knew how to elicit information from people; he knew how to find out what really motivated you. Whether it was the secret part of his training, or whether it was the discipline, or whether it was the self defense; he’d lock on what was of greatest interest to you and made sure he spent one or two minutes every day when he saw you talking about whatever it was that pushed your buttons.”
“You know, at the time of course, I didn’t know this, but after investigating found out that he had either a bachelor of science or some sort of degree from a local college in psychology. So he was certainly putting that to good use. He would never admit that to anybody that he had a degree in psychology, but I listened to him talk to other students who were primarily interested in money, and he’d talk to them about expanding the martial arts studios into franchise and how they could run one of them, or be his business manager. Whatever it took to convince somebody to stick around and put money into his organization, he’d do.”
“There’s no question that I learned a lot of valuable things. His boxing, what he taught, the basic boxing skills were, you know, legitimate boxing skills. But the longer and longer I stayed with him, the more and more I became suspect of his roots.”
“One of the instances was the first time he had a test, where my Dad and Mom came down and watched. He was showing one of his magic ninja death touch secrets, where he set a number of clay, not bricks, but I guess tiles, and how he’d break only this center tile with his dim mak death touch that he mastered, and told us how he could strike somebody leaving no mark whatsoever, yet totally destroy the inside of their body and kill them without any indication or proof whatsoever that he did it.”
“And my dad went home that night, and with a little bit of… like two minutes of practice, replicated the exact same thing. But my dad said basically it was kind of a physics thing, if you put the things and the right pieces, and hit it right, it’d break right in the middle and leave some of the other stuff intact, and he did it. And when my dad showed me that, I went back to class with a lot more of a critical eye.”
“And so, as I became more in his inner circle, because we’d go there at lunch time and practice, and we’d go there four or five days a week and practice, you know, we were there quite a bit, the more I became part of his inner circle and was in his office and stuff, the more I began seeing things that were totally unethical, bordering illegal.”
“Eventually he got to the point where he asked my friend Brian and myself to sign documents, an affidavit basically stating that he had very, very expensive martial arts swords that had been stolen during a robbery.”
“I was there when the swords arrived, you know, months earlier from Asian World of Martial Arts, they were probably the expensive… they weren’t the $79, probably the $99 Asian World of Martial Arts swords that were sharpened, and they looked pretty and I liked them. Being a teenager in high school, I was impressed, but when he claimed that they were, you know, 19 or 20 thousand dollars or whatever he claimed that they were and they were stolen and wanted insurance coverage and us to sign the affidavit, I just simply said that, you know at the time I wasn’t going to challenge him being as young as I was, but I just told him I wasn’t prepared to sign it, I didn’t know enough about the swords, and he’d have to look elsewhere. And you know, he found somebody who would sign it, and he probably got some kind of insurance settlement out of that.”
“He also firebombed his own car. I don’t know if the insurance company actually paid him out, but he made sure there was nobody around and ended up firebombing his own car for insurance purposes.”
How do you know that?
“From about four or five people who knew about it, I guess one person who actually saw it and helped him participate...”
Oh no! (laughter)
“...in the firebombing (laughter). I don’t know if he was ever prosecuted for that. I don’t even know if he got any money from the insurance company in the end, I think some kind of investigation was started.”
“The other thing that really surprised me was he was very, very abusive to his girlfriend. I mean, he’s a big powerful guy anyway, he had this little 105-pound blond girlfriend, and he used to abuse her pretty bad mentally, physically, emotionally, I mean just about every way. And she’d come to me a lot and tell me about the stunts he’d do and how he would be so physically abusive. You know, that just didn’t jive with somebody who was enlightened, and someone who’s a legitimate master and teacher.”
“I also remember going to a party at his home once, and I had to go to the bathroom real bad. You know, we were told to stay downstairs, use the downstairs bathroom, but someone was in that bathroom and I just couldn’t wait, so I zipped upstairs, ran into his bedroom area where the bathroom was and went in there.”
“You know, closed the door, and [was] using the restroom, sitting there, looked down and I think it was “Tao of Jeet Kun Do,” Bruce Lee’s book, and I kind of popped that thing open and started looking and, there were these - not yellow post it notes at the time- but they were some other little markers in there. I looked and they just happened to be everything we had learned for the last three or four weeks.”
“He basically was looking through and that was like his lesson plan. He sat on the toilet and would decide “OK, look this is this week’s,” then I looked over and I started going through a little basket of books. There were more books from Benny the Jet Urquidez, and other people who were legitimate martial artists, and he had marked, actually what week of training this would be, and I’d look through, and lo and behold, I looked through and what we had learned a month and a half ago Benny the Jet had on page 67 of his book (laughter). Which was...which was really funny.”
“The other thing that really, also, once my eyes were opened, was we’d be sitting in class and he’d have a bunch of kids there. White belts, people who had just started class, and he’d be teaching them how to create botulism in things like ice cream, and how to kill people without having people being able to prove that you’re the one who did it. I know that he was trying to keep his students and fascinate his students and all that, but teaching teenagers who’ve been in the art for a couple of weeks how to make botulism, in my eyes seemed pretty inappropriate (laughter)… to say the least.”
“Then he got to the point where he started breaking out his purple hearts, and his other Congressional Medal of Honor trophies and stuff. And the military is pretty open when it comes to verifying things, so I, and my friend Brian, and a couple other people began looking into it.”
“The Instructor was not in the Special Forces; he wasn’t injured in a Special Forces operation when a hand grenade went off and where he tried to save his friend. He was a painter in the Army, and he fell off the back of the paint truck one day, and hurt his back pretty badly, and was discharged because of that.”
“And that was just one more fabrication. The other thing that was really funny which I didn’t learn until years later was he kept telling us about his trainer, his ninja master trainer, I guess his shidoshi, and he was Tiger Tanaka. I can’t remember, I think it was the Koga Ryu of Ninjitsu.”
“I was watching a James Bond movie, and I can’t remember which one it is, but it was one with Roger Moore where there were ninjas. As I was watching, I heard somebody say Tiger Tanaka, and I stopped the tape. After about sixty seconds I said “Wait did I hear that?” and stopped the tape, and I rewound it, played it again, stopped the tape, rewound it, played it again maybe six or eight times, and that’s where he got the name Tiger Tanaka, it was from a James Bond movie. It was the ninja master in that James Bond movie! (laughter)”
“So once again, The Instructor had taken, you know, something from the real world, even though this was a movie which is all fiction, and kind of absorbed it into his own world. Like I said, he was just a wholesale fraud, absolutely, from one extreme to another.”
“Another trick he loved to do and fascinate people with was he’d put a blindfold on and then tell us he could sense and feel the heat of people’s bodies and tell people who was who when they were standing around him in the class, and there were exercises where he’d do it this. Well, if you know The Instructor, you know he’s got a really big nose and I started thinking to myself, “How is he doing this?” and realized that, you know, there were two fairly large gaps just to the edge or side of his nostrils where he put that blindfold on because he did have a big nose. If you know him, you know he’s got a huge nose, unless he’s had it fixed recently.”
“So what I did was, when we were doing the exercise, all he was doing was memorizing people’s feet or their, you know, what the bottom of their feet looked like before class, and I’d started watching him before he asked to do these exercises and he was looking down at peoples feet. Well, I… we started doing the exercise and I let my gi down and then once we started doing it I kind of pulled away and rolled my gi up.”
“I don’t know, there was some sort of mark or something on my gi, blood or whatever, and when I rolled it up and I got back into the group, he kept skipping me over and over and over and over. And of course it was because, my gi wasn’t down and he didn’t know who this new person was. And that was just, you know, one more thing that verified the fact that this guy was a big fraud.”
“I guess a couple years, or however many years after I had taken classes from him, I went to the premiere of [his movie] and [a famous Belgian actor] was there signing posters and talking to people, and once it got quiet, where people were shuffling out of the theater, I began talking to [the actor] and started asking him how much he knew about The Instructor, and all that. He said, ‘Look this is movie, it’s fictionalized, it’s based very loosely on a story, and I’ve had many, many, many people come up to me and tell me this Instructor is nothing at all like what is portrayed in the story.’ And of course, you know, I also confirmed the fact that it ... it was an awfully big fraud.”
“There no question he had kind of a cruel side to him. We’d go into to class and he’d take his, his bamboo...”
Shinai?
“Yah, and we’d be practicing and he’d, on his senior students, he’d just literally whip the shit out of them. I’d go home and just have bruises going up and down my arms and legs - it looked like I was coming out of some POW camp in Vietnam. I just was bruised from head to toe, except for my face (laughter), everything else was covered. but you know, at the time I thought, you know, I was bad, and I was learning how take pain and take good training and all that other stuff, but the guy was simply a sadist. I mean, he enjoyed hurting people. When I learned about his girlfriend that he was hurting on a regular basis, there was just no question he was… he’s a bully, basically.”
“Like I said, the more and more and more I saw of this, the more I finally just kind of dismissed myself from the whole experience. I’m glad I took martial arts and I’m glad that I learned the boxing skills that I did, and all the other skills that I did, but it certainly woke me up when it comes to being very critical about a teacher’s credentials, always questioning, always wondering, never taking anything for face value, never taking somebody’s word just for their word. I mean, do research, look into it, ask people their credentials. Ask people where they’ve trained, you know, follow up and verify. Especially now with the Internet, you know, you should be able to contact almost anywhere around the world, and get additional information.”
“The thing that really surprised me the very most was his book, [book title], because, once again, everything is based on his relationship with the late [CIA administrator], and [that man] is dead. So you know, I could tell you right now that I was an undercover agent for Richard Nixon, I was actually the one (laughter, from me) who put the tapes and the recording devices in the Democratic National Committee. You know, I could write a whole book on this, telling you that it was me, even though I don’t know how old I was at that time, I was probably...under ten years old, but it was me who did it. Anyways, that’s basically exactly what The Instructor did. He based this whole persona and whole character… it is nothing but a work of fiction”.
“Fortunately, Robert Brown, the publisher of Soldier of Fortune, published a great article- in fact he’s published two articles. One exclusively on The Instructor, and the other one on all the people who claim they’re Navy SEALS, and included a splurge on The Instructor again, you know, explaining and claiming he was a complete and total fraud.”
“If The Instructor wasn’t a complete and total fraud, he would’ve sued Robert Brown and others for libel and slander, and the rest. Because all you have to do in libel and slander cases is prove, you know, that you were intentionally libeled or slandered. But the defense to that is the truth. The defense to that kind of case is the truth. So if you go into court and you prove that what you’ve said is true, the case is thrown out of court, of course, so just like Bill Clinton, The Instructor isn’t about to challenge what people are saying ... because, when it comes right down to it (laughter)… it’s all true.”
“And it’s just too bad that he’s been able to hoodwink so many people for so long, and like I said, I learned some valuable lessons. But if anything, I hope I can ... I hope the message other people can learn from my mistakes was: Verify people’s credentials, look into their past, talk to their former students, you know, talk to people that are respected in the martial arts community, and just be critical because there are frauds out there, there are phonies out there, and they are very creative, and really know how to manipulate you. Because so many of the students of the martial arts are younger, they often, very successfully, do manipulate you.”
So there’s one example. But there are lots of “teachers” who pass themselves off as something they’re not. We even had one, I believe, come into Seibukan dojo as a guest instructor. His rank, his affiliations, even his knowledge base, these I felt were legitimate. But when it came down to his esoteric claims, I just couldn’t believe what this guy had to say.
He was a Korean martial arts stylist who had been blind for years from chemical burns to his eyes, who claimed to be able to “see” your aura, or the electromagnetic energy emanating from your body. This marvelous ability of his was uncannily accurate. If you got up and walked away, he could follow your movement with his head, almost as a reflex. This is believable, since the sound of your clothes ruffling or footsteps planting could cue him to your location. But when he stood in front of an entire class seated before him, he was able to discern individuals raising their hands, and point directly at them! It seemed a bit much for me.
When he first arrived in the dojo, he and his wife had a long conversation with Sensei and Sheila, doing some general catching up. As an uchideshi, I was introduced, and sat in for much of the discussion. One thing in particular that he said set off some of my internal alarm system, something I had a very difficult time buying, no matter how much I wanted to.
He described to Sensei how a black belt in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu came into his training center, decried the existence of ki, and challenged our blind friend. Somehow or another (he didn’t get into specifics about this part), he knocked out the jiu-jitsu man and “refused to let him come back into his body” until he felt he had learned his lesson. When Sensei pressed him for specifics about how he had knocked him out, he pointed to a small area on his chest, and said he had hit this spot “lovingly and with compassion,” then quickly changed the subject.
Later, in private conversation, Sensei acknowledged that was one of the knockout points he knew of, but in order to be effective, it had to be used in conjunction with other pressure points on the body. Maybe our friend didn’t want to give Sensei the secret of his success, or have the impressionable ears of young uchideshi picking up ancient secrets, and for that reason, changed the subject. That’s certainly possible.
There aren’t that many Gracie Jiu-Jitsu black belts in the country, so his challenger could have been some idiot claiming a rank, it could have been a legitimate Gracie student, or it could have never happened. I don’t know the truth, and there were many dubious factors, but I certainly have my suspicions.
After the seminar, a friend of the dojo named Peter took in our blind instructor and his wife, opening up his parent’s unoccupied home in Carmel Valley. They stayed for a number of days, while Peter arranged for a variety of distinguished medical experts to come in and witness the amazing sensitivity displayed by this master martial artist. When the day came for the demonstration, and the doctors were en route to Carmel, our blind friend was gone. Where’d he go? He skipped town, of course. This only confirmed for Peter that the man he had opened his parent’s house to was not who he claimed to be. Earlier, Peter had “caught” him holding objects, including text, up to his face. When he asked him what he was doing, all our blind friend said was “Oh…nothing. I was just playing,” and removed the newspaper from his nose.
Again, I have my suspicions. He may have had some sight regeneration over the years since his accident, and hasn’t wanted to mention it, for fear of losing his niche. After all, the blind martial artist who reads energy is an awfully good seminar draw, with little likelihood of a challenge in a traditional dojo.
Losing his sight years ago had been a major obstacle in his life, and he had recently injured his knee in a fall, possibly ending his martial arts career. Down on his luck, I think he was just trying to hack out a living in a world that kept dealing him difficult hands. He wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, and I think that’s an important point to remember. We’re only human, and we’re all trying to make it in competitive society that can drive a person to bend the rules or adopt a façade of something he’s not.
Remember compassion. Remember forgiveness. If the frauds didn’t feel they had to bolster their image with false claims, I’m sure they wouldn’t voluntarily put themselves into that trap. I’m not calling for tolerance or acceptance. I can’t stand liars, especially when they pollute and endanger the world inhabited by legitimate martial artists who’ve devoted themselves to a cause they feel is noble: the moral, physical, and spiritual education of society through mutual benefit, empowerment, and hard work. The hucksters ruin the environment by taking advantage of the uninformed, so arm yourself well through researched decision making and healthy skepticism. If at all possible, enlist the aid of experienced martial artists to offer guidance and company while observing classes or demonstrations.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, even if you think they put you in a bad light. Don’t believe your questions are a burden; it is our responsibility to disseminate accurate information. Express an interest, and we will answer every question, address every concern, and do our best to position you at the most advantageous point to start your journey, where we now wish we had begun. If you’re still too uncomfortable joining by yourself, get a friend and join together. Make an adventure out of it.
So if you want to get started, or ever secretly harbored the idea of practicing martial arts, take a chance.
You never know, it may turn out to be the best decision you’ve ever made.