Martialist Contributor Matt Wallis

I began my love affair with the martial arts in the early 1980s. My friends and I would eagerly await our weekly dose of Kung Fu cinema every Saturday afternoon. We marveled at the apparent grace and deadliness of Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, and the 5 Deadly Venoms. We loved the exotic sounding Kung Fu styles, like the Tiger Claw, the Eagle Claw and… well face it, there were lots of Claws. We especially loved the kicks, the higher the better.

So, when the desire to emulate our favorite action stars rose to a fever pitch, it was time to find a martial arts school and begin our own journey into the deadly arts. We believed they were deadly, of course, and we wanted to be deadly too. We wanted to be able to fight. We wanted to be tough. We wanted to be able to defend ourselves from any attacker. And in the 80s self-defense meant traditional Asian martial arts, the older the better. That’s why Taekwondo was 2000 years old, of course. It had to be ancient to be perceived as effective.

What no one seemed to want, however, was sport. Boxing was a sport, so it was not martial arts. That meant that, for the most part, no one who was into martial arts wanted to box. By definition, a sport was not deadly. A sport was not for self-defense. Even Judo, though mysterious and Asian, was in the end just a sport. What we did, however was “for real.” What we did in our Kung Fu or Karate classes was for self-defense...