Old style Chinese martial arts films….wonderful stuff 🙂

I have not had the pleasure of reviewing a kung fu, martial arts movie in some time and today folks I bring you utter fucking gold. Duel to the Death is by far an away, an over the top slash fest of amazing proportions in that there is nothing but utter madness taking place in this movie. Let me give a quick rundown on the highlights of this movie: You got two master swordsmen battling one another to see who is the best, ninjas out the ass, kamikaze ninjas, ninjas that turn into voltron, ninjas who take the shape of one large ninja, ninjas who who fucking rain down an ungodly amount of ninja stars and oh yeah, did I mean one of the best sword battles ever. Ninja Ninja Ninja!

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The syntax is a little strange, I am guessing the author does not use English as a first language, but you can easily follow what they are saying. Good stuff.

bay73willow

The number 1 street fighting tip is a lot more of any reality check when compared to a real trick or strategy, yet it’s the most important lesson you can every learn on the subject of street fighting. What exactly is that lesson? The very rule in street fighting will there be are not any rules.

It is amazing to me the number of people don’t appreciate this. It appears to be almost routine to anyone who has been with us street fighting, and i also often think it seems like just a little basic. Even so know from experience i need to start while using basics. Only don’t, individuals who keep in mind that once and for all information will get hurt.

Mobile phone . the important meat and potatoes informed:

Street Fighting Guidelines:

Tip #1:

The initial step in any street confrontation is recognizing a battle is resulting…

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More than Meer

There are hands on your throat and they are choking the life out of you. You’ve only got seconds to react before everything goes dark. What do you do?

This is one of the scenarios that you learn to defend against in Krav Maga, a form of street-fighting self-defense from the Israeli military. I teach Krav Maga pretty regularly these days and I’ve trained with the Krav Maga Federation in Manhattan for over five years. But now, as a budding physical therapist, I have a different view of what happens on the training mat, and it’s always interesting to learn things in school that I can apply and/or observe with my students.

Let’s go back to that example above. What we teach on the mat is meant to be used in extreme circumstances, in those moments when a swift and precise execution of your defense (and its accompanying offense)…

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Masked robber dies when restrained.

English: S10 Gas Mask Respirator Avon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Firstly, apologies for the delay in posts, it’s been a busy new year and I along with a lot of people succumbed to a bug which has been doing the rounds in the UK, but an article in the press yesterday reminded me that it was time to blog, so here it is.

An article in several of the papers recounted the story of a masked gunman who died after being pinned down and restrained by customers during an armed robbery at a bookies in Plymouth. The police when called the scene found him unconscious and called an ambulance but he was declared dead when paramedics arrived.

Some papers gleefully began to talk about criminal procedings against the customers who pinned the man down, so I decided that in the interests of the good guy in the street it was time to investigate.

The man was called Alan Levers, 50, he had a criminal record for offences including assault and burglary dating back to his first conviction at age 13. He was jailed for four years in 2010 (for all that seems to mean in the legal system now) after he pointed an imitation handgun at the head of a terrified assistant in a corner shop as he stole £600 from her till. Sources think he was only out of prison for a few days before this incident.

The papers talk about Levers being masked, the police say that he was wearing a gas mask, at much is currently being made of the fact that his gun was an imitation one.

OK so a man in gas mask appears in a shop with a gun and demands money, a couple of people decide to be heroes and pin him to the ground during the course of which he dies.

Does anyone feel sorry for him? Did I hear no?

First, it was “only” an imitation gun – imitation firearms pre-1860 are illegal, so if you walk into somewhere with your favourite fake Glock or Sig assume people are going to think it’s real and react – Levers was hoping they would react as if it was a real weapon and would be cowed into submission, he was wrong! Having a gun pointed at you is terrifying and the average person is not looking for signs that it’s a replica. As far as the people in the betting shop were concerned they were in a life or death situation. Levers gun could have been real, he could have started shooting!

Secondly, his mask was a gas mask, a stupid choice really, if anyone there has used one, they will know how hard it can be to breath in them, add in exertion and rapid respiration and gas masks can be dangerous. It also limits your field of vision. He may well have missed someone ot his side. When he was pinned to the ground, it is entirely likely that the mask intake would have been blocked, assuming it worked in the first place. There are also strap that fit around the face that in a scuffle could have slipped.

The have a go heroes were probably not trained security personnel or martial artists and would not have had a knowledge of fighting skills. A knee on a the neck cutting air, or worse still cutting the blood flow to the carotid artery, could kill in seconds. But when you are trying to hold someone down who you think might have tried to kill you, exactly where that foot or hand is will not be at the top of your personal agenda, all you want is to hear sirens and see some police officers.

Alison Seabeck, Labour MP for Plymouth Moor View, the area where the attempted robbery took place, said: ‘It’s very important that what happened is properly investigated, not least because the person who died also has family and, whatever the rights and wrongs, his family will want to know what happened as well.’

Let me help there: a stupid career criminal who was only out of prison for a similar offence, ran across a couple of folks who cared, they stopped him and restrained him, not with intent to harm, from what I can tell, but probably in the way a couple of scared people might try to stop someone they thought was trying to kill them.

Michael Wolkind, QC, who defended Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for shooting dead a teenage burglar at his Norfolk home in 1999, said the two men in the betting shop acted within the law in restraining Levers. ‘The robber chose to come in wearing some sort of breathing apparatus, he chose to have a gun so people would be in fear, so it would be unreasonable to suggest the people who restrained him should stop and check he is all right in an evolving situation such as this.’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2268633/Police-praise-brave-betting-shop-punters-restrained-armed-robber-collapsed-died.html contains best details and some of which appear here.

The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, for the sake of every hero out there who will stand up to the thugs and the robbers, I hope there is no further action.

Watch this space!

A well thought out article on the change in the law, highlighting that the “carte blanche” issued by David Cameron may not be as straightforward as people thought. The “they come at you with a knife, you come at them with a gun” mantra may be applicable here. The first test case will tell.

MET PR Blog

After recently reading an article in The Telegraph which can be found here:

It raised the question, “Is it ever okay to harm, or kill someone?”

The ethics in this case appear to be situational, for example, if you are at risk, then yes, however if it is simply for the sake of harming another this is not ethically acceptable.

David Cameron UK Prime Minister is currently trying to provide householders who are confronted with force with more legal protection. The current law states that anyone in England and Wales can use “reasonable force” to protect themselves or others. Householders are protected from prosecution as long as they act “honestly and instinctively.”

After stating that he had been burgled many times, it is clear that Cameron is taking a stand on the matter stating that:

“When a burglar invades your home they give up their rights.”

An issue is…

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DRAGON Baby

Just a bit of fun, but you have to admire the skills of the people that put this sequence together.

Chuck Mullis

This made it’s way to me this morning and I had a good chuckle. Maybe you will too!

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Sensible advice here, well worth a read.

Solo Keiko

One of the biggest challenges to training alone is finding motivation. This is particularly true in cases where the goals are not specific or time-sensitive. It is always easier to drill certain kata or techniques that you hope to use successfully in an upcoming tournament or impending belt test. But when the goals are life-protection and the time-frame is the rest of your life, what do you work on today? And, why can’t it wait until tomorrow? Martial artists are not unique in facing issues of motivation – this is a human condition. It is always easier to lose 5 lbs than it is to “get healthy.” Likewise, getting a college degree is an achievable goal but how many of us choose to read all the classic literature that “educated people should have read” when there isn’t a grade or diploma hanging in the balance.

Setting short-term goals is a…

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The Dance of Death – Dim Mak and Count Dante

Yes, this is the DEADLIEST and most TERRIFYING fighting art known to man—and WITHOUT EQUAL. Its MAIMING, MUTILATING, DISFIGURING, PARALYZING and CRIPPLING techniques are known by only a few people in the world. An expert at DIM MAK could easily kill many Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, and Gung Fu experts at one time with only finger-tip pressure using his murderous POISON HAND WEAPONS. Instructing you step by step thru each move in this manual is none other than COUNT DANTE—“THE DEADLIEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED.” (THE CROWN PRINCE OF DEATH.)…..

Any fans of the American comics on the 1970s must remember the lurid adverts for Count Dante? The deadly master of martial arts whose touch could kill and main! But who was the Count and what is his legacy to martial arts in general and street defence in particular?Many older martial artists will be aware of the late John Keehan, a.k.a Count Juan Raphael Dante, who was possibly the most colorful character of the late-’60s/early ’70s US martial arts scene. His goatee-bearded and devillish good looks gave him a place in international pop-culture through those “Deadliest Man Alive!” comic book advertisements.

How much of these comic books claims are true is a subject for another time but Keehan’s gift to “pragmatic” or street based martal arts came about because he grew disillusioned with conventional karate focus on tradition over what he felt to be “effectiveness” and began to focus on his own style that he would promote as street defence. He trained with former champion boxer Johnny Coulon and was a close friend of heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson.

After high school Dante/Keehan joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and later transferred to the U.S. Army. During this period, from 1958 through 1961 he was stationed on the West Coast and trained with Shaolin kung fu master Wong Tim-yuen and Kenpon Karate great, Ed Parker, one of the earliest pioneers of American karate. He also trained with James Yimm Lee, the author of a self-published series titled “Modern Kung-Fu Karate: Iron, Poison Hand Training.”

Dante also claimed to have met Bruce Lee during this time and it would have been fascinating to have learnt what Lee who was also concerned with effective fighting, would have made of the braggadocio inclined pseudo-noble.He developed a system that is now known as the Dan-te system, “Dance of Death” or sometimes Theoretically, by learning all of the steps of Keehan’s “Dance of Death” you could be an effective fighting master. Like so much of the man, it’s difficult to tell if this is true, I have witnessed the so called dance of death and its difficult to say just how street effective this dance would be.

How much of anything claimed by Dante is true is always open to discussion. It is known that in July 22, 1965, Dante was charged with attempted arson when he and an accomplice, Douglas Dwyer (The Second Deadliest Man Alive), were arrested while taping dynamite caps to a rival Chicago dojo. Both claimed to be under the influence of alcohol at the time but Dante explained this was the result of a disagreement with the dojo’s owner over payment for a tournament that Dante had arranged there.

In the 70s Dante seems to have fuelled a series of disagreements with other karate schools over who was best these culminated in the Dojo War incident of April 24, 1970 where Dante and his students went to the dojo of the Green Dragon Society’s l. According to the papers of the time, they claimed to be police officers on arrival and attacked the dojo’s students. The battle lasting only a minute or two resulted in the death of Dante’s friends and fellow sensei, Jim Koncevic. Count Dante was planning a comeback to his preferred career of tournament promoting when he died in his sleep of internal hemorrhaging caused by a bleeding ulcer, on May 25, 1975.

I don’t want to spent too much time on the life and times of Dante, For more information about Dante, check out is wiki entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dante A Google search on Dante will give you all the information and a surprisingly still current interest in the man and his style even to present day and its his style that I want to talk about now.

While information about the man is easily found on the internet, information about the style is less easy to come by, but I recall an article in Black Belt magazine in the middle 1970s, although not read by me until the early 1980s when I first started karate that spoke about the way Dante trained his student and I think Street Defender readers will find it interesting and note the commonality with modern day thinking enshrined in arts such as Krav Maga and Kajukenbo.

Its fairly clear that despite his priviliged upbringing, Dante was no stranger to the ins and outs of street combat and his modified Karate has a lot in common with the applied karate of Gary Spiers or the techniques of Dr. Dennis Hanover of Krav Maga fame.

One interesting and concise definition of Dante’s style came from Fighting Arts International who pointed out it was basically all the moves that had been based by America’s World Karate Organisation, strikes to the face, eyes and throat, kicks to the knees and groin.Dante emphasised multiple strikes, to those soft targets, the aim being to get your opponent down and then finish him with a series of kicks, interesting when I viewed Youtube video of the karate that enshrines his techniques I noted a Gary Spiers style knee drop in the latter part of the defence. Although in the main, legs were for transportation only.

Dante also understood that the chances were that a fight would happen not when the student was nicely warmed up and dressed in comfy white dogi but more likely when in a bar or restaurant, with glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He taught students to fight in those situation and actively for some sessions encourage students to spar after serveral drinks to get the feel of “drunken Dante.”

At the time I recall myself and most others regarding him as some kind of heretic but in the 21st Century his style comes across as solid effective infighting. If I can find more about the “most deadly man in history” I will post it here.

Kung Fu martial arts, what is it?

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