How It Was

HOW IT WAS!

 

In 1973 I started learning the martial arts, along with many other people who were totally impressed with Bruce Lee and films like Enter The Dragon at the time, and went through all the required training and formal grade tests to become a black belt.  Gaining my 7th Dan in 2001 I then became a writer of the martial arts in 2004.

 

 

Back in my day, regardless of the various ranking systems, you had to earn your rank every step of the way. In recent years however it is now the 'norm' to invent a new martial art name and self-promote oneself to 10th Dan as the new name founder and effectively bypass any formal grading tests as a result. Even Bruce Lee did not claim 10th Dan grandmaster status by the way - for the record.

Today we now see young people, who are in many cases only 20 or 30 years old, claiming such grand titles even beyond those twice their age who have had to earn every single grade the hard-earned formal way all their lives. But sadly this situation is now getting even more worse as we are now getting 40 year olds claiming great grandmaster status and further claiming to hold a 100 or more black belt 'Dans'.

 

It is a well known fact that to even get a 8th or even a 9th Dan takes a lifetime of dedication so those self-promoted grandmasters who claim to have 10, 50 or even a 100 or more black belts, even though they were not even born when people like myself were teaching students, are a sick joke to those who have had to earn their grades the formal way.

 

Sadly the martial arts community world-wide will never be able to stop these clear to see bogus ego driven con artists while martial art publishers and so-called qualified registration directories keeps promoting them or the un-educated general public keeps going to them for lessons. People like that have made the martial arts a total joke - very sad!

 

Saying it as it is - there can be no other way!