Trial by fire
When I started training in JKD, I already had a background
in martial arts. I knew my Sifu before we started training, as we were serving
and working together in the armed forces during the early eighties.
One day I went to the park to resume my daily Tai Chi routine, and there
he was doing his routines. We got to talking and we agreed to trade Tai Chi
instruction for his JKD.
Not that he had a short attention span, but after a few months he informed me
that he was done with Tai Chi. As I came to learn later, he took what he felt
applied to him and discarded the rest. That’s when he started destroying all
the years of martial arts training I had.
Sifu Brown was fair, but in that New Yorker way; he had that certain streak that
made you think, ”Is he for real?” JKD is
not something one does by the numbers. Especially if it’s being adapted to you
as you go. It seems a lot more chaotic than sitting in a dojo and going from one
drill to the next.
I trained for 4 years. During that time, I learned that pain is really in the
mind. The drills were unconventional, and it was a lot like a movie montage.
One day he said that starting that weekend, every Saturday would be dedicated to
sparring. This is where it got weird. Back during those times, military
facilities were scattered through
My instructions were simple: you gotta take this one in <he would insert some
arbitrary time>; take ‘em out, or they will take you out.
So one by one, I began to fight people of different styles. Sometimes I would
get my butt kicked. For a while I
was constantly bruised and cut, but I started losing less often as time went.
Then people started getting mad at Sifu Brown.
One guy confronted him, calling him a Bruce Lee pimp; because he
recognized the JKD I was doing. But he didn’t stop; instead he started baiting
people, by betting on how I could take them in less than 5 minutes.
This is how I met a good friend of mine; Bill. He had been a high school
wrestler and he was 6’6” and as buff. When the bell rang, with no effort
whatsoever he picked me up and slammed me on the mat so hard I was still in pain
the week after. It took me a few weeks to recover from that, but the ante was
upped. I was determined, and ended
up having a 3 minute all-out slamfest. My back was sore for what seemed like
forever. I flipped him 3 times. I think he was way over 200 pounds. We became
friends to this day.
For the last year of my training it went like that. I lost track of how many
opponents I faced, and now it’s like a blur. Every time I looked at the opposite
corner, there would be a new face telling me that they
were going to beat me up.
Brown was also my travel partner, as most service people were supposed to
partner up to travel safely. Brown did
fine for himself. We ended up traveling through most of