Archive for December, 2008

I don’t know about you but I have watched some martial arts flicks and only liked about 30% of them. Too often you will find stick banging for every punch and kick (to make noises for the kicks and punches) or the karate fighters flying though the air (like superman) to fight. One movie I could barley sit through was “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”  Well I will not bore you with a review of this type of film. I just watched the movie on IFC entitled, “Seven Samurai.”

This was a movie about some poor farmers dealing with raiding robbers. The village farmers had to decide what to do the next harvest because they knew the 40 robbers were coming back. The village elder told the farmers to seek samurai that were hungry (because the farmers did not have anything to pay) to save the village from the robbers! I will speak about the movie and tie this movie into modern self-defense strategies. Here is a trailer of the film.

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We here at MySelfDefenseBlog.com scourge the ends of the earth to bring only the finest content for your perusal. This time of year begs the question, ” have I been naughty or nice?” or “will I get a sugar plum or lump of coal in my stocking?”

Well if you have a beef with Santa, I may have just found the karate Santa solution! Depending on wether or not you have made the list (you know the list) this year, you may want to take a swing at Santa! I don’t really have a position on this as I have made the list this year but I wanted you to be aware if this Santa is any indication – you might have to get a black-belt before you try and take a swing at Santa!

Karate Santa Very Funny – For more of the funniest videos, click here

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

(citation of, “The Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clark Moore or Henry Livingston)

When I was a kid I used to watch both Batman and the Green Hornet and at the time thought I learned some really cool fighting techniques. I was too young to hear about the drama behind the scenes but apparently some people thought that Robin could beat Kato in a real fight? Why about the time the movie, “Enter the Dragon” was out I made a comment to my uncle that I guess Kato would have won the fight.

My uncle said he heard that Robin (Burt Ward) and Kato (Bruce Lee) got in a real fight outside a bar and Burt won and stuffed Bruce in a trash can. I told my uncle that was a bunch of hooey and who Bruce Lee really was. I guess that it was like Coke or Pepsi, or Ford or Chevy… everyone had an opinion what would happen if they ever met up. Well what I did not know but reportably Robin (Burt) was a black belt in in own right but I have not been able to track down where he trained. This is kind of a fun post but I will try and tie it into what I thought fighting was when I was a kid and what the TV shows were portraying at the time. Here is a video of Batman and Robin meeting the Green Hornet and Kato and I will have a video of the fight scene where Batman fought the Green Hornet and Robin fought Kato!

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I went to a garden party one time and did not see Yoko with a walrus (sorry for the Ricky Nelson reference for you young-ins) but did have an interesting conversation with a formal karate stylist. During that interchange it came out that he (the formal stylist) did not think much of sport karate as it might be applied to self-defense.

I was quite interested in his perspective and made the point I fought effectively in street-fights with sport-karate! At the time I had won tournaments in SoCal and had also worked as a bouncer at a bar for two years.  I will try to highlight his and my points in our conversation and then close with my opinion now.

I searched youtube for a video of a proper low snap-kick to the shin or knee and could not find one in 20 minutes. I saw plenty of high snap and jump snap kicks that would be marginally effective in a street-fight. So I found the shortest karate guy I could find to demonstrate a excellent street technique (although even this guy was kicking too high)

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