Archive for January, 2010

This is a quick post about the January 30th, 2010 Chris “Cyborg” Santos vs Marloes Coenen match for the 145 pound championship coming up. Also some other mentions fighting that night; Nick Diaz, Robbie Lawler, & Herschel Walker are all fighting on the same card.

Unfortunately I do not have showtime anymore so I will be reduced to finding the Santos vs Coenen fight on the internet. If you are curious, with economic downturn, I’ve turned off digital cable but kept the inexpensive network channels.

In this post I’ll talk a bit about Cyborg’s challenger and show one of her fights. It is not that I am not interested in the other fights but I am more interested in seeing women’s MMA take off. Here is an interview with Marloes Coenen.

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Thousands of people the world over have studied various forms of Kenpo or Kempo Karate. I remember when I first started learning karate lessons from an actual instructor, he told me about some of the styles of Okinawan karate. Later when I started learning kenpo karate, I was told that there were Chinese, Japanese, Okinawan, and Hawaiian styles of Kenpo. Well let me tell you that I was confused then and while searching through the internet for kenpo history – I am still a little fuzzy.

In this post I will discuss the difficulty discerning history because of bias, poor records, frame of reference,  and other research challenges. I will also speak of Kempo/Kenpo’s recent history since James Mitose in Hawaii and the Hawaii Karate Museum’s online records. Here is a video of some of Kenpo’s early history including its spread from China, Okinawa, and Japan.

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It is with a heavy heart that I write this post about my long time friend, fellow fighter, and Kenpo Master, Frank Mafnas, who died last Tuesday. Frank lived most recently in Kansas City, MO. Here is Franks obituary.

Frank and I met in the mid-70′s at Tracy’s Karate School in San Diego. I believe Frank started at the Lemon Grove Tracy’s School. We were both blue or green belts at the time and I remember lots of tough fighters of the time used to spar after the Tuesday night group classes. Frank was a hard worker and willing to put in lots of extra work into sparring. I for one appreciated the sparring partner while we were honing our craft.

You see we were trying to play with the big boys on Thursday nights as well as get ready for Southern California tournaments. Frank had a great sense of humor and kept all of use motivated as well as keeping it real. You see Frank excelled at tournaments because he fought with all comers and really enjoyed the challenge of fighting the heavy weights like Lap Napoleon, Terry Crook, and John West. Here is an early picture of Frank apparently at a Joe Lewis seminar.

Todd McElhinney, Irving Hoffman, Joe Lewis, Dick Willett, Dave Hays, Frank Mafnas

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How many times have I seen stories about karate instructors telling students if someone tries to grab your purse or wallet, you can do the following technique! WHAT? Yes I have heard instructors teaching students to not only defend ones life but personal property in self-defense too!

Understandably this is a hot button issue because on one hand people with the old west mentality will argue that not only is it legal to fight over personal property, but if you know how to fight it is a smart thing to do! Teach the robber a lesson and hold the guy for the cops and such.

In this post I will examine the logic of self-defense of purse or wallet from a legal and common sense framework. Should karate instructors teach students that they should try to defend personal property? Here is a quick video of one good samaritan that did come to a women’s rescue that was being robbed of her purse.

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Before I begin there are some great fights coming tonight in the WEC! Varner vs Henderson should be good to watch plus the two former WEC Featherweight champs (Brown and Faber) are each fighting others to get back in line to challenge Aldo.

The hardest thing about writing this blog is to stay on focus to the chief point I am trying to make or examine. This post is about how to fight using some type of martial art. One might view this topic as overly broad but in my mind it is easy.

I will first talk about martial fighting arts and some popular contests that portray martial artists fights! I will talk about what is fighting and then how one could use martial arts to fight in whatever venue you select. Finally I will wrap this up with how I fight with martial arts. Here is a quick video from the old Kung Fu series that explains how a wise man behaves.

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