Picture from here.

 It is with great pleasure I would like to notify the readers of this website that Joe Lewis (former point and  world heavy-weight full contact karate champion) and Dean Lister (U.S. National Sambo champion,  a U.S.  Machado National Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and  National Gracie Jiu Jitsu Champoin) are giving a seminar on June 14, 2008 at Rancho Bernardo (just north of San Diego, CA). Joe Lewis is also planning a seminar on June 12, 2008 at Chandler, AZ (near Phoenix, AZ).

Picture from here.  

I attended a couple of Joe Lewis seminars in the late 70′s to early 80′s at San Diego. Many of the key learnings Joe taught were already familiar to me from my instructor, Richard “Dick” Willett, but I did pick up some new stuff. Having a fighter that started full-contact karate matches – divulging some of his sage advice was priceless. I remember one story of how Joe was working security and wore sneakers. He said he had to kick a guy with his famous side kick and was surprised when the guy tumbled over and got back up! He decided then that sneakers were not good to wear when kicking.

One piece of sage advice Joe spoke of was when Steve “Nasty” Anderson was in attendance (Nasty ended up the champion point fighter for 10 years running in the 80′s), about how winning tournaments was not enough! What? you may be thinking? Mr. Lewis admonished us all to work on defensive fighting as well as offensive. He pointed out that while many of us were winning tournaments at the time, too often while taking the win, our opponents were loosing by one point!  Joe told us to work on, not only scoring points but also work on not letting our opponents score on us. Keeping the critial distance, using inital movement with his angular attack methods would improve our offensive and defensive game. Here is a Youtube.com video of Joe Lewis vs Bill Wallace exposition bout in 1990 or 1991 (as near as I can tell).

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Joe injected his fighting methods into the Tracy's International Schools of Self-Defense during his tenure as the captain the the Tracy's Fighting Team. Anyone interested in point (sport) or full contact karate would do well to attend one of these seminars because I do not believe you can find a better example of a guy has has been there and done that. Mr. Lewis has starred in at lease one motion picture (Enter The Jaguar) and as appeared other movies/tv shows. Dean Lister will also be teaching at the San Diego seminar.

I have not followed UFC, Pride, WEC or the other MMA type fights too much as I am cost challenged. I simply cannot afford to pay $50.00 bucks for a night of pay-per-view fighting from my cable provider. Having said that I do intermittently watch older Pride or UFC fights on ESPN2 or WEC on Verses (VS). When I heard Dean Lister was coming to the seminar, I started researching him. He is a world-class jiu jitsu fighter whose record included 111 wins (90 via submission) and 12 losses. Mr. Lister has only been competing since 1996! That is an amazing record for such a short period of time (12 years). Here is a Youtube.com video with some of Dean Lister's highlights.

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I wrestled at 132 in Jr. High School and learned a few things that have helped me to avoid the ground game. I have been able keep on my feet by understanding how to keep my legs away from an attacker. Dean Lister is a fighter that is very effective with his ground game. I watched some of these videos and noted how easily he seemed to transition from one position to another where he could gain an advantage! You can find more about this truly great jiu jitsu fighter at his website.

Both of these great champions will be a the San Diego seminiar on June 14, 2008, in Rancho Bernardo, CA. I will be attending this event as well because one can never get enough pointers from fighters that have been there and done that in my humble opinion. This should be a great seminar for any up and coming point karate, full-contact karate, jiu jitsu, or MMA fighter to have an opportunity to learn from the best! I hope to see you all there.

I just noted that Nathan Teodoro of TDA Training did a post about Joe Lewis and an upcoming seminar on the East Coast (at Radford, VA) that includes, Joe Lewis and Bill Wallace (and others) on June 26 - 29.