ARTICLES AND COMMENTARY

 

SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE

 

 

  I don’t think the world is waiting for my comments, but I think my friends and even pretend friends are. It is not my intention to point fingers, unfairly criticize or even name names. 

   Sunday night I had promised an article to substantiate my Facebook comment so here goes.

   I mentioned that I was sick of rank whores, association pimps, two faced, fair-weather friends and outright back stabbers. I haven’t just now started feeling that way. All of this exists in one form or another, in every walk of life. It has just been getting worse in the Martial Arts. First of all, unity no longer exists with few exceptions, outside of our dojo. When Mr. Long died, he left some second men, who never became first men. Instead of unifying, they built a fragile power base around themselves, that went nowhere. It was impossible to stay neutral because the individual Associations wanted you to take sides. At one time I had a ku-dan certificate from two Associations. I presently have neither, as I returned them both. I personally could support neither style of the governing philosophy. I have publicly criticized factions of both associations and consequently their people are under orders not to have anything to do with me or my students. I’ll go a step further. Take virtually any Association and the leaders don’t like each other and have little or nothing to do with each others activities. I don’t think these guys should have had sleepovers with each other, but with the difficulty of attracting people to your events, why not just be good business men and at least support each other there. Throw in that; Isshin-ryu tournaments in this are all closed, and you have another problem. So in their wisdom they not only polarized each other, they are starving each other out. With all the reference to master Shimabuku and reverence demonstrated on his behalf, how do you think this would all be explained to him?

   I have talked to these 10^th dans until I became blue in the face. But I took unpopular stands with them by trying to be neutral. I pushed the status quo envelope too. I insisted on an African American for a board seat. I later watched his legs cut out from under him by not allowing him to do anything and refusing him a promotion when he was clearly more talented and more deserving than anyone the board. I pushed for grappling seminars, continuous fighting and open tournaments that further distanced me from the traditionalist.

  At the families request, I along with Joe Laney, joined the Harold Long Foundation board, for the purpose of making sure that Mr. Longs memory was served, and his linage saved. I started by donating a reasonable sum of money and spending time and money traveling back and forth to Knoxville. We recruited some other board members and we had a base of good workers. What we needed was money to buy special protective cases, to put Mr. Longs certificates, papers and all artifacts in. This was a costly undertaking as each cost 300.00 a piece and we needed several. There were also attorneys fees for a tax free corporation, accounting, a web site and patches for identification. To do this, we formed the Isshin-ryu Cross-Trainers Association. It was 25.00 to join. It bought you two patches, a certificate and three tremendous seminar/ workouts a year, with top instructors. I also designed a patch and logo for tee shirts and hoodies. I arranged with Tiger Claw, to print and ship direct. This was a good revenue producer and also good recognition for the ICA.  It all went to the HLF. Every penny. It caused a storm of controversy from the associations. They were sure we were going to try to replace them. It actually helped them because for the first time in a long time they started having seminars and doing something other than three tournaments a year. But, they refused to help, donate and discouraged anyone from doing so. Along with top teaching Masters for our teaching board, we had selected some young Dan’s to be on the board and also serve on a development board. This was to give people input that normally didn’t have any and can be groomed for future leadership. They took part in seminars and had their own meetings and made decisions. They seemed to be happy until the grumpy old men started putting the pressure on them to resign. One guy had a sensei that we didn’t want on the board. He held rank over the guys head until he quit and got his rank. This same sensei squirrel, went to seminars and then said he had trained under these people.  Mr. Longs granddaughter was denied admission to be a member of an association, because she was a member of Joe Laney’s school. Ah yes, Joe Laney. One of the straightest shooters I know and a friends friend. He became the reason that one association wouldn’t help their sensei’s memory. I was told that if I got rid of him they would help. Think about that….. They wanted to pick my friends for me. That didn’t go over very well with me to say the least. Yes, he wrote hard words about them afterwards, but said nothing that wasn’t the truth. He called out a female board member that was aghast that he would do that, after she accused him to people of pocketing money from the Harold Long Foundation. A baseless and absurd accusation designed to hurt all our credibility since I was also accused just to protect her power base. I later got a written apology. Joe did not.  Joe has some information on the promotions Mr. Long was supposed to have made AFTER his death. He feels he can prove that some of the high ranking promotions were not promoted by Mr. Long at all. This scared the hell out of them and kept them wanting to keep everyone away from him. I asked him not to bring it out into the open as I had hoped that we all could work on the Harold Long Foundation in honor of our Sensei and let bygones be bygones… I wish now I had not asked him not to do it. Here are some people running around griping about others promotions with a dirty certificate of their own.

   After reaching the financial goals of the HLF, Joe and I resigned from the board to have more time for other activities. The ICA operates now in name only, and has three open mat workouts a year for free. We put the HLF in a plus basis and enabled Mr. Longs family to share his history with all Isshin-ryu people for all time. Since Joe and I left the HLF board over two years ago, there has not been another meeting by the HLF board and the Memorabilia has been nowhere except one Hall of Fame tourney. All that work, money and BS, for them to just shut down. Are you still wondering why I am walking away from the mainstream??

   We did get a ton of cross training information to people attending the workouts. We also took our collective rank and promoted some very deserving people. That angered the associations because here to fore, they had reserved the power of promotion for themselves. I also developed a system of my own. That gave the naysayer a lot of ammo that backfired when it improved my students and always made them the group to beat at every tournament.

   At the Hall of Fame three years ago, I was promoted to Ju-dan in both Isshin-ryu and Dragon Sen-I Jutsu, by a group of the best working masters in the country. But the vigaro hit the ventilator. Some of my former students and friends, refused to sign it.  It served the purpose of finding out who my friends were. It was a hurtful and revealing demonstration of just how badly some of the people closest to you can refuse to support you rather than their association buddies. People who would haven’t had Jack Squat without me. People who I promoted or got promoted, placed on boards and in the Hall of Fame just blew it all off I guess. People who could never have done it on their own and have done nothing since. Even Jesus had his Judas goat. Why should I feel immune. I have placed my Isshin-ryu 10^th dan aside for a later time. Given the conduct and passiveness in many of the other 10^th dans as well as what knowledge they possess that qualifies them, I will be breaking it out shortly. I feel I qualify.

   I resigned from the Isshin-ryu Hall of Fame to have more time to spend with other things. It was also because of the new leadership which was fast building a good old boy powerbase. So did Daryn Clark and Clyde Stanley. We were not interested in the direction and the director. None of us attended or will attend the banquet or tournament as well, as long as the Hall of Fame is run as it is now. There are some good people on that board. I wish them well and thank them for years of service. I regret their situation now. Of late Master Harold Mitchum, became so angry at the Isshin-ryu Hall Of fame for not inducting one of his students, he wrote an open letter refusing to come to the tournament, or accept an award as the tournament was in his honor this year. Do you think he is the kind of person to do this, if he were not double crossed in some way? I am of the opinion that people have used him and made promises they didn’t keep. Same thing happened to me from the same guy. None of us are immune to the users if we are open people and willing to help people who seem at the time to deserve it. 

  We go to no point tournaments and I will later on tell you where we will go. I feel somewhat sorry for the tournament directors but not too much. They are their own victim by not being more independent and looking after their own interest rather than bowing to the rules of people who don’t pay their rent. You have people who talk about how tough they are, then support the Hatfield and McCoy mentality to the detriment of their own events by knuckling under and becoming timid with their own beliefs. Many of the association big shots are out of touch with the day to day needs of a dojo. The only real activity they participate in are tournaments and seminars demo’s. They completely destroy the integrity of the poor tournament director by being too far out of shape and practice, to be a good judge, or cheat on point scoring and kata scores. Only a few actually cheat. Most are just incompetent. But no tournament director is going to tell them that. Only the poor sensei’s having to watch their students money, training and winning hopes, go down the drain because of these ego burners. Only ones to bring it to their attention are the sensei’s who have to act like an ass to get their attention. If you could just endure them and move on to the next tourney it would be fine. But these bone heads show up for everything. The tournament host is so busy and distracted they don’t know what is happening.  The worst injustice is that the powers that be, have not only stopped educating and providing fresh information to their members, but have privately forbade them from associating with “Outside people” who can provide it. If they say this is not true, they are liars. Maybe they have not said it in so many words but they get the message across. I have been told outright from the people that I am not welcome at their dojo nor can they come to mine due to the feelings of their association heads. Now these are people who were either at one time formers students, former friends or people who are very friendly to me to my face. I have students that also see all this and you know how loyal students feel about their instructors. In short, they want to rip some peoples hearts out. They want to confront them. I have held them off due to hoping something would change and so as not to disrupt any ones tournament. We go to tournaments of people we like and support openly. Some of these same people have caught hell for inviting us. We are not going to disrupt any ones tournament unless we are getting screwed and that happens. Many of you have met my students. They are as polite, respectful and courteous as anyone you will ever meet. I am told that all the time. But they do get screwed and I am finished with standing by pretending I don’t now what is going on. We still win in spite of that. But not without friction and hard feelings.

   So what to do... We are in our own catch 22 right now. We won’t do points and we are too aggressive for the general tournament competition. There was a 10 point reduction at Jessie’s tournament for hard contact. At the end of some rounds we were probably in the negative side owing points. I had three students lose that I was shocked over. The people standing around were saying well, I know who won that one and your guy really dominated him. One mom said, oh my poor daughter, your girl is good. Well not good enough I guess. Do I think someone cheated us? I hope not. I would say the system is flawed and let it go at that.

   MMA is not the answer, nor is individual kickboxing matches. We want to do something as a group and enjoy it together. Our unity is too important to start with individual glory. I’ll tell you what we won’t do. We won’t get up at 4 in the morning, spend gas, food and entry money so someone can give us a 20 dollar trophy and a jar of Vaseline for what just happened. At times I feel one would get the same results from attending a proctologist convention. 

   Many of you on facebook sent encouraging words not to give up ect. I told you it was many other things. I hope you see now where tournaments are just a symptom of the real problems. Tournaments are not a social thing for us they are competition. Social things come afterwards. We are not poor losers we are hard losers. Show me anything else and you need to stay out of competition.

   We also will not compromise our real street training, to accommodate tournament rules to the extent that they are counter productive to our fighting techniques.

   We will attend only those activities that blend with our training or closely compliments it. Right now we are talking the emphasis on dojo training, Jams and/or, related seminar and open mat activities, visits to or from friends dojo’s, and two well selected tournaments.

   For me personally, I am tired of the BS. I want to finish my watch as I see fit and let everyone else do the same. I will close the martial arts page on facebook as it has not served the purpose I had hoped. I trust those that want to stay in touch will do so on the regular pages. My email is shaffersdragons@aol.com Phone number, 864-376-8820. My web site will be institutional only. No more articles to people who could care less, or about people who often times don’t even say thank you. It had been a lot of work for little or no results. I am proud to have given so much positive recognition to people who otherwise were receiving none. I had a Red Dragon tab, to unify friends and recognize them for their friendship. I had a masters Bio page and really went all out to focus on their contributions. I supported personal projects and people, not popular personality power people. I’ve taken the road less traveled and stayed true to myself, my friends, and my dojo family. I didn’t sell out for promotion or politics and I stepped aside for no one. My time as a fighter is well documented as well as my continued training activity. My students don’t care what my rank is,  how many Halls Of Fame I am in, how many tournaments I have won, boards I served on…. and I don’t either. They care that I care, am obligated to be the best teacher I can be and look around the corners for them as to how their career should go.   

   My friends and enemies will both benefit from this decision. Basically I’ll be flying under the radar and in my dojo where I truly belong. My students are free to travel and train anywhere they choose. There is much to be learned from this. As long as they are above the rank of sho-dan, they can enter any event they want to train for, as long as I don’t always have to go. They are students as long as they so choose. They are not my property, or my loyal subjects. You don’t demand respect. You command it. Everything I know I have not learned in the martial arts. However, everything I know, I use in the martial arts. It is my life and I am going to protect and defend it. I know many good martial artists that feel the same way. The same way. I hope you will come see us.

 

   Epilog: I have gone into great detail. Yet, it is only the tip of the iceberg for me. My intention here, is to help my students and friends understand the complexity and simplicity of my decision as it pertains to final. I am not leaving, only pulling back. However, there is a difference between a retreat and a strategic withdrawal.