Nov 20 Dennis Jones – Different Arts and Styles..

This interview was recorded in August 2005

Steve Rowe talks to Shi Kon martial artist and night club doorman Dennis Jones.

SR We’ve just returned from the SENI exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham which bought together many different martial arts, it was great to see such a huge variety.  On the way back we were discussing the 1977 exhibition at Crystal Palace where the Martial Arts Commission put on a multi martial art, multi style event.  What’s your view on different ‘arts’ and ‘styles’?

DJ  If you looked in the Guinness Book of Records at that time, under the heading ‘Karate’, you’d have found listed Shotokan, Wado, Goju and Kyokushinkai, it listed some of the founders like Oyama, Funakoshi, Ohtsuka and mentioned competition karate with names like Ticky Donovan and Eugene Codrington.  Under the heading ‘Kung Fu’ it mentioned Bruce Lee – and Judo had its own separate section. 

At the MAC event in ‘77 they featured the ‘punching and kicking’ styles from Japan, China and Korea.

SR I also remember about that time, Lakos Jakab, the Polish guy that advertised that he could “kill someone with his nose”…

DJ  (Laughter) you’re going back there Steve!  I believe he trained under Baron Omidi…  I remember him offering challenges in the newspapers at the time.

SR  He trained Roger Moore for his role in the James Bond films.

DJ  In 1973 four of his guys did the first full contact martial art bouts on television, I think they featured it during the Saturday afternoon wrestling with Ken Walton.

SR  Ahhh…. Saturday afternoon wrestling, with Mick McManus, Jackie Pallo, Kendo Nagasaki, Billy Two Rivers, ‘Ironfist’ Clive Myers….  those were the days!

DJ  That makes me feel old!  Back to the MAC event in 1977, they did feature Prof Blundell and Ju Jitsu, but even they focussed on the punching and kicking, I guess because of the Bruce Lee craze that was thought to be the most effective way of fighting at the time.

The fundamental differences between the MMA and grappling events at SENI  and the MAC exhibition was that grappling played a fundamental part of the SENI show. 

SR  Do you think that any of the punch/kick arts in ’77 practised or even knew about grappling?

DJ  When I was a kid in the ‘60’s, everyone loved the Saturday afternoon wrestling. Even in those days we had the debate of “would a wrestler beat a boxer” and so on. As kids we all grappled, trying the locks and throws we saw on TV.

SR  Jackie Pallo would have beaten them all!

DJ  What about Johnnie Kwango and Catweazle?  Back then a lot of people said that boxing was superior to wrestling and during the 50s and later, in America, they had bouts between different kinds of fighters.

SR  Mohammed Ali and Anthony Inochi in the ‘70’s was a bit of a non starter..

DJ  That was about 1976 and if I remember rightly they had trouble working out the rules. At that time, most karate technique in the UK was structured around tournament and I remember reading in the book ‘Moving Zen’ by C W Nicholls that when he was training in Japan everyone had respect for a particular tai chi master and his power and ability. Nicholls was in a house and this master was hitting the wall and making the house shudder! That got me thinking and then in Funakoshi’s book, he talked about practising opening and closing the (soapy) hands into a fist many times to strengthen the grip. And I remember wondering did he do that for grappling or perhaps for holding a weapon.

When I was 13 years old, I was a boy scout and along with many other kids at the time, always wore a sheath knife. I had a Bowie knife with a 6 inch blade. Anyway I had a problem with another boy and we decided to meet up in the park for a ‘fight’.  The funny thing is that we both took off our belts and knives and put them to the side!  It just didn’t enter our heads to use the knives.  I guess it’s the culture you grow up in.  At SENI the grappling or mixture of grappling and striking, was familiar to me as it was a culture I’d grown up with. From an early age we all wrestled and punched. It was only when I first started karate that I was told not to – but it was so natural…

SR  The hikite (withdrawing hand) in karate is the pulling hand…There’s no problem with grabbing and grappling combined with strikes is not anathema to karate.

DJ  That’s right, its human nature, if I were chopping down the weeds in my garden with a machete, I’d hold the weeds in my left hand and cut with the machete in  my right.  This is how we do our karate, grabbing and holding, but in the ‘70’s we were taught all strikes.  With experience, it became obvious that many kata techniques were grabbing, twisting, locking, dislocating, throwing and so on.

SR  If you look at Chinese weapons such as the one-handed sword, double edge and broadsword, both hands are always active in this way.  One hand is grappling whilst the other cuts or strikes.

DJ  When I started on the night club doors in the early eighties, some of  the older bouncers I worked with were ex-professional wrestlers.  Many doormen, myself included use grappling extensively to prevent us from getting arrested.  We utilise ‘sleepers’ chokes and holds so as to not cause too much harm and to prevent the obvious bleeding caused by strikes. If doorman are involved in a lot of fights most of them will ‘naturally’ develop one or two very effective techniques.

SR  I think that’s where tai chi really scores well – it’s ‘in your face’ and is 60 – 70% grappling but practically combined with striking, locking and dislocation.

DJ  I’m not that big compared to some of the people I have to deal with, so I have to use  grappling and twisting techniques to neutralise their power and stretch and twist their body to make my strikes more effective. Street fighting is about twisting, turning and moving around in circles. People grab and in a melee you can have ‘hands all over you’ pulling you around. Try punching when someone’s got hold of your arm. You want to hit the person in front of you but the person behind you is stopping it from happening. Already your mind is working in two parts and who do you attack first? Suddenly you’re in a fight and it feels like nothing you’ve trained for.

Even how you see is different. People are taught not to blink. So you squint your eyes but blinking is natural so why waste effort training not to blink. Also there’s no need to stare because if you’ve got resolve in your heart it will be seen in your eyes.

SR…What do you think is the difference between ‘wrestling’ and the approach that martial artists tend to take to grappling?

DJ  Wrestling is as old as man. Like lion cubs play fighting, developing their skills for the hunt, children wrestle. When I was a youngster I use to love reading the American wrestling magazines. Cage fighting and wrestlers like Abdullah the butcher were exciting. Size and strength cannot be ignored nor played down with a comment (which I’ve heard many times) like ‘he’s muscle bound and can’t get out of a swimming pool by himself.’ Answering your question Steve, when you’re young, you tend to use strength to pull your opponent about so that you can get a technique on. As you get older you start losing your strength. You then have to learn to twist and turn going with him as opposed to trying to pull him about. You move with the opponent, that to me is the difference and the ‘economy of motion’ Bruce Lee often quoted.

SR  When you’re pulled, you push and when you’re pushed, you pull; Aikido uses circles; turning in and turning out.

DJ   As you know Steve, it’s so hard to do in a real fight, if only it was that easy! I ended up wrestling a guy once, it had gone off in the nightclub and a group of lads were fighting so I grabbed this one guy around the neck. He was bent over at the waist and I was throttling him as I was trying to pull him back. He was moving forward dragging me with him. He was only about 13 stone, I was about 15 1/2 stone and quite strong because I was training with weights at the time. But I couldn’t hold him and there I was for all my training, at the edge of the dance floor struggling with this one small guy! There was no way a strong bicep and tricep muscle was going to win in this situation. For what seemed like ages I was standing there, I was losing my strength and feeling a right idiot. Suddenly I had this bright idea – it felt like a moment of inspiration but it was simple really…

SR   What did you do?

DJ   I don’t know what made me want to pull him back. Where did that technique (if it was a technique!) come from…? But I let go and then pushed and ran forward with him. I rammed him head first into the side of the bar and knocked him out!

SR…Now that’s a Tai Chi lesson if ever there was one!  Thanks Dennis.

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me: