Nov 26 Dennis Jones – Emotion Led Fighting..

This interview was published in December 2005

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

SR  In last month’s article we talked about your early life, what led you into the martial arts and the prejudice you suffered.  You said that techniques were ‘emotion led’, where have emotions led you?

DJ In a street fight, nothing is cold and clinical. Even a person who’s not showing any anger as he’s hurting someone is still driven by emotions. The emotions involved can be overwhelming and can defeat you before any form of physical confrontation starts;  When you think about it, what makes someone hit somebody else on the head with a hammer?  Or a group of thugs kick someone to death?  What makes a person stick a glass in another persons face?

Often I’ve watched people ‘work themselves up’ getting ready to hurt someone, waiting for the opportunity perhaps for an hour or more before they go for it. They spend all their time plotting and letting their emotions build up.  They are not building up courage, they’re just waiting until they ‘tip themselves over the edge and go mad’ attacking when it’s least expected and when the intended target or should I say victim, is least prepared. I remember seeing one woman cut another woman’s throat; she was filled with envy, hate and jealousy when she did it.  In my experience as a doorman, violence is usually emotionally driven.

SR  You were bullied a lot as a youngster and even when you began training in the Martial Arts, the way that you overcame all that negativity was to work on the door, forcing  yourself to deal with confrontation.  How did you overcome it in the end?

DJ  I used my mind Steve!… Originally I started thinking about strength, in my twenties I thought that it was about getting in the boxing ring or a full contact karate fight, but that’s only strength in sport and is limited. Traditional Martial Artists talk a lot about character building and when you think about it, the training helps you to deal with life’s troubles and life can be really hard. What strength do you need to endure a marriage break up?  The pain of seeing children pulled between arguing parents, the death of your mother and father, the death of your child, the death of relatives and friends. I watched my father die and saw him cry over the death of his parents – and he was a ‘hard’ man.

I remember as he was getting older and approaching the end of his life, his thoughts became tinged with sadness. He constantly reminisced, talking to me, trying to make some sense of the past. He wanted ‘now’ to be the same as before, those same feelings he had when he was younger, but as his memories and the people he loved started to fade and die, he slowly became overwhelmed with the sadness of it all. My father, the toughest man I knew, was brought down and humbled by death.

I remember reading about Jehovah’s Witnesses being tortured and killed by the Nazis before and during World War Two and still not renouncing their faith, now that requires real strength, far superior to that required to fight in a full contact karate or mixed martial art bout – that required faith, inner strength and compassion.

SR  Was there a significant turning point for you?

DJ  Yes there were a number, but the first was at the age of 15 after I was almost killed in a street fight in London when an older guy tried to ram two broken milk bottles into my face and cut my face and neck – I was literally only a hairs breadth away from dying.  After that I thought “who are these people trying to bully me?”  And I started to turn – but it was a process that took a long time. 

I had  to change my mind and my whole way of thinking – and I used my mindset and emotions to achieve it.

SR  How did you do that?

DJ  I turned fear into hate and by doing this I overcame the bullying.  After forcing that change to occur in my mind, if someone attacked me I would be so upset that I would become incredibly violent and unstoppable. I would always do my best ‘not to go there’ but sometimes it was beyond my control. Getting hurt wasn’t an issue I just had to stop the bullying.

SR  You turned fear into hate, did you not then find that you had to learn to control the hate and violence that went with it?

DJ  Yes.  It turned me into a person that was prepared to ‘do anything’ if I had to.  There were quite a few occasions where I was stopped by my friends from seriously hurting someone and fortunately I’ve been able to control it since, but only when my emotions have subsided. 

I remember one night in the nightclub an older woman getting annoyed by a younger girl flirting with her boyfriend.  This woman was so jealous of the younger girl, they had a brief fight that we broke up and then she brooded on it for what must have been an hour, she then picked up a glass and ran at the younger girl and rammed the glass in the girl’s throat and face splitting her face wide open, the bouncers just managed to stop her from doing a second strike. An inch lower, according to the medical report, would have killed her and another strike might have found its mark and proved fatal.

When she was in the foyer, this woman who almost killed the younger girl was completely downcast.  She did 2 years in Holloway prison for that.  The other girl was in a right state and the girl who did the glassing was upset and didn’t say anything. She was emotionally drained and compliant.  Anger is directional and makes people blind to what’s going on around them, which in most cases is that everybody is trying to get away from them!  I’ve learnt that it’s better to hit someone before or after they explode, because at the time they are exploding they can be almost unstoppable.

SR  Do you find that you can now turn this hate and anger on and off like a tap?

DJ  No.  It gets turned on when it’s personal.  Normally I can ignore most things but when it gets personal I’m probably the most lethal that I can be.  At one club where I ran the doors the bouncers nicknamed me ‘tunnel vision’ because when I get that way, when it’s personal, that’s how I appear, totally focused on the job in hand.

SR  I think the what readers will be most interested by the fact that you turned fear into hate and then how that can be controlled.  If they turn their fear into anger when training, how are they going to be able to control it in their everyday life and stop themselves from getting convicted for murder?

DJ  For me it’s based on my experience.  I don’t feel that it’s like a tap.  I just get triggered by some things and not by others.

SR  You can see the fear though that some will have – they become that which they abhor.

DJ  Many people will never become like that.  They just don’t have it in them.  Martial artists train in their techniques and if they have to apply it for real in the street, suddenly find that the anger required to use it is missing.

I realised that anger and rage are hard to defeat.  Many good martial artists would be defeated on the street by a simple rugby tackle and being bitten. If you don’t train in rage and anger in the dojo, its pot luck whether you’ll find it when it counts outside.

SR  You are a polite and reasonable person, so you must have good control over that hate and rage?

DJ  I do the best I can – I have certain religious beliefs and a very strong idea of what’s right and wrong.  I don’t believe that violence is right, it’s sometimes just a response to a situation. You might lash out at someone who has insulted you, but if he has a gun, you would probably just accept it.  We act differently under different circumstances.

What I have discovered is that in any situation, there is one ‘window of opportunity’, one moment in which you can win, if you miss that moment, you stand a good chance of losing. The hardest thing is to be able to identify that moment and act.  My training partners will tell you that I hit hard, but in a real situation with the added emotions of hate and rage – I hit much harder!

Because I’ve been a victim of bullying and prejudice, I would NEVER want to do that anyone else unless they want to do that do me or to someone I have to protect.

SR Thank you Dennis.

DJ  Thank you Steve.

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: