Nov 06 Dennis Jones – Instructors and Street Fighting

This interview was recorded in August 2004

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

SR  Do you think that instructors need a lot of street fighting experience to teach people how to handle themselves in those situations?

DJ  Many people might be surprised at my answer but no, I don’t think that it’s necessary.  Personally the street experiences that I had became my last teacher-I made it work.  I developed my techniques by sinking, vibrating, leading with the Dantien and so on. But I didn’t know these terms back then… certainly not for the first 20 years. And then it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t doing anything new, I had only rediscovered the effectiveness of martial arts

SR  What do you think an instructor needs to be able to teach self defence?

DJ  Understanding based on truth and reality.  He or she must be able to differentiate between competition fighting, dojo sparring and what actually happens in the street.  In my opinion the old original katas contain a deep understanding of combat but much of this understanding has now been lost as its passed from generation to generation and culture to culture.

SR  So you think it’s important to differentiate between the “social” structured clubs that follow a university and sport type training programme originally introduced over here by the Japanese and those that actually teach people how to deal with what’s going on out in the streets?

DJ Yes and it’s not only people who do karate that need to be able to know the differences.

SR  Do you not feel that they should at least have someone with experience at the top of the chain to mentor downwards and ensure that “this understanding” is maintained?

DJ  Let me explain.  If you look at Iaido today, there are a number of styles that teach how to fight with a Japanese sword.  There may be someone still alive that has used a sword against a sword in battle but I doubt it.  The techniques that Iaido practitioners work with still come from the days when live blades were used in battle.

SR  What is interesting with iaido is that each set of forms go back in time.  As a beginner you begin you learn “seiti” iaido, a set of forms devised in the 1960’s by the masters of the time incorporating all the major styles, so that kendo practitioners could appreciate how to use a real sword.  Then you progress to “shoden” the “stylised” forms for the particular style practised which would normally accommodate the time when most combatants would be wearing a hakama and keogi.  The older forms are the “chuden” set which would be performed in “tate hiza” the style of kneeling when wearing battle armour and the cuts would accommodate the enemy wearing armour.  Finally you would learn “okuden” the oldest set of forms often called “hidden level” and you would literally have to sign an oath in blood to learn some of them as they contained the style’s “secret techniques”.

DJ  …  They progressed in that way because society had changed and there weren’t battles in armour anymore.  Therefore they had to adapt their techniques accordingly.

When I look at the application given by many instructors to the moves in kata and they are explained as “self defence” it makes me cringe.  The experience I’ve gained, from the conflicts with which I’ve been involved, has only confirmed the teachings of the warriors and martial artists of the past.

I have had the practical experience in the street.  Mentally, I’ve been pushed to “the edge” but the experiences that I’ve had have confirmed to me that “real martial arts” contain everything both mentally and physically that a student needs for self-defence.

The danger is that many martial artists have trained in a physical system (often with highly suspect techniques) without the mental aspect.  In a fight you find yourself in a state of “mental darkness”.  You can’t even write your name.  All your senses become distorted.  I’ll give you an example:

One night working on the door, about eight men came into the club, they all knew me and gave an “all right Den” as they came in.  Although I knew them, I made them pay the entrance fee; I could see that some of them were as high as kites.  But, wanting an easy life (big mistake) I let them all in, but deep down in my heart I knew that it was a wrong decision.

About an hour later trouble’s erupted upstairs and the other doormen went up leaving me and one other doorman on the door.  After what seemed ages, no one came down, no one was thrown out and I knew something was wrong.  I looked at the other doorman and the girl that took the money and said “I reckon this one’s for me” and went upstairs. 

When I arrived, one customer was sitting by the cloakroom with his face smashed, as I went in another was sitting on the floor with his face smashed, it was of course the guys that I had mistakenly let in.  One of them was tall, over six foot, skinny but with a muscular build.  He had his shirt off, showing off and was coked up to the eyeballs, he had injured the two guys that I had seen on the floor and was now terrorising everyone with his mates standing behind and encouraging him.

One doorman, a boxer had taken a few good shots at him, but they had effectively just bounced of him and had no effect.  I went over to him and he was very aggressive towards me.  I asked him to come over to another area to get him away from his friends.  Although they all knew me, they were enjoying the situation because they wanted to get my measure through this guy, and to be honest, if he knocked me down, they wouldn’t, except for one of them, have thought twice about putting the boot in just for the sake of it!

By now my body and mind functions had changed.  Since these guys had arrived,  everything had started going out of harmony – the heart beat, the breathing, the mind all were messed up!

SR When we talked about this before you stressed how your senses changed…

DJ Yeah Steve…  I had to really work to focus… the music was heaving, really loud, we would never have been able to have a conversation under normal circumstances, and yet speaking normally, we could both hear each other very clearly, strange, really strange.  I told him that he had to leave and using local vernacular he told me that I would have to make him.  The other doormen weren’t coping so I asked him to come to the foyer so that we could discuss the matter and luckily he did.  As we got into the foyer there was only the two of us, my mind was already focussed. I told him to leave and he repeated that he wasn’t going, I gave him his entrance fee and told him to go, high on drugs he said “you going to f****** make me”.  His mates were behind him backing him but I took the opportunity to right cross him, knocked him out and hospitalised him.  At this point there was a lot of shouting from the others, but they quietened down when I asked them if they had a problem.  They all backed down and I let them go back into the club.

At the end of the evening as I cleared them all out one of them said “that was a bit sneaky Den” at which point I asked him if he had a problem with it and he said “no”, and they left without any further trouble.

The point of the story is that the mental pressure in situations like this is immense and that is what most people training in the martial arts have a problem dealing with.

SR The system in most “traditional” martial arts contains the moves and most importantly the mental training required to cope with these situations.  It is up to the instructors to be able to interpret what they have been taught and penetrate the system sufficiently to find it in there.

DJ If an instructor just endlessly goes on about biting peoples noses and ears, gouging their eyes etc… he’s only really doing a form of positive affirmation for himself.  Out of the hundreds of people I’ve heard making those statements only a few will actually do it.  Doing that sort of thing to an idiot is easy, apart from the fact that you will probably be arrested.  But doing it when a situation is on a knife-edge is very hard mentally.  The right zenic mental state is the only way to go.  Couple this with realistic training as opposed to modern sport or school structure style training, learning from those that know what they are doing will help those that don’t.  Whether the original people with direct experience are still alive or not, as long as it’s passed down correctly, it will still work.

Steve, in the book “Musashi – by Eiji Yoshikawa” there are a few lines:…although weapons were as familiar to them as chopsticks, their experience had been primarily in the dojo.  The chance to witness, much less have, a real bout would occur only a few times throughout their lives…”

Experience is hard to get but what happens in a fight is as old as mankind. There is a true history of combat hidden in the forms. Men who had fought for real developed them. Find out how to apply the techniques, don’t look for the obvious, everything seems hidden, but if you ignore the past you do it at your own peril. 

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.

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