Ed Parker apparently never made it to Black Belt in the system taught by Thunderbolt Chow. Heck, halfway through teaching his students, he had to go home to Hawaii because he ran out of material and needed more. And, Chow told him no.
So he made up martial arts, hired a kung fu artist to help make up new forms and techniques, redid his system (five times), and so on. The result was that he could award tenth degree black belts, host tournaments, inspire the starting of chains of schools, and some people hold that he was only a brown belt. And the whole world was fooled into accepting him as the grand poobah of martial arts, and hardly anybody but a dedicated Kenpoist knows where he learned.
And if you think Ed Parker did some bad things, wait until you consider Bruce Lee! Bruce ‘The Little Dragon’ Lee apparently didn’t finish his Wing Chun training. He was apparently involved in the street gangs of his native country and his parents finally had enough of his bad ways and sent him to cool off in the United States! In the United States, though he hadn’t completed his Ving Tsun training under Yip Man, he started teaching that martial art to whoever wanted to learn.
Not knowing the whole wing chun system, he began bolstering it up with studies in boxing, fencing, and 24 other martial arts. Yes, he was a sponge, but he was teaching Kung Fu outside his community, betraying his race (according to some), and teaching stuff that went beyond the classical martial arts. He was teaching a wild eclectic Jeet Kune Do system that went far beyond the classical forms training of the time.
The culmination was a fight with no winner (Wong Jack Man), and then he throws it all away for Hollywood! Is that the mark of a true martial artist? Or is that some unbalanced fellow whining for fame?
Now, it is time for this writer to fess up. Most of you readers know what I am doing anyway. I am engaging in a little yellow journalism for sarcastic sake.
Ed Parker, Bruce Lee, and other inventors studied sufficient in the classical martial arts to know what it was, then they chose, for whatever reasons, their own directions. They then outshone their teachers, and expanded the field of the martial arts to the benefit of all. Yes, Bruce Lee and Ed Parker were traitors, as are all true artists, as need to be anybody who wants to go beyond same old same old training methods and learn the true martial arts.
Want to be a inventor in the martial arts? Want to develop your own system and discover the truth that Bruce Lee and Ed Parker discovered? Head on over to Monster Martial Arts.
haha.. nice article, very cute!
check out our new clip that we just posted, let us know what you think! (although we stuck to Krav Maga)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWHQqarw8Rc&feature=player_embedded