So, last month when I was visited by some of the goons from the Black Dragon Fighting Society in an attempt to intimidate me, one of them asked what my problem with their group was. Well, here it is.
The BDFS is just one of many groups that are essentially martial arts circle jerks. People join these things, sometimes called soke boards, to be ‘recognized’ as masters by other masters. The obvious question is who made these “masters” and gave them that title. The answer is, they gave it to themselves. But of course if person “A” declares himself a master and recognizes person “B” as the same, and in return person “B” returns the favor, then they don’t have to admit that they were egotistical morons. They can say they were named a master by someone else. That person uses the title “master” (or whatever) and calls them a master, so it appears to the unwary that they were judged by some high level martial artists and found worthy of the name.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
As I said, there are numerous groups like this filled with morons that are trying to look important to others. Sometimes they give out memberships to people that really are good martial artists without asking. That way they get to put them on their list of members to look impressive to soccer moms. The head of my organization, Masaaki Hatsumi, is a member of at least one group like this even though he didn’t ask to join and pays no attention to what the silly little men do in another country.
This is of course one of the first things I have with just the general idea of groups like the BDFS. They exist to promote themselves. I know several true masters, and a few real bad asses and they don’t devote energy to convincing others they are the real deal. They let their abilities speak for themselves. If you don’t think of them as masters, they don’t care. They don’t try to prove anything, because deep down they know they are what they are. No one else’s opinion matters to the real thing. The BDFS, with all its devotion to impressing others, it the complete opposite of what I expect from the worthy in martial arts.
This is not just related to groups you can join. Look at the way some martial artists give themselves fancy titles and make their students use that title with them. Grandmaster is too mundane for many of them and they insist on being called SUPREME grandmaster. They look up obscure titles like Anshu (actually, it means the head of a hermitage), hanshi, shihan and of course soke. They weren’t awarded such titles by teachers they went to for years. They gave it to themselves and had it ‘confirmed’ by circle jerks like the BDFS.
Look at their outfits. They may impress the soccer moms, but real uniforms of masters are lucky to have one patch telling what organization they belong to instead of all the patches the BDFS members have that make them look like NASCAR racers. I trained in Japan for many years and never saw the silly shoulder pads Frank Dux gets laughed at about. It all goes back to the way people in groups like the BDFS try to promote themselves, while the real masters are merely worried about functionality.
People that join the BDFS are like Thomas Daw, who pay 10 dollars a month or 100 for the year for the ‘honor’ of being a member. Here is a little video of the type of skill Daw and his like have.
I don’t mind people that are bad doing martial arts. I just resent egotistical incompetents like Daw and all the other members of the BDFS that take the responsibility of teaching people to survive when you can see their lack of skill. When you take on the responsibility to teach, people put their trust in you and depend on what you teach them. For me, I have fear when I teach that any mistakes I unknowingly pass on will get someone killed. If I merely practiced on my own, then my mistakes are my own and I will pay the price. Making someone else pay the price scares me and I keep challenging what I know and seeking deeper knowledge. It is not just me. The teachers I trained under could all be found at their teacher’s training every month. They were worlds better than anyone like Frank Dux, Thomas Daw or anyone else from the BDFS, and yet they still kept going back to have their mistakes pointed out to them and their training deepened. You don’t see that from anyone in the BDFS. The most you can hope for is superficial training, if even that. They talk about continuing to learn, but you would be hard pressed to see any examples. When you are learning, you need to discard some of the stuff you do for better versions. Part of the meaning of “master” is that you have already mastered everything. So to really challenge yourself and actually learn is to admit you are not a master. The idiots that join soke boards can’t admit that. Their image is too dear to them to admit they have much to learn and so they wallow in their incompetence for the rest of their pitiful lives.
Once you call yourself a master, your training and progress has ended. Once you set yourself up as the head of your own art, you will spend much more time and energy defending what you do right now than honestly accept that you might have some very fundamental problems. When your self image that you present to the world is of an elite martial artist, you can’t afford to accept that you might have flaws. And we all have flaws. We all could get better. But guys in the BDFS will never get any better than they are now.
My self image isn’t tied into what others think about me. I care more about what I know about myself than what others believe. If I am a thief, then I am filled with shame no matter if the rest of the believes me a saint. If I am doing my best to be a saint, then other’s mistaken belief that I am a thief doesn’t bother me. This is of course the exact opposite what the incompetents at the BDFS do as they preen and prance around playing the role of a martial arts master. There is a lesson for us to learn from this.
At its base, this is the problem I have with the very concept of a soke board. I have seen masters, and at their core they are different from the BDFS members for the reasons I outlined above. The BDFS will never be true masters because their outlook is wrong and they care more about fame than the truth. They devote themselves to self promotion rather than progress. They are all pitiful in a way.
In addition, groups like the BDFS aren’t in a position to judge much of anyone, let alone ‘recognize’ their fancy ranks. My teacher can judge me, not some fat slob that has never met me. If my teacher doesn’t give me some sort of honor, anything I get from someone in another time zone is worthless.
There is a myth that groups like the BDFS promote that someone in one art can judge another. That is just BS. I can’t judge Bagua. I know guys that do Hsing-yi- another Chinese internal art just like Bagua, that say they are not in a position to judge Bagua. Their art comes from the same country, are also internal styles and yet they can’t tell if a Bagua student is correct in a movement or mistaken. So how is some idiot that does watered- down karate supposed to certify someone claiming to teach kung-fu?
For them matter, how are groups like the BDFS supposed to check the claims of people. Obviously, with the massive frauds such as Frank Dux, Ashida Kim and Irvine Soto, the BDFS hasn’t put in any time of examining their bogus claims. This is par for the course. People think that by joining soke boards, people have their training history and accomplishments examined and confirmed. Nothing could be further from the truth. All you need is ten dollars a month and you can get a certificate from some group “certifying” you as a master. Some groups don’t even charge that much. A group called the Kempo Karate Family International under some yutz named Brad Marshall certified a convicted criminal in my city of Colorado Springs named Dan Harmon as their state representative. So much for background checks. And people use these certificates they get from groups like KKFI and BDFS to try to get jobs teaching children.
Really, I train in the Bujinkan and teach it. My rank and such would be easy to confirm if someone wanted to. But the other folks I trained with in Japan mainly don’t have anyone that speaks English. How are they to check my claims. They have huge numbers of people that claim to have trained from age 7 from mysterious old asian men that no one else has ever met. How are they supposed to confirm the existence of the bogus Kumite tournament Frank Dux and Irvine Soto claim to have won? There really is no way for a bunch of yokels from Chicago to check if someone’s claim of training at the Shaolin Temple is legit or not, so you can bet they just take cash the check and issue a pretty certificate, the facts about their past aren’t an issue with them. For that matter, neither is checking to see if their members have criminal records. One of my greatest fears is that a pedophile will use the certificate issued by one of these soke boards to gain employment somewhere and access to little kids. There are a lot more cases of pedophilia in the marital arts than most believe.
The BDFS has a special honor in this regard. They have Ron Collins. Ron has talked a lot about the BDFS and his ‘brothers’ in it. He talks about what they in the BDFS are going to do, etc. At the same time, Ron cackles about how he has been accused of raping a 13 year old girl, but avoided paying the legal price for it. He has a whole string of convictions for numerous crimes. The only reason he is out of prison right now is that he was found to be crazy and sent to a mental hospital until they could ‘cure’ him by means of medicine. Many of us think he isn’t taking his meds, and yet he was running around the last BDFS meeting in Lexington and posing for pictures with all of his fellow brothers in the BDFS.
Here is a link to the story of just one of the many times he was arrested.
http://www.wearewvproud.com/story/17587930/beckley-man-arrested-on-child-pornography-charges
This man has been arrested for stalking his victim after he was released from prison, child pornography, making terrorist threats, assaulting the victim I mentioned and a few other things. And yet the doors are open to him at BDFS events If for nothing else, that is the reason any other door should be closed to anyone who is a member of the BDFS. They let people like Ron Collins who brag about escaping justice for raping a 13 year old girl share meals and such with them, so who else like Ron is seeking legitimacy from the BDFS? Instead of barring their doors to him for entry, they welcomed him with open arms, taking pictures with him and even helping him come out and try to intimidate me with their numbers. They stood behind a man who lusts for little children and has a long list of criminal convictions. That alone should tell you why they should be avoided.
Of course, the BDFS is not alone in things like this. There are many groups such as the World Head of Family Council and anything with the word “soke” as part of their title that are just as bad at their core as the BDFS. But the lesson is, why would someone join a group like this? If it is a group that standardizes sport rules for sparring, I can see the use in that. If it is to bring together martial artists of a similar outlook, like a Christian or Muslim martial arts group, I can see the purpose. But any group like the BDFS that has at its central core the purpose of making its members look good is an abomination to real martial artists. They should be avoided at all costs. For real martial artists do not need them, but frauds, incompetents and only those seeking to hide something like the pedophile Ron Collins do have a need for them.