A Chronological History of the Martial Arts

and Combative Sports 1940-now (rev01/05)

The National Library of Canada provides an authorized mirror of this e-publication. The base
document, however, is the one at http://ejmas.com/kronos. Most recent update: December
2004. Copyright 2000-2004 Joseph R. Svinth All rights reserved.

Introduction
Kronos; A Chronology of the Martial Arts and Combative Sports, represents my idiosyncratic
interpretation of the history of the martial arts, combative sports, and associated philosophical
topics. If you have suggestions for improvement, please let me know. If you think you can do
better, please do so.
The periods covered are:
0000 to 0499: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist0000-0499.htm
0500 to 1349: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist0500-1349.htm
1350 to 1699: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist1350-1699.htm
1700 to 1859: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist1700-1859.htm
1860 to 1899: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist1860-1899.htm
1900 to 1939: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist1900-1939.htm
1940 to present: http://ejmas.com/kronos/NewHist1940.htm
The bibliographies are at:
A-F: http://ejmas.com/kronos/MABibA-F.htm
G-M: http://ejmas.com/kronos/MABibG-M.htm
N-Z: http://ejmas.com/kronos/MABibN-Z.htm
Online references, a summary of recent changes, and general housekeeping information are
found at:
http://ejmas.com/kronos

If you prefer reading traditional print format, then please see the abbreviated chronology in
Thomas A. Green, Martial Arts of the World: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2001).
Meanwhile, if you prefer reading articles arranged topically rather than chronologically, then
please see the essays in Green's encyclopedia and the chapters in Thomas A. Green and
Joseph R. Svinth, editors, Martial Arts in the Modern World (Greenwood, 2003).
Finally, if you want to see how Kronos has evolved over time, then please see the first edition,
which appears online at http://ejmas.netfirms.com/kronos.

***

1940:
During a talent show given at Chengtu, China, missionary Margaret Simkin sees some husky
young women from Ginling College displaying their skill in dance, fencing, Chinese boxing,
and European gymnastics. While describing the show to friends in Canada, Simkin said,
"There is abundant hope for China in such as these."
The Hon Hsing Athletic Club is established in Vancouver, British Columbia, and its chuan fa
classes were probably the first organized Chinese martial art classes in Canada. However,
non-Chinese students were not allowed until the 1960s. "It used to be that the Chinese
instructors wouldnt teach Westerners," Raymond Leung told Ramona Mar in 1986. "But its
wrong to think that if we teach them, theyll use it to beat us. With every new student, I think
we make one new friend."
In Montreal, 19-year old Joe Weider publishes the first issue of Your Physique, a 12-page
mimeographed newsletter devoted to bodybuilding. (The difference between bodybuilding
and weightlifting is that the former is semi-erotic muscular theater whereas the latter is
nationalistic athletic competition.) It sold well, and by the 1960s, Joe and his younger brother
Ben were leaders in the health and fitness publishing industry.
Hundreds of English witches gather in the New Forest to send Adolf Hitler the telepathic
message, "You cannot cross the sea." According to Gerald B. Gardner, an English warlock
who also wrote a noted book on krisses and other Malay weapons, the gratifying results of the
Battle of Britain were proof of the continuing power of English sorcery.
The British government hires William Fairbairn to teach British commandos to fight dirty.
Fairbairns favorite unarmed fighting techniques included fingers in the eyes, palm-heel
strikes to the chin, and kicks to the groin, and a subsequent German manual based on these
methods was called Englischer Gangster-Methoden. In 1942, Fairbairn left Scotland for North
America. The most famous person to view Fairbairn-style training in Canada was novelist Ian
Fleming, who saw an exhibition during a day-trip to Camp X, outside Ottawa, in 1943. Many
future CIA leaders also took the course from Fairbairn at a similar OSS camp near Camp
David, Maryland. Rex Applegate describes the meat of this latter course in his book Kill or
Get Killed. Meanwhile, the British also send Lt. Col. J.C. Mawhood to Tidal River Camp, in
Victoria, Australia, to teach these methods to Australian commandos. Because there were not

many people in Australia who knew any Asian martial arts, most Australian hand-to-hand
combat instructors of the era were professional boxers or wrestlers. Pioneer instructors
included Alf Volker and Ken "Blue" Curran. However, during the 1950s, the Australian
military began teaching soldiers rudiments of Asian martial arts. These instructors included
men who had received training in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam. Following the
Vietnam War, the Australian military emphasis shifted to nuclear threats, and as a result,
Australian military interest in hand-to-hand combat declined. Then, during the late 1980s, the
Australian military began routinely participating in United Nations peacekeeping operations,
and so, by the early 1990s, there was increased interest in providing Australian Special Forces
soldiers with realistic training in close-quarter fighting. Thus, in 1994, a Military Unarmed
Combat Wing was introduced to 11 Training Group. Pioneers included Majors John Whipp
and Gregory Mawke. Although Military Unarmed Combat Wing was closed in 1996, the
Australian military continued to conduct military unarmed combatives at unit level into the
early 21st century.
The Japanese Army intentionally introduces typhus, cholera, and the bubonic plague into
Chekiang Province, where it was then involved in fighting the Nationalist Chinese. Although
this is the best-known instance of modern biological warfare, this is actually the second
verified instance. The first occurred in September 1939, when the Japanese Army Unit 731
dumped typhus bacteria into water that advancing Soviet units were expected to use.
Following Icelands declaration of independence from Nazi-occupied Denmark, glima
becomes mandatory in Icelandic public schools. This association with school, rules, and
supervised competition effectively killed "joy wrestlings" sense of play, and by the 1980s,
there were barely 1,000 members in Icelands fourteen wrestling clubs.
1941:
Choy Hak-Peng introduces Yang-style tai chi chuan to New York City. Choys students were
all Chinese.
Toward instilling martial discipline and patriotism into school children, the Japanese Ministry
of Education introduces judo and kendo into its fifth grade physical education programs. At
the same time, school gymnastics (tasen) were renamed "physical discipline" (tairen). Under
this scheme, which was influenced by Nazi Strength through Joy pedagogy, budo was said to
include radio transmission, grenade throwing, close-order drill, and races in armor while
carrying sandbags.
A 16-year old Latvian sniper named Elsa Smuskevich makes the Red Army newspapers by
killing her first German outside Murmansk. "A woman has to have a reason to fight, a reason
to leave her home and go to war," Smuskevich tells an interviewer 45 years later. "If she has
that reason she is a wonderful soldier."
Bob Hoffman of York Barbell introduces the idea of womens weightlifting and bodybuilding
to the readers of Strength & Health. His motivation? A middle-aged mans desire to display
his two much younger girlfriends.
1942:

During one of the last cavalry charges on record, the Japanese machine-gun a Sikh cavalry
unit in Burma. News of the failure causes the United States Army to replace its cavalry horses
with tanks and trucks. (Previously it had been hoped that horses would be usable in the
Burmese forests. Although the Italian Savoia regiment staged a successful cavalry attack on a
Russian unit outside Stalingrad as late as August 1942, such attacks were essentially obsolete.
(Even the Soviet newsreels showing Cossack cavalrymen charging Nazi tanks were
propaganda pieces, the Red Army having effectively destroyed the Don and Kuban Cossacks
in 1920, and the Russians actually used their equestrians as mounted infantry. The South
Africans and Rhodesians also used mounted infantry into the 1980s, but mounted infantry and
cavalry are not the same things.) That said, the French army continued to teach equestrian
skills to prospective tank commanders into the 1990s. The reason was that French saw horses
as useful for teaching physical fitness, self-confidence, and the spirit of the cavalry. They also
reasoned that a man who could get a 900-pound horse to do what he wanted would have no
trouble achieving the same from a man.
Near Cholm, Russia, the Germans introduce the worlds first assault rifle, the MKB42, to
combat. Using lighter cartridges (in this case, 7.92 by 33mm Kurz), assault rifles combined
the convenience and cyclic rate of submachine guns with the effective range and stopping
power of rifles. And, while the German weapon was overly complex, the idea impressed the
Soviets, who were working on their own self-loading weapons chambered in 7.62 x 39mm.
The result was the Simonov self-loading carbine (SKs) introduced in 1943 and the AK-47
assault rifle introduced in 1947.
The German firm HASAG, which was based in Leipzig and used slave labor from the
womens camp attached to Buchenwald, begins developing a recoilless anti-tank weapon
called the Faustpatrone. Throughout the rest of World War II, HASAG developed increasingly
powerful versions known as Panzerfaust, and development continued in the Soviet Union
afterwards. Thus, in 1961, the Soviets introduced an improved Panzerfaust known as the
Raketniy Protivotankoviy Granatomet, or RPG-7. Improved projectiles followed, and by the
mid-1980s, the RPG-7 had become the weapon of choice for irregular troops pitted against
medium to high technology militaries. Although the launch, with its backblast and rocket trail,
invariably gave away the firers position, the projectiles were useful for anti-vehicular, antipersonnel, or anti-helicopter missions. Moreover, because pinpoint accuracy was not required,
training time was minimal.
The Japanese replace the Dutch colonial government of Indonesia with an Islamic nationalist
government. Leaders of the new government included Achmed Sukarno and Mohammad
Hatta. With Japanese approval, these Indonesian nationalists then used the dance-like
Indonesian martial art of silat as a method for uniting ethnically, culturally, and religiously
diverse peoples. This modern usage is behind the subsequent stories about silat having been
developed for military use against colonial powers. (If silat has practical value in a postmodern military setting, then it is primarily in teaching students to cooperate and move
together in time. Why do I say this? Consider, for example, that eight Malayans trained in
silat successfully resisted a Chinese attack on their village in August 1949. Since the
Malayans resisted using rifles rather than fists, then what use was their silat? Increased unit
cohesion? Greater physical fitness? Improved self-confidence? All militarily useful things, to
be sure, but each is more rapidly and efficiently taught using football or close-order drill than
silat. So this suggests that the main value is not martial, but instead teaching people to value
their own culture and traditions.)

To reduce factional violence between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, the British stop all Indian
professional wrestling championships. Regional championships resume after Partition in
1947, and Indian national championships resume in 1953. The driving force behind their
resumption was a Bombay millionaire named Gustad Irani.
In the city of Yenan, in Shensi Province, 1,300 Communist Chinese athletes compete in
basketball, volleyball, track-and-field, swimming, and military events. The military events
included equestrian sports, chuan fa demonstrations, mass calisthenics, river fording, and
wrestling.
Masayoshi "James" Mitose, a Japanese-educated Japanese American ("Kibei"), starts teaching
a Japanese martial art at Honolulus Beretania Mission. Mitose called his style kenpo jujitsu
("fist law jujutsu"), and wrote in his 1953 book, What is Self Defense, that the art was
hundreds of years old. Like many of Mitoses claims, this has not been externally
documented, and photos show something that looks suspiciously like karate. Anyway,
between 1942 and 1953, Mitose promoted six students to 1-dan. Among these was William
K.S. Chow, who actually trained under Mitoses student Thomas Young. In 1944, Chow
started his own class at the Nuuanu YMCA, and in 1949, Chow began calling his methods
"kenpo karate." Chow continued teaching kenpo karate (though not always by that name)
until his death in 1987, and his better-known students included Adrianao Emperado, Ed
Parker, Bill Chun, Ralph Castro, and much later, Sam Kuoha.
While training a joint US-Canadian commando group, an Irish close-combat instructor named
Dermot ("Paddy") ONeill introduces a new all-in, jump-on-the-testicles theory of fighting
into North America. ONeills methods, which included techniques borrowed from Kodokan
judo and W. E. Fairbairns defendu system, were mentioned in a book and a movie called The
Devils Brigade. After the war, ONeill taught close combat to the CIA, and in 1966 the US
Marine Corps considered using a modified ONeill program during its recruit training.
Judging from the photographs in the manual (FMFM 1-4 dated November 1966), the ONeill
system taught good takedowns and strangleholds, mediocre kicks and punches, and lousy
knife techniques. The latter failing was not ONeills fault, as the Corps remained wedded to
its Great War-era theories of knife fighting well into the 1980s.
At the urging of Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, the United States Navy introduces a
12-week physical fitness program for naval aviators. Known as the V-5 program, its trainers
used tackle football to teach teamwork, running and swimming to build endurance, boxing for
aggressiveness, and a kind of wrestling called "rough and tumble" for self-defense. Students
learned about vital points of the human body, and were urged to forego fair play in order to
win. While a well-designed curriculum, the chief fault of the program was that it taught more
than anyone could hope to master in 12 weeks. Of course, individual mastery was never a
major goal for V-5 trainers. Instead, their job was only to convert pleasant, well-mannered
college students into disciplined killers as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
The Union Cutlery Company of Ithaca, New York begins making utility knives for the United
States Marine Corps. Known as KA-BARs after a trademark stamped onto their blades, these
knives were rarely used for anything more dangerous than opening rations. (Even if 44% of
American soldiers surveyed claimed that they wanted to kill a Japanese, probably a lot fewer
wanted to slit him open with a knife, then hold him down as he kicked and bled and
screamed.) Nevertheless, the hyperbole of the aging but enthusiastic Lieutenant Colonel
Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, "the old geezer that knows more ways of killing than any man

alive," soon made KA-BARs one of the most famous weapons of World War II. In 1952, John
Styers published some improved versions of Biddles knife and bayonet methods in a book
called Cold Steel.
With so many men off to war, female rassling becomes popular in the United States. The
audiences were about half men and about half women and school-age boys. The rasslers were
working-class women who viewed rassling as a way of earning good money -- up to $100 a
week for a champion -- while staying physically fit. While the most famous female rassler
was Mildred Burke, her peers included Clara Mortensen, Mae Young, Gladys Gillem, and
Elvira Snodgrass. Promoters included Jack Pfefer and Billy Wolfe.
World heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis is drafted into the United States Army.
Because his service helped African American men overcome their doubts about serving in
what many African Americans perceived as just another white mans war, he was eventually
promoted to the rank of staff sergeant and awarded a Legion of Merit. Meanwhile, white exchampions such as Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey were appointed officers in the Navy and
the Coast Guard, and paid more and treated better for doing the same job (e.g., selling war
bonds and teaching boxing to recruits). In defense of Tunney and Dempsey, both were good
public speakers and successful businessmen. Consequently, they were as deserving of their
rank as anyone else. Louis, on the other hand, was a poor public speaker and a worse
businessman. Consequently, his rank is also reasonable. Nonetheless, the American military of
World War II was strictly segregated, and in 1944, Sergeant Louis found himself pulling
strings to get ballplayer Jackie Robinson, an Army lieutenant, discharged rather than courtmartialed. Robinsons crime? Refusing to sit at the back of an Army bus.
According to tradition, second-generation Mexican youths living in the barrios of Los
Angeles begin wearing zoot suits and forming street gangs. (The former showed group pride
while the other supposedly protected Hispanic women from the depredations of drunken
sailors and Marines.) While the story compresses time (both zoot suits and barrio gangs date
to the 1920s instead of the 1940s) and confuses causality (the gangs were formed to protect
Hispanic schoolboys from other Hispanic schoolboys), the story suggests how social,
economic, and political conditions lead to what historians call "invented traditions."
1943:
While looking for methods of easing the pain of childbirth, the Swiss biochemist Albert
Hofmann discovers the hallucinogenic effects of rye ergot fungus. (The key ingredient was
lysergic acid, or LSD.) By 1948, the CIA and KGB had become interested in Hofmanns
discovery, and over the next twenty years their financing caused the development of synthetic
hallucinogens such as LSD-25, DMT, BZ, and EA-1475. The uses that the Cold Warriors
imagined that they would get from these developments included improvements in
brainwashing techniques. What they got was an increase in urban street crime.
At the instigation of S.L.A. Marshall, a Detroit journalist turned military historian, and
General Curtis LeMay, a B-17 group commander, the United States Army develops postcombat debriefings. The purpose of these after-action reports, as they became better known,
was to learn precisely what happened during a battle, as that way systemic problems could be
identified and resolved. The methodology involved getting everyone from private to colonel
in one place, then, in LeMays words, asking "what went right, what went wrong, and why it
went wrong. And each of you is in the act. Everybody has his say. If you think your group

commander is a stupid son-of-a-bitch, now is the time to say it. And why." When the
questions were asked by someone as frank as LeMay or as insightful as Marshall,
observations could be surprising. For example, Marshalls most surprising (and controversial)
observation was that just 20-25% of Army infantry fired their individual weapons against
human targets. Ever. Unfortunately, Marshall was not above stretching a fact to prove a point,
and many subsequent writers contested the exact percentage of shooters and non-shooters. No
matter; during the Korean War, the Army treated these numbers as gospel and went about
improving them. In a 1995 book called On Killing, Army psychologist Dave Grossman wrote
that the Army did this through desensitization, conditioning, and denial. Desensitization
involved teaching soldiers to view non-soldiers and potential enemies as sub-humans, to
applaud group violence, and to develop a culture where excessive drinking was strongly
approved. Conditioning involved building rifle ranges where soldiers took quick shots at
human silhouette targets rather than carefully aimed shots at bulls eyes. Denial included
stressing that individual soldiers fired only upon order, and never upon their own initiative.
("Ich musste," said all the Nazis during the Nuremberg trials: "I had to.") These changes
evidently increased unit lethality. (Unverified Army data reports firing rates of 55% in 1951
and 90% in 1971.) Apparently, the changes also contributed to increased risk of postwar
alcoholism, suicide, and divorce.
About 1944:
In Pernambuco, Brazil, Paulino Aloisio Andrade teaches a stick-fighting game called
macull to a group of local children, and then has the children participate in various regional
festivals and folklore shows. Machetes were later added to the act for the sparks that flew
when the players blades hit. Although macull is taught in many modern capoeira schools,
the masters of the art remain Andrades sons Valfrido Viera de Jesus and Zezinho.
1944:
California bans women from participating in public combat for profit (in other words, from
boxing and wrestling). On the other hand, in 1955, Illinois upheld the right of women to
wrestle. By 1972, most other states had followed suit. Important trainers of women wrestlers
during the 1950s and 1960s included Lillian Ellison and Mildred Burke.
Paul Kaelemakule of Honolulu awards Wally Jay a black belt in judo. Following World War
II, Jay moved to California, where he developed a jujutsu-based system that he called Small
Circle Jujitsu. The fundamental principle of Small Circle Jujitsu involved using the action of
the wrist as fulcrum, lever, and base. Jay credited this understanding of leverage to the
teachings of Danzan Ryu teacher Ken Kawachi.
The worlds first bench-rest shooting association, the Puget Sound Snipers Congress, is
established at Seattle, Washington. Roy Meister was its first champion, with shot groups that
averaged 2.235 inches at 200 yards. By 1993, world-record shot groups measured .147 inches,
and US Army contracts required military ball ammunition to shoot 2-inch groups at 200 yards.
New York sportswriter Al Laney finds the Afro-Canadian fighter Sam Langford, arguably the
greatest boxer never to win a championship, blind and nearly penniless in a Harlem walk-up.
"I got a geetar and a bottle of gin and money in my pocket to buy Christmas dinner," said
Langford. "No millionaire in the world got more than that." Meanwhile, in Japan, pre-war
judo champion Kimura Masahiko was pasting drawings of food around his room, then staring

at them as he slowly chewed the rice balls that formed the bulk of his 900-calorie a day diet.
Both cases show how important visualization is to a champion.
1945:
The publication of The Male Hormone by Paul de Kruif helps popularize synthetic
testosterone use among California bodybuilders.
A firestorm started by the magnesium bombs delivered by US Air Force B-29 bombers kills a
quarter million Japanese, and burns Funakoshi Gichins original Shotokan Dojo to the ground.
The Japanese Army starts teaching karate to members of its special attack squadrons.
According to a Wado-ryu teacher named Nishizono Takatoshi, this training involved little
more than teaching highly fit young men to punch to the face and kick to the testicles. As
elementary as this sounds, this was also easier said than done, as Allied prisoners-of-war had
long ago discovered that the average Japanese soldier punched, in the vernacular of the day,
round arm, like a girl.
Hwang Kee, a Korean who apparently trained in Shotokan or Shutokai karate while working
for the Japanese Railways in Manchuria, establishes the Mu Duk Kwan, or "Martial Virtue
Hall," near the Yong San railroad station in Seoul. (His original students were all railroad
workers.) Hwang originally called his own method tang soo do, which was karate written in
its pre-1936 characters. However, in 1960, he changed this name to Soo Bahk Do, or "the
Way of the Striking Hand." The change was partly nationalistic, as the new name alluded to
medieval Korean boxing while the old name referred to Okinawan karate. Mostly, though, it
was cold-hearted politics: Hwang was simultaneously resisting making his Mu Duk Kwan
part of the government-controlled Korea Taesoodo Association.
After serving as driver (and girlfriend) to the Free French General Marie-Pierre Koenig
throughout most of World War II, the Englishwoman Susan Travers is admitted into the
French Foreign Legion as a sergeant major.
General Henry Arnold uses $10 million from the Air Force budget to establish a private
company in Santa Monica, California. This was not corruption, but instead the beginnings of
the Research and Development, or RAND, Corporation, whose missions included designing
intercontinental missiles, supersonic airplanes, and nuclear wars. To accomplish the first two
tasks, scores of German scientists were hired. (Most US technological advances of the 1950s
in jet aircraft and rocketry technology was based on German research of the 1930s.) Toward
accomplishing the latter task, researchers at the RAND Corporation invented hexagonal
movement tables for military war games. This idea came from a scientifically popular
mathematical game created by John Nash of Princeton University in 1948. In 1958, a
Maryland company called Avalon Hill borrowed the RAND Corporations hexagonal
movement tables, and used them in a commercial war game called Gettysburg. The Avalon
Hill format quickly generated a closet full of imitators, and in 1991, Coalition planners used a
direct descendant called Gulf Strike to rehearse their ground war against Iraq.
About 1946:
Savate enjoys a renaissance in France, in part as a way of restoring national pride. Leaders in
this movement included Pierre Baruzy, who won the French savate championship eleven

times before World War II. The first postwar French championship took place in 1947. In
1970, this title was elevated to championship of Europe, and in 1991, to the championship of
the world. The first womens savate championship took place in 1982.
1946:
The Zuni Indians of New Mexico hold purification rituals for their young men returning home
from military service during World War II. The Zuni called their rite hanasema isu waha, or
"bad luck, get rid of it." Its purpose was to rid former soldiers of their bad memories. (These
included serving in a white mans army as well as stepping into rotting German bodies.) The
Rama Navajo, Teton Lakota, and many other American Indian communities held analogous
services for returning war veterans following both World War II and Korea. The absence of
such outpourings of community support for non-Indian soldiers returning from Vietnam is
often cited as a reason for the Vietnam Wars high percentage of post-traumatic stress
sufferers. Yet, the exorcisms and community support did not help the Indian veterans much,
either. For instance, Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who helped raise the United States flag over Iwo
Jima in 1945, died face-down in a ditch a few years later. Therefore, medical awareness rather
than the absence of parades is probably responsible for the Vietnam Wars high reported rate
of stress disorders.
Before his rematch with the fleet-footed Billy Conn, heavyweight boxer Joe Louis tells
reporters, "He can run. But he cant hide."
Robert Trias, who said he learned Shuri-te karate while stationed in the Pacific with the US
Navy, establishes the first karate school on the United States mainland. Trias school was in
Phoenix, and many of his early students worked for the Arizona Highway Patrol. Trias
daughter Roberta Jane was among the earliest female karate black belts in the United States.
Alfredo San Bartolome, a Peruvian 2-dan, establishes the first permanent judo school in
Spain. Other pioneering Spanish judo instructors included Frank Fernando and Yves Klein.
The Allied occupation government of Japan prohibits the teaching of judo and kendo in
Japanese public schools and bans the words (and concepts) budo and bushido. Meanwhile,
martial art licensing bodies such as the sumo association and the Dai Nippon Butokukai
voluntarily disband. The reason was that before and during "the Emergency," as the Japanese
liked to call World War II, budo and bushido had become synonyms for Japanese fascism.
And there was reason for the belief: during the war, martial arts patronized by the Butokukai
included grenade throwing and glider repair, and afterwards, many of its leaders went to jail,
some for war crimes and others for racketeering. Still, the Americans had nothing against
legitimate sports practiced in a democratic fashion. Therefore, sumo tournaments resumed
during the winter of 1945-1946, and in November 1946 an All-Japan Judo Yudanshakai
("Grade Holders Association") was organized.
The United States Army announces the development of ENIAC, an acronym for an
"electronic numerical integrator and computer." ENIAC calculated range and firing data for
artillery, and it replaced a room full of women with slide rules. However, it was a huge device
weighing thirty tons, and it had thousands of transistor tubes. Moreover, only the US Army
used it. Therefore, it took the development of germanium semiconductors ("transistors") in
1947 and stored-program computers in 1948 to initiate the post-modern era, with its emphasis
on digital rather printed communications. (A British machine called COLOSSUS predated

ENIAC, but its invention was a military secret for several decades after the war. Therefore, it
had little impact on future computer developments.)
1947:
Soviet leader Josef Stalin decides that the Soviets should participate in the Olympics, thus
making the games a battleground in the Cold War. Stalin wanted his athletes to enter the 1948
Olympics. However, at the time, he could not be guaranteed a large number of gold medals.
(Participation was not enough for Stalin; he wanted medals.) Therefore, he decided to
postpone Soviet entry until 1952. To ensure that Soviet athletes met Olympic eligibility
requirements, top athletes were no longer given cash payments by their clubs. Instead, they
received sinecures in government or the military. Schoolteachers also were asked to identify
potential athletes, and to encourage everyone to participate in minor sports such as small-bore
rifle shooting, fencing, and wrestling. After all, there was less competition in the minor sports,
and in the hunt for Olympic gold, a medal was a medal. Finally, as the Soviets had virtually
no athletic facilities, coaches started having players swim during the summer, run in the
spring and fall, and do cross-country skiing in the winter. In other words, they invented cross
training.
A Japanese named Nakano Michiomi -- he later changed his name to So Doshin -incorporates his martial art school as a Kongo Zen Buddhist religious order. (So said that he
taught martial arts mostly as a way of attracting young people to Buddhism, and that it was
the latter, not the martial arts, that would make them better people.) However, the tax breaks
given religious orders were probably a consideration, too. Until 1972, So said that he was the
twenty-first grandmaster of an esoteric northern Shaolin system called Iher Man Thuen. What
caused him to change his mind was a Japanese court ruling that his style was not Chinese, but
instead a mixture of karate (perhaps Wado-ryu) and jujutsu (perhaps Hakko-ryu).
Consequently, the styles name was changed from "Shorinji Kempo," meaning "Shaolin
Temple kung fu," to "Nippon Shorinji Kempo," meaning "Japanese Shaolin Fist-Way."
On Okinawa, Nagamine Shoshin establishes Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu karate. The style used
advanced kata created by Matsumora Kosaku and Matsumura Sokon during the nineteenth
century and introductory kata created by Itosu Anko and Miyagi Chojun during the twentieth.
The name means "Pine Forest Style" and alludes to both Shaolin chuan fa and the long life
supposedly acquired and maintained through strict self-discipline.
A signals officer named Nam Tae Hi establishes a Shotokan karate club, the Oh Do Kwan, at a
Korean Army base at Yong Dae Ri. In 1955, during a demonstration for the South Korean
President Rhee Seung Man, Nam broke thirteen roofing tiles with a single blow. This so
impressed Rhee that he told Colonel Choi Hong Hi, who was Nams commander and an
honorary 4-dan, to start a training program for the entire Korean military. As Nam always
insisted that trainees shout "Tae Kwon!" ("Fists and Feet!"), his karate style soon became
known popularly as taekwondo, or the Way of Fists and Feet.
The Ikatan Penchak Silat Indonesia ("Indonesian Penjak Silat Association") is established in
Jakarta. While its leaders said that this encouraged the development of the Indonesian martial
arts, it was actually used to further the spread of militant Islamic (and anti-Dutch)
nationalism.

Several young men, mostly of Chinese and Filipino descent, create kajukenbo, which is
arguably the United States first eclectic Asian martial art. The name is an anagram of karate,
judo, kenpo, and Chinese boxing, which were some of the styles that it incorporated, and it
was introduced to the North American mainland in 1958. Adriano Emperado is probably the
most famous practitioner.
1948:
Vanderbilt University football coach Henry "Red" Sanders defines good sportsmanship,
American-style, by saying, "Winning isnt everything, its the only thing."
Fear of Communist trade unionists causes the United States government to relax its hard-line
opposition to the Japanese political right. (Since it was financed by big business, the Japanese
political right didnt like trade unionists or socialists, either.) This in turn allows yakuza gangs
whose members enjoyed strikebreaking activities to flourish. One of the more notorious of
these strikebreaking gangs, the National Martyrs Youth Corps, established in 1952. Members
started their mornings with an hour of martial art training. Then they spent their days
extorting money from shopkeepers, blackmailing schoolteachers, and intimidating labor
organizers. Finally, they went to their clubhouses for several hours of singing and drinking
before going home at night.
Red scares cause the occupation government of Japan to reorganize the Japanese police. Part
of the reorganization involved increased training, and on December 31, 1947, keibojutsu
("police stick") was adopted as the official martial art of the Japanese police. Since keibojutsu
included elements borrowed from kendo, this is sometimes interpreted as a partial
reinstatement of kendo. However, that is not correct, as bamboo stick competitions and
training still received no official funds or government support.
Ueshiba Morihei establishes the Aikikai Foundation in Tokyo, and in the process rehabilitates
pre-Pacific War mottoes such as "Budo is not for fighting but for peace" so that they refer to
anti-war sentiment rather than submission to Imperial authority.
The Kodokan holds its first post-war All-Japan Judo Championships.
George Grundy and his son Keith introduce judo to Auckland, New Zealand.
Toward making judo more like wrestling, Henry Stone of Californias San Jose State
University introduces weight divisions into US judo competition.
In London, Koizumi Gunji organizes what becomes the European Judo Union (EJU). In 1951,
Argentina asked to join the EJU. To allow this, the EJU was reorganized as the International
Judo Federation (IJF). However, in 1952 control of the IJF shifted to Japan, leaving the
Europeans to resurrect the EJU as a way of regulating and organizing their European
Championships. Throughout this period, Britain, France, Belgium, and Holland opposed
weight divisions in the European Championships, saying that they were not traditional. The
Germans, on the other hand, supported the idea.
A Czech immigrant named Imi Lichtenfeld develops krav maga, or "contact fighting" for use
by Israeli soldiers. Primary techniques included rear strangleholds, strikes to the neck and
throat, and front snap kicks to the groin. Stylistic influences included boxing, wrestling,

gymnastics, and Australian-rules judo. Israeli civilians were introduced to krav maga during
the early 1970s. The pioneer of this civil movement was Alberto Ayalon, the Argentine-born
director of biomechanics at Tel Avivs Orde Wingate Institute.
After seeing the FBI Practical Pistol Course, two US Marine officers, Jeff Cooper and
Howland Taft, develop an "Advanced Military Combat Pistol Course" for the US military.
1949:
The Story of Huang Fei-hong starts Hong Kongs first martial arts film craze. Based on
operatic themes, swords and spears were whirled with abandon, but bare-knuckle boxing was
rare. These knight-errant films were also popular in the Chinese communities of Indonesia,
Malaysia, and Vietnam.
Feng Wen-pin, President of the All-China Athletic Federation, describes the purpose of
Communist Chinese physical education as developing sports for health, nationalism, and
national defense. To accomplish this with a minimum of time, space, or equipment, workers
were encouraged to practice martial art practice forms. On the other hand, Fengs nationalism
was not extreme, and workers were encouraged to play North American or European games
such as basketball, volleyball, soccer, and table tennis.
The All-Japan Judo Yudanshakai is reorganized into the Japan Judo Federation, and then made
part of the Japan Physical Education Association.
The Japan Karate Association is established in Tokyo. Although Funakoshi Gichin was its
titular head, its actual leaders included a former Vice-Prime Minister, an Air Force general, a
former Minister of the Interior, and the president of Japans largest security guard company.
The chief technical adviser, whose book Dynamic Karate remains a classic, was a professor of
physical education named Nakayama Masatoshi. Initiation fees cost 3000 ($8.36), while the
monthly membership fee was 2000 ($5.58). During their first few classes, beginners learned
history, traditions, and etiquette. Then, after one month, they began learning heian kata.
Students were expected to test every 3-6 months, and learned a new kata at each belt rank.
The headquarters dojo in Tokyo was open six days a week. Branch schools were open three to
six days a week. Instructors were college graduates with a Physical Education major, held
nidan (second-degree) rank or higher, and had a years post-graduate education in
kinesiology, physiology, and business administration. Upon graduation from this program,
students were promoted to sandan (third-degree), and then allowed to instruct under
supervision.
A 34-year old pencak silat practitioner named Enny Rukmini joins the anti-colonial forces on
Indonesia. Since firearms were scarce, she carried a sword. Following independence, she
became the chief instructor at her father's silat school in West Java, and was subsequently a
leader of the movement to introduce silat into the Indonesian schools.
Aslam Bholu Pahelwan defeats Yunus Pahelwan to win the title Rustam-e-Pakistan, champion
of Pakistan. This made Bholu probably the best professional wrestler in the world. (Not
necessarily the best wrestler: even Bholu admitted the possibility of chuppa rustam, hidden
champions. But certainly the best active professional.)

Promoter Bill Johnston introduces Gorgeous George to Madison Square Garden. Georges act
(born George Wagner, but he had his name changed) featured bleached blond locks, custom
dressing gowns, and a fly-sprayer filled with perfume-scented disinfectant. While he was a
mediocre wrestler, this act attracted paying customers by the thousands. Why? Mainly it was
that television audiences liked watching soap opera more than they liked watching serious
wrestling. And, as 1924 Olympic wrestling champion and former professional wrestler
Russell Vis said, "To put on a show youve got to make faces, jump and up and down, pretend
youre hurt, then come from underneath." Added Sam Boal in the New York Times Magazine
on November 20, 1949, "The emotions of the wrestling ring are simple. They are those of the
fairy tale. There is always a Hero and a Villain. It is the enactment of Beauty and the Beast,
a story anybody can understand and respond to."
The Chicago businessmen James Norris and Arthur Wirtz incorporate the International
Boxing Club (IBC) in Illinois and New York. Norris and Wirtz then used the IBC to obtain
exclusive television rights to the professional boxing matches staged in New York, Chicago,
Detroit, and St. Louis. (The IBC failed to control California boxing mainly because George
Parnassus, who owned the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, and his manager, a very
tough woman named Aileen Eaton, refused to be bought or muscled by the IBC.) However,
from 1957 to 1959, the IBC did control the Hollywood Legion Stadium. There were similar
problems in professional wrestling, too, and in 1956 Wladek and Stanislaus Zbyszko of
Savannah, Missouri helped convince the United States government to formally charge the
National Wrestling Alliance with violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. The promoters,
though, got out of the predicament by claiming that what they sold was not sport, but sports
entertainment.) Then Norris and Wirtz started doing business with the Mafia leader Frankie
Carbo, who controlled many North American fighters and fight managers through a
combination of bribery and intimidation. The result was such heavy-handed fixing that the US
Congress started investigating IBC practices in 1951. Federal judges ordered the dissolution
of the IBC in 1959 and the imprisonment of Carbo in 1961.
Norma Graziano, the wife of middleweight boxing champion Rocky Graziano, tells her
mother, "I should go to the dentist when he fights. That way I cant worry about him." Her
fear wasnt so much that her husband would win or lose, she said, but that he would get hurt.
Thirty years later, Florence Frazier, wife of former heavyweight champion Joe Frazier and the
mother of Olympic hopeful Marvis Frazier, agreed, saying, "Seeing your husband get hurt is
one thing. Seeing your baby get hurt is another."
A Seattle middleweight named Harry "Kid" Matthews starts a profitable light-heavyweight
boxing career under the tutelage of the veteran trainer Jack Hurley. Said Hurley of his
methods, which emphasized slipping punches and counter-punching, "Speed is detrimental.
Slow it down to one punch. If youre moving fast, youre also moving your opponent fast."
1950:
The Communist Chinese occupy eastern Tibet, and during 1954-1955, they move into central
and northern Tibet. The Communist introduction of collective farming schemes caused rural
Tibetans to revolt in 1957. The Dalai Lamas calls for divine assistance proved as ineffectual
at stopping the Chinese tanks and artillery as the CIA airdrops, and so he fled to India in 1959.
The Zen Nihon Shinai Kyogi Renmei ("All Japan Federation for Bamboo Stick Competition")
is organized in Japan. Its first president was Sasamori Junzo, an American-educated Christian

educator and liberal politician who believed that kendo could be taught in a democratic
fashion. Sasamoris 1964 book, This is Kendo: The Art of Japanese Fencing, was one of the
first English-language kendo texts, and many of his Japanese-language texts remain in print.
Judo returns to Japanese high schools. Due to American pressure, it was now an elective
rather than a mandatory subject, and the emphasis was on competition rather than selfsacrifice for the Emperor. To show the difference between prewar and postwar judo, until
1989 Ministry of Education required that it be described as kakugi ("combative technique")
rather than budo ("martial art").
Feuding Northern Nigerians hire professional musicians to create scurrilous songs about their
rivals, and then spread these songs throughout the neighborhood at night, when the sound of a
drum and a good voice could carry for several miles. The rules of engagement were that the
singer could not say anything that was not true unless the statement was clearly impossible. In
other words, while he could say that a man was really a pig in disguise, he could not say that a
woman stole yams unless he could prove in court that she did. Such drumming contests
continued for weeks, generally until one side or the other ran out of money for drummers, or
decided to go to court or engage in street fighting.
Arthur Berger, a New York dentist who moonlighted as a referee at Madison Square Garden,
tells a reporter from The New Yorker: "In boxing, you have to worry about the scoring of
points in each round, see that neither fighter is getting banged up too much, holler Break! all
the time, and insinuate yourself between the men in clinches. Fortunately, my shoulders are
just the right height for breaking up a clinch. You break clinches at elbow height. In wrestling,
your main worry is not getting rolled on, although you also have to keep a sharp eye out for
fouls."
Retired featherweight boxing champion Abe Attell tells sportswriter Joe Williams that the
hardest part of professional boxing was making bad fighters last long enough to satisfy the
crowd, or mediocre fighters look good enough to justify a rematch. Reigning middleweight
champion Ray Robinson agreed, saying that his hardest match was one where he had to carry
another boxer named Charlie Fusari: "I had to fight fifteen rounds for me and fifteen for him."
Scholarly articles showing that weight training improves all-round athletic performance
appear in the United States. Their findings will not penetrate professional boxing until the late
1980s, when a light-heavyweight named Evander Holyfield uses a weight program to turn
himself into a legitimate heavyweight. Holyfields program required him to spar six rounds in
the morning, do a cardiovascular workout in the afternoon, and lift weights and strain against
resistance machines in the evening. Holyfield also ate six times a day. For breakfast, he had
grits, four eggs, toast, and a protein drink. For first lunch, he had two turkey sandwiches and
another protein drink. For second lunch, he had two baked potatoes and a protein shake. As an
afternoon snack, he had two more turkey sandwiches and a carbohydrate drink. For his two
dinners, he had chicken breasts, beans, corn bread, collard greens, and protein drinks. When
not training, Holyfield said, he also liked peach cobblers and banana pudding.
General Curtis LeMay, commander of the United States Air Forces nuclear-capable Strategic
Air Command, becomes worried about base security. "The Russians didnt threaten us," said
LeMay. "But I was worried about fifth column activity. Sabotage And the stupidest people
we had in the Air Force were put in the Military Police." To reduce this risk, LeMay looked
for, found, and publicly fired some incompetent provost marshals and unconcerned wing

commanders. Next, he ordered that his security forces be called Air Police, and treated as key
members of his personal security team rather than unwanted stepchildren. The easy things
done, LeMay then established an Air Police school at Fort Carson, Colorado, that taught Air
Police how to be a combination of civilian police and nuclear weapon security rather than
simply gate guards. Finally, to make Air Police feel special, he gave them distinctive uniforms
and arranged for professional instruction in aikido, judo, and karate. During the 1950s, about
twenty Japanese martial art instructors toured Air Force bases, and hundreds of US airmen
took month-long courses at the Kodokan. The Japanese were among the best available: karate
teachers included Nakayama Masatoshi and Nishiyama Hidetaka; judo teachers included
Daigo Toshiro and Kotani Sumiyuki, and aikido teachers included Tomiki Kenji. Air Police
were also encouraged to practice their judo and karate in the gyms that LeMay had ordered
built on their bases. Following discharge, former Air Police often continued teaching and
practicing judo or karate in their home towns; examples include Laverne Raab in Omaha and
Bill Reuter in Seattle. Therefore, LeMays program helped spread Japanese martial arts
throughout Middle America. LeMays program also had a profound affect on the modern
Japanese martial arts. As Nakayama Masatoshi, a future head of the Japan Karate Association
put it, "The Americans simply were not satisfied with following blindly like the Japanese. So,
under Master Funakoshis guidance, I began an intense study of kinetics, physiology,
anatomy, and hygienics." Changes to karate included less emphasis on building callused
knuckles and more emphasis on teaching light, natural blocks and strikes powered by fluid,
centered movement. (Details appear in Egami Shigerus 1976 book called The Way of
Karate.) Changes to aikido included the addition of the hard, competitive edge exemplified by
Tomiki aikido. Changes to judo included the appearance of large numbers of technically
proficient judo instructors who were not of Japanese descent. That in turn gradually changed
the prewar Japanese belief that only people of Japanese descent could master judo.
1951:
Critics vote Rashomon, a 1950 samurai film by Kurosawa Akira, the best film of the Venice
Film Festival. Rashomon also introduces Western audiences to Mifune Toshiro, the Japanese
actor whose subsequent films included Seven Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, Yojimbo, and
Shogun.
Ed Parker starts studying kenpo karate with William K. S. Chow. As a boy growing up in
Honolulu, Parker had boxed and done judo, and later, while serving in the Coast Guard, he
trained in kenpo karate with Chows younger brother Frank. Following discharge from the
Coast Guard, Parker attended Utahs Brigham Young University. In 1953, Parker gave a
kenpo karate demonstration during the halftime of a basketball game, and in 1954, he started
teaching it to some friends at a Provo, Utah gym. Upon graduating from college, Parker
moved to Pasadena, California, where in 1956 he opened the first of a series of commercial
martial arts schools. At first, he taught kenpo karate as he had learned it from Chow. However,
in 1961 he became friends with some local chuan fa practitioners, and so over the next few
years there began to be significant differences between what Parker was doing and what
Chow was doing. Consequently, Parkers methods became known as American kenpo.
Japanese sumotori visit Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. To avoid
breaking city ordinances concerning indecent exposure, the wrestlers had to wear boxer shorts
under their mawashi (loincloths).

The first Pan-American Games are held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The United States won
half the first place medals in the wrestling events, and John Osako of Chicago was a winner in
judo.
Rikidozan makes his American-style professional wrestling debut in Tokyo. His birth name
was Kim Sin-Rak, and he was born in South Hamgyong Province, in northeastern Korea, in
1923. At the age of 15, went to Japan to train as a sumotori. Because of Japanese prejudice
against Koreans, his handlers started the story that he was a Japanese named Momota
Mitsuhiro. However, because his ring name alluded to a mountain in Korea, Koreans always
knew he was one of them. In 1950, Rikidozan quit sumo and began working for a gambler
named Niita Shinsasku. In 1951, he met (and according to the story, fought) the Japanese
American professional wrestler Harold Sakata in a Ginza nightclub, and afterwards, he
decided to enter an American-style wrestling tournament that American Shriners had
organized in Tokyo. He enjoyed the work, so in 1952 he traveled to the United States, where
his trainers included Rubberman Higami and Oki Shikina. After about a year in North
America and Hawaii, he returned to Japan, and by early 1955 he was the star of the newly
organized Japan Pro Wrestling Association. The promotional angles in Japan allowed
Rikidozan to beat most Americans and to draw with "champions" such as Lou Thesz and
Walter "Killer" Kowalski. These acts proved enormously popular, and Japanese fans without
televisions often stood on streets outside department stores just to see Rikidozan wrestle. In
December 1963 Rikidozan was stabbed during a bar fight and subsequently died of infection,
but forty years later many Japanese still considered him one of the most influential Japanese
of the twentieth century. Koreans also liked the man, and in 1983, the North Korean press
reported that Rikidozan was Supreme Leader Kim Il-Sungs favorite wrestler of all time.
A rassler who called herself Female Joe Louis tells sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, "I like to
fight men. The harder I pop them, the better I like it." About the same time, however, another
female wrestler, 19-year-old Jeannette Wolfe, died of abdominal injuries received during a
match in East Liverpool, Ohio. While deaths in womens wrestling were hardly common,
Wolfes death was especially noteworthy because it did not involve a blow to the head or an
auto accident. During the 1950s and 1960s, ring-related deaths associated with professional
wrestling averaged around one per year. Besides Wolfe, wrestling fatalities included Dennis
Clary in 1955, Buck Weaver in 1956, Chris Davros ("Babe Zaharias"; he was a cousin-in-law
of the famous golfer) in 1957, Chick Garibaldi and Ali Pasha in 1961, Tex Riley in 1964, and
Alberto Torres and Iron Mike DeBiase in 1969. Canadian rassling deaths included Paul Lentre
in 1953, Gus Johnson in 1954, and Stanley Mayeshiro ("Oyama Kato") in 1961. Other risks
associated with professional wrestling included broken wrists, cauliflower ears, and eye
infections that could cause blindness or staph infection. "Did it ever occur to you," said
former rassling champion Gus Sonnenberg shortly before his death, "that after two or three
years of regular use a wrestling mat is not a pleasant mattress to roll around on?"
Transcontinental television appears in North America. With its close-in action and short,
easily packaged rounds, boxing and wrestling seemed made for the new medium.
Unfortunately, the television producers failed to put any money into developing new talent.
Over the next ten years, a combination of scandals (Senator Warren G. Magnuson suggested
that the Mafia was fixing fights), predictable outcomes (the fighter in the white trunks won
about 75% of the time), and overexposure (why sit through boring matches between bums
when you could watch I Love Lucy instead) drove boxing into technical decline. On the other
hand, rassling flourished. Why? Because, said Willie Gilzenberg of the World Wide Wrestling
Federation, "In wrestling today, even though its on TV, the fan is never shown the match he

really wants to see." The decline of the male-only working-class saloon culture that had
supported boxing for the previous century probably played a role, too. After all, from 1850 to
1940, boxing had been popular mostly with working-class men, whereas rassling had been
popular with women and children since the 1940s.
The United States military begins issuing armored vests to its soldiers in Korea. The vests
were made from fiberglass and nylon, and were found to reduce casualties from artillery and
mortar fragments. So, within a few months, they became standard for UN infantry in Korea.
While combat aircrew and naval personnel on landing craft had worn similar armor during
World War II, this was the first widespread use of body armor by infantry since the
seventeenth century.
The United States Army publishes a study showing that soldiers decision to mutiny was a
sequential process. That is, it was a long slow process rather than some sudden decision, and
invariably involved soldiers losing faith in both the national government and the military
chain of command. But of course firing inept politicians and generals wasnt possible, and so
the Army had to content itself with addressing such comparatively insignificant issues as fears
about death, frozen feet, and the loss of sweethearts.
1952:
A Briton named P.Z. Mackenzie describes a battle between rival Dinka factions in the
Southern Sudan. According to Mackenzie, several hundred Dinka men arranged themselves in
ragged lines to face a comparable enemy standing or kneeling about 40 yards away. Behind
each of these heroes were four or five supporters, whose purpose was to make noise, collect
spent spears and throwing sticks, and carry away the wounded. During the battle itself, there
was little maneuver except dodging. Tactically, one group threw their clubs high to cause their
opponents to raise their shields while another group threw spears low to catch distracted
warriors in the legs; hence the jumping, darting motions seen in many warrior dances.
Although Mao Tse-tungs motto was "keep fit, study well, work well," the Chairman also
believed that secret societies, like capitalism and ancient religions, undermined the race and
retarded progress. Consequently, the China Wu Shu Association was created. This
organization was underneath the aegis of the All-China Athletic Federation, and was tasked
with removing all "feudal comprador fascist thought" from the Chinese martial arts. Toward
accomplishing this, cadres registered regular boxers and reeducated "arch-leaders" using
threats, beatings, harsh interrogations, banishment to work farms, and even pistol shots to the
brain.
Yip Man, a refugee from Communist China, begins teaching wing chun in Hong Kong. Since
many of Yips students were restaurant workers, his methods soon spread throughout the
world. While Yips most famous student was the Chinese-American actor Bruce Lee, he was
not Yips best. (When Lee visited Hong Kong in 1961 to show Yip Man how much his martial
arts had improved while in the United States, he found, in the words of student James DeMile,
that "his progress was zip... He could hit the good Wing Chun men maybe once out of every
three times they could hit him.") Yips better students included his son Chun.
A Korean known as Oyama Mas (birth name: Choi Yong I) joins the Chicago-based ProWrestling Association and tours North America. From the late 1930s to the early 1940s,
Oyama had trained in Goju Kai karate under So Nei Cho in Tokyo. He also trained in

Shotokan. During his travels through 32 US states, Oyama reportedly challenged anyone in
America to fight him for a winner-take-all purse of $1,000 per match. One suspects that
Oyama did not go out of his way to find worthwhile competition. After all, the Pakistani
national wrestling champions Joginder and Arjan Singh were also traveling through North
America during 1951-1952, and likewise offering $1,000 to anyone who could beat them, and
somehow these various parties never met. There are many stories told about Oyama during
this period. "The story about Oyama fighting bulls is not true," says Oyamas student Jon
Bluming. "He never met a real bull, for he never visited Spain. [He did apparently visit
Mexico.] I also doubt that he was gored, for he never told me about it, and he used to tell me
everything. Kenji Kurosaki was there, and he told me what happened. They went early in the
morning to a stockyard in [the town of] Tateyama. Workmen prepared a fat old ox for Oyama
by hitting one of its horns with a hammer so that it was quite loose. Oyama did not kill the ox,
he only knocked off the loose horn. Bill Backhus and I saw the 16mm movie in 1959. Oyama
himself showed it to us. I told Oyama to never show this film in Europe because it looked too
phony, and everyone would laugh at him. As far as I know, nobody saw that movie again." In
fairness, note that a bullfight featuring Oyama was filmed in Chiba Prefecture in 1954, and
the footage subsequently shown in Japanese theaters as Ushito Tatakau Otoko ("A Man Who
Fought a Bull".) Furthermore, Oyama himself admitted the oxen were old. So, while the story
has grown over the years, there is no doubt that he did some bulldogging in his time. Other
aspects of Oyama's wrestling career also are not entirely clear. For example, an article in the
October 1953 edition of Argosy magazine said that Oyama "left more than of a hundred of
Americas burlier, rougher citizens flat on their back." On the other hand, Oyama said in the
1958 edition of his book What Is Karate that he had just three matches with professional
wrestlers plus thirty exhibitions and nine television appearances. As all matches between
American professional wrestlers of the 1950s must be considered fixed, that leaves Oyama
with 33 exhibitions, nine television appearances, and some steer wrestling to his credit.
To reduce the injuries (mostly bloody noses, split lips, and jammed fingers and toes) during
free-sparring, the Japan Karate Association introduces corner judges and center referees. A
complete set of collegiate karate rules appears in August 1956.
The Zen Nihon Kendo Renmei (All Japan Kendo Federation) is established. As far as is
known, this was the first post-World War II public use of the word "kendo." For kendo to be
taught in the public schools, however, it had to be described as "flexible stick competition"
(shinai kyogi). Moreover, said the Ministry of Education, it was not to be "taught as budo
[martial art] but as a physical education sport [kyoiku supotsu]."
The United States fields its first Greco-Roman wrestling team. But there was little interest in
the sport outside Minnesota for decades, and American Greco-Roman wrestlers would not
place in international competition until 1968, or win Olympic gold until 1984, a year that the
Soviets decided to boycott the Olympics. One of the 1984 gold medalists was a cancer
survivor named Jeffrey Blatnick. Like many successful athletes, Blatnick attempted to convert
his athletic accomplishments into cash. But he soon found that he made more money making
public appearances as a former cancer patient than as a wrestler. "I earned more money in the
last year than I had in the previous eight," said Blatnick in 1986. "But I lived on $5,000 or less
for each of those five years, so making $40,000 in one year is like hitting a gold mine."
A study published by the United States sociologists Kirson Weinberg and Henry Arond reports
that 84% of professional boxers never progress beyond the preliminary stage. Just 9% became
main-event fighters, only 7% received national attention, and less than 1% became recognized

champions. Meanwhile, around twelve per year died of injuries received in the ring. These
academic findings were supported by inside opinion. For example, when asked how to rank
boxers, the veteran trainer Angelo Dundee provided the following typology: Tomato Can.
Someone whos garbage but can still fight. Bum. Someone who is one cut better than a tomato
can. Opponent. Someone you should beat but who still looks good on your record.
Journeyman. Someone with modest skills, but hardworking and always in shape. Fighter.
Someone with skill and heart; someone you have to fight eventually. Hell of a fighter. A
fighter who looks good while he is active. Great. One hell of a fighter who still looks good
after he has retired.
The York Barbell Company introduces Hi-Proteen. This was soybean flour mixed with salt
and chocolate, and the first commercially successful food supplement. In an era when good
nutrition was thought to include Wonder Bread, perhaps promoter Bob Hoffman had a point.
1953:
Working separately, Charles Hard Townes of the United States and Nikolai Basov and
Aleksander Prochorov of the Soviet Union create the worlds first masers. These devices
amplified microwave radiation, and were the direct ancestors of lasers, which amplified
visible and near-visible light into intense streams of electromagnetic waves possessing the
same frequency, phase, and direction of motion.
While describing Rocky Marcianos unpolished (but effective) boxing style, Marcianos
trainer Charley Goldman tells an interviewer from Ring magazine, "Theres one serious
mistake some trainers make. They try to change a boys style. It doesnt pay to meddle around
with a natural style. If a kid is inclined to be a boxer, dont try to make a slugger out of him.
And vice versa. You can improve on what he has, but dont change it. Ive seen many a great
prospect ruined because somebody tried to make him something he wasnt cut out to be."
Twenty-two boxers die of injuries received in the ring. While fatalities averaged 12 per year
between 1946 and 1965, this was the worst year on record. The exact number of ring deaths is
not certain. The British neurosurgeon Macdonald Critchley reported 207 ring deaths before
1950, while amateur historian Manuel Velasquez documented 321 ring deaths between 1946
and 1983. The official count, the one published by Ring Magazine, lists 164 fatalities between
1918 and 1950, and 269 fatalities between 1951 and 1980. Television contributed to the
increase in post-war boxing fatalities. For one thing, advertisers and audiences wanted
spectacular knockouts rather than boring decisions. (Nationally televised boxing deaths
included Ed Sanders in 1954, Benny Paret in 1962, and Kim Duk Koo in 1982.) To keep the
shrinking arena crowds, referees everywhere became increasingly reluctant to stop fights
early. (Deaths in Madison Square Garden included Georgie Flores in 1951.) In addition,
unsophisticated viewers thought that every bout should be a championship fight. This led to
the creation of a wild array of weights and divisions, and televised fights between men who
had no business leaving their inner-city gyms. (As former champion Jake LaMotta told
journalist Arlene Schulman, "I had more fights in one year than many of these guys have in
their entire careers.") The bigger purses paid by television sponsors were also a factor.
Although managers and trainers had always exploited boxers, televised fights paid more than
club fights. Therefore, many managers pushed their charges to fight main events whether they
were ready or not.

In return for Japanese support to the United States during the Korean War, the United States
returns the Northern Ryukyus to Japanese control. One immediate result is fights between
Japanese laborers using judo and Ryukyuan laborers using karate. While the reported fights
were over who would unload boats at Naze, on Amami-Shoto, there were probably fights in
Naha, too, over who would control the prostitution outside the giant United States military
bases that sprawled throughout Southern Okinawa. The point was hardly moot, either, as what
the Japanese call the entertainment industry brought in more money than sugar cane, and
employed perhaps 10% of Okinawas women.
Arvo Ojala of Gleed, Washington introduces metal-lined, forward-raked pistol holsters to
Hollywood. Specifically designed for quick-draw, Ojalas rigs appear in most subsequent
cinematic gunfights, and contribute to the establishment of quick-draw pistol competitions in
1956. Ojala, who trained everyone from Marilyn Monroe to Michael J. Fox, spent his sizable
income on fast cars, fast women, and fast guns. ("Not necessarily in that order," he says.) In
1996, a reporter asked the old trick shooter what he would do differently if he could. The
answer: "I would have bought some land and stuff like that. Investments, more to lean back
on today."
Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, tells the US judoka Yosh
Uchida that he will support Uchidas dream of getting judo introduced into the 1964 Olympics
in return for two things. First, Uchida had to organize judo competition by weight, and
second, he had to show that the US could produce competitive national teams. Uchida agreed,
and with Henry Stone organized a national AAU judo championship at San Jose State
University later that year. Japanese and Japanese Americans generally opposed the weight
divisions, but due to the rising numbers of European American judoka, this opposition was
soon made irrelevant. Part of the process also involved organizing a national organization akin
to the European Judo Union. Toward this end, the Judo Black Belt Federation of the United
States (JBBF) was also formed in 1953. The JBBFs stated purpose was to unify, promote, and
stimulate the growth of judo while maintaining high levels of skill and proficiency in
discipline and judo. Leaders of the national judo movement in the Washington, DC, area
included a US Marine officer named Donn Draeger. To keep the growing sport pure, Draeger
encouraged teachers and students to use Japanese terminology and ritual. Unfortunately, many
people mistook form for substance, and as early as 1965, Robert W. Smith, a former public
relations committeeman for the JBBF, acknowledged that the early emphasis on Japanese
ritual had been a mistake. Why? Because the "Japanese ritual injected into a foreign milieu
too often becomes mumbo-jumbo mystique for the masses" and "contrives to rob the art of
courtesy which it is meant to nurture." Toward eliminating this problem, Smith recommended
the following changes. 1. Emphasize maximum efficiency with minimum effort rather than
winning. ("Few of us seem to have ever learned that ... [the philosophy of judo includes
mutual welfare], which means simply love.") 2. Eliminate color belts. ("Because most
frictions pivot on problems of rank, why not attack the problem?") 3. Eliminate meaningless
rituals. ("I would replace the bow with a handshake, eschew most of the elaborate procedures
(who was it who thought Joseki was a town in Missouri not too far from Peoria?), and
except for international matches use the prevailing language rather than Japanese.") 4.
Design rules to protect players rather than thrill crowds. ("If this sounds sissy, let us remove
all restrictions, introduce striking and kicking, rename the thing all-in fighting, and forget
the educative aspects of the art.") "I would urge retention, however, of the kata," concluded
Smith, "for I believe they have a legitimate role in the art."

Tohei Koichi introduces aikido to Hawaii. On Maui, a policeman named Shunichi Suzuki
helped him arrange demonstrations. Due to Tohei's good work (and returning to Hawaii
during 1955-1956 and 1957-1958), aikido soon became popular throughout Hawaii.
1954:
In a book called Motivation and Personality, Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist
from Brandeis University, proposes a tiered hierarchy of human values. In ascending order
these were: 1) physiological needs such as food, oxygen, and water; 2) personal safety; 3)
sense of community, to include love; 4) competence and prestige; 5) self-fulfillment; and 6)
curiosity and the need to understand. Although religious leaders were offended by Maslows
thesis that people did not seek self-fulfillment until after other needs were met, his theory
became popular with such diverse entities as New Age philosopher Barbara Marx Hubbard
and the United States Army. Why? Because each chose to emphasize different stages.
Hubbard, for instance, stressed the high-level functions that she called "self-actualization."
The Army, on the other hand, stressed mid-level functions such as belonging and competence.
As Richard Strozzi Heckler wrote in a book about training Special Forces soldiers, "The
institution of the Army wants [soldiers] to achieve deeper levels of power and control, but
[does not] want them necessarily to begin thinking and feeling too much on their own."
Swedish neurosurgeons discover that the reason skilled boxers suffered fewer knockouts was
not that they were any tougher than other men but that they got hit less. (With greater skill,
they learned to duck and dodge rather than absorb.)
Herman Hickman writes in the Saturday Evening Post, "none can compare with the wrestlers
for generosity, friendliness, and real straight shooting. This term may sound a little
incongruous when applied to participants in a sport that was fixed every night. But they
never thought of it that way. They considered themselves performers attempting to please a
crowd every night, just as a tumbling act might do in the vaudeville circuit." Beginners
learned to take a fall without getting hurt, to roll with a wristlock to avoid getting a dislocated
shoulder, and to slam opponents without injuring them. (This involved making the feet hit the
mat before the head.) Rookies also learned to work loose, which meant to strain their muscles
for audiences while not allowing their opponents to even feel the pressure.
John Grimek, Jim Park, and Yas Kuzuhara become the first weightlifters known to have used
artificial testosterone in an attempt to increase their strength. Their source of supply was John
Ziegler, a physician working for a Swiss pharmaceutical company associated with the CIA.
As the athletes did not report much difference, US weightlifters generally ignored steroids
until 1959, at which time some began using them haphazardly. Meanwhile, the Soviets, using
the same Nazi-derived research as Ziegler, began systematically using steroids. Shortly
afterwards, their athletes began dominating international weightlifting competition.
A much smaller version of the Dai Nippon Butokukai reopens in Kyoto. This was much
applauded by the Japanese political right, which believed that martial art training provided a
good way of instilling character (a.k.a. right-wing nationalism) into young people.
Shimabuku Tatsuo combines techniques from Shorin-ryu and Goju-ryu karate to create
Isshinryu karate. While an uncommon style in Okinawa, Isshinryu becomes popular in the
United States because Shimabuku specialized in teaching karate to airmen and Marines. The
name means "The One-Heart Method," or "Concentration."

Henri Plee establishes Le Karat Club de France. This is the first karate club in France. Plee
simultaneously organizes the Fdration Francaise de Boxe Libre et de Karat in Paris.
While techniques originally came from savate and le boxe franaise, they became more
Japanese after Ohshima Tsutomu of the Shotokan system visited Paris in 1962. Said Ohshima,
"My biggest shock was at the number of [French] karate men who were wearing black belts.
There must have been forty of them... I decided I had better do something, and do it quick... I
then proceeded to go down the line and had every one of those wearing a black belt come out
and engage in kumite ["free-sparring"], either knocking them down or driving them around
before me. After setting that example, we got down to some serious lessons." Of course, as
Ohshimas victims were all recreational players rather than practicing professionals, his
"victories" really say more about Ohshimas arrogance than European fighting ability.
Mochizuki Minoru introduces aikido to Paris. According to Mochizuki, aikido developed
from a style of jujutsu practiced mostly by influential nobles. Its key principles were, in order,
contact, pain, and unbalance. The name meant, "grouped together spirit," and described a
policy of continuity in both time and space. Mochizuki thought aikido was better suited for
self-defense than judo, as judo placed entirely too much emphasis on sporting victories. An
advocate of non-violent solutions to problems, Mochizuki was eventually expelled from
France for protesting French nuclear testing.
The San Diego Judo Club introduces aikido to the mainland United States. A course
description dated October 12, 1954, said that aikido was more effective than judo for selfdefense, and easier to master. Students were eligible for their first promotion after just 25
hours of instruction. In 1996, with 42 more years experience with aikido, Al Holtmann (6-dan
judo, 4-dan jujutsu, 1-dan aikido) of the Southern California School of Judo and Ju Jitsu
explained himself a little better. Said Holtmann, aikidos spiraling movement and standing
wrestling were outstanding. Its philosophy, submission holds, and techniques for controlling
internal energy were admirable. However, its ground wrestling was weak and teachers often
spent too much time training students to defend themselves from old-style Japanese
techniques that no one would ever face outside class. Therefore, "anyone studying Aikido
assuming that he is learning realistic self defense is being misinformed."
With the release of a movie called The Seven Samurai, the Japanese director Kurosawa Akira
introduces the stylized bloodletting of the bunraku puppet theater to international cinema.
While the Italians and Spanish quickly copied Kurosawas techniques, similar slow-motion
mayhem did not appear in heavily censored Hollywood until after the release of Sam
Peckinpahs The Wild Bunch in 1969.
Actress Gail Davis plays Annie Oakley on television, thereby providing a generation of North
American children with their first female role model having significant martial art skills.
(While earlier heroines had simply stood screaming in the corner until some man saved them,
Oakley routinely shot the gun from the bad guys hand.)
Japanese television begins broadcasting professional wrestling. Not many Japanese owned
televisions, so they stood looking in department store windows to watch Rikidozan and
Masahiko Kimura defeat giant "American" opponents. (In this particular case, the foreigners
were actually Canadian, but to most people, one foreigner looks pretty much the same as
another.) Meanwhile, in the United States, the major television networks were refusing to
syndicate wrestling shows. The reason was that political action groups such as the Japanese
American Citizens League threatened the networks with boycotts and lawsuits unless they

eliminated shows that perpetuated blatant racial stereotypes. This in turn led to rassling acts
showing mostly on local stations until the advent of national cable networks during the 1980s.
About 1955:
Toward instilling national pride and self-discipline in young people, the South Korean
government starts organizing martial art organizations and subsidizing martial art
tournaments. While ssirem, or traditional belt wrestling, remained popular in rural areas,
Japanese-influenced martial arts such as karate proved more popular in the cities, in part
because they were closer to the types of fighting seen in American movies. The styles taught
were mostly Japanese. "After the liberation of Korea at the end of World War II," says
taekwondo pioneer Kim Soo, "the martial arts instructors who began teaching in Korea were
primarily Korean nationals; some who had learned Shotokan, and some who had learned
Shudokan karate during their stay in Japan. It is these styles which are the genesis of modern
Tae Kwon Do." Although for decades Korean nationalists loudly denied the Japanese
parentage of their national combative sport, it is obvious that the practice forms kijo 1-3 and
pyongan, for example, are variants of the taikyoku and heian series kata.
Despite resistance from male instructors, increasing numbers of North American women start
studying judo. This prejudice against female judoka reflected mid-twentieth century American
society more than the limitations of judo itself. For example, when Professor Yamashita
introduced judo to Washington, DC, in 1904, his students included the wife of the Democratic
candidate for Vice-President of the United States. In 1937, Arthur Grix published a photo
showing three Japanese women practicing judo at the Kodokan. Said Grix, "Swiping knives is
especially practiced by women practicing judo." In 1954, Robert W. Smith wrote in the
Budokwai Quarterly Bulletin that two female judoka, Fukuda Umeko (a 5-dan from Japan)
and Helen Carollo (a Danzan Ryu 2-dan from California), demonstrated ju-no-kata and
randori. Smith added that their technique appeared both elegant and effective. Unfortunately,
many middle-class Americans viewed encouraging female athleticism as tantamount to
encouraging lesbianism, and therefore discouraged it in their daughters. Their sons were no
better: as recently as 1988, 36% of North American girls aged 7-18 believed that boys made
fun of girls who played sports.
1955:
On the subject of martial arts in Hollywood, fencer Aldo Nadi wrote, "Whereas it cannot be
firmly stipulated that in order to have any success in Hollywood, i.e., to be employed by the
studios, one must be a mediocrity, it can however be firmly stated that quite often such is
indeed the case." Why? "Producers are literally shy of real and universally recognized talent."
George Wilson establishes an after-school judo program at Kent, Washingtons Kentridge
High School. This was the first secondary judo program in the United States. The most
athletically successful graduate of Wilsons program was Doug Graham, a Kent-Meridian
High School graduate who went on to become a Pan-American champion. However, success
in competition was never Wilsons goal. "Judo is a means to an end, not an end to itself,"
Wilson told a Seattle reporter in 1989. "That end is making a complete person."
A group of Korean military officers and businessmen decide that taesoodo and Tang Soo Do
are insufficiently patriotic names for the karate styles practiced in Korea, and therefore decree
that in future all Korean styles should be called taekwondo. Toward this end, ahistorical links

were made between the popular name of the military style and a nineteenth century Korean
kicking game called taekkyon, and by 1966 taekwondo had become the Korean standard.
Why? "Because I was a ROK Army general," said General Choi Hong Hi, an honorary 6-dan
in the style.
About 1956:
Heavyweight boxer Floyd Patterson starts using what his trainer Cus DAmato called The
System, and his detractors called the peek-a-boo defense. The System, which was probably
invented by an amateur bantamweight named George Colon and his trainer, Joe Fariello,
involved keeping the hands near the cheeks instead of extended, moving sideways instead of
straight ahead, and attacking using flurries of punches thrown from every conceivable angle.
Of course, every system has its flaws. For Patterson, the flaw of DAmatos system was
learning to box with his feet parallel (+---+) rather than oblique (+\+). Consequently, he was
knocked down more frequently than necessary.
During a show at the South China Athletic Association in Hong Kong, a Chinese boxing
instructor takes a stance, finds his center, and then signals a student to drive into him with an
automobile. Fortunately, the car was a Morris Minor rather than Detroit iron. Said an observer
(Timothy Mo), "The car leapt rather than rolled smoothly forwards over the master and
snagged on the fender, he was dragged a few yards forward before his startled disciples could
disentangle him."
1956:
Ohshima Tsutomo establishes a karate club at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
The style taught was Shotokai karate, an offshoot of Shotokan karate that the 26-year old
Ohshima had learned while attending Waseda University in Tokyo. Ohshimas early students
were mostly Japanese Americans, and he supported himself and his dojo by announcing at a
Japanese-language radio station in Los Angeles. In 1959, Ohshimas organization became the
Southern California Karate Association, which in turn became Shotokan Karate of America.
The first two Japan Karate Association instructors in the United States were Nishiyama
Hidetaka, who opened a school in Los Angeles in 1961, and Okazaki Teruyuki, who opened a
school in Philadelphia that same year.
Carlton Shimomi opens Honolulus first commercial karate dojo. Ten years later, he closed the
Shorin-ryu school for financial reasons. This shocked student Mike McAndrews, who had
started training with Shimomi in 1964: "I hadnt realized that even a karate sensei needed to
make a living. To me, it was simply high art... an art than enabled one to transcend
mediocrity." Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in New York City, judo teacher Jerome
Mackey introduces franchise martial arts to the United States. The Mackey clubs remained
influential in New York and New Jersey into the 1970s, when a stock swindle forced their
closure.
In a special supplement to the June issue of Atlantic Monthly, an Indonesian Muslim named
Asrul Sani describes training in Sumatran silat circa 1905. According to Sani, pentjak was a
dance performed during fairs, whereas silat was a divinely inspired method for solving
problems. Training was done between eight in the evening and one in the morning. During the
training, lamps were usually dimmed, supposedly to teach the youths to fight by sound and
feel rather than by sight. One suspects, however, that fuel conservation was also an issue:

while teachers said they worked purely for the joy of passing on traditions, students also were
expected to provide masters with "gifts" including chickens, cloth, knives, tobacco, and
money.
The Soviets start showing soccer, hockey, and other national sports on national television. The
theory was that this would inspire urban audiences to take up physical culture and healthy
exercise. Ironically, a 1986 Soviet study found that the more a person watched sports on
television, the less likely he was to do sports or exercise.
Toward simplifying public education and political indoctrination, the Peoples Republic of
China introduces sweeping language reforms, including a simplified script. While the changes
made publishing and teaching easier, they also made it harder for young people to read old
books. Whether that result was an unintentional side effect or a deliberate government policy
is unknown.
1957:
The All-Japan Karate Association (a Wado-ryu group) hosts Japans first-ever sport karate
championships. Fourteen different university teams participated. Despite breaking bones in
his hand during the semi-finals, Kanazawa Hirokazu of the Japan Karate Association (a
leading Shotokan group) became the first grand champion. This sanguinary example set the
stage for the American karate tournaments of the 1960s, where competitors were expected to
be kicked into the spectators chairs, and come back swinging. In Japan, Kanazawas example
was touted as representative of the samurai spirit, but elsewhere it was simply part of a
boxers everyday existence. (Examples of hands broken during amateur boxing include Joe
Frazier, who won Olympic gold after breaking his right thumb during the 1964 Olympics, and
Sugar Ray Seales, who won Olympic gold after breaking a left knuckle during the 1972
Olympics.)
Louis Kowlowski of St. Louis, Missouri opens the first karate school in the American
Midwest. Kowlowskis style was Matsubayashi Shorin-ryu.
Following service in Okinawa, a US Marine named Don Nagle introduces Isshinryu karate to
North Carolina. Following his discharge in 1959, he opened a commercial school in New
Jersey.
Lee Tinn Chan becomes the first person known to teach tai chi chuan classes to non-Chinese
people. An electrical equipment repairman, Lee started studying Wu style tai chi chuan in
China in 1937. He introduced the art to the Mun Lum Chinese Language School in Honolulu
partly because he had nothing against haoles, and mainly because he thought of tai chi as a
life-extending exercise rather than a lethal fighting art.
Maegashira Tamanoumi XIV becomes the first important sumotori to publicly wear a gold
mawashi, or groin wrap, instead of a navy blue or purple silk mawashi. As the new wrap
looked spectacular on television, it established a new tradition for sumo.
Although judo teachers had historically taught that a thorough understanding of the principles
was more important than strength, the Kodokan installs a well-equipped weight room on the
fifth floor of its new headquarters in Tokyo. Donn Draeger of the United States was a key
proponent of this innovation. Draegers Japanese support for this innovation came from Daigo

Toshiro and other Japanese judo champions who had spent time wrestling against much larger
foreign students such as Anton Geesink of the Netherlands. Bulk and power were sought
rather than definition, and favorite techniques included squats, incline and bench presses, and
curling exercises.
Placido Yambao and Buenaventura Mirafuente publish Mga Karunungan sa Larung Arns
("Knowledge in the Art of Arnis"), the first book about the traditional Filipino martial arts.
The accidental venting of extraction wastes by a Soviet plutonium factory near Kyshtym,
Russia forces a twenty-year evacuation of nearly 500 square miles of Western Siberia. US
government efforts to monitor the activities of this site were responsible for the U-2 overflight
that resulted in the capture of Francis Gary Powers.
1958:
The Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment at Porton Down, Britain, develops the
binary nerve agent VX. VX was more stable in storage than Sarin and Soman, and soon
became the mainstay of North American and Western European chemical warfare stockpiles.
The patents for the agent were published in 1974. The Soviets, meanwhile, continued to prefer
using thickened forms of the older German agents until the early 1990s, when they began
replacing their aging Sarin stocks with the more stable (and lethal) Novichok ("Newcomer")
series of binary biotoxins. To date, none of these military agents has proven as lethal or
persistent as the four million gallons of Agent Orange dumped on Southeast Asia during the
Vietnam War.
A Korean immigrant named Jhoon Rhee introduces Ji Do Kwan karate, a Shotokan-based
system that is one of the root arts of taekwondo, into San Marcos, Texas. An indefatigable
promoter, Rhee was also responsible for getting foam-dipped foot and hand pads introduced
to the North American tournament karate scene in 1973. Unfortunately, all this did was reduce
the visible bleeding, as a Canadian study completed in 1986 showed that foam-dipped hand
and foot protectors did not appreciably reduce karate stylists peak accelerations. A similar
study done at the University of Oregon in 1988 showed that members of international-class
taekwondo teams were 3.2 times more likely to receive cerebral concussions than were
members of North American collegiate football teams.
George Mattson introduces Uechi-ryu karate to Brookline, Massachusetts.
Karate schools open in the Philippines. Pioneers included Latino Gonzales and Meliton
Geronimo. Gonzales was a Manila physical culturalist who taught himself karate by reading
books but subsequently trained with Okinawas Iha Seikichi. Geronimo was a captain in the
Philippine Air Force, and he learned his techniques from Japanese instructors working for the
United States Air Force. It is possible that modern karates reverse roundhouse, or heel kick,
shows Filipino influence, as the kick was not part of pre-war Japanese or Okinawan karate,
but was allowed in a Filipino boxing game called sikaran.
Mas Tsuruoka introduces Chito-ryu karate to Toronto, and in 1966 Tsuruokas wife Kay
becomes the first Canadian woman to receive black belt rank from the All-Japan Karate-do
Association. Chito Ryu karate combined kata from Goju-ryu and Shorin-ryu, and was created
by a Japanese medical doctor named Chitose Tsuyoshi during the 1930s.

During Nisei Week in Los Angeles, Ohshima Tsutomu sponsors North Americas first
Shotokan karate tournament.
Mitsugi Kobayashi, George Miyasaki, and Kenneth Murakami introduce Izumikawa Kankis
Senbukan Goju-ryu karate to Honolulu. Kobayashi had learned karate while stationed in
Okinawa as part of the United States occupation government, while Miyasaki and Murakami
had learned it while stationed in Japan as members of the United States Air Force.
A medical study identifies the leading cause of death among professional boxers as subdural
hemorrhages caused by repeated blows to the head. As such deaths were often delayed for
several days following the fight, they are a likely source for the "delayed death touches"
reported by masters of the Asian martial arts. The fighters knew these risks. So why did they
fight? Mostly for reputation, and the hope of maybe making some money. (Boxers tend to
come from working-class backgrounds.) Unfortunately for their dreams, there isnt much
money in semi-professional boxing. For four televised rounds at Madison Square Garden in
1952, unknown fighters received $150 each, while by the 1980s, that rate had increased to just
$2,500.
The Kodokan sells its old building to the Japan Karate Association, and moves to a new
seven-story building that had a weight room and a 500-mat main floor. To celebrate, the
Kodokan introduces 21 new techniques known as Kodokan goshin jutsu, or "Kodokan selfdefense techniques." Twelve of these techniques were designed for use against unarmed
attackers while nine were designed for use against armed attackers. This new interest in
practical self-defense was encouraged partly by urban dwellers fear of attack by teenaged
hoodlums, and mainly by the interests of Kodokan leaders who belonged to the Japanese
military, police forces, and security guard companies.
1959:
The United States Army adopts a new riot control agent, o-chlorobenzylidene malonotrile.
Commonly known as CS, it was both easier to disperse and more effective than CN.
Unfortunately, CS-based irritants were ineffective on about 10% of the population.
Furthermore, they could be fatal if used in enclosed spaces. While neither of these posed
unreasonable risks during military situations (the Americans used a million pounds of CS in
Vietnam in 1969, and always backed the irritant with snipers), it was a problem during police
operations. Accordingly, in 1974 British researchers introduced a new agent called dibenz(b,f)-1,4-oxazepine. Known as CR, this was about five times more effective than CS, and less
toxic. Unfortunately, it was also very persistent, and therefore it is rarely used. Working
separately, researchers in Maryland developed an equally powerful irritant called oleoresin
capsicum, or OC, in 1978. OC was soon fielded to police departments and militaries, and was
widely heralded as a breakthrough in non-lethal weapons technology when United Nations
forces used it during 1993 peacekeeping operations in Somalia. Actually, it was nothing of the
kind. Instead, it was simply a hot pepper powder put into an aerosol spray or mixed with
soapsuds.
A crippled Argentine youth named Carlos explains why he liked watching rassler Antonio
Rocca: "When I see him in the ring, I become Rocca. He gives me the feeling that I am living
in the ring with him. I am big and strong. I am a conqueror. My legs are jumping with him."
Added Rocca, who was a much better showman than wrestler, "You put a guy in a position to
smile, and that is greatness. In the ring, I try to transmit the desire to smile." If this was a true

statement of Roccas philosophy, then he probably did not kill a Brazilian rassler named
Okitaro in 1949 as his New York press agents sometimes claimed.
Mike Yuhasz, a varsity wrestling coach at the University of Western Ontario, organizes
Ontarios first high school wrestling tournament. Until 1972, the Canadians wrestled
according to NCAA rather than international rules, and all wrestlers were male. Then, during
the early 1970s a few girls (generally daughters of coaches) started wrestling. However, girls
wrestling did not become an official Canadian sport until 1993. The reason was not that the
girls couldnt beat most boys their own weight, but that the losing boys (and their coaches and
teammates) often could not cope with the defeat.
Advocates of aikido tell the publisher of Todays Japan that aikido was an outstanding
defensive art. (In aikido, the expert practitioner moves in a 360-degree arc, while "in Judo
movement is usually limited to 90 degrees and in Karate to little more than a straight line.")
The same sources added that true masters could dodge pistol bullets. (How? "If you watch the
eyes of your opponents carefully, Ueshiba said, it is possible to judge an instant before they
fire where they will shoot.") The article then qualified the preceding statements by
concluding, "Rikidozan, a leading professional wrestler, possesses a thorough knowledge of
Aikido. He is famed for his use of the karate chop, which he learned from the Aikido master
Oba."
With the publication of Goldfinger, British novelist Ian Fleming introduces European and
North American readers to karate. Although Fleming watched a demonstration of womens
judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo in 1959, most of his knowledge of the Japanese martial arts
came from talking to Japanese journalists and watching professional wrestling on television.
Japanese villains were popular in Britain and North America during the 1950s, and in 1964,
the Hawaiian professional wrestler Harold Sakata was recruited for the role of Oddjob after
the films producers saw him performing in London.
Peter Urban introduces Yamaguchi-style Goju Kai karate to Uniontown, New Jersey. "Many
beginners in Karate would rather spend all their time fighting than endure the discipline and
hard work necessary to perfect the katas of their style," said Urban in his 1967 book, The
Karate Dojo. "But not until they become fine kata performers do students have an inkling of
what Karate really means and what is meant by the phrase coming out of the dance."
Jrgen Seydel introduces Shotokan karate into the Federal Republic of Germany. Seydel was
a judoka, and his karate was based on some training with Henri Ple in Paris. One of Seydels
first students was an American serviceman named Elvis Presley. Following Presleys return to
the United States, the entertainer continued his training, this time in Ed Parkers kenpo karate,
and via Presleys patronage, Parkers kenpo karate begins to appear regularly on US television
shows. Other early TV fight coordinators included Bruce Tegner, whose on-screen karate
students included Robert Taylor (The Detective; the show aired in January 1960) and Rick
Nelson (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet; the show aired in March 1961).
Bruce Lee starts teaching wing chun in the covered parking lot of a Blue Cross clinic in
Seattle, Washington. According to his early students, Lee had good speed and better sticky
hands, and trained like a demon. But, as for the stories he told, well, Lee liked hearing himself
talk. When pressed, he would admit that Gung Fu did not mean fighting, but "speed," as in the
speed of slicing vegetables in Ruby Chows restaurant. Moreover, he was frequently pressed.
His longtime girlfriend Amy Sanbo, for example, once told him, "Maybe you can impress

those thugs you run around with this yin and yang bullshit, but we both know you dont
believe a damn word youre saying." "One thing the guys done, though," said Seattle attorney
Mark Chow, whose mother once sponsored Lee in the United States, "is that nobody takes
lunch money away from Chinese kids anymore because they assume they wont fight back."
About 1960:
The two-handed pistol stance known as the Weaver (after its pioneer, Jack Weaver) develops
in California. The idea was to develop a stance that would allow shooters to control a .357
Magnum revolver during rapid fire. Vocal advocates of the Weaver stance included John
Plahn and Jeff Cooper, and by the early 1980s, academies routinely taught police officers to
shoot from a Weaver stance. Nonetheless, the Weaver stance had its critics. For instance, Rex
Applegate advocated the "instinctive" (e.g., one-hand point-and-shoot) method espoused by
W. E. Fairbairn in the 1930s, while Elden Carl and Massad Ayoob advocated what became
known as the Modern Isosceles, or Triangle, method. Part of the disagreement, Cooper
admitted many years later, was the "basic divergence in purpose between the amateur and the
professional. The amateur seeks excellence. The professional seeks adequacy. The hobbyist
shooter wants to be better. The cop wants to be good enough."
1960:
Theodore Maiman of Malibu, Californias Hughes Research Laboratories makes the first
working ruby laser. A few months later, Donald Herriott, Ali Javan, and William Bennett of
New Jerseys Bell Laboratories unveil the first helium-neon lasers. The former are the type of
lasers subsequently made into artillery rangefinders, while the latter are the kind subsequently
used in supermarket checkout lines.
North American walk-and-draw pistol shooters hold their first national championship. This
leads to rapid improvements in pistol holster design and combat firing techniques. The sport
had its beginning when some stuntmen working for a California amusement park known as
Knotts Berry Farm decided to see how fast they could get.
In an article published in True magazine, a Spokane, Washington boxing promoter named
Jack Powers describes the club fighting of the late 1940s and early 1950s, the kind you never
saw on television. "We had no license to put on fights, but kept alive by calling ourselves a
private club, for members only; you could become a member by paying two dollars at the
doors. We could cram 600 people into the place, and there was never a vacant seat. Drinks
were served up and down the aisles, and the announcer usually had a glass in one hand and
the microphone in the other If the boys fought like hell we would cut the rounds down to
two minutes. If they were dragging, we let them go four or five. On the good fights, we gave
them an extra minute or two between rounds to rest up. Most of the matches were made in the
dressing room immediately before the show." As for the fighters themselves, Seattles Bob
Wark once wrote, "These are not great fighters, and they may lose as many bouts as they win,
but I guarantee that they will fight and bleed all the way."
Lee Joo-bang and his brother Lee Joo-sang open the first Hwa Rang Do academy in Korea.
Although the name commemorated the ancient Silla hwarang ("Flowering Knights") groups,
this should not be construed as implying actual historical connection to the ancient methods.
Instead, the Lees learned their yu sool, a Korean art perhaps related to jujutsu and certainly

related to hapkido, from a Buddhist monk named Suahm Dosa, who lived at the Yang Mi Ahm
temple near Seoul.
Anthony Mirakian introduces the Okinawan Goju-ryu karate of Yagi Meitoku to Watertown,
Massachusetts.
A former Marine named Steve Armstrong introduces Isshinryu karate to Tacoma, Washington.
Armstrong had not originally planned to teach women and children. One day a woman walked
into the garage where he held his classes, and asked him why her sweat and money should be
different from a mans. Said Armstrong, "She began lessons that day."
US physician John Ziegler puts weightlifter Louis Riecke on a program of isometrics and
anabolic steroids, and within a few months, Riecke approached world-class performance,
narrowly losing to Tommy Kono in the US Nationals. "We can't have this," Bob Hoffman of
York Barbell said upon discovering how Riecke made his gains. "We have to sell weights."
Nonetheless, because Ziegler's research methods were shoddy, the credit for developing
steroids in the US actually should go to more systematic researchers such as Louisiana State
Universitys Francis Drury.
1961:
New Jerseys Bell Laboratories introduces the first high-energy gas laser. High-energy gas
lasers drilled holes through steel at nearly light speed, and caused industrialized nations to
spend billions of dollars researching direct-fire laser weapons. Unfortunately, such weapons
required batteries storing several megawatts of energy, and those were not especially portable
during the twentieth century. (By contrast, the most powerful turbine at Washington States
Grand Coulee Dam generated .815 megawatts, while the most powerful nuclear reactors in the
world, including the Ignalina reactor in Lithuania and the CHOOZ-B1 reactor in France,
generated around 1.4 megawatts.)
Black Belt magazine enters production in California.
After a woman named Rusty Glickman defeats a male opponent during an AAU-sanctioned
judo meet in New York City, the AAU bans women from participating in judo tournaments.
(The reason was not that the male-dominated AAU leadership believed that women couldnt
wrestle, but that it believed that women shouldnt wrestle.) Under pressure from womens
groups (including one led by the by-then Rusty Glickman Kanokogi) the AAU finally relents
in 1971, and allows women to compete against women using special "womens rules." The
women kept pushing for equality, and women were allowed to compete using standard rules
in 1973. While a blow for equality, there remains little interest in having women compete
against men. Yet, if judo is everything that its proponents claim, namely an activity where
skill matters more than size, then shouldnt women compete directly against men of the same
age, experience, and weight?
The 66" Dutchman Anton Geesink shatters the myth of Japanese invincibility in judo by
winning the world heavyweight championship.
Oyama Mas establishes formal links between board breaking, Zen, and Kyokushin Kai karate.

Richard Kim begins teaching Shorinji Ryu karate at the Chinese YMCA in San Francisco,
California. (From the late 1890s to the late 1950s, YMCAs were often segregated.)
While attending college in San Francisco, Yamaguchi Gosen (a son of Yamaguchi Gogen)
introduces Goju Kai karate into California. Early students include Rodney Hu. In 1963, Gosen
returned to Japan, but in 1964, his older brother, Gosei, replaced him in San Francisco.
Yamaguchi Gosei stayed in the United States, where he became the head of Goju Kai USA.
Following a South Korean military coup, Martial Law Number Six orders the karate styles
known as Chung Do Kwan, Chang Moo Kwan, Song Moo Kwan, Moo Duk Kwan, and Ji Do
Kwan reorganized into a unified system called taesoodo. It also ordered that Korean soldiers
receive taesoodo instruction as part of their regular training. Leaders from the Moo Duk Kwan
and the Ji Do Kwan disagreed with the new systems promotional policies, and resisted this
consolidation as best they could. The government steamrollered the opposition, and by 1965,
the association was firmly in place under its new name of Korea Taesoodo Association (KTA).
(The modern name, Korea Taekwondo Association, only dates to 1966.)
1962:
Honor Blackman becomes the first actress to win theatrical fights using techniques borrowed
from the Asian martial arts. The reason was that Ray Austin (Blackmans fight arranger on
The Avengers) believed that judo throws and aikido wristlocks were more visually exciting
than .25 automatics. Austin also choreographed some of the first karate fights on television
using Diana Rigg, Blackmans replacement on The Avengers, and a stunt double named Cyd
Child. Austins choreography invariably favored form over function. This was partly because
Rigg, unlike Blackman, had little martial art experience, and mainly that the shows lawyers
feared that British schoolchildren would copy Riggs techniques and use them during their
schoolyard fights. Child, by the way, was also a model for the comic book character Modesty
Blaise.
John Leong introduces hung gar and tai chi chuan to Seattle, Washington. Leongs patrons
included Ruby Chow, the head of Seattles Chong Wa Benevolent Association, and with her
support, his students included many non-Chinese people. Leongs instructors in Hong Kong
included Wong Lee.
Cheng Man-cheng publishes an English-language text called Tai Chi Chuan: A Simplified
Method of Calisthenics for Health and Self-Defense.
The Ministry of Education authorizes the use of the word "kendo" in Japanese public schools;
it had previously been in disfavor due to unpleasant associations with WWII-era militarism.
Taesoodo becomes part of the Korean National Sports Festival. (Its first public appearance at
the games was actually in 1963; this was just the announcement.) For political reasons, the
styles Japanese origins were minimized and this in turn led to the development of new ethics,
philosophies, and techniques. For example, while karate emphasizes single punches, taesoodo
started emphasizing kicks thrown in rapid combination. Furthermore, it prohibited hand
techniques to the face or any attacks below the waist, and eliminated all grabs and throws.
Additionally, sparring rules were modified to emphasize continuous action, and pads were
developed that allowed heavier physical contact between players. Finally, emphasis was
placed on developing character through athletic competition rather than through

contemplation of self-defense applications. Consequently, as Herb Perez wrote in Black Belt

in February 1998, competitive taekwondo "is actually traditional taekwondo by virtue of the
fact that it was developed wholly in Korea."
The South Korean Army sends four taesoodo instructors -- Nam Tae Hi, Kim Seung Kyu,
Jung Young Hwi, and Choo Kyo -- to the Republic of Vietnam. Over the next decade, the
Koreans send another 657 instructors and another 40,000 more heavily armed soldiers to Binh
Dinh, Phu Yen, Khanh Hoa, and Ninh Thuan provinces. In Korean units, martial art training
was widespread. For example, in 1967, the Korean Capital Division had 15,000 men. Of
these, three were fourth-degree, 29 were third-degree, 57 were second-degree, and 115 were
first-degree. There were also 600 red belts (red is higher than black in Japan, so General Choi
made it lower than black in his system) and 2,300 blue belts. The principal style taught was
the Shotokan derivative known as Chung Do Kwan, and about 1,250 Vietnamese and 150
Americans attended the month-long course at Qui Nhon Air Force Base. Foreign instruction
was often in English, and the primary trainers included Captain Yoon Dong Ho and Sergeant
Jun Jae Gun. Other than making the soldiers physically fitter, there is debate concerning the
military value of the training. Lieutenant General Chae Myung Shin, Commander of the ROK
Forces, Vietnam, said, "Through Taekwondo, the soldiers moral armament is strengthened,
gallantry to protect the weak enhanced, courage against injustice fostered, and patriotism
firmly planted." Unfortunately, this was not demonstrated in combat. For example, Major
General Charles P. Brown, Commander of I Field Force, Vietnam, said that the Korean
military frequently failed to show initiative when conducting military operations or sympathy
when dealing with civilians. General Browns predecessor was less kind, saying that the two
Korean divisions were less use than one US brigade, a unit ten times smaller. Finally, General
Creighton Abrahms told Vice-President Spiro Agnew that the Korean forces were militarily
no better than the South Vietnamese, for whom Abrahms had nothing but contempt. As for the
arts reported effect on character-building, tactical uses included the beheadings of a woman
and her eight children following a sniper attack, and a beating delivered to a US Army major
who complained about a Korean Marine colonels involvement in black market profiteering.
The Soviet Union sends its first team to the European Judo Championships. Although trained
solely in sambo, the Soviets Anzor Kiknadze captured the grand championship and the team
itself took third. This got the attention of European judoka, and started changing the face of
competition judo. Specific changes included increased emphasis on bodily lifting opponents
and then applying leg and arm locks to gain submission and less emphasis on proper form,
spectacular throws, and etiquette. Aesthetically the new methods left much to be desired, but
they were brutally practical.
Los Angeles County coroner Cyril Courville publishes a study showing that dementia
pugilistica, or punch drunkenness, is caused by the severe atrophy of the frontal lobes of the
brain and the premature loss of huge numbers of nerve cells within the hippocamus and
cerebellar cortex.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a Berkeley physicist named Thomas Kuhn uses the
word "paradigm" to describe the model problems and solutions that communities of
practitioners used to define their science. New Age writers quickly misappropriate and misuse
the term, causing Kuhn to wish that he had used the word "exemplar" instead of "paradigm,"
and to complain that he was fonder of his critics than his fans.
1963:

As part of a post-graduate project at Oxford University, a retired Marine Corps general named
Samuel Griffith publishes a heavily annotated translation of Sun Tzus The Art of War.
Reasons for the translation included Griffiths belief that the United States could no more win
a war against the Chinese without understanding Sun Tzus thirteen chapters than it could win
a war against the Nazis without understanding Mein Kampf. Nevertheless, other Western
generals until do not come to appreciate the wily Chinese until after the US withdrawal from
Vietnam in 1972.
A New York woman named Kitty Genovese is slowly knifed to death in front of her
apartment. None of the 38 witnesses try to help her, or even call the police. "I was tired. I
went back to bed," explained one of the witnesses afterwards. Quickly exploited by media and
academic philosophers, the story continues to be cited as an example of the callousness of
modern urban dwellers. Still, given the response of the coal miners living in Audenried,
Pennsylvania to a street killing in 1862 (one man locked himself in his cellar, another
carefully finished his drink, then turned around and went home by a different route, while a
third looked out his window, then shut his window and went to bed), the suspicion arises that
discretion is the normal human response to unexpected situations requiring individual acts of
moral and physical courage.
The massive muscle bulk of the Soviet judo team causes a French judo team to start
demanding weight divisions. When the Japanese officials in charge of the International Judo
Federation resisted the suggestion, the French gathered support from the Australians, Swiss,
Spanish, and several African countries, and then voted the Japanese out and the weight
divisions in. All of which proves the point of Indonesian President Sukharno, who
simultaneously said of Olympic posturing, "Let us declare frankly that sport has something to
do with politics." Ironically, while steroids may have enhanced the size of the Soviet players,
their successes owed more to good nutrition, sophisticated national-level training programs,
and directed visualization. Furthermore, despite their emphasis on identifying athletes at an
early age, the Soviets never encouraged youths to do gymnastics before the age of eight, to
wrestle before the age of ten, or to box before the age of twelve. Finally, they did not disburse
steroids except under medical supervision. This was rather different than in East Germany,
where in 1989 Hans-Jrgen Noczenski, a former chairman of the East German judo
federation, told the newspaper Bild am Sontag that East German Olympic athletes were
virtually force-fed performance enhancing drugs. These allegations were supported by the
East German ski jumper Hans-Georg Aschenbach, who told reporters that athletes who balked
were not allowed to compete internationally, and were harassed in their private lives.
An interviewer asks Vincente Ferreira Pastinha, the elderly doyen of the Angola players, how
many strikes there are in capoeira. The mestre replied: "They are without number. For every
strike which is launched, there are two defenses already prepared, and for those two defenses,
four more strikes. One is [always] improvising and thinking while fighting." However, for the
edification of the literal-minded, a group of capoeiristas decided in 1969 that there were 141
defensive movements, 238 takedowns, and 400 strikes. Afterwards, says Bira Almeida, who
was there when this decision was rendered, "We found nothing had changed. Nobody agreed
with anybody."
An article in China Sports reports that doctors at the Shanghai No. 1 Medical College had
found that elderly people who practiced tai chi chuan regularly were one-third stronger and
six times more flexible than elderly people who did not. The Chinese government, however,
was not entirely happy with tai chi chuan, as it encouraged workers to leave productive jobs

to teach students in parks, or to become infected with the "ideological poison of many feudal
superstitions."
Chuck Norris opens a Tang Soo Do school in Torrance, California. Norris had studied at Osan
Air Force Base in Korea, and his successes in California open tournaments soon allowed him
to turn his school into a major Los Angeles-area franchise operation. Norris later quit this
business to become a film and television performer.
Ed Parkers students Jim and Al Tracy open a commercial kenpo karate school in San Jose,
California. It made a lot of money, so in 1966 the Tracys decided to begin franchising their
operations. The salesmen for the system included the Tracys and a man named Tom Connors,
but the man they hired to show the effectiveness of their system was the famous tournament
fighter Joe Lewis. (Lewis did karate rather than anything related to kenpo, but to the Tracys,
that was an unimportant detail.) Anyway, the way these franchises worked was that the Tracys
would help someone establish his own storefront school, and then pay the initial rent,
advertising, and other expenses. In return, the instructor had to pay the Tracys about $4,000 a
month. To pay these franchise fees and eat, an instructor needed two things: high monthly fees
and several hundred students. While some instructors had the charm, charisma, and skills
needed to maintain both high monthly fees and several hundred students, others did not.
Consequently, many individual franchise owners soon found themselves faced with the choice
of lowering standards or going out of business.
Stan Schmidt introduces JKA (Shotokan) karate to Johannesburg, South Africa.
Mervyn Oakley introduces Goju Kai karate to Sydney, Australia.
About 1964:
Religico-magical hunting rituals, many of which involved dances mimicking the actions of
the hunt and its aftermath, begin dying out among school-educated Africans. The reason had
to do with independence from colonial rule. While the colonialists had restricted black
Africans access to firearms and found magic entertaining, the new Western-educated African
elite encouraged people to own shotguns and hunting rifles, and believed (publicly, if not
always privately) that magic was old-fashioned.
So that children who were physically or temperamentally unfit for sports such as gymnastics
or basketball could have their own after-school sport, the Chinese introduce tai chi chuan
into their middle school pedagogy. (The Chinese government expected all children aged
thirteen to fifteen to participate in after-school sports.) Class structure followed Soviet
pedagogical models, and included five minutes of attendance-taking, ten to fifteen minutes of
warm-ups, about half an hour of actual instruction, and a five minute cool-down and closing.
A Confucian aspect of the instruction was that the teacher was expected to take an active role
in the childs private life, and to mingle with the students before and after class.
1964:
To improve its submarine-launched ballistic missile target acquisition, the United States Navy
launches a global positioning satellite called Transit. In 1967, global positioning system
(GPS) technology becomes available to civilians. For the next fifteen years, GPS was used
mostly by the airline industry. However, over time prices dropped, and in 1991, GPS-using

soldiers involved in the Desert Storm campaign became the first soldiers in history to know
where they were without compass, map, or previous experience in the area.
A Yale University psychology professor named Stanley Milgram publishes experimental data
showing that cruelty is usually a function of people obeying orders or reacting to peer
pressure rather than a characteristic unique to sadists. Indeed, follow-on studies found that 6080% of the populations studied would grudgingly engage in personally distasteful levels of
violence whenever directly ordered to do so by someone in authority. As a rule, middle-aged
males were more likely to disobey authority than adolescent males or females.
Former heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson explains courage to writer Gay Talese using
the following words: "Well find out what hes like after somebody beats him, how he takes it.
Its easy to do anything in victory. Its in defeat that a man reveals himself." Meanwhile,
trainer Cus DAmato increases the speed of boxer Jos Torres combinations by having Torres
punch according to the numbers. Not just the ol one-two, but a whole series of numbers. Step
one: punch and move. Step two: punch, move, punch. And so on, until by step six, Torres was
throwing six punches to predetermined areas in two-fifths of a second. This punching was not
done in the air, either, as DAmato believed that punching the air was worthless. Instead, it
involved hitting a target made from mattresses wrapped around a pole, and struck according
to the numbers called out by the coach or planned by the fighter. The numbers used in this
system were: 1. A straight left to the head. 2. A straight right to the head. 3. A left uppercut to
the chin. 4. A right uppercut to the chin. 5. A left hook to the body. 6. A right hook to the body.
7. A left jab to the head.
The Summer Olympics take place in Tokyo, and judo is one of the exhibition sports. (It only
became an official sport in 1972.) As expected, the Japanese dominate the event, but to the
horror of the Japanese public, the giant Dutchman Anton Geesink wins the gold medal in the
unlimited division. The secret of his success, Geesink said, was not his size but his training: "I
defeated the Japanese because I know judo better than the Japanese. The secret is to train
every day in the basics. This will make you unbeatable."
Pat Burleson and Allen Steen of Fort Worth, Texas, introduce belt-goal karate classes. These
guaranteed promotion upon payment for a set number of classes, a trick that increased
enrollment and lowered dropout rates.
Angel Cabales of Stockton, California opens the first school to teach Filipino martial arts to
non-Filipinos. Cabales, who moved to the United States from the Philippines in 1939, learned
his stick and knife fighting skills on the Manila docks from a man named Feliscimo Dizon.
By teaching tai chi chuan and other Chinese martial arts to non-Chinese people, Ark Yuey
Wong and Cheng Man-ching upset the Chinese communities in, respectively, Los Angeles
and New York. One cause of the unhappiness was their willingness to teach women, blacks,
and long-haired white males.
Lee Chong introduces taekwondo to Montreal, and subsequently becomes a leader of
Canadian Olympic-style taekwondo.
1965:

DuPont researcher Stephanie Kwolek invents a polyaramid fiber called Kevlar. It was first
used to make steel-belted radial tires. Then, in 1971, a version called Kevlar-29 was found to
provide good resistance to handgun bullets, and in 1974, this in turn led to the introduction of
soft body armor that was resistant to pistol and shotgun fire. In December 1975, an off-duty
Seattle police officer named Ray Johnson became the first person known to have survived a
shooting because of Kevlar armor, and by 2000, Kevlar armor had reportedly saved about
2,500 US police officers from death or serious injury. The US military was following these
developments, and so in 1982, it began replacing its steel helmets and nylon ballistic vests
with helmets and vests made from Kevlar. Research continued, and during the 1990s, lighter,
stronger, and more flexible vests were introduced that had pockets in front and back to hold
ceramic armor plates made of boron carbide. These plates were capable of absorbing direct
hits from rifle fire, and so their use in Afghanistan and Iraq was credited with saving the lives
of British and American soldiers. Unfortunately, the helmets, vests, and plates still did not
provide any protection for limbs, and so the next research goal was to develop a flexible cloth
that would change its molecular structure when struck by projectiles.
A South Vietnamese entomology professor named Ngo Dong combines Shotokan karate with
aikido to create his own martial art known as cuong nhu. Cuong nhu becomes quite popular
with the urban middle classes of South Florida during the 1980s. This is somewhat ironic,
inasmuch as the Vietnamese street gangs of the region preferred MAC-10s and other selfloading firearms.
The Korea Taekwondo Association establishes a committee to design distinctively Korean
practice forms (poomse) with which to replace the Shotokan/Shudokan kata traditionally
taught. Over the next few years 25 (eight palgwe, eight taeguek, and nine yudanja) forms
were developed, and in 1972 these were promulgated in a Korean-language textbook called
Taekwondo Kyobon. There were known errors in the text, but according to Im Chang Soo, the
errors were allowed to remain because the grandmasters werent willing to take the time or
spend the money to make the corrections.
Paula and Pauline Short open Karate for Women in Portland, Oregon. In 1968, LaVerne Bates
started a womens chuan fa class in Los Angeles, and in 1971, Py Bateman established a
Feminist Karate Union in Seattle, Washington. A stated purpose of all three schools was to
teach women that it was not only permissible, but also desirable, to assert themselves during
physical confrontations.
In Pakistan, important wrestling matches were not taking place as often as in the past. Karachi
journalist Anwer Mooraj said reasons why included inexperienced promoters, inadequate
facilities, and complaints about "a certain understanding among members of the fraternity not
to break one anothers limbs too often." Pre-match publicity always followed this pattern.
First, photos of the wrestlers appeared in the newspapers. Then, for the next several weeks,
the wrestlers boasted in the sport pages about what they planned to do to the other once they
got into the ring. Thus, by match time, thousands of fans would cram into the National or
Railway Stadiums expecting an exciting match. And if they didnt get it, said Mooraj, only
half in jest, bookmakers "started offering odds on the referees chances of surviving the
match."
An author for the Chinese periodical Hsin Ti-yu ("New Physical Culture") notes that "low
practices and illegalities in taking fees" were a problem in Mainland Chinese tai chi chuan
classes. According to workers from a Peking automobile manufacturing plant, some teachers

had not been reformed by Socialism. Therefore, toward keeping workers following the
discredited road of feudal superstition, the youth group called the Red Guard orchestrated
attacks on traditional martial art instructors. The Red Guards also pillaged the Shaolin Temple
at Chang-shao, and drove away the handful of remaining monks. Photographs taken by the
Japanese visitors Tokiwa and Sekino show that the Shaolin Monastery was run-down by 1920.
In 1927, it was burned during the Northern Expedition. A handful of very passive monks lived
inside the ruins from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s. Consequently, there was probably little,
if any, martial art instruction at the Shaolin Monastery from 1927 to 1980.
1966:
The United States military fields its first man-portable atomic bombs. These were .2 kiloton
devices delivered by three-man Special Forces or Underwater Demolitions teams. The smaller
implosion bombs weighed 42 pounds, while the larger gun-type bombs weighed 120 pounds.
Inexplicably, the weapons timing devices were only accurate to plus-or-minus five hours, and
most of their blast went into the air instead of the target. So, except for making a place
lethally radioactive for a couple weeks, the devices were almost criminally impractical.
Consequently, they were reportedly deactivated after laser-guided smart bombs and radarguided cruise missiles became available during the early 1970s. Equivalent Soviet devices do
not seem to have been any more practical.
While sitting around the house in Berkeley, California, a group of fantasy writers and college
students including Diana Paxson starts wondering what it would be like to really live in
medieval times. The result is the Society for Creative Anachronism, or SCA. The original
purpose of the SCA was to recreate life in medieval times. (Selectively, though -- no SCA
members wanted to recreate plagues or the lack of indoor plumbing.) Many members liked
sword-and-buckler play. Early weapons and armor were crude and tended to build a high
tolerance for pain. (Armor consisted of padded jackets and fencing masks, while weapons
were rattan singlesticks.) By the late 1970s, armor manufacture had improved, and metal
armor started appearing. Along the way, many members training methodology began tipping
toward a sporting attitude rather than antiquarian research.
In Toledo, Ohio, polyethylene foam wrestling mats are used for the first time during
international competition. Although expensive, foam mats were softer (eggs bounced rather
than broke) and more easily set up and sanitized than the traditional canvas over horsehair
mats. This contributed to the spread of high school wrestling programs throughout the United
States and Canada.
Bruce Lee appears on a short-lived American television series called The Green Hornet. Lees
getting this role was due in part to his friendship with Ed Parker, whose students included
various Hollywood stars and producers. Unfortunately, because the studios refused to believe
that North American audiences would ever like an Asian hero, Lee could not get starring roles
in Hollywood. Consequently, he returned to Hong Kong, where he met Raymond Chow of
Golden Harvest, who was starting to use hand-to-hand fights in his action films instead of
swordplay. The result was a series of low-budget chop-socky flicks including The Big Boss
and Way of the Dragon. While the fighting shown in these movies was more spectacular than
practical, the anti-authoritarian themes of the scripts appealed to working class audiences
everywhere and the result was incredible box-office success.

About breaking boards and bricks with the fists, Ohshima Tsutomo of the Southern California
Karate Association says, "People who do that, I think, are perhaps subconsciously
strengthening their ki ["spirit-energy"]. They think they have to toughen up their hands by
bruising them to make them strong and irresistible [However,] if the ki had been developed
and strong enough, [they] could have done these things all along, instead of having to rely on
such hand toughening methods to convince [themselves]."
Peter Urban breaks from Yamaguchi Gogen to establish the U. S. A. Goju-Ryu Association.
Matsuura Hiroshi introduces Shito-ryu karate to Mexico.
Fujita Seiko dies. Fujita claimed to be Japans last practicing ninja, but that claim has since
been disputed. Anyway, during interviews, Fujita always deplored the commercialization of
ninjutsu in the movies, and added that people such as Hatsumi Yoshiaki were not describing
true ninjutsu, only interesting aspects of the traditional Japanese martial arts. These statements
correspond with what Richard Bowen wrote in the Budokwai quarterly Judo in October 1957.
"I saw in a [Japanese] newspaper to-day that in Veno Mie Prefecture a group of young office
workers had come across some old books dealing with a defunct school Nin-jutsu. They
became so interested that for fun they decided to try some of the methods The idea is to
break into fortifications, etc., do what you were going to do in the way of murder, abduction,
spying, arson, and such like pleasant pastimes, and then get out again without being
slaughtered." However, they are not what Hatsumis students believed, and so to this day the
actual history of modern ninjutsu remains a contentious topic.
Cheng Man-Ching and Robert W. Smith provide the first English translations of the classics
of tai chi chuan. (It is hard, if not impossible, to do tai chi chuan well without an
understanding of these classics.) The essential tai chi exercise known as pushing-hands is
described below. The translation is by Liang Tung-tsai.
In Ward-off, Rollback, Press, and Push,
You must find the real technique -If he goes up you follow;
If he goes down, you follow -Then he cannot attack.
1967:
Although you would never have guessed that there were such things as Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorders by watching the years movies, which included The One-Armed Swordsman and
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the World War II hero Audie Murphy admits to suffering
recurring war-induced nightmares.
Bruce Lee names his martial art, which combined wing chun with boxing, fencing, and arnis,
"Jeet Kune Do," which means "The Way of the Intercepting Fist."

The James Bond movie You Only Live Twice introduces Western audiences to the black-clad
super-warriors called ninjas. Unlike most subsequent movie ninja, the Bond ninja are
ultimately destroyed by automatic weapon fire. Extras included Donn Draeger and Oyama
Mas.
When asked about the quality of his European and North American opposition, which he
routinely destroyed in a matter of minutes, an outstanding Pakistani professional wrestler
called Aslam Bholu replied, "They are making a living, my friend; life is hard." Packing 300
pounds on a 63" frame, Bholu said that his diet consisted of six pounds of curd and two
pounds of almonds for breakfast, and eight pounds of chicken mixed with a couple of loaves
of bread for lunch and supper. However, he didnt drink milk.
About 1968:
African American martial art practitioners begin developing Black Nationalist ("Afrikan")
martial arts. Most of these practitioners, such as Moses Powell and James Cheatham, taught
reasonably orthodox Asian or eclectic martial arts, but some, such as Dennis Newsome,
instead started studying African heritage arts such as capoeira. In addition, a few practitioners,
notably Nganga Tolo-Naa (Ray Cooper) and Shaha Maasi (William Nichols), developed their
own arts (in this case, Kupigana Ngumi, which includes techniques from karate, tai chi
chuan, and Maung Gyis American Bando). African American street versions also developed.
The latter are known today by the generic term "Jailhouse Rock." Influences on these street
versions included Black Islam, rap music, popular dance, and kung-fu movies.
1968:
In Vietnam, military lawyers boast of winning 200 convictions for a crime that they called
"assault with explosives," and that GIs called "fragging." While popularly attributed to poor
leadership in the field, most fraggings actually involved poor leadership in garrison.
Explained one unidentified officer to a reporter, "Given beer, whisky or drugs, mixed in with a
crowd of blacks and whites, and you can have trouble. But you never know which came first
-- the booze, the drugs, or racial disagreements." The problem was not unique to Vietnam,
either. For example, Dr. Joseph W. Owen, the head of a psychiatric section in the Solomon
Islands during World War II, has described the case of a Marine captain who routinely
ridiculed a lieutenant in front of his men. After a few weeks of this, the lieutenant planted a
mine in the captains tent and detonated it from the bushes.
For crippling two American M-48 tanks and leading two successful attacks against a South
Vietnamese military base near Saigon, the North Vietnamese Army awards a 17-year old
woman named Vo Thi Mo its Victory Medal Third Class. "The first time I killed an
American," Vo told an interviewer twenty years later, "I felt enthusiasm and more hatred."
After a while, however, her enthusiasm waned, in part because, after watching American
soldiers look at pictures and cry, she realized that most American soldiers were not faceless
baby burners, simply scared young men far from home.
The University of California publishes Carlos Castanedas doctoral dissertation as Don Juan:
A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. While the book was later shown to be a sociological hoax, it still
helped popularize the idea of the chemically dependent warrior in Europe and North America.

Californian Pat Johnson introduces the penalty-point system to North American karate. Under
this system, fighters who hit their opponent too hard gave up one point to that opponent, and
lost if that opponent could not continue. (Previously, fighters who couldnt continue were
disqualified.) While encouraging karate tournaments to become games of tag instead of
realistic fights, the "Johnson ruling" also solved the problem of excessive bloodshed during
North American amateur karate tournaments. Today, however, Johnson is best remembered as
the fight arranger for The Karate Kid, a Hollywood movie that portrayed excessive contact
and unsportsmanlike conduct as the norm rather than the exception during tournament
competition.
The Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) starts sending taekwondo instructors
overseas. Several of these men were subsequently arrested in Germany, where they were
charged with assaulting anti-government protesters. The Koreans probably were not assassins,
however, as in 1991, General Chois son Choi Choong Hwa was sentenced to six years in a
Canadian prison for attempting to hire some Canadians to assassinate a serving South Korean
president.
1969:
After deciding to admit women undergraduates, Yale University stops requiring (not allowing,
requiring) nude swimming in its pool. The official reason for the nudity? The wool used in
bathing suits clogged pool filters.
The Swiss-born psychologist Elisabeth Kbler-Ross publishes On Death and Dying. This
book introduces the theory that human responses to death and other unpleasant realities go
through a continuum comprised of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In
1995, US Army psychologist Dave Grossman modified her schema to identify the human
responses. These responses are 1) concern about the ability to kill, 2) the actual kill, 3)
exhilaration ("It is vital," says Grossman, "that future soldiers understand that [exhilaration] is
a normal and very common response to the abnormal circumstances of combat, and they need
to understand that their feelings of satisfaction at killing are a natural and fairly common
aspect of combat"), 4) remorse and revulsion, 5) rationalization, and 6) acceptance. Grossman
adds that most people (he says 3 out of 4) are emotionally unable to personally kill another
human being. As many societies worship aggressive behavior, an individuals discovery that
he or she is personally unable to kill can be as traumatizing as an actual first kill.
A British study finds that while professional boxers vocabularies were below normal, their
intelligence levels were equal to or higher than the general population. As for amateur boxers,
a separate Finnish study completed in 1982 found that amateur boxing champions tended to
have better average education and higher social status than their parents or siblings.
In Evanston, Illinois, an amateur wrestling organization known as the United States Wrestling
Federation (USWF) holds its first Freestyle Senior Open tournament. The USWF did things
for wrestlers that the AAU never considered, such as run clinics and pay travel expenses.
(Under AAU auspices, international-class wrestlers hitchhiked to tournaments, and faced
banning for appearing on television shows or accepting speaking engagements.) The USWF
also pushed for rules changes that would allow athletes to be coaches without losing their
amateur status. Obviously, such changes were popular with wrestlers and coaches, and so in
1982 the USWF replaced the AAU as the arbiter of United States amateur wrestling. To
reflect this change, the USWF changed its name to USA Wrestling. USA Wrestling became

part of FILA in 1986. Meanwhile, Canadian amateur wrestlers were making similar changes;
in their case, the new organization was called the Canadian Amateur Wrestling Association.
Lee Haeng Ung establishes the American Tae Kwon Do Association (ATA) in Little Rock,
Arkansas. In 1992, this organization claimed 80,000 members in 250 schools, making it the
largest taekwondo organization in North America. Explaining his own initiation into the
martial arts, Lee told Tae Kwon Do Times in an interview published in March 1992: "After the
Korean War, Korea started to import a lot of American Western and gangster movies. As kids,
we loved to watch them fight, and all of us wanted to be able to fight better. I tried Judo when
I was nine or ten, but I couldnt throw the big guy. Then I took up boxing and I got hit too
much and got lots of headaches. I looked for something better and found Tang Soo Do. Most
people back then didnt think martial arts were good; they thought ... only gangsters and
hoods did them."
Smith & Wesson begin offering practical shooting instruction to police officers. The chief
instructor was a retired FBI agent named Charles Smith. However, for civilian shooters, Jeff
Coopers American Pistol Institute ("Gunsite"), which opened in Arizona in 1973, was
probably more influential.
1970:
The United States Army fields low-energy ruby laser rangefinders in Vietnam. The American
artillerymen found the weapons point-of-aim, point-of-impact, accuracy so fascinating that
both officers and enlisted began pulling out lawn chairs and cold beers to better view the
action. International television audiences joined these fascinated American soldiers during the
Gulf War of 1991, when Coalition forces fired 12,000 laser-guided munitions at the hapless
Iraqis.
While watching Joe Lewis (a karate stylist who relied heavily on punching) knock out Greg
"Ohm" Baines (a San Jose kenpo karate stylist who relied more on kicking), a ringside
announcer invents the phrase "kick boxing." Lewis was an excellent puncher. Nonetheless, the
competition in karate in those days was hardly as stiff as competition in professional boxing,
and when Lewis boxed against a Honolulu preliminary boxer named Teddy Limoz in July
1975, it was Limoz in three.
Cho Sang Min opens Brazils first taekwondo school, the Academia Liberdade, in So Paulo.
His peers included Lee Woo Jae, Oh Ju Yul, and Lee Bo Tee, all of whom opened Brazilian
taekwondo academies in 1972. That said, Brazils most famous taekwondo teacher was
undoubtedly Kim Yong Min, who, after starting a school in Rio in 1975, did extensive
advertising on television and in comic books.
Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali shows his trademark backward-stepping "Ali
shuffle" to the 62-year old New York fight trainer Cus DAmato, and says that the shuffle was
so fast, that no one alive could touch him. DAmato laughs and says that wasnt true. Prove it,
replied the Champ. So DAmato does, twice, bending his body to the right while jabbing with
his left the first time, then bending to the left while jabbing with his right the second. The
secret, said the beaming DAmato, involved timing rather than speed.
Because NCAA wrestling rules did not apply to international competition, the Canadian
Intercollegiate Athletic Union votes to change from NCAA free-style wrestling to

international freestyle. Although the FILA rules committee had an annoying habit of changing
rules in mid-season, the result was nevertheless better overall Canadian performance during
Olympic and World Championship events.
1971:
After winning a bruising fifteen-round decision over former champion Muhammad Ali, the
reigning heavyweight champion Joe Frazier finds that the only way to keep his head from
hurting was to stick it into a sink filled with ice water. Ali evidently felt about the same, as he
went to the hospital for X-rays of his jaw, and then told the press, "I guess Im not pretty any
more."
The British anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard claims that the acrobatic dances done by the
Nubans, a Nilotic African people living in southwestern Sudan and northeastern Zaire, were
originally designed to simulate short-ranged individual combats. Perhaps. On the other hand,
a Masaai man named Tepilit Ole Saitoti said in his 1986 autobiography that the Masaai
warriors of the late 1960s danced mostly to attract female attention. Either way, both the
Masaai and the Nuba wrestled to enhance personal and clan reputation. Training included
wrestling, dancing, and abstaining from beer and sex.
A Department of Defense study finds that 69% of the United States military personnel queried
used marijuana while stationed in Southeast Asia. Another 29% used barbiturates or
amphetamines, and 38% used heroin or other opiates. These staggering levels of drug abuse
were motivated by the soldiers desire to chemically escape stress and fear. In the words of
one Vietnam veteran, "Wed sit around smoking grass and getting stoned and talking about
when wed get to go home." This said, alcoholism was an even bigger problem. In the words
of another veteran, "You cant forget... but booze makes it go away for awhile."
A Canadian environmental group called Greenpeace launches its first Rainbow Warriors.
While the Rainbow Warriors originally espoused non-violence, they soon turned to spiking
trees, vandalizing bulldozers, and ramming whaling ships, for, in the words of the Arizona
environmentalist Edward Abbey, "Whats more American than violence?"
Japanese organized crime syndicates become actively involved in kickboxing and female
professional wrestling in Thailand and Singapore.
Yamaguchi Gogen defines Japanese Goju karate using the following words:
Quick decisions.
Calm heart.
Strong and swift.
1972:
By creating a television series called Kung Fu and a movie called Return of the Dragon,
Warner Brothers introduces Hong Kong-style kung fu movies to Hollywood. Bruce Lee
starred in the latter movie, and he was originally offered the starring role in Kung Fu.
However, after auditioning, Lee was turned down for the role because the producer, Jerry

Thorpe, didnt think that Lee spoke English well enough. The result was that dancer David
Carradine, whom Chuck Norris has said does martial arts about as well as Norris acts, got the
role instead.
A Hungarian-born Australian named Joe Meissner becomes the first non-Japanese to win the
world karate championships.
The French national karate champion Dominic Valera introduces Western boxings one-two
punches to international karate competition. While this revolutionizes European karate, single
attacks (generally reverse punches and front snap kicks) continued to dominate Japanese
tournaments until 1982. Why? Rules. The Japanese rules only awarded points for single
attacks, therefore discouraging combinations.
With the support of the Brazilian Air Force, capoeira Regional becomes an official sport of
the Brazilian Boxing Confederation. In return, the capoeira schools involved agreed to add
tournament rules, ranking schemes, and colored belts. The colors chosen for those belts
(green, yellow, blue, and white) were those of the Brazilian national flag.
Twenty-year old Tefilio Stevenson wins the first of three successive gold medals in Olympic
heavyweight boxing. While "El Gigante" was Cubas national hero throughout the 1970s, his
goal was to become a well-rounded boxer. "As athletes grow older," said Stevenson, " they
learn and develop more technique." Other outstanding Cuban Olympic boxers included Angel
Herra (gold in 1976 and 1980), Andrs Aldama (silver in 1976 and gold in 1980), and Felix
Savon (gold in 1992, 1996, and 2000).
Mens judo becomes a permanent Olympic sport. Although Japanese won the most Olympic
gold medals, by the late early 2000s the French, South Korean, and former Soviet teams were
not far behind in total medal count.
Taekwondo becomes part of the official curriculum of South Korean public schools.
A Hawaiian named Jesse James Walani Kuhaulua (but known as Daigoro Takamiyama)
becomes the first foreigner to win the Emperors Cup in sumo. The congratulatory telegram
by the United States President Richard Nixon marks the only time that English has ever been
officially spoken in a Tokyo sumo ring. (When the Samoan American sumotori known as
Konishiki became the second United States citizen to win the Emperors Cup in 1989, the
diplomat sent to read President George Bushs congratulatory telegram read the Presidents
words in Japanese instead of English.)
The Japanese government imposes minimum education requirements on sumotori. The idea
was to keep rural teenagers from dropping out of junior high school to become professional
wrestlers.
Dan Gable of Iowa, who won 180 consecutive matches in high school and college, becomes
the first Olympic wrestler to win a gold medal without his opponents scoring a single point. "I
expected to win all of these matches," Gable told reporters several years later, "but only one at
a time." According to Gables teammate Ben Peterson, Gable funded his wrestling by saving
the money he earned by teaching seminars. Still, said Peterson, a devout Christian, the hard
work and low pay beat wearing T-shirts advertising beer companies, as became the norm
following the appearance of corporate Olympics in 1984.

1973:
The World Taekwon-Do Federation (WTF) is established in Seoul, Korea. The An official
organ of the South Korean government, the proximate cause of its establishment was that
General Choi Hong Hi, head of the existing International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) was
planning to move to Toronto, Canada. ("The WTF," says American taekwondo pioneer Henry
Cho, "is not a martial art organization, it is a political organization They have been
successful from the standpoint that they have developed Tae Kwon Do as a sport, and I can
appreciate this... but it hasnt had much to do with promoting Tae Kwon Do as a martial art.")
A second and dispute was over who pocketed the money collected through proprietary
ranking systems.
A Polish study finds that most elite male athletes came from working-class rural backgrounds.
Elite female athletes, on the other hand, usually came from upper-class urban backgrounds.
Both male and female athletes viewed athletics as a hindrance to marriage, and rural workingclass women evidently viewed this as a larger problem than wealthy urban women.
Contemporary East German studies showed that women, regardless of social class, were just
as likely as men to do morning calisthenics, but were far less likely to participate in strenuous
physical competition.
About 10,000 Cambodians jam into Phnom Penh Olympic Stadium to watch Khmer kickboxing. Bouts consisted of three rounds, each of which was three minutes long. Winners
received payment via the crowd stuffing bank notes into the winners gloves. Although fights
supposedly were not fixed, the only way that Cambodian players ever lost to foreigners was
by knockout. Khmer boxing is similar to muay Thai, and the Cambodians say that their
method is the older. Favorite techniques include a left jab followed by a right knee or shin to
the body. There are both male and female divisions, but in the female divisions, there is less
kicking and more wrestling.
International physicians begin studying pain during their symposiums. Nevertheless, as late as
1989, no medical school included the study of pain in its curriculum.
Reports of cadet abuse cause prisoner of war training at the United States Air Force Academy
to come under congressional scrutiny. During the investigation, an Air Force staff
psychologist reports that "some [cadets] become psychotic [during the training], but they snap
out of it."
1974:
Gary Gygax self-publishes a fantasy role-playing game called Dungeons& Dragons. The
game was popular with high school and college students, and this in turn inspired academic
research into the history of European medieval and renaissance martial arts.
The Canadian national wrestling champion Gord Bertie describes his competition regimen.
First, he ran four miles every morning while wearing three sweat suits. Second, he ate nothing
but vitamin pills and fluids (especially tomato juice). Third, he wrestled every afternoon.
Finally, he ran again in the sauna at night. The advantage of this program was that it allowed
him to wrestle at a lower weight, where he was stronger. Its disadvantage was that it sapped
his physical and emotional reserves and gave him violent diarrhea.

To give audiences the impression that its leaders were more worried about the health of
athletes than television market shares, the International Olympic Committee adds anabolic
steroids to its list of banned drugs. The ban did not deter many strength athletes from taking
the drugs. Why? In their own words, "Die young, die strong, Dianabol." Put another way, why
should a little thing like a rule or possible liver damage deter athletes obsessed with winning?
Said Elliott Gorn and Warren Goldstein in A Brief History of American Sports, "Nothing in
the socialization and training of first-rate athletes, nothing in the culture of athletic boosterism
encourages honor over victory or rule-following over rule-bending." Of course, by taking
steroids, the athletes actually reduced their ultimate potential. Explained Hal Connolly, a
United States Olympic hammer thrower who took steroids during the mid-1960s, "I think I
was just spending too much time getting strong and not enough time improving speed and
technique."
Sociological studies reveal that the people most strongly opposed to female athletes were
female non-athletes. Female non-athletes also were the quickest to accuse female athletes of
harboring homosexual tendencies.
As part of the International Womens Year, the Womens International Boxing Federation is
created. The organizations first president was former professional boxer Barbara Buttrick of
Yorkshire, England. Carol Polis was the New York Athletic Commissions first female boxing
judge. To satisfy legal requirements, each boxer was required to sign the following
declaration: "I understand and appreciate that participation in sport carries a risk to me of
serious injury including permanent paralysis or death. I voluntarily and knowingly accept this
risk." Meanwhile, Pauline Short and Py Bateman celebrated International Womens Year by
holding the first all-womens karate tournament in Seattle. "It was exciting to see what the
womans touch could do in the male dominated world of karate tournaments," said Seattle
karate teacher Judy Duleba. Duleba added that it was refreshing "to be with other women in
an atmosphere devoid of emphasis on clothes, hair styles, and make up." Once the novelty
wore off, however, bra-less sparring and hand-made trophies showing women on top instead
of men were about as far as the "womans touch" went in Northwestern all-female karate
tournaments.
Following the normalization of political relations between the United States and the Peoples
Republic of China, the Chinese national wu shu troupe tours the United States. A year later, it
toured Europe. Chinese medical concepts, including those of acupuncture, acupressure, and
chi-kung, started filtering west about the same time.
"Worker-peasant-soldier students" of the wu shu class of the Peking Physical Culture Institute
appear for the first time at the national wu shu tournament. Two-thirds of the players were
between 17-18 years old.
Taekwondo becomes an official AAU sport. Although women were allowed to compete, there
were usually no weight divisions and sometimes not even belt divisions. Therefore, many
women felt uncomfortable competing, especially if they had not been raised to play
aggressive games.
Using Elvis Presleys money, Ed Parker and Steve Armstrong introduce North American freestyle sparring to Europe. Featured fighters included Benny Urquidez and John Natividad.

In Los Angeles, Masayoshi "James" Mitose (by now known as James M. Mitose) is convicted
of murder and extortion, and in March 1981 he died while still in prison. Because Mitose had
introduced kenpo karate to Hawaii during the 1940s, his conviction for murder caused
considerable shock in the US martial arts community. That an individual stylist might go
wrong was one thing, but the pioneer of a system? This shattered the old theory that martial
arts built character in boys, and the repercussions continued to haunt karate for decades.
The Okinawan Karate Association awards a retired public schoolteacher named Kina Shosei a
tenth degree black belt in karate. The reason was that when Kina had retired from teaching
karate and kobujutsu in 1938, Okinawan karate men had used belts only to hold their pants
up.
Tohei Koichi breaks with the Aikikai to establish Shishin Toitsu Aikido.
Mike Anderson, a taekwondo instructor from Texas, introduces brightly colored uniforms to
North American tournament karate. The idea was to add visual excitement to the sport;
previously karate uniforms had been black, white, or a combination of black and white. The
innovation was popular with crowds, and by 1988, competitors such as Britains Jeoff
Thompson were calling for this crowd-pleasing innovation to be added to international karate
competition, too. To increase contrast on black-and-white television, the European Judo
Union introduced blue uniforms in 1988, an innovation that even the Kodokan reluctantly
accepted in 1997.
1975:
University of Maryland mathematicians James Yorke and Tien-yien Li give the name "chaos"
to a new theory that suggested that simple systems give rise to complex behaviors while
complex systems gave rise to simple behaviors. (The older Newtonian assumption was that
simple systems gave rise to simple behaviors while complex systems gave rise to complex
behaviors.) The computer models they used to argue their case caused academics to begin
questioning whether linear models are as useful for explaining the way things work in nature
as multi-dimensional models. If Yorke and Li are correct, they are not.
Californias Ray Chapman wins the first World Combat Pistol Championships, which were
held in Zrich, Switzerland.
Inspired by tales of Korean ferocity in Vietnam, the commanding general of the United States
Armys 25th Infantry Division brings a high-ranking taekwondo teacher to Hawaii for the
purpose of teaching unarmed killing techniques to his soldiers. The plan fails after the Korean
is shot to death in a Honolulu nightclub.
A study done by some United States engineers reveals that the impact of a full-power boxing
blow to the head exceeded current road safety guidelines by a factor of four.
A Brazilian immigrant named Jelon Vieira introduces capoeira Regional to New York City.
Vieira trained dancers, some of whom appeared in Hollywood movies, and according to some
students of the African American movement arts, these influenced the short-lived dance craze
known as break-dancing. That is not so. For one thing, break-dancing was not short-lived.
Instead, it simply evolved into hip-hop. Furthermore, break-dancing lacks the underlying
sense of trickery that exemplifies capoeira. Finally (and probably most importantly), the

assertion does injustice to the New York street groups (examples include Rock Steady Crew
and High Times Crew) that actually popularized "b-boyin" ("break-boying") during the late
1970s.
An article in the China Post reports that after two Americans who spent a year-and-a-half
studying boxing in Taiwan returned home, they opened schools and called themselves
"masters of kungfu." The article added that "Local martial artists puzzle over whether the two
young men gained a deep understanding of kungfu during their brief stay in Taiwan, and are
offended by their emphasis on earning money rather than perfecting their skills."
1976:
Mel Tappan, a former investment banker turned survivalist, publishes Survival Guns, the most
thorough look at defensive firearm selection produced to date. Nevertheless, neither the
advice, the money, nor the arsenal ultimately did Tappan any good -- his death in 1980 at the
age of 47 was owed to congestive heart failure rather than hordes of crazed San Franciscans
storming Rogue River, Oregon.
The International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) is formed. Organizers included
Richard Thomas and Franklin Brown, and they left "pistol" out of the title so that in future
they could include long guns in their programs.
The Peoples Republic of China reports that Chiang Ching, the actress wife of the late
Chairman Mao, wanted to replace military bayonet training with techniques borrowed from
the Chinese theater. The Red Army resisted the innovation, saying, "Amidst heavy gunfire,
who would want to enjoy the dance posture of swordplay?" (The generals idea of military
sports (chn-shih ti y) included marksmanship, mountaineering, signaling, bayonet-fighting,
grenade throwing, knife-fighting, and first aid, and Korean War veterans taught such "sports"
in middle school physical education classes from 1952 to 1968. Rifle range targets included
photographs of Lyndon Johnson and Chiang Kai-shek.)
The Japan Sumo Association rules that only sumotori possessing Japanese citizenship could
be managers or trainers following their retirement. The purpose of the ruling was to keep big
foreigners such as Jesse Kuhaulua from taking over the sport.
Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia are reported collecting human livers. Sometimes they put
the livers on sticks and hung them in front of their houses, as a way of scaring people, and
sometimes they ate them, as a way of gaining magical power. The eyes of the soldiers who ate
those livers were said to be fierce and red, like those of a tiger.
1977:
The Martial Arts Commission is established in Britain. This leads to the publication of the
first books aimed specifically at training Western teachers of Asian martial arts.
Benny Urquidez becomes the first United States citizen to win a Japanese kick-boxing
championship.
Oakland sportswriter Ralph Wiley asks former heavyweight boxer Lou Nova what it felt like
to be hit by Joe Louis. "Louis?" said Nova. "Why Louis didnt hit me near as hard as Baer

did. Not even close." Fine, says Wiley. Baer was a champion once. So how did it feel to get
hit on the button by Max Baer? "Well, Ill tell ya," replied Nova. "My nervous system was on
hold. For weeks after the fight, I was afraid to move my head for fear my neck was broken."
Boxing promoter Don King and Ring magazine are caught faking records in order to secure
better matches for fighters under contract to King. The net effect of the discovery is a
muckraking article in SPORT magazine and the cancellation of a television contract between
Don King Productions and ABC Sports. Lost profits aside, the discovery wasnt a big deal to
the world boxing fraternity. Partly this was because, in his own words, King had "just the
right combination of wit, grit, and bullshit" to survive. Mostly, though, it was because the
revelation was used to advance the interests of a rival South African fight syndicate headed by
Bob Arum.
Fifty-seven-year-old Cacoy Canete of Cebu City takes first place in stick fighting during the
Philippines first national eskrima tournament. Canete repeated the feat two years later,
without being hit by anyone either time.
1978:
During the Fifth All-Japan Shukokai Championships at Osaka, womens sparring events are
introduced into Japanese tournament karate. Ishimaru Yumiko, who took second in the kata
division, won this fighting division. The winning technique was a front kick followed by a left
hook.
A West German study finds that female wage earners were more likely to play competitive
sports than were homemakers, and that homemakers were more likely to play competitive
sports than were unemployed women seeking work outside the home. Said historian Allen
Guttman, "The most likely reason for their non-involvement is that they fear a further loss of
self-confidence as a consequence of poor performance in sports."
1979:
The Peoples Republic of China reports that several thousand Chinese children aged 8-14
were capable of telepathy, clairvoyance, X-ray vision, or psychokinesis. Touted examples
from the Asian martial arts include chi kung exhibitions, in which men awed audiences by
withstanding spear thrusts to the throat, supporting themselves on the prongs of forks, and
receiving hammer blows on their bodies that smashed the stone slabs underneath them. Two
years later, the Chinese Academy of Sciences admitted that its initial claims were unfounded.
The United States Army publishes a concept paper called "The First Earth Battalion." Its
assumption was that soldiers of the 1990s would be involved in more peacekeeping operations
than wars. Despite his New Age rhetoric, the author, Lt. Colonel Jim Channon, had a crystal
ball that was surprisingly clear. Among his predictions were personal stereos ("body vest
music"), heads-up map displays, a global communication system called "The Net," and a
scenario that involved soldiers who "parachuted in that morning and stood in a long line
facing each opposing army. The EARTH BATTALION satellite above beamed this image to
the globe. The earth watched as this potential catastrophy [sic] awaited the conscience of one
of the two army leaders to set. For they would have to bloody the EARTH BATTALION
people in their path before they could attack -- and the world would know." Replace "EARTH
BATTALION satellite" with "CNN," and you have the foreign policy of the United States

during the 1990s. (The global communication system described, by the way, was ARPANET.
The Department of Defenses Advanced Research Projects Agency established the system to
provide military personnel and contractors with a redundant communications system that
might survive a nuclear attack. The name "Internet" dates to ca. 1973.) Channon also believed
that soldiers should learn esoteric aspects of the Asian martial arts. For example, he believed
that training in tai chi chuan could teach them to heal or hurt using touch while training in
aikido could teach them spatial awareness. Although the Army was not institutionally
interested in meditation, martial arts, or biofeedback, during the 1980s Special Forces hired
outside contractors to provide two A-teams, a total of 25 men, with training in biofeedback,
aikido, and "mind-body psychology." The trainers for this project included former Marines
Jack Cirie and Richard Strozzi Heckler, and a typical training day included running,
swimming, "industrial-strength" calisthenics, and 1-1/2 hours of aikido practice. After six
months, the soldiers were not aikido masters but were considerably fitter than when they
started. (On average, 75% fitter.) Navy SEALs received an abbreviated version of the same
course in 1988, as did a company of US Marines in 2000. Army Rangers, on the other hand,
adopted Gracie Jiu-Jitsu in 1994, and the program that the US Marines adopted in 2000 was
based on judo and karate. Whatever the method taught, the idea was not to create great handto-hand fighters, but instead to instill the warrior ethos.
Soviet migrs report an outbreak of pulmonary anthrax near Sverdlovsk. While the CIA said
that this was the result of an accident at a Soviet biological warfare research center, the
Soviets blamed it on people selling black market meat. Who was right? Probably both, since
the Russians admitted testing genetically engineered biotoxins as recently as 1992.
West German officials charge several highly ranked British, Dutch, and US judoka with using
hollowed-out judo mats to smuggle LSD into Britain and the United States. United States
officials also linked the US judoka to four California homicides. But, as the killers used
knives rather than bare hands, the suspicion arises that the lethality of the unarmed Japanese
martial arts is somewhat overrated. That suspicion is supported by FBI statistics indicating
that the typical victim of an unarmed homicide was not a healthy adult, but instead either an
infant or an invalid.
New York fight trainer Cus DAmato decides to make Mike Tyson, a physically gifted 12-year
old street hood, into a future heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Besides teaching
Tyson his "System" and getting him good coaching and professional sparring partners,
DAmato built the youths low self-esteem by having him repeat every morning and evening,
"Day by day in every way, Im getting better and better." DAmato also lectured the youth on
his need to confront and control his fears. Fear, said DAmato to Tyson, is your best friend. So
what if you cant sleep the night before a fight; your opponent cant, either. So what if your
opponent looks calm on the outside; hes burning up inside. In the end, said the professor, "the
fight itself is the only reality that matters. Learn to impose your will and take control over that
reality."
An American Ph.D. candidate named Edward Powe describes dambe, or Hausa boxing, in
detail. According to Powe, most dambe players were poorly educated members of the
butchers guild. Rural matches were associated with post-harvest festivals, and were held
during mornings and evenings. On the other hand, urban boxing matches were associated with
bars, gambling, and prostitution, and were held year-round except during Ramadan. Both
village and urban boxers wore shorts or charm-festooned loincloths, and fought barefoot.
They wrapped their strong side hands in cloth and cords, and used their unwrapped weak side

hands as shields. Their goal was not to beat the one another senseless, but to knock the other
fellow to the ground. Meanwhile, other rural Nigerians were reported using wrestling as a
way of instilling community pride into young people. As with boxing, the wrestling matches
were associated with harvest festivals and adolescent rites of passage. Youths practiced by
wrestling with other youths in sandy streambeds during the day, or by wrestling with their
uncles and fathers in courtyards at night. They learned endurance by harvesting yams, by
running hills barefoot, and by learning the old wrestling dances that taught rhythm and respect
for tradition. Young women also participated in these matches, partly by cheering for their
heroes and partly by vying among themselves to see who had the best clothes or the most
acrobatic dances.
1980:
Jackie Chan makes his North American film debut. Chans martial art background included
training for the Peking Theater.
Stephen Hayes introduces the Togakure-ryu ninjutsu of Hatsumi Masaaki into the United
States. Although Togakure-ryu is a relatively mainstream Japanese martial art, its popularity
in the United States was owed mainly to the unrelated (but essentially concurrent) publication
of The Ninja, a novel by fantasy writer Eric van Lustbader that portrayed ninja as bulletproof,
black-clad sadists.
The Amazigh ("Berber" or "Tuareg") dominated government of Mauritania declares slavery to
be illegal, and orders the emancipation of hundreds of thousands of black African slaves. Yet,
as the emancipation was qualified by the requirement for the freed slaves to compensate their
former owners for the owners financial loss, the proclamation was more symbolic than real.
Tom Waddell, a former United States Army decathlete, decides to organize a Gay Olympics.
Outraged, the US Olympic Committee took Waddell to court. The judge agreed with the
Olympic Committee and told Waddell that he could not have a Gay Olympics. Undeterred,
Waddell changed the name to the Gay Games. He then said that the name change was
probably best, as "the Olympics are racist, the Olympics are exclusive, theyre nationalistic,
they pit one group of people against another, and [are] only for the very best athletes. That
doesnt describe our Games." Instead, in the Games Waddell had in mind, "Winnings not
important, doing your best is important." Although just a few thousand people attended the
first Gay Games in 1982, the fourth Gay Games in 1994 boasted more participants and nearly
as many spectators as the 1992 Winter Olympics. Nonetheless, the Gay Games received
almost no television coverage, corporate sponsorship, or celebrity endorsements.
1981:
Due to the commercial success of kung fu movies, the Peoples Republic of China repairs the
damage to the exterior of the Shaolin temple at Chang-shao and replaces its four aged monks
with dozens of politically reliable martial art teachers. From a commercial standpoint, the
move was wildly successful, and by 1996, there were nearly 10,000 Chinese and foreign
students attending wu shu academies in the Shaolin valley. Meanwhile, in rural Hupeh,
Hunan, and Kwangtung Provinces, villagers hired less politically correct instructors to
improve youngsters fighting capabilities during land use and genealogical disputes. Knowing
the worth of fists during gun fights, a clan on Hainan Island bought some pistols from a bank

guard, only to discover a few weeks later that the same bank guard had sold assault rifles to its
rivals.
Park Jung Tae, a senior instructor of the ITF living in Canada, introduces taekwondo into
North Korea. The South Korean government is outraged.
During a full-contact karate match in Tijuana, Mexico, a 15-year old Mexican named Alfredo
Castro Herrera dies. "The death failed to calm the audience down," said a local
newspaperman. Instead, it had the 2,500 fight fans "jumping from their seats yelling for the
match to continue."
At Fort Lewis, Washington, the United States Army unveils MILES, the first military training
system to simulate bullet strikes using low-energy laser pulses. Meanwhile, outside Henniker,
New Hampshire, a dozen middle-aged middle-class men invent the Survival Game, a.k.a.
paintball wars. Because several of the original players were writers, their games received
national media exposure, and tournaments, prize money, and a host of paintball-related
products followed in 1983. What was paintballs fascination? "I thought it was silly at first,"
admitted one urban executive. "But once I got started, it was a fantastic experience. I never
thought it was so much fun shooting people." Police and militaries were also intrigued, and by
the mid-1990s, this led to the Canadian arms manufacturer SNC developing Simunitions, a
non-lethal projectile that could be fired from .38 caliber and 9mm weapons during force-onforce training.
"As [the other wrestler] was easily pinning me he was inadvertently choking me very
effectively," former NCAA wrestling champion Les Anderson told journalist Mike Chapman.
"The coach who was looking for the fall didnt notice or take heed of my plight. I can
remember waiting for the coach to help me. When he didnt the thought flashed through my
mind as I was weakening that I had better help myself instead of depending on someone else.
I came off my back and pinned him. Subsequent tryouts also ended in my beating him. As I
pieced it together many years later as a coach, I truly believe that a subconscious factor
registered -- that one must make his own breaks in a match and cannot depend on others."
1982:
During the South Atlantic (or Falklands) War, the British use "dazzle sights," or direct-fire
laser weapons, to flashblind attacking Argentine pilots.
To set a Guinness record, fifteen members of a Canadian karate club use their kicks and
punches to demolish a seven-room wooden house. The destruction took 3 hours, 18 minutes.
The Canadian ethnobiologist Wade Davis finds that voodoo sorcerers create zombies using
puffer fish poisons. He also found that the process was not diabolical, but part of a system of
judicial discipline imposed by politically powerful secret societies.
Professional boxer Earnie Shavers auditions for a role in Rocky II. As Shavers kept pulling his
punches, actor Sylvester Stallone told Shavers to punch a little harder, to make it look real.
Shavers did. Stallone "stopped the workout and the camera and went to the bathroom for a
little while. When he came back he tol me he was sorry, but they couldnt use me Only
thing, people come up to me now, they know who I am, and they say, Hey Earnie, think you
could beat Rocky?"

With 50 million admissions a year, rassling becomes the third most popular spectator sport in
North America. (Football and automobile racing were number one and two.) According to
rassler Adrian Adonis, this was because the "American people are sickos who love violence
and the sight of blood." Perhaps. But if so, then how to explain the horror that millions of
people expressed after seeing boxer Ray Mancini beat to death a Korean club fighter named
Kim Duk Koo in November 1982? Approaching the question from another tack, academics
such as Theodore Kemper claimed that watching rassling released testosterone in viewers,
thereby giving them vicarious thrills that they didnt get in their dead-end jobs. (According to
his theory, most rassling fans are elderly or working class.) Perhaps. But then how to explain
the sales of wrestling action figures to children, or the opinions of academics such as Gerald
Morton and George OBrien who equate rassling with folk theater? In short, there is still no
easy answer to explain why many people enjoy watching professional wrestling and dislike
watching amateur wrestling.
1983:
A Korean boxer named Duk Koo-Kim is beaten to death on national television. About the
same time, a medical study reports that about 15% of professional boxers suffered long-term
brain damage that was directly attributable to boxing. Consequently, Dr. George Lundberg,
editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, calls professional boxing an
obscenity rather than a sport, and says that it should not be sanctioned by a civilized society.
Lundbergs cry was met with the response that he neither understood the use of pain as a
means of self-expression, nor the aspirations of working-class men who preferred the risks of
brain-damage to the certainty of a life without hope. The counter-argument does not show
causality. (Those young men might have become doctors or teachers instead of auto plant
workers or dishwashers had their social class or educational levels allowed it.) Nor does it
show much understanding of economics. (No more than 10% of professional boxers makes
after-tax profit.) Nonetheless, it does reflect the attitudes of the boxers themselves.
The United States starts building high-energy lasers designed to shoot down aircraft and
missiles. Similar programs began in France and West Germany three years later and probably
also in the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China. By 1988, such lasers were
concentrating 2.6 megawatts on pinhead-sized targets for 9.5 x 10-11 seconds, which was
supposedly enough time to vaporize incoming nuclear warheads.
1984:
The US Secret Service commissions the development of foam-padded training suits. The idea
was to allow for opponents in training scenarios to provide more resistance, thereby
increasing training realism. People involved with the original suit design included John
Desmedt, and early makers included Macho Products, which already manufactured a line of
foam-dipped taekwondo sparring gear. Meanwhile, bulkier custom suits were also under
development by people interested in allowing essentially full contact to the head, body, and
groin. Pioneers of these "pumpkin-head" or "bulletman" suits included Matt Thomas and
Mark Morris of Model Mugging.
University of California anthropologist Gilbert Herdt reports that some warrior cultures living
in Papua, New Guinea require their prepubescent boys to regularly fellate adult warriors, as it
was believed that boys could only become men by swallowing their seniors semen. As for the
adult warriors, while they enjoyed sex with women, they also feared it, as it exposed their

precious male substance to female pollution and stole it from the next generation of warriors.
The societies described were some of the most homicidal on earth, with murder rates
approaching two per thousand.
Concerning the risks of describing the great wrestlers of the past, the former Canadian
Olympic wrestling coach Glynn Leyshon warns, "The older we get; the better we were!"
About 1985:
The growing popularity of capoeira among North American women, particularly those with
dance backgrounds, causes the deletion of many of the macho songs previously sung in
capoeira classes. What did these women see in the historically chauvinist sport? Said one to
the teacher Bira Almeida, "The beautiful movement, the use of space, sense of play, qualities
of motion, and the rhythms -- it was the dance that captured me."
Professional boxing moves from smoky sports arenas into swank Las Vegas and Atlantic City
resorts. The reason, explained casino owner Donald Trump, was that he had observed "a direct
relation between a high roller in the gaming sense and a boxing fan. Boxing, more than any
other sport, brings out the highly-competitive person." What that meant to Trumps casinos
was an extra $15 million a week in business, and almost $2 million a week in profits.
1985:
Kilindi Iyi of Detroit publishes a paper called "African Roots in Asian Martial Arts," in which
he argued that the martial arts developed in Africa rather than China or India. Although the
theory proved popular in Afro-centric circles, elsewhere, it was widely dismissed.
Ranking sumotori including Hawaiis Salevaa Atisanoe visit Washington, DC, where they are
greeted by Secretary of State George Schultz. However, President Ronald Reagans wife
Nancy refused to see them, saying she didnt want to see semi-naked wrestlers trampling
through her garden.
The International Wrestling Federation (FILA) introduces an upper weight limit of 286
pounds to international free-style wrestling. While the change was announced as a way of
protecting mere 200-pounders from being hurt by larger opponents, it was actually designed
to keep 400-pounders from competing.
Nintendo introduces a computerized first-person shooter game called Hogans Alley, in which
the object was to distinguish between good guys and bad guys, and only shoot the bad guys.
The following year, the FBI began construction on a "Practical Applications Unit" at
Quantico, Virginia, that was known popularly as Hogans Alley, and in which actors portrayed
civilians and bad guys while trainees went through training scenarios.
1986:
In Tokyo, the Ministry of Education proposes allowing kendo and judo to be termed budo
("native Japanese techniques that constitute martial ways") rather than kakugi ("combative
technique"). Although intellectuals protested, pointing to abuses of the term during World War
II, the Japanese public failed to react to the complaints, and in 1989, the Ministry of
Education formalized the conversion.

A medical study finds that many of the men renewing professional boxing licenses in New
York City were hiding vision-threatening injuries (mainly posterior subscapular cataracts and
retinal tears). While there was no statistical correlation between handedness and prevalence of
right and left eye injuries, there was direct correlation between the number of bouts and
losses, with the risk of injury jumping noticeably every six bouts or two losses.
Mayan peasants are described as waiting for December 23, 2012, on which date great wars
would reduce the worlds armies to fighting with sticks and machetes, and the Mayans would
again rule Central America. The date and the theory are a combination of Cold War
propaganda, Christian eschatology, and the end of a Mayan Great Cycle.
Female Jell-O wrestlers working in Chicago bars describe their motivation as the high that
they got from doing whatever they damn well wanted. Said one of them to a Washington Post
reporter, "It took me two years to get aggressive enough to be a good wrestler. Id never hit
anybody before. I had to learn to be aggressive and thats hard for a woman because we were
taught to be sweet and nice and cute." Replied General Foods, the manufacturer of Jell-O:
"Its disgusting to have people swimming around in food."
1987:
The Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov reports that Red Army studies had found that when a
soldier fired his rifle at an armed enemy during hand-to-hand combat, the enemy generally
fired back. On the other hand, when the same soldier threw his entrenching tool at the enemy
instead of shooting at him, then the enemy usually dropped his weapon and ran away. Suvarov
offered this curious detail as an explanation of why meter-long entrenching tools remained
popular with Soviet Special Forces soldiers, despite their not having to dig many holes with
them.
Although theorized during the 1940s and developed in laboratories during the 1970s, the first
well-documented "wild" computer viruses emerge. Originally, amateur "hackers" mostly
designed viruses. However, by the early 2000s, there was growing evidence that governments
(primarily the United States and China) were also designing computer viruses for the purpose
of attacking the computers used to control each others weapon systems.
1988:
The United States Army purchases 100,000 pairs of polycarbonate-filled wrap-around
sunglasses for use as ballistic and laser protective spectacles. While these provided much
more protection against debris than lasers, that was hardly an insignificant consideration, as 610% of modern battlefield casualties are the result of rock, bomb, or shell fragments in the
eyes.
In Seoul, taekwondo is introduced to the Olympics as a demonstration sport; it became an
official sport of the Summer Games in Sydney in 2000.
Aurelio Miguel becomes the first Brazilian to win an Olympic gold medal in judo. He was not
the first Brazilian to win an Olympic medal in judo, however, that being Chiaki Ishii in 1972.
Since Ishii had no hopes of making the Japanese national team, he took a job working in
Brazil. There he continued doing judo, and after becoming a Brazilian citizen, he had no

trouble making the Brazilian judo team. Ishii later won Olympic bronze, and in 2000, his
daughter Tania was an Olympic judoka for Brazil.
After the Japanese judo team turns in a disappointing showing at the Summer Olympics (well,
disappointing by Japanese standards -- the team still won one gold and three bronze medals),
its coaches announce their intent to return to the fundamentals. Publicly, this meant that in
future the Japanese judo team would put more emphasis on character-development than
winning. However, in practice it mostly meant that the teams financial backers supported the
change of terminology from kakugi ("combative technique") to budo ("martial way").
West African wrestling matches are described as allowing head butting and thumb gouging,
but not joint-locks or body slams. This said, the wrestlers usual objective was to use their
upper body strength and dance-like movement to force their opponents knees or back to the
ground. As the first fall usually decided the bout, few matches lasted longer than five minutes.
Thirty or more matches comprised a Sunday afternoon fight card. This said, the real
entertainment went on between the matches, when the amulet-festooned wrestlers strutted
about the ring, pausing after every second step to boast of their previous victories or to do
gymnastic tricks. The West African wrestlers were also flanked by praise-singers and squads
of chanting female admirers, and made their money by accepting presents from the crowd.
According to novelist Buchi Emecheta, the charms used in Southern Nigerian wrestling
included crocodile teeth (to prevent the wrestler from becoming breathless) and nut kernels
(to ensure that the wearer was hard to crack). Wrestlers also took herbal baths to protect their
spirits from evil intentions, and drank special potions to avoid becoming faint-hearted in the
ring.
1989:
During harvest festivals in Southwest Bolivia, local champions are seen donning leather
helmets and breastplates, then using sticks and knuckle-dusters to beat one another senseless.
Similar ritual battles were also reported in villages north of Quito, Ecuador. Beer flowed
freely before and after such battles, which combined elements of faction fighting, rites-ofpassage, and goddess (Pacha Mama) veneration. Says archaeologist Michael Moseley, "Ritual
intoxication is a very ancient Andean tradition to judge from the quantities of libation vessels
found in prehistoric graves." Probably the battles are, too.
A retired US Army colonel named David Hackworth claims that fratricide caused at least 20%
of the United States casualties during the Vietnam War. Hackworth offered no proof of the
allegation, and the Army only admitted to a fratricide rate of around 3%. Probably truth lies
somewhere between these extremes.
"We receive hundreds of letters from all over the world," a monk at the Shaolin monastery in
Honan Province tells a reporter named Michael Browning. "Some are written in blood. All
beg to study here." The real monks Browning met were a handful of wrinkled old men who
"dont do much kung fu anymore." Nevertheless, movies made Shaolin kung fu worth
$270,000 a year in video sales. That didnt count souvenir sales or martial art instruction. In
1996, Craig Smith of the Wall Street Journal reported that the streams near the temple were
filled with shampoo bottles, dirty socks, and old underpants, and that the temples wu shu
instructors wore long hair and Harley-Davidson T-shirts. Rooms for foreign students cost US
$35 a night, and ordination certificates cost US $500. A discouraged Belgian student named

Daniel Reul told Smith, "I wanted to make a life in which money isnt important, but I fell
into a place where money is even more important than at home."
1990:
The US Army deploys Stingray, a vehicle-mounted laser weapon, to Saudi Arabia. Stingray
was designed to knock out targeting devices, but if you were looking through those binoculars
at the time, you would go blind. Human rights groups were appalled, but official Army
publications were more blas, saying that enemy soldiers looking at the world through their
own blood were likely to panic, and so contribute to overall victory. Five years later, a much
less powerful rifle-mounted laser, Saber 203, was sent to Somalia, where it was used to put
large red dots on potentially hostile civilians, reportedly discouraging them from attacking.
This reportedly chased off a few people, but the general consensus was that the main thing the
weapon accomplished was giving away the shooter's position.
The first Internet users group dedicated to martial arts, rec.martial-arts, is established. Early
e-mail lists devoted to individual martial arts include Aikido-L, established in 1993, and
Iaido-L, established in 1994.
The Canadian sociologists Philip White and James Curtis find that Protestant women
participate in competitive sports almost as often as Roman Catholic men, and three times
more often than Roman Catholic women.
The Afro-Venezuelan martial art of broma ("just joking") is described by a teacher named
Bernardo Saenz as "using whatever youve got." Its moves included some karate learned by
watching television, a little wrestling, and a lot of Afro-American sweeps, head-butts, and
spinning kicks.
Tatsuhiko Konno, one of three professional sword polishers in the United States, tells a
Seattle reporter that it takes about ten days to properly sharpen and polish a Japanese sword.
"Sure, the first stages are hard work, especially if theres much rust," Konno says. "But then
its fun watching the pattern of the grain and tempering emerge. I keep going to see whats
there. And every blade is different." The cost for Konnos work, which he freely admitted was
not museum-grade, was about $30 an inch. Museum-grade work was only done in Japan,
where the best polishers had a three-year waiting list and charged about $90 an inch.
An Irish rassler named Pat Barrett writes that he had always been fascinated with
unconventional holds. Therefore, during a bar fight in Germany he tried one. It involved
thrusting the first and second fingers in behind the bottom teeth of the victims mouth. The
thumb then pressed under the chin while the hand squeezed and twisted. "Getting the grip was
childs play," said Barrett. "Then I started to exert pressure. Thats when things went wrong."
[Namely, the other mans jaws closed like a vise on his fingers.] "Understanding came
quickly. I simply didnt have enough power." [Actually, Barrett, who wasnt much of a
wrestler, had his hold wrong. Done correctly, the hold requires virtually no hand power, and is
excruciatingly painful.] At any rate, Barrett realized the technique wasnt working,
immediately quit trying to be cute, and solved his problem by simultaneously squeezing and
twisting his opponents testicles. (Like plucking figs, said Barrett.) The story offers three
lessons that all self-defense classes should teach. First, fights are not places to experiment.
Second, many techniques work better in theory than in practice. Finally, and probably most
importantly, if Plan A fails, then you need to immediately try something else.

1991:
With funding from the National Park Service and the Bishop Museum, lua classes begin to be
taught publicly in Hawaii. The teachers were former students of Charles Kenn named Jerry
Walker, Richard Paglinawan, Mitchell Eli, and Moses Kalauokalani. Students had to be aged
21 years or older and be at least part Native Hawaiian. In these classes, the idea was not to
teach a modern hand-to-hand combative, but to help preserve ancient Hawaiian culture. "As
in ancient times," Betty Fullard-Leo wrote in August 1998, "battle begins with chants that
give way to insults, threats and gestures to show strength. The warriors begin their
challenging haka, or dance, lunging and dodging from side to side. As the battle commences,
it is not a fight ending in death, but an event that promises life -- life for an ancient art that is
just one more piece of the puzzle being assembled to save the Hawaiian culture."
In California and New York, "karate aerobics" and "executive boxing" becomes the rage
among working women looking for a new form of aerobic exercise. An advertisement for the
activity claimed that "the only pain you inflict is on yourself." The ad then went on to say that
the activity "sorts out the women from the girls," and that "after the first few rounds of
training youll start to lose weight and gain... long, lean muscles, not bulk." Sniffed British
boxing historian Jennifer Hargreaves, "This introspective approach reflects widespread
insecurities about the body and self, but also reveals how anxieties are mediated and
perpetuated through dominant modes of consumption such as advertising." Of course, the idea
was not new, for as early as the 1930s Philadelphia Jack OBrien had been offering "Boxing
without Punishment" to both men and women at his gym in New York City. ("Philadelphia
Jack doesnt say that boxing can be learned without punishment just taught," explained A. J.
Liebling, who liked OBrien.) Either way, both karate aerobics and boxing without
punishment were better for muscular conditioning and weight reduction than practical selfdefense.
David DeLaittre of Seattle, Washington, becomes one of the few blind people in the United
States to earn black belt ranking in judo. "Everyone has some problems," DeLaittre, a law
judge, told a Seattle reporter. "Thats what life is all about how to deal with the problems we
have."
To reduce factional violence, the apartheid-era government of South Africa prohibits blacks
from carrying traditional weapons such as iwisa (knobkerries) and iklwa (assegais). Although
the Zulus got the most publicity, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Swazi men also practiced stick fighting.
Due to the white-supremacist South Africa Police ignoring the "cultural weapons" retained by
Zulu supporters of the Nationalist regime, the ban only leads to increased violence inside
racially segregated townships.
Just before Operation Desert Storm, a US Marine Corps attorney provides this description of
the laws of war: "All the laws of war boil down to these three fundamentals. One. If it needs
to be killed, kill it. Two. If it doesnt need to be killed, dont kill it. Three. If you see
somebody killing something that doesnt need to be killed, try to stop them. Any questions?"
1992:
Camel racing is described as the favorite sport of the desert Amazigh ("Tuareg") of Niger.
One rider would grab a scarf from a woman, then the others would chase after him and try to
get it away while the women screamed, danced, and clapped to the accompaniment of drums.

While outsiders often thought these races had hidden ritual meanings, it seems just as likely
that they were simply races, and that the chief prize was the attention of willing females.
After being a demonstration sport in 1988, womens judo becomes a permanent Olympic
event, and a second-place finish allows 25-year old Yael Arad to become the first Israeli to
win an Olympic medal. As a rule, however, the world's best female judoka trained in Japan,
France, Korea, or Cuba.
Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X, which defined McJob as "a low-pay, low prestige,
low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the service sector," appears in paperback, and within
weeks, the term "McDojo" appeared at rec.martial-arts as a description of franchise martial art
schools run by people with more ego than talent. Coupland did not invent the term McJob,
however, only its popular definition, as published articles indicate that the term was used, in
print, at least five years prior to the publication of his novel.
1993:
Inspired by a 1959 science fiction novel called Starship Troopers, the United States Army
announces plans to use satellite feeds and computers to link individual infantrymen to their
peers and commanders. Army press releases neglected to mention concurrent research into
robotic devices designed to completely replace human infantrymen. However, when the Army
did mention these devices during 1995, its reports emphasized only those devices that would
supplement humans rather than replace them. The Marines, on the other hand, decided to
place increased emphasis on developing warrior spirit in humans.
Iran hosts the first Islamic Countries Womens Sports Games. Eleven countries sent teams to
compete in eight sports. Men were permitted at events such as shooting in which women
could be decently attired, but were barred from watching basketball, where the women wore
clothing that was more revealing. The organizer was Faezeh Hashemi, the 30-year old
daughter of the president of the Iranian Olympic Committee.
New York music promoter Robert Meyrowitz organizes a pay-per-view Ultimate Fighting
Championship (UFC) in which competitors were free to punch, kick, or wrestle their
opponents. At first, most participants were trained in styles that emphasized either striking
(e.g., punching or kicking) or grappling but not both, and during such contests, Gracie JiuJitsu, which emphasized groundwork, proved most successful. Then both strikers and
grapplers began cross-training. Within a few years, champions had to be competent at both
striking and grappling. Then, as the Dutch trainer Jon Bluming put it, "What I was teaching
was neither Kodokan judo nor Kyokushin Kai karate, but instead a mix of one-third karate
and Thai boxing, one-third throwing techniques I teach seven different throws and onethird groundwork. That altogether is the full circle of unarmed fighting. That is not arrogant,
that is the truth." Yet even this greatly expanded vision represented only a portion of the story;
the circle was really a sphere, and inside it, intangibles such as spirit, stamina, and strategic
insight continued to play leading roles. Anyway, because the UFC name was a licensed
trademark, training in the new mixed methods went by a variety of names. Examples included
all-round fighting, extreme fighting, hybrid martial arts, submission fighting, No Holds
Barred (NHB), Vale Tudo (Brazilian Portuguese for "anything goes"), and shoot fighting.
Comparable rival organizations also went by a variety of names; among these were Pancrase,
PRIDE, and RINGS. Noted mixed martial art champions of the 1990s included Brazilians

Royce Gracie and Pedro Rizzo, Americans Ken Shamrock and Mark Coleman, and the
Japanese Sato Rumina and Sakuraba Kazushi.
1994:
U. S. News and World Report estimates that the fear of crime caused United States citizens to
spend $78 billion a year on criminal justice and $64 billion a year on private security. Yet, as
the same United States citizens were simultaneously spending $55 billion a year on sports and
$10 billion a year on illegal drugs, they cannot have taken the fear of crime all that seriously.
Kamengen, or youth wrestling matches, are described as the keystones of the dry season
harvest festivals of the Diola people of Senegals Lower Casamance region. Their importance
was due to the matches giving unmarried men the chance to develop their reputations while
simultaneously meeting and impressing prospective wives. Therefore, although the wrestling
was often good, the drinking, dancing, and singing that preceded and followed the wrestling
events were probably more important to everyone but the wrestlers themselves.
The Hawaii JuJitsu Kodenkai, a Danzan Ryu club in Honolulu, becomes the first martial arts
club known to have established a permanent presence on the Internet. The same club also
pioneered "Underwater JuJitsu," a course aimed at helping lifeguards and dive instructors deal
with panicked swimmers.
1995:
From a bumper sticker seen in Miami, Florida, reportedly the most violent city in North
America: "Thank you for not shooting."
Rob Redmond of Atlanta, Georgia establishes the Internet web site that later becomes
Shotokan Planet. That same year, Neil Ohlenkamp of Camarillo, California created the online
Judo Information Site. As far as is known, these were first martial art web sites designed to be
information-intensive rather than advertisements. About the same time, an unrelated Chinese
martial art discussion group called Dragons List goes online. In 1997, Dragons List started
publishing articles, and in 1998, it became the first web-based martial art publication known
to have obtained an International Standard Serial Number, or ISSN. This is the eight-digit
number that libraries use to identify periodical publications, and it is (in part) what
distinguishes e-publications such as EJMAS from web sites.
1996:
The International Olympic Committee holds its first world conference on women and sport. It
was notable for being the first womens sport conference to be attended by women from
Islamic nations such as Iran.
A junior varsity wrestler named Jessica Salmeron tells a reporter from a Lynnwood,
Washington, newspaper that she was not at a disadvantage wrestling against males, as
"muscles arent the point. Strength and skills are the point. If they [women] want to wrestle,
they should go for it."
For knocking out a badly outclassed opponent named Bethany Payne, female boxing
champion Christy Martin receives a purse of $75,000. This sets a record for female boxing

championships. "By contrast," said the Associated Press, "Ricardo Lopez, who defended his
105-pound title for the 17th time earlier on the card, was paid $50,000." Martin worked for
promoter Don King and fought on the undercard of Mike Tyson title fights; by 2000, her
record was 40-2-2.
To circumvent the problem of not being able to find enough physically fit young people to fill
its ranks the British Army lowers its admission standards. In 1997, the US Army followed
suit.
1997:
The International Defensive Pistol Association holds its first defensive pistol championship.
The idea behind these contests was to use duty weapons and holsters rather than specialized
equipment. Early leaders of the IDPA included Richard Thomas, Ken Hackathorn, and Bill
Wilson.
1998:
The US government passes legislation prohibiting anyone from using the name "Olympic" or
the symbol of five rings (interlocking or otherwise) unless they had been using that name or
icon prior to September 1950. Two years later, the International Olympic Committee files a
lawsuit in US Federal court asking for an injunction against anyone using the word "Olympic"
in an Internet domain name.
2000:
Licensed Ultimate Fighting Championship video games are released.
2004:
The US Air Force tests a directed energy weapon system known as Active Denial System in
Iraq. Basically, this was a microwave device that made your skin feel as if it was being
burned. Originally developed to protect US nuclear weapons, it was being tested in Iraq to see
if it had potential for crowd control.

Kronos Updates
December 2004
About 550:
During an exhibition held at the court of the Liang Dynasty Wu Ti emperor, a Buddhist monk
called Tung Chuan ("Eastern Fist") uses unarmed techniques to disarm armed attackers.
What these techniques were is unknown. Therefore, while this exhibition has been cited as
proof of the early existence of Shaolin temple boxing, it could as easily have been a religicomagical preparation for a Liang Dynasty attack on some enemies living north of the Yangtze
River. Meanwhile, in Western China, artists commemorate Chinese victories over Avars,
Uighurs, Mongols, and other nomad groups ("bandits") by painting murals on the walls of

Dunhuang Cave 285. The story of the 500 Bandits' conversion to Buddhism is a popular
theme in later Chinese theatricals, and so represents a possible source of inspiration for
Chinese boxing styles.
About 1595:
Dutch Republican soldiers develop the marching and musketry drills that eventually become
military close-order drill. The popularity of these Dutch drills had several roots. One was that
they greatly reduced the risk of clumsy soldiers accidentally bayoneting their neighbors, or
soldiers causing their neighbors powder charges to explode through the careless use of
matches. Another was that the Dutch drills greatly increased sustained rates of fire, thus
allowing regiments to be subdivided into smaller, more manageable sizes. More importantly,
wrote historian William McNeill, "drill created such a lively esprit de corps among the
poverty-stricken peasant recruits and urban outcasts who came to constitute the rank and file
of European armies, that other social ties faded to insignificance among them." Therefore, the
Dutch infantry fought as teams instead of individuals. The idea of moving soldiers together as
disciplined units is attributed to Count Louis of Nassau and his cousin, Maurice of Orange.
Their sources of inspiration reportedly included translations of ancient Greek and Roman
military texts. Meanwhile, Jesuits observe the Japanese developing kata (forms) with which to
train their firearm-toting soldiers. Although outwardly similar to the European developments,
the kata are probably concurrent rather than related developments, as the Japanese use kata to
teach everything, and the Dutch did not arrive in Nagasaki for several more years.
1826:
After his Janissaries refuse to support proposed military reforms, the Ottoman Sultan
Mahmud II orders his European-trained artillerists to shoot them down with grapeshot.
(Grapeshot consisted of one-inch iron pellets packed into mesh bags like grapes, and then
fired from cannon.) Mahmud then set about organizing military academies to train Europeanstyle infantry and cavalry officers. The first opened in 1835, and the modern Turkish Military
Academy, established in Ankara in 1936, is its descendent. Noted graduates of Ottoman
military academies included Nuri as-Said and Yasin al-Hashimi, both of whom were leaders
of the post-World War I state of Iraq.
1850:
An English squire named William Coke designs some close-fitting, hard-domed black hats for
his gameskeepers to wear while hunting poachers. Manufactured by Thomas and William
Bowler of Southwark Hill Road in London, the hats quickly become known as "Bowlers."
Given a steel rim, bowler hats were then used as weapons in the 1964 James Bond film
Goldfinger and the British television series The Avengers. Meanwhile, another English squire,
William Penny Brookes, convinces the Wenlock Agricultural Reading Society that it should
promote the "moral, physical and intellectual improvement of the inhabitants of the town &
neighbourhood of Wenlock and especially of the Working classes" by awarding prizes for
athletic prowess. The subsequent games, known as the Olympian Class, were held annually.
Brookes corresponded regularly with the Greeks involved with the revival of Olympiads in
Athens, and in 1889, Brookes and Baron Pierre de Coubertin also entered into
correspondence. Originally, Coubertin was not too interested in Brookes' idea of organizing
international games similarly devoted to promoting the moral, physical, and intellectual
development of the working classes, but by 1908, he was claiming to have invented the idea.

1911:
Howard Garis, a New Jersey newspaperman writing under the pseudonym Victor Appleton,
publishes a novel titled Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle. Swift's rifle could shoot through
walls, and stun or destroy whatever it touched. The idea was not original with Garis, Jules
Verne having posited a similar underwater weapon in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the
Sea, first published in 1875. The idea left fiction, however, in 1969, when a California-based
physicist, Jack Cover, began developing an electronic weapon called the TASER, after
Thomas A. Swift's Electronic Rifle. A baton-shaped weapon using pistol powder to launch
two electric probes was introduced in 1974, but it did not work especially well, especially on
motivated individuals or people under the influence of cocaine. New investors became
interested in the product in the mid-1990s, smaller, more powerful compressed air variants
were developed, and by 2004, many police forces and military organizations were including
TASER X26s as part of their less-lethal weaponry.
1922:
A Norwegian diplomat named Lauritz Grnvold undertakes judo studies at the Kodokan in
Tokyo. Upon leaving Japan six years later, Grnvold receives his black belt at a ceremony
attended by the Emperor, making him the first (and perhaps only) European to be so honored.
Other Norwegian judo pioneers included Haakon Schonning, who started teaching Fairbairns
defendu system to Norwegian policemen in 1929. In Sweden, pioneers include Viking
Cronholm, who introduced jujutsu to Stockholm as early as 1908, and his students Alex
Wiemark, Arthur Lidberg, and Ernst Wessman. Jacques Rigolet introduced Kawaishi's
methods to Stockholm in 1948, and in 1957, the Dutch judoka Gerhard Gosen also started
clubs in Sweden. Danish pioneers include Knud Janson, who established a judo organization
in Copenhagen in 1944. Finally, in Finland, Torsten Muren established a judo club in Helsinki
in 1958. Early Scandinavian instructors were usually foreign: British at the Norwegian clubs,
French at the Danish clubs, German, French, or Dutch at the Swedish clubs, and Japanese at
the Finnish clubs.
1930:
Bishop Bernard Sheil of Chicago pioneers the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), which
was a relatively non-denominational program designed to get urban youth involved in sports.
Basketball and boxing were particularly emphasized in the clubs serving Chicagos black
neighborhoods, and in 1936, three of the eight boxers on the US Olympic team were from
Chicago CYO clubs. While the CYO itself evolved into the National Federation for Catholic
Youth Ministry, its muscular Christian boxing programs faded into obscurity following Sheils
retirement in 1954.
1936:
Pierre de Coubertin asks the crowds at the Berlin Olympics to remember that "the important
thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part. Just as in life, the aim is not to
conquer, but to struggle well." The old mans loudspeaker-amplified voice is lost amidst the
audiences excited chant of "Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!" The Berlin Olympics were the
first to feature closed-circuit television, electronic timing devices, and a Chinese national
team. One hundred and seven Chinese athletes and officials participated in the Berlin
Olympics, and their number included a Muslim named Chang Wen-quang who exhibited

taijicao, a variant of t'ai chi ch'uan developed by the French-educated Chu Min-yi during the
early 1930s. In 1940, Chu left the Kuomintang to join the Japanese puppet government in
Manchuoku, and so after the war, both Nationalists and Communists pretended that particular
system never existed.
1940:
The British government hires William Fairbairn to teach British commandos to fight dirty.
Fairbairns favorite unarmed fighting techniques included fingers in the eyes, palm-heel
strikes to the chin, and kicks to the groin, and a subsequent German manual based on these
methods was called Englischer Gangster-Methoden. In 1942, Fairbairn left Scotland for North
America. The most famous person to view Fairbairn-style training in Canada was novelist Ian
Fleming, who saw an exhibition during a day-trip to Camp X, outside Ottawa, in 1943. Many
future CIA leaders also took the course from Fairbairn at a similar OSS camp near Camp
David, Maryland. Rex Applegate describes the meat of this latter course in his book Kill or
Get Killed. Meanwhile, the British also send Lt. Col. J.C. Mawhood to Tidal River Camp, in
Victoria, Australia, to teach these methods to Australian commandos. Because there were not
many people in Australia who knew any Asian martial arts, most Australian hand-to-hand
combat instructors of the era were professional boxers or wrestlers. Pioneer instructors
included Alf Volker and Ken "Blue" Curran. However, during the 1950s, the Australian
military began teaching soldiers rudiments of Asian martial arts. These instructors included
men who had received training in Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, and Vietnam. Following the
Vietnam War, the Australian military emphasis shifted to nuclear threats, and as a result,
Australian military interest in hand-to-hand combat declined. Then, during the late 1980s, the
Australian military began routinely participating in United Nations peacekeeping operations,
and so, by the early 1990s, there was increased interest in providing Australian Special Forces
soldiers with realistic training in close-quarter fighting. Thus, in 1994, a Military Unarmed
Combat Wing was introduced to 11 Training Group. Pioneers included Majors John Whipp
and Gregory Mawke. Although Military Unarmed Combat Wing was closed in 1996, the
Australian military continued to conduct military unarmed combatives at unit level into the
early 21st century.
1942:
The German firm HASAG, which was based in Leipzig and used slave labor from the
womens camp attached to Buchenwald, begins developing a recoilless anti-tank weapon
called the Faustpatrone. Throughout the rest of World War II, HASAG developed increasingly
powerful versions known as Panzerfaust, and development continued in the Soviet Union
afterwards. Thus, in 1961, the Soviets introduced an improved Panzerfaust known as the
Raketniy Protivotankoviy Granatomet, or RPG-7. Improved projectiles followed, and by the
mid-1980s, the RPG-7 had become the weapon of choice for irregular troops pitted against
medium to high technology militaries. Although the launch, with its backblast and rocket trail,
invariably gave away the firers position, the projectiles were useful for anti-vehicular, antipersonnel, or anti-helicopter missions. Moreover, because pinpoint accuracy was not required,
training time was minimal.
1946:
Alfredo San Bartolome, a Peruvian 2-dan, establishes the first permanent judo school in
Spain. Other pioneering Spanish judo instructors included Frank Fernando and Yves Klein.

1956:
Carlton Shimomi opens Honolulus first commercial karate dojo. Ten years later, he closed the
Shorin-ryu school for financial reasons. This shocked student Mike McAndrews, who had
started training with Shimomi in 1964: "I hadnt realized that even a karate sensei needed to
make a living. To me, it was simply high art... an art than enabled one to transcend
mediocrity." Meanwhile, in New York City, judo teacher Jerome Mackey introduces franchise
martial arts to the United States. The Mackey clubs remained influential in New York and
New Jersey into the 1970s, when a stock swindle forced their closure.
1965:
DuPont researcher Stephanie Kwolek invents a polyaramid fiber called Kevlar. It was first
used to make steel-belted radial tires. Then, in 1971, a version called Kevlar-29 was found to
provide good resistance to handgun bullets, and in 1974, this in turn led to the introduction of
soft body armor that was resistant to pistol and shotgun fire. In December 1975, an off-duty
Seattle police officer named Ray Johnson became the first person known to have survived a
shooting because of Kevlar armor, and by 2000, Kevlar armor had reportedly saved about
2,500 US police officers from death or serious injury. The US military was following these
developments, and so in 1982, it began replacing its steel helmets and nylon ballistic vests
with helmets and vests made from Kevlar. Research continued, and during the 1990s, lighter,
stronger, and more flexible vests were introduced that had pockets in front and back that held
ceramic armor plates made of boron carbide. These plates were capable of absorbing direct
hits from rifle fire, and so their use in Afghanistan and Iraq was credited with saving the lives
of British and American soldiers. Unfortunately, the helmets, vests, and plates still did not
provide any protection for limbs, and so the next research goal was to develop a flexible cloth
that would change its molecular structure when struck by projectiles.
About 1968:
African American martial art practitioners begin developing Black Nationalist ("Afrikan")
martial arts. Most of these practitioners, such as Moses Powell and James Cheatham, taught
reasonably orthodox Asian or eclectic martial arts, but some, such as Dennis Newsome,
instead started studying African heritage arts such as capoeira. In addition, a few practitioners,
notably Nganga Tolo-Naa (Ray Cooper) and Shaha Maasi (William Nichols), developed their
own arts (in this case, Kupigana Ngumi, which includes techniques from karate, tai chi
chuan, and Maung Gyis American Bando). African American street versions also developed.
The latter are known today by the generic term "Jailhouse Rock." Influences on these street
versions included Black Islam, rap music, popular dance, and kung-fu movies.
1984:
The US Secret Service commissions the development of foam-padded training suits. The idea
was to allow for opponents in training scenarios to provide more resistance, thereby
increasing training realism. People involved with the original suit design included John
Desmedt, and early makers included Macho Products, which already manufactured a line of
foam-dipped taekwondo sparring gear. Meanwhile, bulkier custom suits were also under
development by people interested in allowing essentially full contact to the head, body, and
groin. Pioneers of these "pumpkin-head" or "bulletman" suits included Matt Thomas and
Mark Morris of Model Mugging.

1985:
Kilindi Iyi of Detroit publishes a paper called "African Roots in Asian Martial Arts," in which
he argued that the martial arts developed in Africa rather than China or India. Although the
theory proved popular in Afro-centric circles, elsewhere, it was widely dismissed.
1990:
The US Army deploys Stingray, a vehicle-mounted laser weapon, to Saudi Arabia. Stingray
was designed to knock out targeting devices, but if you were looking through those binoculars
at the time, you would go blind. Human rights groups were appalled, but official Army
publications were more blas, saying that enemy soldiers looking at the world through their
own blood were likely to panic, and so contribute to overall victory. Five years later, a much
less powerful rifle-mounted laser, Saber 203, was sent to Somalia, where it was used to put
large red dots on potentially hostile civilians. This reportedly chased off a few people, but the
general consensus was that the main thing the weapon accomplished was giving away the
shooter's position.
1992:
Douglas Coupland's novel Generation X, which defined McJob as "a low-pay, low prestige,
low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the service sector," appears in paperback, and within
weeks, the term "McDojo" appeared at rec.martial-arts as a description of franchise martial art
schools run by people with more ego than talent. Coupland did not invent the term McJob,
however, only its popular definition, as published articles indicate that the term was used, in
print, at least five years prior to the publication of his novel.
1995:
Rob Redmond of Atlanta, Georgia establishes the Internet web site that later becomes
Shotokan Planet. That same year, Neil Ohlenkamp of Camarillo, California created the online
Judo Information Site. As far as is known, these were first martial art web sites designed to be
information-intensive rather than advertisements.
2004:
The US Air Force tests a directed energy weapon system known as Active Denial System in
Iraq. Basically, this was a microwave device that made your skin feel as if it was being
burned. Originally developed to protect US nuclear weapons, it was being tested in Iraq to see
if it had potential for crowd control.