November 27 would have been his 65th birthday. One can't help but wonder how he would have impacted entertainment and the martial arts community if he had lived, and what his career would be like now. (Maybe he'd be the governor of California--stanger things have happened!) But, it seems an opportune moment to revisit the question of What would JKD be like if he were still alive?
Surely its popularity would have exploded, and every kid would be doing it. It'd be as common as TKD--or at least, schools advertising that they taught it would be that common, whether those schools were authorized to do so or not. He always said that if people focused too much on the name that it should be abandoned--I wonder if he would have been able to follow through on this and abandon his name for the art? What would he have done then? Surely the same thing, under a different name or no name? My guess is he'd have had to start trademarking/copyrighting things and licensing the name.
As to the curriculum, I imagine that the Filipino influence would have grown and that the MMA craze would have influenced the art toward more grappling. Would he have added gun disarms? Maybe.
It's interesting to think about!
Surely its popularity would have exploded, and every kid would be doing it. It'd be as common as TKD--or at least, schools advertising that they taught it would be that common, whether those schools were authorized to do so or not. He always said that if people focused too much on the name that it should be abandoned--I wonder if he would have been able to follow through on this and abandon his name for the art? What would he have done then? Surely the same thing, under a different name or no name? My guess is he'd have had to start trademarking/copyrighting things and licensing the name.
As to the curriculum, I imagine that the Filipino influence would have grown and that the MMA craze would have influenced the art toward more grappling. Would he have added gun disarms? Maybe.
It's interesting to think about!
