Frederick J. Hamilton

[Danjo]

I posted this in the General MA section but got no response, so I thought I'd come over here with it. Anyone know who this man was? I read somewhere that he hosted a no holds barred tournement in the 1970's and was considered fairly controversial in his day. I believe his style was Shotokan Karate. His dojo was in Harlem I believe.

 

[bujinclergy]

He had a few dojo in Harlem and hosted a full contact - no padding event at the NY Ballet Theatre I believe it was in NYC in 1975. It was an entertaining and brutal event. (I was there 8th row center and paid a whopping 30$ for a ticket, big money back then for a teenager.) There were quite a few folks from the Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn full contact dojo competing in the event.
His younger students could do some amazing physical stuff and they were brutally hard fighters.
There was some serious blood at that event and what was weird was they would just jump out with a mop and bucket and wipe up the stage and continue.
Some guy from LI NY (can't remember his name but was wearing a hapkido uniform) stepped up to compete and this guy that was famous for doing "the robot" moves in his kata in those days hit him twice and there was blood all over the place and the guy was down for the count.
Hamilton was a veteran I know because he used to come into the place I worked in St.Albans. Hard man to forget.
There was a lot of USA Goju, Nisei Goju (an offshoot school of the USAGJR who spawned Louie Delgado) and Shotokan besides Aaron Banks groups up on that end of the Manhatten Island in those days....
I only remember him as a terribly polite man with amazing students.
Raymond McRinna claims to have trained with him directly. Could get more info from him... http://www.usakarate.org/contacts.html and possibly the other gentleman that is listed on the site from "original karate dojo" Samad Raatib.


Hope thats some help...

Kent

 

[Danjo]

He had a few dojo in Harlem and hosted a full contact - no padding event at the NY Ballet Theatre I believe it was in NYC in 1975. It was an entertaining and brutal event. (I was there 8th row center and paid a whopping 30$ for a ticket, big money back then for a teenager.) There were quite a few folks from the Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn full contact dojo competing in the event.
His younger students could do some amazing physical stuff and they were brutally hard fighters.
There was some serious blood at that event and what was weird was they would just jump out with a mop and bucket and wipe up the stage and continue.
Some guy from LI NY (can't remember his name but was wearing a hapkido uniform) stepped up to compete and this guy that was famous for doing "the robot" moves in his kata in those days hit him twice and there was blood all over the place and the guy was down for the count.
Hamilton was a veteran I know because he used to come into the place I worked in St.Albans. Hard man to forget.
There was a lot of USA Goju, Nisei Goju (an offshoot school of the USAGJR who spawned Louie Delgado) and Shotokan besides Aaron Banks groups up on that end of the Manhatten Island in those days....
I only remember him as a terribly polite man with amazing students.
Hope thats some help...

Kent

Kent,

Wow, excellent information. Sounds as if the trained his students well. I wonder what happened to all of that old school training? You say he was hard to forget. I take it he had a way with words as well as teaching eh?

 

[bujinclergy]

It's a thing of the past probably because of law suits etc...
My Sensei at the time frame was a guy named Rich Barathy and it was a similar "black and blue weekly" school. We did do kata at that time but it was just for the tournaments and full contact Jiyu Kumite was a steady day by day thing. (it was also seriously frowned on to come in to class less than 4-5x a week.)
People still trash talk about Barathy Sensei to this day because of the brutality reputation the school had and there may have been some money problems going on after a large breakup of the blackbelts. Don't know anything about that because I had changed schools at that point for Matsubayashi Shorin Ryu. Actually it was a great group of people. And Barathy Sensei was a really good man if he was on your side. God help you if you weren't . Just was none of us took any crap from folks.
Times have changed for the most part. Few people want to train that way anymore. I have to admit even the folks that want to really turnon the heat in my place makes me nervous for them. I would have never even dreamed of sueing my teacher for any injury. Now it is a real thing to worry about.
Since I'm into the whole "healing thing" at least we offer free treatment within our facility for anything that we can reasonably take care of if it is a result of training at our center. In the past ten years I have only had 6 cases of injuries, the worst being a dislocated clavicle which was the "dreaded white belt" dumping one of my brown belts dead on the top cap of his shoulder with a fairly high elevated throw.
Still praying for this luck to continue
PS I edited the top post with a link and such for more info on someone who sounds like was in Hamilton Sensei's dojo. Good luck! It was a good era!!

 

[Danjo]

Thanks for the information. It's always good to read about how things were back in the day.