My shifu was a student of Tung Ying Chieh, he taught us the martial side as well. But as time went on he got more and more students who did not care about that side. And he. like many of these guys that know it, is getting older, he is now in his 80s.
Getting back to what I said about Billy's response to who was the toughest you ever trained under or worked with. What surprised me was how quickly he answered, not even thinking about it. And Billy's trained with just about everybody.
When Billy Blanks was a young black belt he ran his own school in Eire Pennsylvania. He had a lot of students and most of them competed. A gentleman (Master Chan) came in one day and told him his two children, a boy and a girl in their early teens, wanted to join a school and compete in tournaments, and asked Billy if he did that. He said yes.
The gentleman then asked, and I paraphrase, “Are you any good at what you do?”
Billy told him there are a lot of instructors in the area that have far more experience than he, himself, has, but we work hard, we’re always learning and his students are improving constantly.
The gentleman said, “I’ve visited all the schools around the area. You’re the first instructor that hasn’t told me how terrific he was. May I bring my children in tomorrow to start their training?” And he did.
Billy said they were great kids. Very relaxed, very attentive, very respectful and worked really hard.
Their father would drive them to the dojo and attentively watch class. Billy asked him several times, “Mister Chan, do you train Martial Arts?” He would always deflect the question and say he was "just interested.” He would also go to all the tournaments his children competed in. And closely watch Billy fight in the black belt division as well.
At one tournament, held in the gym of an old, broken down high school in Erie, just before Billy was to fight in the second round, Chan took him aside and told him (again, I’m paraphrasing) “When you fight your next opponent, use your kicks attacking from his lower right side moving up. His vision is poor there.”
Billy looked at him, pointed and said “You DO train Martial Arts!” Chan just said “go fight.”
Billy did what Chan had said, and it worked perfectly. Before Billy's fight for first place Chan told him “Move your opponent to that corner of the floor, the floor is not strong there, he won’t be able to use the incredible spring of his legs.
Billy did and it worked as Chan said it would.
Afterwards Chan told him, yes, he did train in Martial Arts. Tai Chi, his whole life.
Billy started training under him that week. After a year, they moved to training outside. They went to a spot where there was a stream about eighteen inches deep. They would sit in the stream, Indian style, facing each other, Chan’s back to the current. Every time Billy told me the story his eyes would get big and he’d laugh. He said, “Oh, man, it was so f'n cold! My body was shivering so hard, my lips were blue, I couldn’t feel my feet!”
They would practice breathing and the flow of energy in the body, which Chan said Billy had little of.”
After several weeks, Billy would have his back to the current. He also told me Mister Chan had picked that stream because of an abundance of a particular kind of clay in parts of the spring bed. He would scoop out a bunch of it, put it into a pile and form it into a cube, slapping it tight as he built it. He then asked Billy to punch it as hard as he could.
Billy could hit hard. He’d smack it and leave a beautiful imprint of a fist. Chan would smack it and bury his fist almost to the bottom knuckle of his thumb. Billy’s eyes would go wide on that one, too.
He also told me that if Chan shoved you - you were going ash over tea kettle, that it was like getting bumped by a bus that didn’t quite stop in time.
I take it all as truth, Billy doesn’t talk trash about the Arts. And some may say that none of that has anything to do with fighting. But to me, everything has to do with fighting. Especially ways to improve and hone it.
