My teachers of Martial Arts

If you want to be good in any subject then eventually it is good to venture out and see what the best people in your field of study do. The more you learn the better. I have been blessed to have met so many good martial artists in my life. So I would like to share my experiences with you.

In one movie that I went to , I think it was one of the super hero movies like Captain America or Wonder Woman, I watched carefully at the credits. The credits rolled by screen after screen. There seemed to be no end. It was incredible how many people it took in total to actually make the movie. I roughly estimated how many people were on each screen that went by. I counted about 10,000 people.

If you go to University for five years and take ten different classes each year then you maybe encounter 50 different professors. One of those professors can make you refer to 100 different books, maybe not read all of them but use them for a reference. If you multiply the number of professors by the number of books, that gives you 5,000 influences.

If you think about the number of musicians you have heard in your life as a musician then that number is easily in the thousands too.

There is a saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child. “It takes a village to raise a child is an African proverb that means that an entire community of people must interact with children for those children to experience and grow in a safe and healthy environment. The villagers look out for the children. This does not mean an entire village is responsible for raising a child or the children of a crowd.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_takes_a_village

Likewise when studying martial art, over a person’s lifetime one may encounter hundreds if not thousands of martial artists if you count your teachers, which may only be one, but add to that movie martial arts, Youtube videos, books, senior classmates etc. Someone serious about any subject, learns from so many people.

We can count on our figures, all the famous people that invented something but if you think about a cell phone, that took hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life to develop. That’s what the human race is all about, everyone helping everyone else.  Everyone contributes to the greater knowledge of the human race in major or minor ways. everyone is important, not just the famous people.

That’s the background I wish to give when I list some of the key teachers and master I encounters during my 50 year journey of learning martial arts. If I said I learned from 100 great teachers then the above is what I mean. A few teachers were my main teachers because I spent at least five years under each while some of the others I learned something just from a seminar given by them or from a phone call or from a visit. So here they are:

Wrestlers on TV in my youth and my good wrestling buddy David Volman. We wrestled everyday in the summers for our entertainment. There was no Internet in those days so that’s what we did. We also competed in shot put together. I matched his Alberta record of 48 feet with a 12 pound shotput at home once but he beat the crap out of me in actual competition. In competition, I threw 4 feet short of that.

1. Olaf Simon – first Karate and also Kung Fu teacher (1966)

2. Olaf Simon’s students – Dwight Sheer, Emil Repak, Margitte Hilbig, Lyndon Bateson, Randy Ness

3. James Lore – Hung style teacher in Toronto (1969). James Lore told me that he learned from five different masters. One of them was a specialist in Butterfly knife and Pole. When that master was 76 years old, he was working in a town in Northern Ontario that was being burned down by 15 people. So he got out a bamboo pole and put all 15 in the hospital and became the hero that saved the town.

4. Jack Chin – Hung style teacher and Choy Lee Fut teacher in Toronto. Jack Chin was like a military instructor. He often yelled at students and told them that their art was garbage, their stance was no good, their hand positions were all wrong. He would tell you this 100 times and if you still didn’t get it, then he would sweep you to the ground, to probe his point. He often told students to not waste their time and just stay home and watch TV. He was using a reverse psychology on the students which worked because everyone stayed.

5. Raymond Chung – Tai Chi teacher in Vancouver (1975). Raymond Chun was a Jet fighter pilot on China and escaped with his daughter from China with a 10 hour swim in freezing waters and gun boats all around. He was very famous and when people heard he was coming to Canada, 80 people joined up. His China teaching method was to stand in the middle of the room and do a half dozen movements and then sat down and told people to copy those. After a few months, everyone quit. So he figured Canadians and Canadian born Chinese were a different breed of people and needed a different training method. So he spent 5 minutes with each student and every week taught the students a few movements of a form and did some pushing hands ot applications with that student. That worked very well. At one point he had maybe 150 students.

6. Patrick Chow – Wing Chun teacher who was in Vancouver from Hong Kong (1976). I heard that Patrick Chow was teaching at a college in Vancouver and so I sought him and invited him to my house to teach a half dozen people. I also went to some other place where he taught. His students all had more than ten years of martial arts but were no match for him. I told him I did Hung style so he asked me to show my form. He said, pretty good, even better than some people in Hong Kong. Aftet that he asked me to attack him in anyway. He easily countered everything with a big smile on his face. He never hurt me or went faster than me or used any strength. He was like a Chess master, just outwitting me each time.

7. Johnnie Yu – taught me the Wing Chun Moy Yat forms – he learned from Moy Yat (1977). In exchange I taught him all my Tai Chi forms and the pushing hands. His Wing Chun was very good.

8.  Mark Lee – He taught me some of the body guard Wing Chun from Roland Wong who learned from Jiu Wan (1980). His Wing Chun was always closer than elbow range. every hit was very powerful and precise. He learned from Roland Wong in roland’s kitchen along with seven other people. Roland fought all of them at the same time with no problems. He was very very soft and hit very very hard. He was a small person.

9. Roland Wong – I just met him once. Superb Wing Chun. I met a very experienced Hung style teacher who was very strong. One day he asked rold Wong what Wing Chun was. Roland gave him an inch punch to send him flying into the wall. The Hung style teacher said “Why the hell fif you have to hit me so hard?” Roland said if he didn’t do that then he would never think much of Wing Chun because it is not fancy looking. even my Hung style teacher sad that if it looks fancy, then it is usually no good, He said they stuff that doesn’t look like much often has a kick to it.

10. Dr. G.K. Khoe – my main Wing Chun teacher in Vancouver (1982).I have a long writeup about Dr. G.K. Khoe in by blog section.

11. Wang Kiu – Dr. Khoe’s teacher who I met in seminars and at my house and at Dr. Khoe’s house. (1982, 1986). Master Wang Kiu came over in 1986 to discuss doing an International Wing Chun newsletter to talk about his kind of Wing Chun. That became the newsletter called “Wing Chun Viewpoint.”

12. Dr. Dom Lopez – a top Escrima teacher who decended from Ancion Bacon like Remy Presas and Bobby Taboada did. (1982). Dr. Dom Lopez is in the red shirt. I had a match with him , Wing Chun Butterfly knife vs his padded stick. I got hit pretty good in the head. No way I could match his stick fighting skill. He enjoyed the Wing Chun training a lot. Later he said that Wing Chun and Filipino empty hand fighting were very similar.

13. Fred Shadian – who learned from Remy Presas and others. I went to his seminars. Fred said that he would be willing to give our club a seminar as soon as we get back into stick fighting again. He just finished giving various seminars in Germany. If you can get away with that, then you are pretty good.

14. Remy Presas – Arnis instructor.

15. Bobby Taboada – Escrima/Arnis instructor – seminar.

16. Ted Lucay Lucay - Escrima teacher – went to his seminar. I really like this super expert master’s stick methods a lot and hope one day our club can invite him to teach us.

17. Roberto Tores – Philippine martial arts – seminar

18. James Keating - when is came to knife fighting this was the man. Knife fighting was his passion. I went o his seminar and thought “Wow.”

19. David Harris – Tai Chi, Ba Gua (martial art magician) – seminar. By magician, I mean he could do incredible things and nobody could figure out how he did that. He flung people around effortlessly, and it didn’t look real until you felt it done to you.

20. Herman Siwanda - was a top Silat expert from Indonesia. His whole family were Silat experts. I you thought you have seen everything in Martial Arts then most likely you have not. There are hundreds of styles of Silat. Herman was able to catch very fast boxer jabs and instantly the boxer would be on the ground face down. Unfortunately he passsed away from a car accident in Germany.

21. Frank Spangler – Choy Lee Fut expert – phone conversations

22. Hawkins Cheung – Wing Chun – phone conversation

23. Duncan Leung – Wing Chun – phone conversation

Duncan Leung was a favorite student of Ip Man. A very knowledgeable and proficient teacher of Wing Chun. He also did a lot of the choreography in the movie the Grandmaster. This film took years to make and is one of the Artiest Kung Fu movies of all time, featuring Wing Chun, Ba Gua, Xing Yi, Ba Ji, Preying Mantis etc. The actress Zhang Zi Yi, trained a few years Ba Gua, just for the movie. Some Youtube videos show that training.

24. Herb April – diversified martial artist – emails.

25. Henry Huang – Tai Chi – seminar

26. Harrison Moretz – Tai Chi – seminar

27. Kenneth Chung – Wing Chun, visit and seminars. I would say that Ken’s Wing Chun showed us the real path to the highest level of Wing Chun. We didn’t achieve that yet. (1990’s)

28. Emin Boztepe – Wing Tsun – seminar. For practical combat, Emin’s the man.

29. Ralph Haenel – Wing Tsun – seminars (2008 and later)

30. Robert Vogel junior – WangKiu Wing Chun – came for a visit from Holland. Shown is Robert Vogel señor and Robert Vogel junior, two top students of Master Wang Kiu.

31. Unknown – Wu Shu expert from China came for a visit.

32. Unknown – Chen Tai Chi expert from China – came for a visit.

33. Benny Meng – Wing Chun friendship seminar. (1998)

34. Marty Goldberg – Wing Chun friendship seminar

35. Bob Stevenson – Nanaimo Wing Chun teacher – friendship seminar.

36. Robert Goudy – senior instructor for Bob Stevenson. He trained with us a few years. He and the head of the Saanich police were great training partners together. They were bigger than the rest of us.

37. Sonny Umpad – USA super expert in Escrima and knife fighting – visited him. He had this special dummy in his living room with arms all over the place that he would train his sticks on. He invested a sticking hitting methods too that was very similar to the wing Chun chain punching method. He was very open with his knowledge.

38. Greg Lee – son of Yim Lee who wrote the Wing Chun book with Bruce Lee. He does JKD. He was trying to get volume 2 of the Yim Lee book published but the photographer would not release any of the photos for less than $40,000.

39. Ben Der – Wing Chun teacher and student of Kenneth Chung. The most friendly teacher ever. Ken said I should visit him to see how a much smaller person can do all the stuff that Ken taught me. So I did. He was very good and so was his son.

40. Leung Ga Wing – top student of Tsui Shan Tin who I met at Kenneth Chung’s club. Very good skill.

41. Eddie Chong – Wing Chun – seminar and two visits to his club.

42. Ken Chung’s wonderful students in San Francisco.

43. William C.C. Chen – Tai Chi teacher in New York – visit. He was super good. I went for a seminar in how to produce videos in New York and met this very famous and skilled master. He was very soft , hit very hard, super nice teacher who ignored his class for 30 minutes just to tell me what Tai Chi was all about. (1988)

44. Chung Kwok Chow – Wing Chun - two seminars and he visited in Victoria.

45. Joseph Simonet – Superb Kenpo teacher – met at the Wang Kiu wooden seminar in Whistler, BC. seminar. He was a very respectful nice person. Very skilled in Arnis, Silat, Kenpo et. Even some experts have told me that you don’t want to mess with him.

46. Mike Chin – Aikido, Judo, Arnis – we trained together in Wing Chun and Arnis and shared many martial arts stories.

I practiced many years of Wing Chun and Tai Chi and Arnis with Mike Chin and his wife NanYien. They are super nice people always willing to help anyone and definitely helped me when I was in need. Mike Chin and NanYien. Mike was an Aikido teacher but not that many people know he was also skilled in some White Crane, Iron Palm, Judo, TaekwonDo, Arnis and a few other things. His wife Nanyien also taught Aikido and Tai Chi and we did lots of Wing Chun together.

47. Wayne Unger – Superb Judo teacher – we practiced together.

48. Eddie Chong – again but this time Pan Nam Wing Chun.

49. Jason Siu – superb classical Wing Chun and Hung style – he helped me teach in 1980 and on.

50. Joe Louis – Karate champion – met him at a computer seminar.

51. Yang style fighting champion from Hong Kong – met him in Victoria. This person said he represented the Yang style in Hong Kong against all other style of combat. He was very skillful and said that the Tai Chi people who fight also train on a wooden dummy and put on the gloves and fight a lot. He had a lot of power.

52. Robert Chu – Wing Chun – wrote some articles for me when I published my “Wing Chun Viewpoint newsletter”. Definitely he was one of the most intellectual writers and has the skill to back up whatever he says. After ten years, I finally met him in Victoria. Robert is skilled in Wing Chun, Tai Chi, Hung Gar, Pole fighting and many other things. He is also an Acupuncturist and teaches that as well. With just three needles he totally relieved my massive cold.

53. Rene Ritchie -  Yuen Kay San Wing Chun – friendship seminar.

54. Victor Der – Wing Chun – Ben Der’s son – came to help me out (1998).

55. Richard Mark – Karate – we trained in the same place but at different times (2017 and on).

56. Richard Mark’s wonderful Karate students – Aaron – he’s great.

57. China Yang style Tai Chi master I met in Tieling – Northern China (2000)

58. Russ Brower – superb martial artist – street, Karate, Wing Chun, Hung Fut.

59. Al Carty – one of the best in military combat – just talked.

60. Lorn Chan – wrestling, Ba Gua, Al Carty student – learned my Wing Chun and runs his own club now.

61. Winston Wan – Lok Yiu Wing Chun teacher in Hong Kong but moved to Richmond – visited him.

62. Kelly Worden – Superb Arnis instructor under Remy Presas – seminar.

63. Al Cheng – Preying Mantis – visited him.

64. John Funk – Preying Mantis visited him.

65. Herman Leung – my student but developed his own art that he shared with me.

66. Heiko – number two German stick fighting champion and Jujitsu expert – trained with us.

67. Mighty Mouse (Paul Lam) -  My Hung style idol in my Hung style club. But all the students were good (1969 and on).

68. Robin Young – my Hung style classmate – taught me some spear and knife stuff.

69. Jopit Laraya – Hung style and stick fighting expert I met in my Hung style club.

70. Frank Lam – super expert in Hung style – came to visit our Toronto club. He went to a Karate tournament where they were breaking three boards. He asked the Karate people to hold those same boards for him and with an inch hit, broke all three. He said, that’s the real way to do it. Him and his family travelled around North America to promote Hung Gar.

71. Andrea Falk – just visited her to talk about Ba Gua as a supplement to Wing Chun.

72. Joe Ng – one of or teachers but learned Hong Kong WT style that he shared (2017 and on).

73. Sunny Tang – talked to him about Wing Chun in Toronto one time.

74. Master Moy – he started the Taoist Tai Chi empire – met him in Toronto when he started up. Our Hung style club trained at the same place for awhile. (1969)

75. Wong Shun Leung – Wing Chun - came for a visit and to give a seminar in Victoria (1992)

76. Tsui Shan Tin – came with Wong Shun Leung for a visit and to give a seminar in Victoria (1992)

77. Asiatic sifu – Wing Chun seminar in Vancouver. (2018)

78. Cliff Au Yueng – Wing Chun seminar in Vancouver. His book talks about Wong Shun Leung and also Wang Kiu. (2018)

78. Douglas Wong – senior student from Raymond Chung Tai Chi – one seminar

79. Charles Daniels – my senior in Tai Chi – that I practiced with all the time. (1990’s)

80. I forget his last name but his first name was Blair. He was our student and also was a Chinese Sanda Champion with 10 years in the art. We trained together.

81. Steven Leung - Duncan Leung student - we had many great conversations about Wing Chun in the past. He teaches out of Las Vegas.

82. John Kam - He runs the AMS Wing Chun club at UBC. We trained together a lot under Dr. G.K. Khoe in the 1980’s. He also came over to meet Kenneth Chung in Victoria one time. John has also studied Judo. https://www.facebook.com/WingChunUBC/

83. Leung Ting - I never learned from Grandmaster Leung Ting directly but I would say that other than Bruce Lee and lately Donnie Yen, he did the most to spread Wing Chun all over Europe. At one time they said more than a million people practice Wing Chun because of him. It was Grandmaster Ip Man’s dream to make Wing Chun a household word and to spread it far and wide. I was influenced by his many magazine articles and various books and videos and ran into one of his top students Emin Boztepe when Emin held a seminar in Victoria BC. Leung Ting uses his own spelling for the name Wing Chun and write Wing Tsun. This was to copyright his unique teaching approach and also they didn’t like the initials WC because he said in England that stands for “Water Closet” or toilet and so other arts would make fun of Wing Chun in those days with the insult :”Show me your toilet cleaning hands.”

84. Charles Nelson - Military Combat instructor. See my blog about him. Definitely very deadly. I met him in New York in 1987.

Some of the people I like on Youtube: Master Wong, Gary Lam, Master Ken, Chintya Candranaya, Kenneth Chung, Emin Boztepe. There are so many good people these days. When I started Wing Chun, it was rare to find any teachers of this art and the wooden dummy and the weapons were still held as a secret to the art.  

Last but not least, Reza Terani. He calls me his teacher but I learned more from him about the reality of combat then he learned from me about the classical stuff. I shared my classical style with him, he shared his combat style with me. The two of us teach together and are like the Yin and Yang in our approaches to martial art. They are different but they compliment each other. I find we really need both approaches together but you have to go through the classical approach first.

 If you look at the above list you might say that is ridiculous but if you read the stuff before, it was to point out is it not ridiculous because we learn from anyone and everyone in our lives if we  always have an open mind to learn. You learn who you can learn from. If you have a closed mind or if you always have excuses that you are too busy in your life to learn stuff , then you can learn very little in life. I learn a lot from my students too.

From my experience, it does not make sense when someone has only learned from one teacher in his life, no matter what the subject and they close their eyes to all other teachings by anyone else and think only one way is good. I have met lots of martial artists who think only their art and only their teacher is good. However I would recommend you become proficient in at least one martial art before venturing out to learn what else there is or else you are wasting your time. Beginning students of Wing Chun now get attracted by the MMA hype and try to learn that at the same time and then in Wing Chun class jump around like a ring fighter and that is not what we teach. So they end up knowing learning almost nothing about Wing Chun! Master Wang Kiu said that if you want to really learn Wing Chun, then you must give up the others. The first official student of Ip Man in Hong Kong was Leung Sheung. He was already an expert in Choy Lee Fut, Dragon style and White eyebrow style. But he gave all this up to learn from Ip Man. My friend Reza can probably beat all of us with his Iranian wrestling skills, yet he sticks to the classical Wing Chun in class and never mixes the two.

 I am sure I forgot some important people at my age of 75.

Last but not least, the many Hung style movies I watched in the 1970’s.