As stated before my dad used to teach Taekwondo in Korea. If you are not familiar with Taekwondo here is a brief explanation. It is probably one of the most useless martial arts out there. Trust me. I know what I am talking about in terms of Taekwondo. I am a 4th degree black belt in it so I think I have some knowledge of the sport. Well, my dad enrolled me into Taekwondo for a couple of reasons. 1) I was a fan of Bruce Lee. Bruce would fuck anyone up on film and I thought that was pretty badass. 2) I needed to learn how to protect myself because I started getting into a lot of scuffles in my neighborhood.
So at the age of 5 I started doing taekwondo. The first taekwondo school I was enrolled in was Choong-Hyo Taekwondo. The head master was this small dude with this mustache. He really wasn’t in the business of showing by example. In the 8 years that I studied under him, I recall about 5 instances where he actually did a kick or punch to show us how something was done. Granted that when he did kick a bag or something, it was pretty damn powerful. I hated that school because I really didn’t learn anything about self defense. They taught me useless forms that would never work unless you are Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid 3. (Terrible movie by the way) So, I was thinking about quitting but my father had a saying. “When a man pulls out a sword, you should always draw blood.” For all of you that don’t understand the meaning of this saying, it basically means that you need complete everything that you set out to do. Never give up.
Luckily at the time that I was about to give up, there was another teacher at this school that taught me other martial arts on the side. It really was exciting. He then asked my father if I can be his assistant instructor at the new school he is setting up. My dad agreed and from then on I learned real self defense. From aikido, judo, and jujitsu, I learned it all. I even started excelling at Taekwondo. I started winning most tournaments that I entered and even got to the nationals.
The funny thing about this is that my body is not ideal for taekwondo. I was skinny from the waste up. Waist down, I looked like a Mexican chick after giving birth to the 4th of her 8 children. On top of that, it have unusually short legs so there was a disadvantage with reach most of the time. But my philosophy for taekwondo was a little different from the norm. I always thought that my opponent may hit me more times but the times I am going to hit this guy, he is going to definitely feel it. I guess the notion that I am going to maim someone really put a lot of things into perspective. I was rarely nervous to go to tournaments.
There was this one tournament that comes to mind. It was in Camarillo California. We were sitting in the waiting room when the one Armenian guy kept talking all this shit that he was state champion. He actually told me that he was going to beat me. That really didn’t sit well with me and luck would have it that I would fight him in the prelims. We are getting set to fight and he lets out this primitive yell to try to psych me out. Unfortunately for him, I made up my mind that I would make sure I own his ass by the end of the match. I looked at him and smirked. When the referee signaled to start, I kicked him in his head with a spin hook kick as hard as I can. The Armenian dude’s helmet flew off of him and landing in the sparring ring next to us. Now my opponent is kind of mad. He fucked with his pride. He comes at me again and I cracked him on the head again. This time he crumbled to the ground and again his helmet flew. So he got up and now I could see he was a bit terrified. I told him he might want to tighten the helmet down because it’s going to fly off again if he doesn’t. So the referee signals to resume the match and I toy with him. I give a weak kick to his chest. He doesn’t really attack because he doesn’t want to get his ass kicked again. I pepper him with some more kicks and he just takes this humiliation. I guess his coach couldn’t stand this and yelled for him to attack me. So reluctantly he attacks and this time I kick his head as if this is the last kick I will ever throw in my life. The guys eyes roll back and they called the medics to wheel this kid out.
I win and I go back to where most of the guys in my division are and I just look at them. Two of those guys actually got up and quit the tournament. It really felt good to shut this fucker up. I feel like you can only talk big if you can back it up. Some examples of people that can talk shit are: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Tiger Woods, Manny Pacquiao, William Wallace from Braveheart, Maximus from Gladiator, and Bruce Lee.
The moral of the story is you might never know who is in the room so shut the fuck up.
