Ep. 33 The Perfect Weapon

What is the perfect weapon? Sword? Nah. Firearm? Pfft. Smart Missile? No. Jeff Speakman and his fearsome Kenpo fists. In this 1991 classic, Jeff plays Jeff, a rough and tumble street tough with a heart of gold. After his master is killed in Koreatown, Jeff must venture into the world of mobsters and crime to avenge his mentor and reclaim the honor of Kenpo School.

Join your hosts as they dive in to this martial arts masterpiece and discover why exactly Jeff Speakman IS The Perfect Weapon.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
We emotional content. I'm gonna showyou how great I am. If you
want me here, you're gonna giveus one mind everything we do keep Welcome

(00:24):
to the Pot of Five Rings,your Martial Arts podcast where we talk about
martial arts, martial arts, movies, and all things of martial artsy with
your hosts Joe Sobula and Rob Roland. Rob, how's it going. It
has been too long, way toolong. We have a lot of shit
going on, which is great.Yeah, you know that means business is
booming. We don't have time tojust talk about frivolous things like martial arts,

(00:47):
but we're gonna make time for itbecause that's what the audience wants,
with the fan want, and that'swhat my heart wants. It is exactly
what my heart wants. And Iwill tell you I got to watch this
movie today while I was actually writingmy bike, and I ended up putting
in like the full time on mybike, and there is definitely a correlation

(01:08):
between the amount of action and myoverall pace. So that's kind of interesting
to see. But we are,of course talking about the nineteen ninety one
classic tempo movie The Perfect Weapon.Can I just say for me as like
a moderately successful YouTuber. I havea handful of videos that I would say

(01:32):
have gone viral. Chief among themis my video where I talk about some
problems I see in Kempo. SoI think when I come out and say
the Campo movie is one of myfavorite martial arts films, people are gonna
be like, they're not allowed towatch that movie. You hate Kempo.
Don't get me wrong, I hateKempo. That's one of those There are

(01:59):
no stupid questions, only stupid peoplekind of responses. But everything is polarizing
on YouTube, you know that.Yeah, if you're like I love oranges,
everyone assumes you hate apples. There'sno in between, so which is
unfortunate. This is not a criticallyacclaimed film. But every I don't even

(02:19):
want to say every serious, butevery like decent martial artist that I've ever
known, is a fan of thisfilm. They've seen it. They all
are kind of in this camp ofIt's almost a shame that Speakman didn't get
more of a shot at an actioncareer, because he's really watchable and really
fun and really makes this, youknow, this tempo stuff attractive to people.

(02:42):
He has a weird kind of liketrolling style of acting. Yeah,
like he's he is literally smarter thanthe scripts he's playing. But it doesn't
feel off putting, you know.It feels like he knows, Like can
you believe I'm in this movie?This? Yes? Well, but this
is a point that I wanted tomake because I don't think that his like
in his mind. I don't thinkhe was like, yeah, I want
to be the next Sworts and Anger. I don't want to be the next

(03:05):
you know, Stallone. I thinkhe was just like, I want to
do karate for my entire life,and I want to run a school and
like make my master proud, andI have an opportunity to be in a
movie and kind of show off whatI can do. Like that's awesome if
I'm a guy who runs a karateschool, I mean any kind of martial
arts school, and I get theopportunity to be in a film that sees

(03:28):
any level of success, and Ilook cool as hell doing it, even
if it's campy, even if it'sover the top, even if the script
is terrible. If I look somewhatcool, Everybody's going to sign up for
my martial arts classes, and I'mset. I'm never going to be wanting
for clients, and I feel likethat's kind of where he ended up with
all of this, because his nextcouple of movies that came out after this

(03:50):
did not do well at all,And that is sort of what you'll see
if you could look at film reviewsfor this. What came out after this
was like Street Night. It's like, ah, it's just too bad because
he makes it so fun, butlike the films are just so bad they
weren't ever going to go anywhere.But his career after this was all in
running to martial arts school. SoI think it's a tremendous success from that

(04:14):
perspective. I don't know that heever felt the calling to go take acting
lessons or to like you know,brush up on the craft, or to
become a better filmmaker. I thinkit achieved everything he could ever wanted to
achieve, which was I'm somebody nowin this realm. I legit did not
know that Jeff Speakman did anything afterthe Perfect Weapon, because if you mentioned

(04:35):
Jeff Speakman's name to people, heis the Perfect Weapon. Yeah, that's
his one hit wonder. But Ilegit didn't know he did anything else outside
of I think choreography every once ina while, but this is this made
his name, Like, yeah,this is the movie that made him.
You know, to this day,I know people that know him and they
introduced him as you know, Jeffs Peakman, the Perfect Weapon. Oh.

(04:58):
Earlier, you mentioned that no seriousor martial artists period has seen this
movie and says anything bad about it. Yeah, respect to like what it
is, right, I would extendthat to say, nobody who's seen this
movie dislikes this movie. Right,even if you are not a martial artist,
you're not interested in martial arts atall. This is an entertaining,
dumb ass movie. Yeah it is. It is, But I think that's

(05:19):
like the Cavat, you take itwith it. It doesn't come out as
like we're trying to win an Academyaward. And then again, and believe
me, I have this conversation frequentlywith any of my friends who are like,
hey, you want to go seea film, Well, it only
got a five point six on IMDb. It's like the film critics aren't interested
in whether it's a fun spend ofyou know, seven to twelve dollars depending

(05:41):
on where you're at for a movie. These days, they're looking at it
like, well, this is notgoing to win an Academy award. So
if I give it a high mark, and then people go see it and
they're like, well, that wasn'tOscar worthy, you know, like if
I give this ten stars out often, I'm comparing it to Shindler's List,
Like it's a complete different thing.This is a martial arts film.

(06:01):
It needs to be, you know, on the five rings scale, and
this one gets five rings out offive rings because as a martial arts movie,
it's everything you need. You needa protagonist who somehow knows martial arts.
All right, they do it apretty good job, I mean,
because that's the thing. We're hereto watch a guy fight, and then
we need someone for him to fight. We need a bad guy. And

(06:24):
so usually the story goes like this. It's some you know, white dude,
Western dude who gets introduced to amartial arts when he's young, changes
his life, and then for somereason, a street thug kills his mentor
or somebody important to him, andhe has to go out solve the mystery
and find vengeance and of course getinto a bunch of fights along the way.

(06:46):
In the end, kills the badguy, he's the hero. Movie
ends. That's it. Fill inany other details you want. That pretty
much is like every nineteen nineties martialarts movie ever made. I'm not gonna
lie. I legit thought once Igot my black belt, I thought my
instructor's life was just you know it, it was time time bomb. I

(07:06):
was like, dude, I'm sorry, Like I didn't mean to progress this
far, but you know, yougot you've got a time limit. Now
he ended up dying of a heartattack, and I don't know how I
get vengeance against you know, cardiology. My my grandmaster got pancreatic cancer.
So yeah, how do you gethow do you get vengeance against that?
I kind of wish that, youknow, Ninja would have come and taken

(07:29):
him away in the night, becauseat least that would leave, you know,
a mystique worthy of his his legend. I mean, you're kind of
a mentor to me. Actually,no, God damn for me in that
boat. But on that note,you pretty much just described the whole film.
Yeah, I mean, Speakman wasa rough and tummil young kid.

(07:49):
His dad threw him in Keempo classesmaster Master Kempo, and then his master
got killed and now he's on aquest for vengeance. Also, his brother's
a cop. Yeah, well becausehis dad was a cop. But his
dad is a total pos in thismovie. What a dick. He's unnecessaril
the absolute worst. Two. Well, his option is I got to send

(08:09):
him to military academy. I don'tknow what else to do with him,
Like, well, maybe be afather, Like what the concept? Well,
ain't me that's the problem. Imean I know that you know his
mom died he was only ten yearsold. So my solution is send him
in a military academy. Okay,that's how you create a freaking hitman.
So he sends him to the Chemposchools what he calls it the Chempo school.

(08:33):
If you're a fan of martial arts, you always want to portray them
in a positive light, and Ithink exaggerating the effect that it has on
your life is sort of the naturalthing to do. We've all been through
martial arts schools since. Yeah,martial arts had a really positive impact on
me. I don't I don't knowanybody whoever got involved in martial arts.
It came out being like man,martial arts turned me into a real you

(08:54):
know, dogshit human being. It'slike there's something about the physical training,
the mental training that goes along withit, the discipline of it. It
just just makes better people. Andsome people get what they get out of
it and they move on with theirlife, and that's fine. Some people
it becomes all consuming, and that'sfine too. And you know, Speakman
is a guy who is clearly positivelyimpacted by his experience with martial arts,

(09:16):
who really wanted to show it ina good light. And so it makes
sense to tell a story about somekid who is wayward and got set straight,
but you have to maintain, youknow, the conflict between him and
his father figure, because he's notsupposed to be a good guy, right,
He's supposed to be kind of rough, kind of streets kind of I'd

(09:37):
rather punch my way out. Andthat's this whole thing they created here,
between the tiger and the dragon.It's like he's this tiger. He knows
how to attack, but he's gotto be wise like the dragon. The
dragon is still very powerful but alsosneaky, apparently, is what I got
from that whole thing. Yeah,there's a whole like mystique and the Bible
of the Tiger and the Dragon anactual keempo study. I was taught at

(10:01):
one time, and it was like, the thing is kempo is really cool.
Yeah, Like the movements are prettybad ass looking, but every single
thing about kempo is long winded.Nothing is shortened to the point. So
the mystique of the Tiger and theDragon is like you might as well be
reading Lysses. It's a lot,Yeah, but I do know it's basically

(10:22):
like the Tiger is aggression and straightforwardness, directness. The Dragon is about being
steady and pacing yourself and understanding whento move and when not to move.
Like that's basic. It's Yin andyang, right, Yan Yang, And
I guess that's kind of what theywere trying to portray here. You know,
martial arts movies, when they're madeby the star or they're made for
the star, they tend to kindof exemplify the philosophy of their style.

(10:43):
You know, it becomes less aboutthe story, less about the plot,
more about like this is what thisis what kempo is about, right,
which can be used to great effectas it was in this film, or
it could be used to not sogreat effect as it was in Karate Kid
Part three or go back even forthe go back to Bruce Lee. What
was Bruce Lee? What was hemaking films about? Like? What set

(11:05):
him apart? He wasn't telling amazingnarratives, you know what I mean.
He was telling a film about martialarts. He was trying to make a
movie about kung fu and ended upmaking the Chinese connection, you know what
I mean. It wasn't like theplot of the movie was the thing that
was selling it. People were thereto see something that they didn't understand.

(11:26):
They wanted to see a guy whoknew how to fight like that, how
to move like that. Right,he looked cool, he looked badass,
entered the dragon like Yeah, there'sa plot, but really the purpose behind
the film was Bruce Lee wanted totell a story about kung fu, about
fighting. And that's why it's sointriguing to a martial artist to watch Bruce
Lee's films, to read his books, is because he's always instructing. He's

(11:50):
just like a natural master. Andso when you watch him move, when
you watch how he choreographed his fights, it was all very very on purpose.
Every movement that he does in there, it's there's a lesson involved his
epic battle with Chuck Norris. Thetwo of them were trying to portray something
other than good guy fights bad guy. It's close, but good guy wins.

(12:15):
They're talking about fighting, you know, the whole thing with them stretching
before the fight and getting prepared andthe comparison of Bruce Lee to the cat
through the whole thing, like there'sa story being told other than who are
the characters on screen and what arethe words that they're saying. So fast
forward to the nineteen nineties and peopleare still making martial arts movies that are
about a martial art and and youknow, it's interesting to me because this

(12:39):
is a chempos school and it's ina Korean setting, the Campo School,
but it's in Koreatown, and you'vegot a lot of like Chinese actors and
Japanese actors playing Koreans all of asudden, and it brings back to something
else we've talked about on this showof like anything Asian is whatever you want
it to be in Hollywood. Yeah, that doesn't fly nowadays, but no,

(13:03):
And it's funny to me because backin the nineties, what I've even
known the difference like I mean,I was a kid, I didn't I
don't know, you know what Imean. Now, having having lived in
Korea for as long as I did, like, I definitely, you know,
appreciate the attempt, but like Iknow, these actors they're just Asian
dudes. And and what a cast, Holy cow, what an amazing ensemble

(13:26):
this film has. They just theygot everybody. I mean, name name
uh an Asian bad guy in afilm, he's in this movie. I
mean, christ, they had anodd job. I think the only one
they didn't have was Shredder from theteam Ninja Child. Everyone else, I
mean they got, they got ShangSung, they got uh wait, do

(13:48):
they have Randall Duck Kim? Dothey have Lipan? Yeah? Yeah they
do, Yeah they do. Theygot they got everyone in here. Now,
I will say, nowadays, youmake a movie about China, the
actors have got to be Chinese orthe internet will lose his mind. Right,
Yeah, that's good, that's important. However, there was always something
fun about knowing that, like thatguy's not actually Chinese, he's actually a

(14:11):
Korean actor, and he played insuch movies as blah blah blah blah blah.
Right, it was always like asecret language. Like to you,
that's just an Asian guy. Butto you and I, this guy is
like a fifth degree taekwondo black beltand he's doing this as a favor to
his friend, the director. Right, Yeah, yeah, like it was
a secret code we were in andeveryone else was dumb. Granted, it
wasn't great that we were just likeAsia's Asia who cares? However, it

(14:33):
was cool to have that kind oflike built in easter egg. Yeah,
and I think again from a Westernperspective. We talked about this specifically in
The Big Trouble Little China, becausethat one really takes the Asian mysticism to
like a whole another level, whichis what was so fun about it,
because it's so foreign, because it'sso weird. You know, it's like

(14:54):
listening to music that has a sitarin it. It just sounds odd to
the Western ear. And the Asiamysticism has that twang to it that's just
like it draws you in and youdon't know what to believe. You don't
have these preconceived notions, so theycan kind of do anything. And I
feel like even at this time inHollywood, again Asian was just Asian.

(15:16):
It wasn't something where people would recognizethat there were a lot of different cultures
that were being portrayed, and soon one hand, it's a bit of
a shame because it is a disserviceto, you know, the beauty of
a Japanese culture, the beauty ofChinese culture, the beauty of Korean culture.
That they have actors of all thesedifferent persuasions chipping in is kind of
a cool thing at the same time, and the fact that there was something

(15:37):
in that that people felt was reallyworthy of treating seriously in a film,
because I feel like they make KoreaTown like a respectable place full of honest,
hardworking people, and yeah, it'sgot its problems, it's got its
gang lords, but like the peoplethere aren't stupid. They're not just a

(15:58):
back drop for this film to happen. They're like an important part in the
film. And him being able toget information out of people requires that he
participates and proves himself. So youcan't just be an outsider who walks in
and just has everything handed to you, like you kind of have to prove
that you get it. And hehas to fight three guys at the same

(16:19):
time, which is stupid. Becausehe doesn't actually fight three guys at the
same time. They decide to attackhim one at a time, making it
way more possible for him to win. Excuse me, I have gotten to
many an argument with Kempo guys onthe internet, and that's exactly how fights
work. Everyone waits their turn,punches one of the time, leaves their
arm out there, They do fiftymoves, and then they die. I

(16:40):
was thinking about it as I'm watchingThe Seed. It's like, how funny
would it be if they just literallyjust dogpile on this guy for five minutes,
just found him stupid? And thenit's just like, you can't fight
three dudes at the same time.But no, they come out and the
one dude's like, this is allme. You two just stand there and
it. Multiple times he calls themoff when they want to jump in to
help. I always love the honorablebad guy who's like, no, no,

(17:03):
no, wait, I want tosee how this plays out. Yeah,
I did want to say, backto what you were talking about,
there is the risk that this moviegets accused of having white savior complex right,
knowing that you could just look atthe script and be like, oh,
so the white guy comes in andbeats us in Koreatown. But like
you said, he's not the Savior. He has to become part of the

(17:25):
community. He has to he hasto get ingrained and respect me, be
in respect before he can do anythingwhere he can accomplish anything. Well,
as I would say, as thewhite Savior, he's a complete failure because
he comes in he ends up workingfor the bad guy. The very first
thing he does. I'm sorry Ishould have said spoiler alert. Yeah,
but like that, you know,the real bad guy plays him like a

(17:47):
freaking fiddle right away because of that, because he knows he's just an attack
dog, because he knows he's notsuper bright, you know. And even
his younger brother who's now the policeinspector on this thing, he's clear a
lot more intelligent, clearly understands theworld better. But he's also really naive,
you know. And he walks intothis place and like you know,

(18:08):
he walks into the Korean restaurant andhe's trying to get information about mister Kim
and it accidentally ends up ordering kimchioff the menu. Yeah, and it's
kind of this play of like weknow who you are, a cop,
and we know that we don't wantto talk to you because you know there's
just like we could get beat up. It's bad. How do you make
it to being a detective? Andlike you're that you're that obtuse about how

(18:33):
how to approach a subject, howto how to investigate? Like how is
he that dumb? And they managesto be a detective? Like the test
is not easy. It's called poorscreenwriting. I will say this though,
Jeff Speakman clearly loves Kempo and hasa very interesting character dynamic, like he

(18:53):
created an interesting character. That characteris not good at being like bad,
right, he's not a good badboy. Well, and there's you know,
a couple like throwaway jokes that hetells to the movie, like you
know, he stabs a guy inthe like like here hold this and like
yeah, that's funny, that's cool. But does that fit that guy?
Is he the Spider Man kind ofjaw jacking funny guy? Because we saw

(19:18):
that in American Ninja five, right, there was some like really odd one
liners it just weren't expecting. Butonce you accepted that, okay, this
is a guy who talks trash,well he fights, it was a lot
more enjoyable. It wasn't the originalAmerican Ninja Joe Armstrong, who doesn't talk
at all. Right, he's justyou know, pure badass to the core.
So I had a hard time gettingthe jokes in this one because I

(19:42):
didn't feel like he would be joking. He was a very angry man,
right, why would you be youknow, why are you telling jokes in
the middle of a fight. Itjust didn't seem to fit. So,
like, save those jokes for yournext screenplay where you're doing a little bit
more of a kung fu hustle.I will offer this, Truly. The
saddest is the clown himself, thesad clown trope, right, he speak

(20:06):
deep was Actually he's like my character. His father kicked him out of the
house. He had he had togo to the Kempo school, his mother
died. He feels a lot ofpain on the inside. When you feel
that pain, you have to laughabout it. So when I stab someone,
I'm gonna go hear hold this,And that's me letting him know that
I too was stabbed in the leg. Emotionally, I do. I do

(20:29):
love the scene where he his firstKempo lesson, where all the kids are
punching each other in the stomach andhe just collapses. It's like because you
know, then they show time passingand he like, you can take the
punch, and it's like, wasthat his first week or was that like
after three years of getting floored everyday before he finally figured it out?
How many? How many lessons doyou have to take of anything where you

(20:51):
get hammered in the stomach and fallover before you're like, you know what
I'm doing? Basketball? But thisis what I mean. Most people get
into martial arts and they learn somethingabout them and they want it because it's
good, like there's value at it. Getting punched in the stomach by a
girl over and over again. It'sjust getting punched in the stomach. There's
nothing fun about that. I mean, it depends on whose punch, It

(21:11):
depends on what. I mean.She's you know, I guess you know,
she was cute. He was intoher because there was clearly like some
relationship dynamic to it, because shedoes take him under her wing in the
training montage and like they it's prettyclear about that. But he never does
go and talk to her until thevery very end of the movie, so
she has no dialogue whatsoever. ButI actually thought that was a really interesting

(21:32):
way to bookend the film of likefinally he's returning. Finally he's, you
know, as his master said,become a man, and he's like returned
to the school to say, youknow what, I've done what I needed
to do, which is actually notkill somebody, because everybody pretty much assumed
that I would kill somebody. Andmaybe maybe that's the thing that I was
missing. Maybe that's why he wastelling jokes. That was the moment his

(21:52):
character changed, because he's not anattack dog anymore. Now he's thinking on
his own and he's like, youknow what, I'm not so full of
anger and I can I can cracka joke. That's how I know I've
grown. And that's what my masterwas trying to teach me all those years
ago, low so many years ago, was that I needed to lighten the
hell up. Really, what I'msaying is Jeff Speakman's Perfect Weapon is the

(22:15):
exact same story as Ben Affleck's Batman. Yeah, okay, why did you
say that name? Exactly? KempoKempo School is his Martha. It is
it is Martha that should be thetagline for this podcast. Kempo is Martha.

(22:37):
If you tie my name to anything, Kempo, I'm gonna get a
rule window. Shit, that's it'llbe fun. I'm ready for it.
Though. Talking about Jeff Speakman finallybecoming a man by the end of the
film, how old is he inthis movie? Yeah, you know,
it's not clear because you kind ofassume you can't be bad. But he's

(22:59):
still going old. He's listen,he's still doing kada in his living room.
Okay, so he can't be He'snot. He hasn't been hardened to
the uselessness of kanda yet. Throwthat beehive in there, all right.

(23:22):
A serious question as a martial artist, as a true martial artist, not
just a fan of martial artists ofmartial arts, but like a martial artist,
have you ever like worked out thathard in your own living room just
doing forms? Have I ever strippeddown to just my pants and done kada
and the done kanda so hard thatI'm like, yeah, no, yeah,

(23:47):
no, I thought about it.But I mean, but every movie
it's like that's kind of like acool scene. So like the only way
that I would actually see myself doingthat is like I just want to look
cool. But there's nobody watching,so you came watching it. Yeah,
it's like like every martial arts movie. I mean, they got to show
you know, Van Dam doing thesplits and meditating and all that stuff,
and it's like that's all it's forshow. You wouldn't like that. That's

(24:11):
not a regular part of your practice, you know what I mean, Like
you practice forums at the at thedojang or dojo. Sorry, I come
from the Korean background, but like, I don't know, I'm not going
to like rearrange my house just topractice forms. I'll say this, anybody
who does kata in their living roomwith that amount of intensity doesn't look like
Jeff Speakman did when he was doingit, you know what I'm saying.

(24:33):
Yeah, the kind of people thatdo caught up for fun look like the
kind of people who do caught itfor fun, you know what I'm saying.
I know what you're saying. Themost realistic I think martial arts in
my living room were montage I've everseen was our first podcast, Meals on
Wheels. Yeah. Yeah, wellbut that that that was two guys who
you know, obviously embodied and livedand grew up doing kung fu and so

(24:57):
it was just integrated into their lives. So like their daily workout was was
not get up, go to agym and lift weights, it was get
up, do some stretching, spardo some drills, and then you know,
get cleaned up and go to work. So they just had to find
a way to integrate that into theplace that they lived and in you know,
this foreign land. Well that wasthe fun part. Like, that's

(25:19):
the fun part of martial arts training, right, Sparring, drilling, doing
weird splits and stuff. Kata islike the most boring part. It's never
nobody is like this is the bestpart of all martial arts. It's the
warm up for the best part.Yeah, even if you're like, you
know what I like doing a jumpspinning hookkick and I caught it, well,
then just do the jump spinning hookkickwell the way I like in it

(25:41):
too. Like, if you wantto be a painter, you have to
learn how to paint circles, youhave to learn how to paint squares.
You're gonna have to know how tomake a triangle. Like you're gonna have
to know a lot of shapes.But as a master painter, do you
ever just pull up a blank canvasand just practice squares over and over and
over, and practice circles over andover, Like you don't at a certain

(26:04):
point, like you've used that toolto get to the level where you're doing
something that you need it for,you know, unless your whole thing is
like doing squares and circles, whichare okay, cool, but even that's
taking it to a whole other level. So I think you know, yes,
yes, you you never are beyondpracticing the basics. But I always

(26:26):
looked at forms as a tool.It's a tool to help get you to
apply a concept in a certain way. And this this legend always said of
like, oh the Master's made theseup to mimic you know, fighting multiple
opponents from various angles, Like itdoesn't fit. It doesn't like none of
the forms make sense that way,and you can kind of like it's a
it's a fun game. I don'tknow if you've ever done this, is

(26:47):
like go through one of your formsand try to figure out, like,
Okay, what am I really doinghere? Like what does this fight look
like? It's kind of a coolthing, but it's still not super practical.
Yeah, I mean, I've alwaysliking it to I mean a and
karate. We have bunkai, whichis where you do sit down and break
down the form and you're like,all right, this movement here is symbolizing
taking someone's arm, wrapping it around, pulling them in a choke. Right,

(27:11):
It's like, you can do thator you can just practice that in
the individual movement. I've always likenkada to an instructor who walks into a
room and is like, oh shit, I've got twenty people in class today.
I don't have time to go upto each and every one of them
and adjust you this way here.So instead I'm just gonna have them do
it individually at a time here,and eventually I'll get to them one on
one and we'll break it down.It's a good way to get a lot

(27:33):
of people doing broadstroke movements, andthen you go in later and refine that.
I double is eventually you have somegoals to make money with martial arts,
right. The goal is to haveyour your gym filled with people so
that you're getting your bills paid,so that you're paying yourself. Right.
So if you get twenty thirty fiftypeople on the floor and they're all having
to work through that kada When areyou going to get through each of them

(27:56):
to be like, actually, whatyou're doing here is pulling. You know,
you're not gonna have that kind oftime, you know. So you
get people learning the kata because it'sthe easy way to teach a bunch of
people something, but they never learnedthe next step, which is throw that
essentially mining away, un let's learnthe real stuff now. Well, And
for a lot of people, they'renot interested in learning the real stuff anyway,

(28:17):
because it's the mysticism that they're into. And what could be more mystic
than walking into a room and watchinga bunch of people at different levels moving
and like synchronization with purpose and intent, Like it's a pretty powerful thing.
Like when I was coming up throughthe ranks at Hawkeye Taekwondo down at University
of Iowa, like we were veryvery much like you had to be on
the meter. So we would practice, you know, to a cadence where

(28:40):
the instructor would be yelling out,you know, hut, and you would
turn and do that next move,turn and do that next move, and
so there was definite breaking points.But then we would take that away and
the goal would be you should beable to do this facing any direction and
stay with the class blindfolded, andwe would do drills where we broke up
and people would be facing different directionsand we would tire belts around our eyes

(29:02):
so we couldn't see where the otherpeople were. And just by the sound
of it, as you had totry to get everything, you know,
get your uniform to pop, andget that kicked land at exactly that right
moment so that it created that cadence. And then when we did have the
full group, I mean, wewould start with like the lowest level form
because you're you're lined up from blackbelts in the front to white belts in

(29:22):
the back. We would all dothe white belt form. We do one
to the count, we'd do itagain without the count, and if everybody
nailed it, then the white beltscould go get a drink of water,
and then we would do the yellowbelt form and then yellow belts would fall
out and then we would do youknow, the orange belts, and you
would continue all the way up throughthe rank. So that as a black
belt instructor, which is really whatgetting the black belt was about, was

(29:44):
can you instruct this stuff? Youhad to have memorized all of the forms
through all of the ranks and masteredthem to the degree where you could do
them without the cadence. And Ilike that for two reasons. One because
as an instructor, you're supposed toknow this stuff. How else are you
going to know unless you practice itregularly? And then two because it's really
kind of cool. And as you'resaying here, it's also a good use

(30:07):
of the time because me, asan instructor, I have to memorize curriculum
and I have to continue to practicethat, like I just said, but
as a white belt, I don'thave to spend so much time doing other
stuff. And now, guess what, the white belts are off and everyone
else is still going. So nowone of the assistant instructors can go take
the white belts and work with thema little bit more one on one because
they need a little bit more work, you know. And then again,

(30:30):
all of a sudden, the whitebelts are going, and now the yellow
belts fall out, and you've gotanother instructor who can take the yellow belts
one on one, and so you'rekind of breaking the class up in sort
of a natural way. And bythe time the black belts finish their forms,
they're tired, they're sweaty, They'veliterally practiced everything that they need to
know, and now they get timeto put on the gear and actually just
spar for twenty minutes at the endof class. It makes for like a

(30:52):
perfect class. It's a good useof time. But did I go home
after that and strip off my shirt, push my furniture to the corners and
then just get really like intensely pissedoff and practice forms for like an hour
and then sit down and randomly callmy old Korean buddy, No, that's
it's not something, And I woulddo kempo. I think went a step

(31:15):
farther in really you know, makingkata practical and that they have their super
long techniques. Yeah, well,basically they're doing kata on another human being.
You're gonna step forward through one punchand I'm gonna go on two,
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
and I'm gonna call that fighting becauseyou're not gonna move at all after
that first punch. And they callthat it's a fighting technique. It's a

(31:36):
lot of principles that you use inreal fighting. Yes, kata also has
principles I use in real fighting.It's the practice of it that's the problem.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, likeI think again, Bruce Lee has
said it best. If you wantto learn to swim, eventually, you
got to get in the water.You can't. I mean, yeah,
I get it, and you canyou. Yeah, you can sit on
the dry land and practice the strokes. That's not, you know, useless.

(32:00):
If you want to be a swimmer, you got to be in the
water. That's all there is toit. The same thing I could practice
skydiving. I can sit in achair and visualize the plane taking off right.
I can visualize putting on my pack. I can even practice the motions
even as I'm sitting here in mychair. I'm doing that, make sure
my clips are on right. Butat a certain point, you got to
get in an airplane, go up. You got to jump out of the
plane or you're not a skydiver.To your audience, go jump out of

(32:22):
a plane right now. Good luck. Chology. There's a really good video
of my girlfriend wearing one of thoseVR headsets, and I don't think she's
skydimming. Then's supposed to seem likejumping off of a building, but like
her body like she's just standing ina building, right, she's just standing
in an office, but like she'stensing up what she's about and watching it.

(32:43):
I'm just like, this is themost hilarious goddamn thing, and she's
just like here I go, andjust like it doesn't actually fall. Uh,
your mind makes it real. Morpheustaught me that now. But I
mean that's I mean that's VR jumpingfrom a plane or jumping from a rooftop

(33:06):
is more practical, I would saythan practicing kata or chempo techniques a thousand
times. Honestly, I think planewe boxing is probably more effectively about to
say, I would love to doan experiment with like two different untrained martial
artists. One of them does likeVR boxing, the other one just does
kata. Who learns more faster?That'd be cool as hell, it would

(33:28):
be. I would put money down. You already know how to fight.
I'll do I'll play we boxing.Do we just make them fight out the
VR boxer out of the well.I will say, getting back into the

(33:50):
film here, that it is funto watch. It is super fun to
watch When he's landing fifteen sixteen hitcombos. You know it's funny. She
just did the video of the longcombos, the three hit combo. Yeah,
that was that was my joke isbring out the old killer instinct,
combo breaker. It's like, that'swhat I felt like watching this. It's

(34:12):
just like, oh, he hitme, and then now I'm just falling
back and I have no defense whatsoever. But I'm just gonna continue to stand
here and eat nine or ten moreblows before I finally blackout. You know
what happens if you're hitting someone fifteentimes in a row, You're just assaulting
an innocent person. You're just beatingthe corpse. Like if you hit someone

(34:35):
three times, okay, you're fighting, then you're probably you might be defending
yourself. If you hit him three, four or five fifteen times, you
are now an attacker. Okay,now you are. This reminds me of
something else I was going to askyou about. Now, this is going
to test your knowledge as a practicalmartial artist. Have you ever been blacked
out? Have you ever been chokedout? I've been choked out? Yeah,
okay, have you ever choked someoneelse out like to blackout? Yeah?

(35:00):
Okay, slap him back awake?Yeah? So how long are they
out. They're not long, noteven yeah, and and they're coming back
around. So he climbs in thewindow, grabs the guard by the neck,
gives him in the old sleeper hole. That dude goes out. How

(35:21):
long is he out for? Longenough for you to set up an ambush
in the hole with the fire exting. I'm like, I've seen this in
so many movies where it's like,oh, he just choked that guy out
and he's gonna be out for likewhat the next five or six hours?
Right, Like, No, thatdude's gonna be awake in like eight seconds.
Dude, you just fucking joke meout and then let me go scenario

(35:45):
the best case scenario. That guy'slike, what the hell just happened?
Yeah, so he had to killhim. It's like, well, it's
the same thing like with James Bondand when somebody you know says the antesthesia
in his neck, Yeah, it'sthere's reason you go to school to study
become an anesthesiologist. Like the rightamount and someone will pass out for the

(36:06):
amount of time you want them totoo little, nothing happens too much,
and they're dead. They're dead.They stop breathing. The same thing with
the sleeperhle like you put someone innaked choke for too long, they're dead.
There's a reason it's called the choke, you know. Yeah, we're
not cutting The thing is, we'renot cutting off air. We're cutting off
blood supply to the body. Yeah, but I mean even even the old

(36:28):
like I'm gonna just hit him overthe head and knock him out. It's
like, if he doesn't get backup, like within the next ten minutes,
you just murdered that guy and killsomebody, which I undermind Jeff Speakman's
entire arc in this film. Yeah, well that's and then the kids like
how many men have you killed?It's like, well, other than that,
dude, I just killed break inthere, you know. And then
the one a hit on the headwith the fire extinguisher. He's probably not

(36:52):
doing too good either. I wouldlove to see a movie where like the
good guy saves the day, getsthe girl back up it his master,
but then goes to prison for thenerd all the henchmen. The cops are
like, you killed thirty five people. His brother just takes him down to

(37:12):
coups. At the end of thefilm, I'm just like, dude,
I told you we found. Wefound six bums in an alley that had
been slashed with knives. Is thatyou? I'm pretty sure that was you.
Your hair was found at the scene. You beat a couple of black
belts to death with some sticks earlier, like they killed one guy, they

(37:34):
killed one old man. You wipedout the entire game, Like yeah,
I mean, he's just you murdered, justified and you're going to prison.
Yeah, I mean I get yourmotives. They're wrong. Also, he
has like a custom Chempo stick holderon his back, Like that's unique,
Like I didn't get one of those. He's Nightwing basically night Wing. Well,

(37:57):
and then what's funny is like hekind of struggles get him out the
first time, which is sort oflike okay, yeah, they're caught in
his jacket or whatever, and thenhe fights and it's like, oh,
yeah, he ain't screwing around.He brought his sticks, and then he
puts him back, so the sticksare already out man, but but they
do end up saving his life becausethe guy with the little switch blade in
his sleeve who says, don't worry, we're prepared for this and then doesn't

(38:22):
use it as he almost gets chokedto death. He finally does use it
and then stabs him in the chempostick, which, as we all know,
is completely non fake. That happensa lot, completely not that happens
a lot to night Wing. Yeah, if you read the night Wing comic
books, his sticks get stabbed alot because apparently he had three inch piece

(38:43):
of woods, a much better targetthan a human body. I mean,
like the precision that you got tostick that with just to get it to
stick into like a dowel. Youknow, it's like it would just glance
off and like right in between theribs. Oh well, I will say
I do love that they incorporated becausestick fighting is a very paramount part of

(39:04):
tempo training. It's not inherent tocampo, and here's where I get to
prove my bona fides. So thisis the tempo they're doing. This movie
is American Campo. It is technicallyjust Speakman's five point Campo five point zero,
but it's based on Ed Parker's AmericanCampo from Hawaii. Hawaii, of
course, is a melting pot ofEast Asian cultures, particularly Filipino culture.

(39:27):
There's a lot of Filipinos in Hawaii, and so American campo and integrated a
lot of Filipino martial arts, collegeescrima, stuff like that. Right,
So Kempo itself doesn't have a lotof stick fighting, but because Ed Parker
and his friends did a lot ofFilipino martial arts, that's what they incorporated
into the style. So it's justkind of it's a natural part of campo.

(39:50):
It's not part of the core curriculum, but it's just something you also
do. You learn empty hand fightingtechniques, you learn nunchucks, you learn
katana, and then you learn juelbustone. Right. Well, interestingly,
this this whole spiel that you're givingis actually why he made Kempo five point
zero because previous to five point zero, he was just doing Ed Parker's Kempo.

(40:12):
And then, you know, thingskind of evolve after a while,
and Parker was really a proponent oftrying to get more ground fighting into the
curriculum, and so Speakman decided,well, why wouldn't we continue to evolve,
And if we continue to evolve,maybe we should continue to change the
verbage around that, because there wasanother term that they'd used for a while.
It was an acronym, and Idon't remember quite what the letters of
it were. It was like inan American tempo something something speed. I

(40:37):
don't yeah, I don't remember thespecifics of it, but that was kind
of the idea of like, toone hand, you want to preserve the
art for what it is, buton the other hand, it's like it
should constantly evolve. I mean,that's a very Bruce Lee way to think
about things. And so that's whyhe decided to go with the old five
point zero. And I don't thinkthat existed at the time of this film.
I think that was something that camemuch later. So I do know

(41:00):
that his five point zero system doesincorporate a lot of like jiu jitsu type
principles and same spirit, which issomething that I actually I respect quite a
bit. But I think also sinceUFC, honestly, I think a lot
of martial arts schools have taken thatapproach, Like even the taekwondo academies here
in the cities that I have trainedwith also pair with jiu jitsu academy and

(41:22):
so there's kind of this whole thingof like why would we just get good
at one thing if we could kindof practice everything, and like why not?
Why get caught up on the barriersbetween the martial arts when those are
the things that we should be lookingat. Is like, maybe that is
a weakness in my system and maybeI should study other things. You know,
if you've got a guy who's gota black belt in taekwondo, a
black belt in jiu jitsu, youknow, even a black belt in hapkto

(41:45):
on top of that, Like you'retalking about a guy who's studied fighting from
a lot of different ranges and isprobably pretty knowledgeable and has a lot of
experience. That can't be a badthing. Yeah, more knowledge in the
martial arts is never a bad thing. It's bring it back to what you
and I do. Like, it'slike being the stronger person in a fight.
Mm hmm, never a bad thingto be strong. Yeah, it's

(42:07):
never a bad thing to have moreknowledge than the other guy. I would
have won, but I was toofreaking strong. God damn it, it
happens to be I'll lift it outover my head. I didn't notice.
Like, I can't think of asituation where it's bad to pull off a
seven twenty kick, yeah, ordon't know how to do it right,
Like the analyticism, the skill theprecision. Well, I'll tell you this
something I learned from a from afamous tech Quoni fighter. Patrice remarks,

(42:29):
he was like he didn't want flexibilityto be the reason he couldn't do something,
because he had control over his flexibility. I don't want any factor that
I can control to be my limitingfactor. If there's something I can't do,
let it be for something outside ofwhat I'm capable of changing. And
so, yeah, if I canlearn to do a seven twenty kick,
I should probably learn to do aseven twenty Why not. And if I'm

(42:52):
gonna make a movie, I'm probablygonna need to do something cool. Sure,
work it in, okay, becausethe audience loves that shit. Remember
The Matrix wasn't a fun film towatch because the fighting was so high quality.
It's because it was fun to watch, Yeah, because they were having
fun making it. They were throwingsome cool shit out there, and it
was like just super cool to seeit, especially in like high quality film

(43:13):
with like a real budget and coolspecial effects like that was awesome. But
it wasn't different than Crouching Tiger,which really isn't that different than every chopsack
film from the seventies. It wasjust kung fu on film, like you
just throw a lot of money atit. Yeah, I mean it's cool
to see somebody put that much effortinto it. But yeah, I like

(43:35):
the idea of constantly broadening your horizonsbecause I think when you when you close
that off, when you say no, no, this is the only truth,
basically, you end up featured onmcdojo Life and that's not a good
place to be. So I mightnot should say this, but I think

(43:55):
it's hilarious. My old boss atthe Kajakimba school that I got let go
of got featured on Niktotial Life,not featured, he got he got his
story shared. But uh yeah,they found a video of one of his
techniques and it got posted and onlyit only takes one. I was like,

(44:17):
yeah, that's what he thinks peopleare paying for. It was one.
It was a real naked choke escape. We're literally his His solution to
getting out of a renaked choke isto just lift the guy's arm. Oh
so easy, just lift the chokeoff, just just just say stop.
Yeah, I do know how towin a fight against any jiu jitsu fighter.

(44:38):
Ever, this is this is true. No as soon as they get
you into a compromising position, justtap let go at the time condition the
UH, I will say, I'vetold peop a thousand times. I don't

(45:00):
think of myself as a good fighter. I don't even think of myself as
a competent fighter. I just thinkI know how to get in people's heads,
and I will do stuff like whenI'm sparking with people, just be
like stop. Like I'll put myhand inack no, and you look at
me like what the what are youdoing? And then I just go I
used to do that stuff. I'mnot even kidding. It's not exaggeration.
I used to do that when wewere doing CrossFit wides. If somebody was

(45:20):
like a couple of reps ahead ofme, I'd be like, dude,
wait and he'd be like what,And then I would go, you know
what that is? That's utilizing thespirit of the dragon. That's right,
that's right. We have attained ahigher level. I am KEMPO. Yeah,
no, I do. I alsowanted to point out there was one
there was one other little choreography bitin this film that I think takes the

(45:45):
cake. This is one of theabsolute best UH examples of knife throwing,
I think in cinema, and hehas two knives, and he very specifically
and very awkwardly actually pulls him outof his boots, and then the guy
shoot him with the machine gun andhe waits for him to reload. Okay,
brilliant. He stands up and hechucks one knife way over the dude's

(46:07):
head. So the dude looks upat the knife and then sticks it with
the other one. And that isso perfect. That is exactly the kind
of trickery that we're just talking abouthere. Is that a little bit of
misdirection, that little bit of likedid you just throw that knife at me?
And it leaves you wide open forthat easy kill. By the way,
that guy's also dead another that's true. If he stabs someone with the

(46:29):
knife, they're dead. Well.The dude he's stabbed in the leg a
whole bunch of times, can't bein good shape either. He's just what
is that Colin Mormer Batman, He'sjust he's just tuckered out. He's he's
just really tucker it out. Idon't know. I think this may have
been Jeff Speakman's audition for Night Wing. If not Batman, I mean if

(46:51):
maybe, if somebody would have takenthat approach, it would have gone somewhere
for him, because I could seehim as a night Wing. I'm watching
the movie alongside us right now,and I'm just seeing him sneak around the
compound. He's like crawling a littlebit. He's like, he's, you
know, crouching around the walls.I'm like, this is kind of a
little little night Wiggie. I willsay, I think he's maybe too broad
bulky. Yeah, yeah, Imean he's definitely built like a Batman,

(47:14):
not like a night Wing, notthe way I see. Yah, I
would definitely see him. I wouldlike him as like an older Dick Grayson
as Batman. Sure, yeah,yeah, Like if that had happened,
if they were like, you knowwhat, we're just we're gonna skip Bruce
Wayne. This is forty year oldDick Grayson now taking over the role.
It's Batman with sticks. That wouldhave been cool as hell. That would

(47:36):
be cool as hell. Actually,I don't know they would have done that
in nineteen ninety one. But Irefuse to see this new Batman movie.
I'm just like, you can't justyeah, you just can't just keep giving
me new Batman every six years.You gotta stick with a guy. I'm
just I'm burnout on it. Ijust don't even Care's do you read comic
books? They give you a newBatman every six man at all, but
like you can pick which ones youlike, you know what I mean.

(47:58):
The one I'm waiting for is TheDark Night Returns. If you ever watch
that animated one? So good?Yeah I would, I would. I
would be all right with them doinga live action of that, And especially
if they could get Ben Affleck asthe old Batman and Henry cavill as Superman
would be phenomenal. They tried reallyhard to make Batman be Superman simultaneously Death

(48:23):
of Superman and World's Finest and TheDark Knight Returns. And that's way too
much shit. It's just too muchship. They should have and they and
they didn't. They didn't have thewhole conspiracy board with the threads laid out
to actually tie a universe together theway that Marvel did. And they should
have just simplified their lives is whatthey should have done. What they should

(48:44):
do is called Jeff Speakman to beBatman. Yeah. Also, he just
did a spinning back fire extinguisher hit. I'm the guy. Fire extinguishers are
heaviest. Fuck. I told youthat he dead too. All I'm saying
is body's dropping. Are saying moreand more prison time? Yeah, I

(49:04):
said, the bums in the alley, he pretty much killed all of them.
They did not get back up.That's murder, is the guy then
back up? That's the thing.Like if you're knocking these guys out,
as soon as you turn the corner, they're coming back and just dogpiling you.
Yeah, you know, and maybethey have concussions, but they know
where they're at, they know whattheir job is. So these guys are

(49:28):
are dead. You've killed a lotof people, Jeff Sanders. But it
is it is entertaining. Oh,it is super fun to watch. And
like I said, give all themurder for that. That's his defense.
The judges like, you killed thirtyseven people, how do you plead?
And he's like, Judge, Iwas having so much fun, I'm not

(49:52):
gonna go over. Well, here'sthe here's a question I have for you.
We're at a point right now wheremartial arts choreography is kind of just
like Marshal Ar's movie choreography is Idon't want to say Filipino martial arts based.
It's kind of just nondescript, likejudo, fast hands, takedown shoot,

(50:14):
right, Like, we don't reallyhave a style anymore. You know,
there was a period when everyone wasdoing karate, everyone was doing food.
We never really had the Kempo renaissance. You know. I think Kempo
is a perfect cinematic martial art.Yeah, Like it's got spinning kicks,
it's got a lot of power,obviously, it's got those fifteen hrut combinations
that are all visually aesthetically pleasing,Like why don't we have more tempo in

(50:38):
what we need in martial arts choreographyin movies. What I honestly think people
are craving that they aren't getting isimpact because it's so much like you said,
it's fast hands, it's guys gettinghit thirty seven times. And in
the nineteen nineties, it was gettinga spin hook kick to the chin and

(50:58):
just brushing it off and continue tofight and then getting punched out with like
a right cross and it's like,I'm sorry, the spin hook kick should
have taken that guy's jaw off,you know what I mean. And so
you get into the like like you'refighting the clay monster, where you're just
you're punching something that just sits thereand sucks up the blows. It doesn't
make sense, and I think peopleare waiting for that impact of a punch

(51:19):
that lands and damages the opponent ina somewhat believable, somewhat realistic way.
I don't want fights to all beyou know, one punch Man, although
that is a fucking amazing show,by the way, but I would like
to see some fights that are alittle bit more violent, a little bit
more brutal, and a little bitshorter, like up the violence, decrease

(51:39):
the length of the fights, andgive me guys know what the hell they're
doing and make it look like theyThe reason I hit the guy that way
was because it would work, notbecause I'm trying to land thirty seven punches
and fill five minutes of screen time. You want like a forty five minute
No, you can fill the filmwith film. This is why I say

(52:01):
you can make a good movie thathas martial arts in it. You know
what I mean, John Wick isa martial arts movie with guns. How
long does it take to shoot aguy? Should be one bullet? If
you're good at what you do.If you're unloading clip after clip after clip,
you're pretty shitty hitting that. Iwill say. I think John Wick
hits what he shoots at. Hejust got a lot of things to shoot

(52:22):
at. Yeah, but that's Ithink that's the challenge of that film,
you know what I mean. It'slike it's gonna be a lot of numbers
on there. But I want tosee fight choreography that is actually effective.
Because all of these movie universes thatwe live in, people just get beat
to hell and don't take any damage. And so I'd like to see a

(52:44):
punch. And I remember when themovie The Rocks movie The Rundown, that
was one of the first films,and I actually remember people lurching out of
the theater seats, you know,like when there's a scene where they're rolling
down a hill and he just hitsa tree ump and everybody jerks, you
know, and then they're rolling,rolling, roll and he hits another tree
and everybody jumps out of the seatbecause the impact on the film, the

(53:04):
way they filmed it, the theshake of the camera. And then you
know, he does get into afight with Ernie Race Junior and Ernie Race
Junior is like he's so fast andthen it's like bam, and you,
as an audience member, you feelthat punch of just like holy cow,
this dude can move and he canhit hard, you know. And when
when he finally does like hit himacross the face with the big branch,
it's like holy shit. Like youfeel that in the theater, And I

(53:27):
think that is more the experience thatI think people need from a martial arts
movie. Don't try to tell meyour style is the most brutal style and
it still takes seventy two hits toyou know, stun a guy. If
it's a brutal style, like getin, get your job done, and
move on like you've been there before. I'm having a thought, I think

(53:49):
this might explain why we're seeing thirtyfive strike combinations in movies, because cinematically,
we are very good at showing offaccidents. Yep. I can't think
of a movie where a car accidentdoesn't feel heavy and we don't understand the
damage of it. But you knowwhy, I think most people have to

(54:10):
some degree been at least a fenderbender, if not a straight up totally
of their car. Right, weunderstand what that feels like, what it
sounds like, what it looks like. We can create that on film.
Most people who make films have notbeen punched, so they don't know what
it feels like. You're at Ifeel like this is a service that you

(54:30):
and I can provide. I thinkwe should be the on set punchers.
Bring me your director. I thinkthey need to hire us on the next
film to just punch the director rightin the mouth. Just punch couple.
How many? How many of thosecan you take before the fight is over?
Well, and if you've ever ifyou've ever, if you've ever been

(54:52):
on a film set and you justare like, hey, who here would
like to see me punch the director? You're gonna see a lot of hands
going on at that point. It'slike I've always liken film sets to a
pirate ship, honestly, like werespect the captain, we follow his orders
until we decide not to yeah,and then we'll find him floating face down.

(55:15):
So if the entire crew is like, you know what I could,
I could, I could let letthe director get punched. There's director getting
punched. You know, no union'sgonna protect you. Nope, it's not
their job contract and say no,go ahead. It's for the sake of
the movie. The story comes first. The show must go on. I
gotta punch Steven Soderberg right in themouth. What are you charge for this

(55:42):
service? We gotta figure this out. We'll get to the bottom of this.
Anybody out there and listener Land knowshow to write up a like iron
clad waiver, let me know atleast of all liability is that what we're
saying is we're gonna knock you out. But honestly, it's not even like
that crazy of an idea. Justlike, hey, if you're gonna film

(56:06):
like a movie that's based on martialarts, the key idea of people behind
it should probably have to take afew months of martial arts. You got
to do a few sparring matches.You gotta do a few roles, like
you gotta know what it's like toget choked out, just so you can
really portray what that looks like.Or for Christ's sake, listen to your
choreographer that too, you know whatI mean, Because like a lot of
these guys have some serious chops andthen they come in and it's like,

(56:29):
well, I need a three minutefight, and it's like I gotta pretend
these guys don't know how to hitwell. Going back to what you were
saying about boxing, being like,you know, it's a lot of punches
and then only the one that actuallymatters. Boxing is a lot of punches
that don't land, or a lotof punches that don'tland where they're supposed to.
You know, if you land agood punch is someone's liver. They're

(56:50):
not fighting you anymore. You know, Like there's a lot of targets in
just boxing. When these are myonly two weapons, right my left hand,
right hand, I still have alot of targets, but I got
to hit them clean and I gotto hit him right. So a lot
of times boxers are not landing thepunches they're throwing. Yeah, and that's
cool for the sport aspect of it, but in terms of well, actually,
I will say this Jackie Chan films, he doesn't land most of the

(57:10):
strikes throws. A lot of themjust happen in the air, and you
see people avoiding them, you seepeople blocking them. So you can even
make missing something visually interesting, becauseI think that's the key right here,
because a lot of those films you'reright, it's not like they're getting hit
a whole bunch of times. They'reonly taking a couple of good heavy shots

(57:30):
throughout a fighting. I'm going backto like the old Wu Tang versus Shao
Lynn kind of films, right,the old Chop Sockeys. Like the real
fun of watching that is that theseguys move out of the way, they
know where that punch is coming,and they're countering. And then it's like
I got a counter your counter,and so you're countering my counter to your
counter, and then you're countering mycounter accounting, and it just goes on

(57:51):
and on, and the choreography ofit is exactly that. It's this ridiculous
game of chess. Then the onedude that finally lands a hit that he
won that round, and then theykind of have to re establish and they
redo, so that again it's moreof a film about kung fu, you
know what I mean. Like,pick any movie from like Shaw Brothers or

(58:12):
Golden Harvest from back in the dayand tell me if the plot makes any
freaking sense at all, like itusually doesn't. It's a few times that
usually it's like, all right,so the Wu Tang came in killed the
shaolin master. Shallon student wants toget revenge, and then he kills a
bunch of people, but he doesn'tkill the person who's looking after you're looking

(58:34):
for because that person died of dysenterya month ago, and then credits like,
yep, that's the plot, andyeah, And there have been ones
of just like I remember sort ofDune. The dude is spending every waking
hour practicing this thrust, which isthe only technique that can kill the bad
guy, and the bad guy goescrazy and kills himself and the movie's over,

(58:54):
Like what about the dude who hispractice threat? Does he know somebody
go tell him he can get ajob now, I don't know. I'm
sure they thought they were gonna havesort of Doom too, I guarantee,
because that was part of a bookseries. I believe it just never Yeah,
I just never got mad. Ithink we talked about that in the
podcast we did a little podcast.You've been hitting that a lot, But

(59:20):
I think there's that that choreography stillexists. I think in real in modern
cinema, the idea of the expertfighter is not the one who throws and
gets thirty seven strikes landed on them. It's the chess game of I'm gonna
throw my punch and it's just barelygonna miss you. You're gonna throw you
as back. It's just barely gonnamiss me. And the person who lands
the first punch is the one whowins. Yeah, kempo is the opposite

(59:44):
idea. It's let's throw thirty sevenlittle slappy punches and none of them do
anything well. But that look atall the wing chun videos on like YouTube,
Yeah, it's like it looks brutal, and it's like, yeah,
if you just give up offending yourself, I throw a one punch and then
just drop my guard and just keepmy center line wide open. Yeah,

(01:00:06):
you can land sixteen or seventeen blowsall in a second. Got fast hands,
man. I was doing like asparring tournament in college back in the
day, and it was like amulti day thing, right, And I
went back to my instructor and Iwas like, hey see there's a wing
chun practitioner here. He does Kajikimbo as well, but he's also got

(01:00:27):
a wing chun background, and hekeeps chain punching me. What do I
do? And he goes, Haveyou tried stepping to the left or right?
But what do you mean, hegoes, I mean the chain punching
is coming straight down the line towardsyou. Have you tried stepping left right?
Now? I'm like, oh shit, you're right, And that's when
I mastered lateral movement because that neutralizesall wing toun Well, now go back

(01:00:47):
to the boxing example. Right ina boxing ring, where are they moving
straight back and forth? They gotfour directions? Four back, left,
right, circle right, circle left, circle right. They circle a lot,
a lot. You know, ifyou know a guy's got a strong
right hand, you just circle awayfrom it. Takes all the power out
of that hit right, or sometimesyou gotta circle right into it so you

(01:01:08):
can cut it off. It justit kind of depends. But you're not
just standing there getting punched. Yeah, I mean, I'm constantly telling my
students two things. A we livein a three D world. Stop moving
forward and back. This isn't astreet fighter move anywhere else. Secondly,
I tell them how many times doyou get hit and sparring before you move

(01:01:30):
out of the way or hit back? Why are you training like your opponent's
gonna move He's gonna move out ofthe way. Well, this is always
an issue that I had learning combinations, like, oh, you gotta learn
this combination, apply this combination,because I always felt like what's called a
gambit. I'm just gonna throw thesefour punches and some of them might land,

(01:01:52):
some of them won't. But I'mgoing to throw all four punches.
And it's like it's kind of stupidbecause like I should probably only hit targets
that are actually available or move toopen a target like that would be the
higher level of mastery. But sometimesyou just kind of have to throw a
gambit. You just have to throwa punch and like maybe that last one
lands, maybe it doesn't. Butwhat you get to is what you actually

(01:02:14):
talked about earlier in the podcast,which is you can get into somebody's head,
and that's that higher level of Likeif he thinks I'm gonna come at
him with a one two three fourcombo, and I start coming at him
with a one two three four comboand then I throw something else, it's
just changed that expectation. It's createdand opening somewhere else. But you have
to know like kind of how todo that stuff. So I mean it's

(01:02:36):
not like combos don't have a place, but a thirty seven hit combo is
a pretty big gambit. It's likeI threw thirty seven punches and four of
them landed. It means you misseda whole lot of punches. It's not
a really good thing. You're wastinga lot of energy. And again,
a real fight, despite all thekarate practitioners out there that are like,

(01:02:58):
well, in a real fight,real fights a short. Real fights are
super brutal, and they're going toleave you absolutely exhausted. And if you
don't believe me, go fight acheetah, Go fight a bear, go
fight a wild animal of any kind, and tell me how you're gonna feel
after that fight. You take downa mountain lion, you're not strutting around
like you're king shit. You're justlucky to be alive. Yeah, real

(01:03:22):
fights are short and they're brutal.I will say this, this is and
this this podcast is probably gonna comeout before nonna come out after this video
that I'm gonna make. So here'sa little preview for another combat self defense
video. I am a Kaja Camboblack belt. They've been doing Coach Cambo
for about ten years now, alittle bit longer than that. I think

(01:03:44):
I hate Coage Kembo. I hateCoacha Kembo people because they're the most like
arrogant, most closed minded people evermet. There's a post going around in
one of the Kaja Kembo whos I'min right now about it. It's like,
we don't train for sport. Thisis the Olympics. We trained for
the street. We trained to endthe fight as quickly as possible and go

(01:04:06):
home. This is life or death. And I'm like, in what world
do you think that Steven WonderBoy Thompsonwants to step into the cage for more
than twenty seconds? Mm hmm.Everyone's trying to end the fight as quickly
as possible. You want that,and so does your opponent. Yeah,

(01:04:27):
so however long that fight takes,is as quickly as possible. It's not
a situation where he throws that punchand I go one, two, three,
four, five six and he's done. Yeah. I want to end
the fight and he wants to endthe fight, and that means that's gonna
be a long endeavor for me.The question is how good am I at
ending that on my terms? Exactly? So, Yes, real fights are

(01:04:48):
short, but they're not so shortin that like I get to decide when
they end. No, you knowit's probably not gonna be three fifty three
five minutes. Right here, I'lltell you exactly factly. Why it's short
is because it's intense, and durationis the inverse of intensity. Right,
So if you come out and youcome out hard, you cannot sprint the

(01:05:10):
whole time. Go out and sprintthirty seconds as hard as you can and
tell me how you feel at theend of that. Are you ready to
sprint again? Like? No,not. If you went as hard as
you can for thirty seconds, youknow we've done just with maximum style training
a minute all out on the airdie. That is the absolute worst workout
in the world. I would ratherdo literally anything else because of how you

(01:05:31):
feel at the end of one minuteof effort on there, because it's literally
everything you got. You do notget back up and continue. You go
out in the parking lot and youthrow up and you lay down in a
gutter for a while, because that'swhat that workout does to you, and
that's the intensity you're bringing to aself defense situation. You don't have much
more time than that and it willbe will be well right, and will

(01:05:55):
be in you know, experienced blackbelt give you some advantage. Fuck yeah,
but it's not a guarantee, youknow what I mean. Yeah,
Like, you might still get caught, You might get ambushed. You know,
it wouldn't be an ambush if youknew it was coming, right.
But I would always put money ona more experienced fighter. But you don't
know the guy you're fighting in thestreet. That might be his job.

(01:06:17):
He's a professional thug, a professionalmugger. He's probably got thousands of victims
before you, and for whatever reasonhe picked you as his next number.
There's probably a reason he picked youbecause he thinks he can take you.
And he's usually not wrong because he'she's out on the street doing his thing
and not behind bars somewhere. Yeah, so you tell me, students.

(01:06:40):
I tell my students pretty often thatanybody who carries a knife or dual sticks
like Jeff Speakman does in this film, they are already at an advantage to
you as a black belt, becausea weapon is a force multiplier. Yeah.
So maybe this person has zero abilityto fight with their bare hands,

(01:07:00):
but with a knife, all Ihave to do is and you're dead right.
I don't need to know how tofight. I just need to know
how to point it at you.That's pretty much it. So all of
your all of your skill, whetherwe're talking about boxing, taekwondo, aikito,
whatever, is immediately neutralized by someonehaving a half meter long stick or
a knife. You have to bebetter than that. Yeah, you know.

(01:07:25):
So it's like the person who wantsto mug you or attack you in
the street, if they've got aweapon. You don't get to be like
high block, thundering hammer, grabthe wrists, break, hit the groin,
walk away. You don't get tojust do that because all he has
to do is turn his wrist andyou're not cut open. Click bang,
And that's the scene in this movie. Are you faster than a bullet?

(01:07:45):
And guess what he was bullshit there. There was an old episode of Magnum
p I where there's this wing chunassassin. I don't know if you've ever
seen this one. This is worthdigging through the archives for. But the
only giveaway that the assassin was aboutto move was that he linked right before
he moved, And that was thescene. At the end. His Magnum
had the gun on the guy andit's like, nobody's that fast, man,

(01:08:09):
just give up, nobody's that fast, and the dude blinks and they
cut and you're just like what happened? And it's like, you know,
come back from commercial and Magnum's like, you know, going on about his
thing, and you know, herecomes his butler, Higgins, Like,
Wow, You're so lucky to bealive. I can't believe that guy thought
he was faster than a bullet,you know what I mean. But it's
like that's also the reality of it. I don't care how fast you think

(01:08:30):
you are, Like, do youhave any idea how fast a bullet travels
out of the end of a gun? Like it's a completely different world of
speed. This isn't something that youcan just like tap into your mystic martial
arts and suddenly dodge bullets. It'sa cool ploy for Remo Williams or for
a neo from the Matrix. It'snot a reality and a nice the same

(01:08:54):
thing. What I love is likeyou can go live in the mountains in
the monastery for many years and study, you know, some secret form of
kung fu, and some dude canjust pick up a pointy stick and he's
got an advantage of you. Like, that's a reality. That's why we
invented weapons. That's what made usthe dominance be We didn't start taking down

(01:09:14):
saber toothed tigers with our bare hands. We just upped the game and we
put a rock on the end ofa stick and poked him with it,
and it was like, wow,that works, because no matter how many
teeth and claws you have, Ican stab you from over there. And
then that wasn't even enough. Wehad to actually find ways to like throw
those spears. And then that wasn'tenough. We had to get like a
bow so that we could throw themfaster. And now it's like we're throwing

(01:09:35):
little rocks, you know, littletiny rocks, but they're super sonics.
Like, yeah, there's a reasonthese things exist. The fact is unarmed
combat is great. I think it'simportant for us to know, but it
is not the most effective way tokill another human being. No, And
I would say there's benefits beyond selfdefense that people forget when it comes to

(01:09:56):
the martial arts. The real benefitsfor me are in the practice. It's
in the growth, it's in theshowing up every day because you're passionate about
something. It's about learning how tobe passionate about something. It's about learning
how to be dedicated to something andthen understanding the fruits of those labors.
You know, I lost a lotof weight when I got when I became
passionate about martial arts, and itwas because I couldn't wait to come to

(01:10:18):
the next class. I mean,I quit drinking, I quit smoking wheat,
I quit eating like an asshole.I was exercising. I was making
sacrifices because I wanted to be betterat this thing. I wanted to be
able to do these things that Ipreviously thought were impossible. It changed my
life. It taught me everything aboutfitness, about health, about a life
that's worth living. That's a hugething. And it had nothing to do

(01:10:40):
with like me walking down the streetand defending myself. I hope that never
happens. But I'm not like asmall dude. I'm an imposing guy.
I don't think most people are goingto target me. I'm not big enough
to be the big guy that theywant to take down to prove that they're
tough. But I'm definitely not theeasy target either. Fine, call call
that my big dude privilege, Iguess. But like the self defense thing

(01:11:03):
doesn't motivate me a whole lot.And it's cool, and I think there
are people who it's much more applicablethan it is to me, and I
will share that with them. Iwill be the bad guy in their scenario
so that they can learn that.I still don't even think it's that important
compared to how important everything else is. I think that's that's ultimately why I
don't hate kempo. I just wantpeople to be honest about what they're doing

(01:11:27):
when they're practicing it. It's okayto practice a thing for its own sake.
Because if you want to learn tofight, take boxing, take kickboxing,
take ju jitsu. If your goalis just to learn to beat up
another human being, that's the fastest, most effective way to do it.
Take mma, right, yep.If you want to just pursue an activity
for the sake of pursuing it,that's what art is, and that's okay.

(01:11:50):
Just be honest about it. Itis to My thing really is that
martial arts is the pursuit of theflow state. Yes, ultimately, you're
just pursuing the mind of no mind, being able to act without thinking,
without interference of the conscious mind.I don't care what style you're studying.
That's what we're doing, honestly,whether we're talking about martial arts or weightlifting

(01:12:14):
exercising, it's the idea of gettingyour brain out of your own way.
That's really what we're all doing tosome degree. That's why I get so
fucking pissed off when kempbo guys arelike, we're actually trained to fight it.
No, you're not. Well,so let's let's just change change the
paradigm. We're talking about dancing.You do flamenco. I do Irish dance,
right, somebody else does ballet andthey're like, well, ballet is

(01:12:36):
the better dance. It's like,well, I don't know, an think
like Irish dance is pretty cool,and you're like, you know, there's
something to flamenco that you guys aren'tconsidering. These are all just different styles,
But are any one of these goingto protect us in a street fight?
Like, No, that's not theirfucking purpose, that's not what they're
about. Like, it's a stupidquestion to try to find this outside thing

(01:12:57):
that is absolutely nothing. Well,I study Irish answer, So I feel
like if I was attacked by abear, I would be more likely to
survive than the ballerina, right becauseI've seen bears do ballet, So how
hard can it be for them tokill a ballerina? Like it's it's ridiculous
and put that right into Well,I mean, we're all studying different ways
of training, different ways of combat. Obviously my way of combat is better

(01:13:19):
than yours. It's like, Idon't know that that makes any difference better
at what is the question? Well, in every every quote style has its
own system of combat too, right, Like, if you want to take
up taekwondo, you're gonna learn sporttaekwondo. You're gonna be throwing a lot
of roundhouse kicks because ninety percent ofthe points scored in a taekwando match are

(01:13:41):
straight up round It like that,that's just the case. You're gonna throw
some spin back kicks and maybe somehookkicks and some axe kicks if you're really
good and flexible. That's it.You're not gonna throw a lot of punches.
Now you get into you know,boxing, guess what, you're gonna
throw any kicks at all. Butthey have a different system for testing that
you know, in this idea ofwell, I'm gonna take a boxer and

(01:14:01):
put them up against the taekwondo guy, it's like, okay, but now
there's just two athletes fighting and they'reprobably not a thing. But they're probably
not even fighting because even in thatsituation, you're gonna say things like no
eye gouging, no grappling, youknow what I mean. There's gonna be
a rule, a system that governsthat. So the only way you're gonna

(01:14:23):
find out who the best fighter inthe world is is to have everybody fight
to death until there's literally one personstanding, and then who's he gonna break
to It's a stupid concept. Alsofor the sake of argument, if you
do put a boxer and a taekwondofighter in a fight to fight to the
death, the fight's gonna end grapplingmm hmm. It's gonna end in the

(01:14:45):
thing neither one of them is goodat yeah, because they're not gonna play
each other's game. It's they're exactlyhug each other, kiss a little bit,
and someone's gonna get choked. Andwith that being said, I think
it's time we wrap up this moviethat we barely talked about Yeah, it
was. It was good. Itsparked a good conversation. Yeah, not
for lack of interest in the movie. The movie is very good. I

(01:15:08):
love it, very fun. Yeah. Yeah, and I really do think,
I really do think that's all Igot. Oh I forgot to talk
about that. Oh my god.This film features I Got the Power,
the greatest song of all time.So we talked about this before, right,
we talked about this before. Everytournament caught a competition features kung fu

(01:15:31):
fighting or the Mortal Kombat theme orI Got the Maybe because of this film.
Yeah, maybe. I wouldn't besurprised if I bet. If you
ask somebody why did you use that, they'd be like, well, there's
this film. I know. Yeah, I think I reckon. I would
definitely recommend with two thumbs straight upmy butt people go watch The Perfect Weapon.

(01:15:56):
It is a great film. Again, we're using we're using the five
rings as the rating system. Thisgets a full five rings. I would
give it a full five ring.I will say this though, going back
to what we talked about in thebeginning of the podcast, I think every
film genre should have their own Academyawards. Yes, that's the only way
to make it fair. Martial artsfilms deserve their own oscars. Absolutely,

(01:16:18):
horror films deserve their own oscars.You gotta judge something on its own merit,
not on what, not on whatthe academy thinks. Yeah, because
there's no world where this wins anOscar unless fans of martial arts are judging
it well. And nine times outof ten, you ask somebody for their
favorite movie, you're probably gonna getat least the majority of them will be

(01:16:40):
like Oscar worthy films. People aregonna say things like Shindler's a Last or
dramas. Right, but if yougo look at anybody's film collection, it's
ninety percent comedies. Yeah, Sowhy can't rom coms have their own awards?
Why are they going up against theEnglish patient They're not the same thing,

(01:17:00):
Like, why why are we judginga romantic comedy on that basis?
Right, Dumb and Dumber is agreat idiot comedy. It doesn't need to
be compared to like water for Chocolateor whatever else. Water for chocolate,
mm hmm is that a real movie? I don't know. It's it's a
dramatic book. No, yeah,it's a good it's not it's it's good.

(01:17:25):
You're not gonna be disappointed. It'sfilling kind of hits everything you need
to hit. You can live off. It hits everything you need to hit
thirty seven times thirty seven times minimum. And it does commit several murders that
go completely unaddressed from the moral perspective. We're gonna, I'm gonna have to

(01:17:46):
start doing this now. With everyfilm we watch, we got to see
like how many like you know,innocent people get brutally murdered in theally of
the like goons that died. Alsogoing back to Kevin Smith, we wrap
this podcast, but I'm back toKevin Smith the sceneing Clerks where they're talking
about the contractors that worked on theDeath Star. For most goons working for

(01:18:10):
Mighty Lord fuck Blade, They're justdoing a job. He's got a mortgage,
he's got a wife, he's gota kid that needs braces. He's
just trying to put food on thetable. He didn't deserve to die.
Come on, Jeff, give hima break. Like my job is to
walk across this catwalk and a goddthis is what is even in this warehouse.
We don't even is this supposed tobe drugs that I'm like, I

(01:18:31):
don't even know. I'm just walkingon the catwalk with a machine gun and
look there's a guy brat, Like, what else am I supposed to do?
Not shoot the gun? Like I'mmaking fourteen to fifteen hour to walk
back and forth this twelve foot stage, and knowing how these guys do business,
they probably got his mom locked upsomewhere and are threatening to kill her

(01:18:51):
if he doesn't work for them,you know, and you're gonna show up
and show him to death like you'restabbing the guy in the leg like it's
a joke. Come on, man, have a little have a little glass.
All I'm saying is that every everymovie we watched so far boils down
to class warfare. I think weneed to just go full social Alright,

(01:19:14):
alright, that's enough, We're wrappingthis up, all right, all right,
tune in next time. Make surethis Oh what are we talking about
next week? By the way,Hunted, the Hunted, Hunted? Yeah,
Christopher Lambert Hunted. So if youwant to watch that before we get
to it, watch it. Potof five Rings. Make sure to subscribe,
Share with your friends, give usfive star review. Tell us what

(01:19:36):
you thought about The Perfect weapon,See you guys next time. M h
m hm hm