If Mr. Parker Was Still With Us.

[MJS]

If Mr. Parker was still with us, what do you think Kenpo would be like today? What changes/additions, if any, do you think that he would have made?

 

[IWishToLearn]

I'd have made every effort to meet the man myself, that's for sure. No clue what that'd mean for my training - I've been very very blessed to have been able to study under three 1st gen students of Mr. Parker. I've been with Mr. Sullivan & Mr. Le Roux for almost 5 years now, and I've been blessed as of August 2007 to have begun training in the SL4 pool with Dr. Chap'el too. I can only imagine and hypothesize what meeting Mr. Parker would have been like... but it's fun to hear the stories.

 

[Tames D]

I think he would have much more ground fighting in the system.

 

[arnisador]

I think he would have much more ground fighting in the system.

Let me ask a somewhat provocative question, then: The Gracies surprised a lot of people, and they also embarrassed a lot of people who claimed their system could handle a grappler. Would Mr. Parker have been one of those surprised by how well the Garcies' system worked against his? Would he have been embarrassed? (I am not necessarily talking about a one-on-one fight between Mr. Parker at his advanced age against a grappler half his age, even though he was still very fast at his death.) Kenpo has made some strong claims about its self-defense practicality. Would it be another system backtracking when the Gracies came around with their challenge?

 

[SL4Drew]

I think he would have much more ground fighting in the system.

A related discussion recently occurred at KT: http://www.kenpotalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6766.

To sum it up (as Doc did): If you take care it vertically, you won't have to horizontally. Although not always apparent in the commerical system, Mr. Parker had extensive knowledge of grappling. Not just from his friendship with people like Gene LeBell and Wally Jay, but also from his own experience in JuJitsu back in Hawaii.

So, in my mind, the only thing he might do is make the verticle grappling for explict.

 

[Kembudo-Kai Kempoka]

I think he would have much more ground fighting in the system.

The post-bot stuck this over on KenpoTalk. A gentleman over there posted the same sentiments....that the popularity of MMA would necessitate Mr. Parker adding ground-fighting to EPAK. He highlighted Jeff Speakmans 5.0 as an evolution of kenpo, adding grappling, and was sure Mr. Parker would be proud. To that, I posted the following reply:

"1. Mr. Parker would not have adapted to it by adding back in what he had previously taken out. Old training in kenpo involved many skill drills akin to "ground & pound" of today...ripping off blows from various positions on the way in and on the way down, on the ground from various referents, and on the way back up, and out. Hawaii was a martial arts melting pot in the 30's, 40's, and 50,'s, and Mr. Parker ... along with Professor Chow and Sijo Emperado... studied all sorts of stuff. Including judo and jujutsu ground fighting and submissions. It was dumped for 2 reasons: Strategic liability, and "mat toughness". Mr. Parker taught pretty hard core in the early days. Not a good way to get women and children to sign up en masse, which is necessary to pay the bills with a large Mormon family. The kenpo base techniques and extensions are filled with vertical/upright grappling...limb destructions from jujutsu, Chin Na, and Lua. Many quite debilitating and highly applicable to clinches and hold reversals; all utilizing tactics illegal in the sportive arena; all available to the kenpoist for use in a dooky-hits-the-fan scenario. Most just don't bother to look deep enough, pay close enough attention, or put in the long, hard, painful hours necessary to own it at the same level of "immediate application" that grapplers own their material. Instead, half-hearted understandings of BJJ are grafted to half-hearted understandings of kenpo, and it gets called a "solution".

2. Again, no. I had studied judo AND kenpo since I was a rugrat in Hawaii (started in 71), then TAI (Dave Germans blending of kenpo and grappling), then signed up at the Gracie Academy, and was busy being a mat-rat half the nights of the week, and a kenpo dork the other half. I had very specific discussions with Mr. Parker about the strengths and weaknesses of thier approach. Take a man the size of a bear, lightning fast. Shoot on him. In about 6 inches of your travel time, he's going to hit you about as many times. And they aren't the rat-a-tat-tat tippy-tappy kenpo pops so common today. His 2 finger spear buries fingers fatter than your unit into the eye socket, up to the wrist. Curve these a little for extraction, and bone is coming out with them. That's one strike. It gets followed by claws, rakes, rips, hammers, etc., each breaking what it hits. Anyone who has dummied for the old man or spent much time around him will have no trouble believing he could rip flesh from bone. What his adaptations would more likely have looked like would be stalling and jamming tactics coupled with proper execution of injury-causing basics. Stuff that's already in the system, but overlooked and underemphasized.

I worked with a couple buddies from other styles and backgrounds to re-create the kajukenbo concept using the styles du jour of the late 80's. We used the kenpo cirriculum as the core, changed the extensions to take-downs followed by some pounding, submissions into a choke or break, then some more pounding as we got up and left. American Kenpo, Chinese Kenpo (old Parker material), Muay Thai, JKD, TKD, Japanese and Brazilian jujutsu, etc. Lacking artistic talent, I stole the layout for front cover almost exactly off his Big Red. I replaced his crest with ours, and IKKA with our clubs name.

He saw it in my bag one day, and questioned me about it, telling me to hand it over to him. Talk about pucker factor...you coulda turned coal into a diamond in my butt at that moment. He flipped through it...quizzed me. Had me show him SD Techs with new names we had made up by grafting the front end of an EPAK tech to a judo throw and BJJ submission flow. I shook all the way through it. But rather than kill me or excommunicate me from his world, he congratulated me and my workgroup on a job well done, offered some pointers for improvement, and told me (pointing out the cover art on the manual) to be sure not to call it Ed Parker's kenpo. He wasn't asking; I had been told. But he also said, if anyone had a problem with what we were doing, they should call him. You have no idea what a huge blessing something like that is, since working on a project like that is always filled with doubt in ones self and the final product, particularly how it will be recieved by seniors in the MA community. Oh yeah...it included at each belt "skill sets"...little seminars lasting several weeks that were nothing more than clinics on some aspect of BJJ, shoot, or kickboxing. Also, Arnis and combat handgunning.

So, no...I don't think he would have added grappling. I think he would have toured the studio circuit showing how the existing tools could be tweaked to maim the crap out of some guy shooting on you, or who has you in a clinch. The tools really are there for defense; the foundations are just typically so poor, it's no wonder the material can't be made to work and has to be changed.

#3. 20 years before Jeff Speakman did it, I did it...and demo'd it for Mr. Parker. 20 years before I did it, Dave German did it. 20 years before Mr. German did it, a boatload of Hawaiians did it. I'm sure the eclectics of 1940's Hawaii are looking at us through time, thinking sarcastically, "Great new idea, eh? What took you so long to reach da same conclusions we already reached." Speakman didn't dig either the kenpo well or the grappling well, or the kenpo-grappling well. He's just drinking from it. In our common lineage, it got dug a long time ago by smarter men than we, who abdicated clinches & submissions for limb destructions and vital target attacks.

Best Regards,

Dave"

That's my take, based on my experience. Unfortunately, we'll never really know. And that's the saddest part.

D.

 

[Touch Of Death]

Let me ask a somewhat provocative question, then: The Gracies surprised a lot of people, and they also embarrassed a lot of people who claimed their system could handle a grappler. Would Mr. Parker have been one of those surprised by how well the Garcies' system worked against his? Would he have been embarrassed? (I am not necessarily talking about a one-on-one fight between Mr. Parker at his advanced age against a grappler half his age, even though he was still very fast at his death.) Kenpo has made some strong claims about its self-defense practicality. Would it be another system backtracking when the Gracies came around with their challenge?

This is assuming that properly executed Kenpo is in-effective.
Sean

 

[arnisador]

This is assuming that properly executed Kenpo is in-effective.

Well, I'm taking it for granted that the Gracies have shown their system to be highly effective against stand-up arts time and time again. Is there evidence of Kenpoists performing better than the Karateka etc. have in these types of situations?

 

[Xue Sheng]

I am no a kempo guy but I have always been intrigued by the argument that the Gracies showed the world kind of thing. First I do not believe they won all the matches in their chanllange but they are only publicizing the wins. Second when I see that this style would add or should add grappling and MMA or the gracies showed this or that to then that assumes that grappling is something new that know one ever thought o before and yet it is likely one of the oldest styles of fighting around today it has been used on battle fields and back alleys for centuries.

I am not trying to take anything away from the Gracies or MMA I am rather impressed with the level of training form both but please ground fighting has been around since long before Mr Parker was born

 

[Touch Of Death]

Well, I'm taking it for granted that the Gracies have shown their system to be highly effective against stand-up arts time and time again. Is there evidence of Kenpoists performing better than the Karateka etc. have in these types of situations?

Its a system kenpoists aren't famous for training against, but we now have some common attacks and defenses to experience and work with. As for the Kenpoists themselves... some are better than others.
Sean

 

[Tames D]

A related discussion recently occurred at KT: http://www.kenpotalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6766.

To sum it up (as Doc did): If you take care it vertically, you won't have to horizontally. Although not always apparent in the commerical system, Mr. Parker had extensive knowledge of grappling. Not just from his friendship with people like Gene LeBell and Wally Jay, but also from his own experience in JuJitsu back in Hawaii.

So, in my mind, the only thing he might do is make the verticle grappling for explict.

This statement is so true. But it can not be guaranteed no matter how good you are (in my opinion of course). That is why I train extensivly for ground fighting as well as stand up.

 

[Tames D]

A related discussion recently occurred at KT: http://www.kenpotalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6766.

To sum it up (as Doc did): If you take care it vertically, you won't have to horizontally. Although not always apparent in the commerical system, Mr. Parker had extensive knowledge of grappling. Not just from his friendship with people like Gene LeBell and Wally Jay, but also from his own experience in JuJitsu back in Hawaii.

So, in my mind, the only thing he might do is make the verticle grappling for explict.

This statement is very true however it can not be guaranteed that you won't ever be taken to the ground no matter how good you are (in my opinion of course). That is why I train for ground fighting as well as standup.

 

[Danjo]

From everything that people have said about him, I doubt it would have taken Mr. Parker long to "solve" the grappling problem that he helped to create via establishing the tournaments and the style of fighting it encouraged. The problem was solved by strikers fairly effectively by adopting the sprawl and learning to get out of the guard and back into a range where a stand up fighter can be effective. I think Mr. Parker would have looked at what was happening and come up with a solution fairly quickly given his propensity for problem solving.

 

[Old Fat Kenpoka]

No doubt Mr. Parker would have addressed both the grappling and "alive" training issues as others have mentioned.

In addition, there would be only one 10th Degree Black Belt in Ed Parker's American Kenpo.

 

[Flying Crane]

From what I understand, for those who trained under Mr. Parker in the early days, meaning no later than the mid-later 1960s, grappling and ground work was a regular staple in training. Lots of falling and rolling and work on the ground, and a lot of this material never got codified into the myriad Self-Defense techniques. However, the focus and intention in the groundwork was different. It was not meant for sticking around to win the submission. It was meant for self defense. This means the strategy was around injuring and breaking free of the opponent, in order to get up and either carry the fight from a more mobile upright position, or simply get away. There is no need to win the submission in self defense.

For those who have trained in this way, how does it relate to the Gracies? I dunno, and really don't care much. Maybe in a competition, the Gracies would still win because they are specialists in this and it's pretty hard to beat a specialist in his own game, if you aren't also a specialist in the same game. Maybe on the street, it might be effective enough to break away and get away, or at least carry the fight into a more favorable arena.

To be honest, I don't put much stock into the notion that we all need to be able to grapple like a Gracie, or compete in the octagon like an MMA guy. Sure, it's good to understand this arena of combat so you can deal with it if you find yourself swept into it. But have the Gracies sunk so low that they are the ones trying to mug me for my lunch money? Do I need to be THAT good at grappling, because Rorion is lurking in the shadows, ready to jump me? I doubt it...

 

[IWishToLearn]

In addition, there would be only one 10th Degree Black Belt in Ed Parker's American Kenpo.

This is probably true.

 

[Karatedrifter7]

I think he would be collaberating with Jeff Speakman, looking for a younger perspective.
Does anybody know why Parker had such an untimely death? Did he not take care of his health?

 

[IWishToLearn]

Massive heart attack in Honolulu airport.

 

[Danjo]

I think he would be collaberating with Jeff Speakman, looking for a younger perspective.
Does anybody know why Parker had such an untimely death? Did he not take care of his health?

Longevity is about 85% genetic. Jim Fixx the running guru died of a heart attack at 51, and George Burns who smoked and drank lived to be 100. Go figure.

 

[Flying Crane]

This is probably true.

mis-read the info, never mind.