JCVD

[Xue Sheng]

When I first moved to Maui I used to fly out to L.A and stay at Billy Blanks’s house for a week to ten days. Billy had been one of my Instructors in Massachusetts, my sparring partner and the best man at my wedding.

Billy had a rocking dojo in Sherman Oaks at the time. The busiest, most packed dojo I’ve ever been in to this day. (The place was absolutely NUTS)

Jean-Claude was there for a few days. A really nice guy, polite, friendly, just an all around good dude. He was supposed to teach a seminar but some nagging health issues raised their ugly head
and prevented it. Too bad, I would have liked to have done some training with him.

I know people say some crap about him but I never saw it. Of course there were a lot of big dogs in that gym, so I don’t know.

But I liked Jean-Claude. A lot.

Of course you meant Jean-Claude…. I knew that before the thread started…. You know virtually everybody…. I mean other than Chuck Norris… is there anyone you don’t know

 

[Same Trick]

Uh? You mean the fight record at

Jean-Claude Van Damme - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

is made up?

Being from the late 70s and early 80s, It's nearly impossible to verify unless one goes physically to the paper archives of the organizations, if there are any. WAKO for example - they don't seem to have any results online now, never mind about the late 70s/early 80s..

Sorry, i don’t have access to Wikipedia from the location I’m at. Anyway, the wiki page must have links to its sources of information, if those sources are from recognized martial arts organizations that arrange tournaments and similar championship competitions I’ll be happy to take part of the links to those organizations webpages listing Mr..Van Varenberg.

The only info that I could google is that he supposedly competed in(and around?) Belgium between 1976-1980/(82)? in semi-contact format, that mean he competed between the age of 16-20/22 years old.

Kickboxing was introduced to Europe(Germany)around the time when Jean-Claude began competing .

However the info I can find on JCVD says he competed in semi-contact/(light contact) format, I’m not sure that was even on the map then in Europe when it comes to kick-boxing ?

But, as I understand JCVD trained in Shotokan karate and this styles own competition rule allow reasonable contact to body while it’s “skin” touch/contact to head/face - a kind of “semi-contact one could perhaps say. What I can find he’s supposedly has a 44 wins/4losses fight record, whatever that mean in competing in tournament competition?

I google Shotokan/karate organizations in Belgium, the little that comes up searching his both names on those webpages, nothing comes up. Also found a short list of the all times best kickboxers in Belgium, he’s not on there either. But I’m searching by writing in English, if I could write Flemish, French or German perhaps more results will come up ?

Compared with Dolph(Hans) Lundgren who’s martial arts/karate(kyukushin) career can easily be verified JCVD’s(Van Varenberg) seems a mystery.