Fortunately, I found out that under my very nose at work was a guy, Rod Kuratomi, who was at that time the top weapons practitioner of his school in Japanese Karate as taught by Master Kubota (I don't think the spelling is right but he's the guy who for years advertised in Black Belt showing him hitting the back of his hand with a hammer and his shins with a bat for tempering purposes - now that's nuts!). Rod's specialties were the tonfas and the shinai and he turned out the be at a similar point in his training as I was with mine - he wanted to go forward but had no one to do it with. Now at the time, the party line within the FMA Community was that the Japanese styles were too stiff and lacked the flow that the more nimble FMA's were known for. I remember hearing from several of my constituents, PT'ers included, that the staff, bo stick or the samurai sword was "really easy to fight. Gee, all you have to do is X block and hit the hands." And in the case of the tonfas, all you had to do was keep them at long range and take pot shots, or so it was believed. Conversely, according to Rod, the Japanese regarded anything that was not Japanese as inferior and easy to defeat, plain and simple. But he, as I, could not find anyone within his own group who could say that they had actually sparred/fought against a "foreign" weapon outside of their tribe.
Well, we started rediscovering territory for both our groups with each evening of fights we had. We found that the tonfa's were limited in range but could easily knock the wind out of you or break a rib, jaw or anything it hit IF it could survive bridging the gap. He used a very heavy set of tonfas (later I found out that they were of his own design and not standard issue) and consequently I used a matching stick. For the most part, the stick held serve due to it's offensive fire power - although the reality is, you will get very few pot shots in - and some adroit footwork. As a result of fighting this weapon I REALLY began to appreciate the side stepping drills that Tuhon Leo and Tom had taught me. The shinai and short staff, however, were a different story. Let me tell you, forget X-blocking for anything other than a last ditch effort to give you just enough time to get your *** out of the way of the next furious swing. I found myself cursing everyone within PT, FMA, JKD - you name it - for their audacity to think they could espouse the virtues - and supremacy - of the stick versus all weapons without ever having done so themselves. It was a real eye opener, one I recommend for anyone who wants to know the truth about their stick and their grit.
The moral of that episode was to not take anyone else's word for it but your own. It was clear to me that NO ONE in the various MA circles I was in - P.T. included - had come much closer than lip service (with the exception of Tom) when it came to knowing how to really deal with this type of movement and force. I have fought several other weapons since but the truth is , a long, sharp, pointed weapon in the hands of someone with good formal training is tough to beat - especially when it's longer, sharper and more pointed than the one you're using - no matter what magical style you, your cohorts or instructor(s) may practice. Yes, the stick(s) can do well against something like a shinai or longer weapon, but what everyone was missing was that you had to go against it to understand what the drills and the manongs who HAVE worked against it are trying to tell you.
