Hope everyone can download the article and enjoy it. :asian:
Hey, I haven’t seen it in 40 years either! It just never caught on here in the States. The Air Force allowed me the time and paid for my training in the combative measures class at the Kodokan -- near the very end of the program in 1961. That was the last time I actually trained in it or saw it again. At a couple AF tournaments the higher dans would perform some of those kata during opening ceremonies, but that was the last I saw any “jujitsu” type stuff at Judo events. However, over the years most of the Judoka I knew practiced something other than Judo and distinguishes Judo players from most everyone else in Martial Arts. Akijitsu, karate, Aikido and so on.
It was partly us old guys' fault for this mess; we just didnÂ’t follow traditions well. From the time I returned to the States until 1980 I must have had 3,000 or more students at one time or the other, but let a lot of tradition slip.
During the 1960Â’s a lot of my friends did practice Judo as self-defense. At Bergstrom AFB, in Austin, Texas we trained the Austin Police in our Judo club and additional class in hand-to-hand stuff. Your remember the idiot who shot all those people from the top of the Texas Tower? One of the cops who got killed trying to get to him was in our class at Bergstrom. CanÂ’t remember his name and my old friend and I were just talking about him last month. The age thing!
Yes, we were serious about self-defense aspect of Judo then, but in the 1970Â’s things changed.
I would love to teach again, but too many years away from would hamper my abilities to translate Judo to others. Besides, I live in a small town in central Florida, of 1,300 maybe, and the closest Judo is up in Lakeland. My old Pal George Bass lives there and probably has a dojo working. Tampa is a good place for it too, but too far.
My son taped most of the 2001 Olympic Judo (he lives in Japan) and sent them to me. I really enjoyed it because the Judo appears to have improved somewhat. In the past decades the few seconds they would show Judo on TV it looked so bad I turned it off. Wow, some guy from Brazil threw a Japanese guy in finals with a classic uchimata; the Japanese guy reached for the mat and broke his arm – big time. But, viewing the replays in slow motion that was nearly a perfect unchimata. Felt badly for them both – the pain and the Brazilian looked like he would cry!:wah: