Finger through the Coke can guy?
Who is the craziest person you know in the martial arts?
- Thread starter frank raud
- Start date
Those brick walls are tricky, man. Never mess with them in a footrace - they don't race fair.
Man, he looks pissed at those blocks. Great performance.
That was Billy Blanks. Billy did the craziest, and most unusual, breaks I've ever seen. He could break pretty much anything.
JR 137
Grandmaster
Very good point.
Gee, I forgot all about those guys. Yes, very good points. I must be getting too old, how does one forget Frank Dux?
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
By gettin old.
Independent, 3rd party validation & proof that invites from @Buka are real, and can be claimed. Fantastic. Maui is great, everyone should go, more than once.
Craziest guy I know is a guy named Zane Davidson, still lives in the Springfield, MO area. Zane was a shreeded-up, good-looking (think male dancer physique) type, who also happened to be a Shotokan BB when I met him with my TKD/HKD BBs in hand. He was working at a local Springfield bar/nightclub called Starzz. It was a new club, and I'd been working at the "main" college bar called Grafitti's for a couple years. Same age guys, doing the same young guy job part time while going to college. Well, I was in undergrad, he was in the police academy.
He opened his own school, I tought there for a minute with him, then left Springburg to get myself down to Houston. One time before I split he came over to my apartment to show off his new Sig Sauer (no clue if I'm spelling that right, I do't do guns y'all). He wanted to show me the handgun, talk about it, it was his nifty new thing. He even pulled the slide to get a round in the chamber, showed me the safety on/off rocker button thing, put the safety on and put it to his head and pulled at the trigger. Idiot. Or crazy. Or crazy idiot. I know enough about gun safety to know that THAT was probably Not taught to him at the police academy.
While working, Zane had this thing about being touched. He would totally, completely flip out if someone touched him. He actually started fights when someone would sort of accidentally brush him or bump him. Again, crazy idiot. He'd "win" most of those fights, because he was sober and generally they were not, but a needless risk, for both him & the bar. He ended up leaving that bouncing job to be a small-town cop.
Then he got into BJJ, then reffing cage fights, then progressed into reffing MMA fights... and got Hugely fat, like 350 or so at 6'1".
Now, he's married, takes way too much of the pharmacy and is a bodybuilder with about 5% bodyfat at about 270, and has no teeth in his upper jaw because of all the fighting and getting them knocked out. I'd bet that probably 90% of the scraps Zane got into were avoidable After the initial dust-up and raised voices.
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
That is not the guy I was thinking about. The guy I was thinking about did those breaks at XMA events. This guy (starts at 2:37):
Yeah, I'm like.... I knew someone in the martial arts who was a paranoid schizophrenic with auditory hallucinations. Very well-behaved otherwise, but uh, that was interesting. There's also a lady that I took a couple classes from who, it turned out, had been fired from her prison guard career due to her fondness for, uh, fraternizing with the inmates. Or the stalker who sent my other half threatening text messages. Oh, and I remember one time I was taking part in a demo at a local city festival, and some dude came up and tried to demand that we publicly acknowledge him, because he's Supreme Chief Grandmaster Some Name with a 14th Dan in Rex Kwon Do or whatever, some made-up art. I've seen lots of different kinds of crazy, most of them not good.
That was fun to watch. Those are the kind of guys I never want to let get their hands on my face or head.
What Billy did was more difficult. He would suspend a can from a string, so it was free hanging. Usually from the basketball rim in a tournament gym during breaking. Then he'd speed poke it with his finger and pierce it. But THEN.....he'd do it with an empty can. And pierce that. Still blows my mind. He said it was easy, just a speed break.
One comment to anyone who ever finds themselves involved in a breaking demo or competition like the one shown in that clip. Get those children the hell away from breaking. This is one of the more irresponsible things I've seen in a long while. In breaking, stuff goes flying all over the place. That was seriously stupid on the part of the competitor, the judges, anybody and everybody involved.
dvcochran
Grandmaster
The drink cans are something of a trick. They are much easier than you may think. Especially the Coke can which is already under a lot of pressure. Try them; I think you will be surprised. There is more hazard in cutting your hand/finger rather than not doing the "break".
Flying Crane
Sr. Grandmaster
I had a teacher for a brief period who I believe was actually mentally ill. It tended to come out in really weird ways. I guess Iām not gonna say much more because in hindsight it was actually very sad. i donāt want to name him on the forums here, it would be bad form, I guess.
dvcochran
Grandmaster
A suspended can or an empty can, especially a thicker one from back in Blanks' heyday would be impressive. Holding a full can in your other hand is a "trick". Similar to how easy it is to knock the bottom out of a partially filled glass bottle with a palm heel.
I tried that break no fewer than a hundred times with every kind of bottle I could find. I never did it, not even once. Billy used to laugh his butt off. Oh, man, not even once.
I have seen him do it with an empty can as well. I have tried it, unsuccessfully several times. It is quite hard to do. I haven't tried it with a full can though.
Not to mention that it is a waste of a perfectly good can of Coke.
The more stories you tell about Billy, the more I think you must have had a lot of fun with that guy.
