Part 1 (1/2)

MEMOIRS OF A KARATE FIGHTER

Ralph Robb

Acknowledgeratitude to the scores of young men who trained at the Wolverhampton YMCA karate club over the years Their personalities and experiences have inspired many of the characters and plots in my novels Unfortunately, editorial and other constraints make it impossible to include the names of everyone, or the many, many anecdotes about their ti ies to all those I have failed to mention

Foreword

KARATE, AS PRACTISED in japan, had its 'golden era' in the lead up to World War Two It was a period when, impelled by ultra-nationalist fervour, karateka trained to the very li karate exponents never returned from the war, but of those who did survive, sohout America and Europe The karate master Tatsuo Suzuki had been frustrated that he had been too young to enlist, but twenty years after the war ended he began establishi+ng a style of karate known as Wado Ryu throughout Europe Initially, the type of karate he taught was si sort in which he himself had been tutored But karate had entered vastly different cultures and after initial calls in the British popular press for it to be banned, it was inevitable that the fighting art he had brought froanBritish karate's heyday In 1975, Britain defeated japan in the final of the world chao onto to dohout the 1980s While Britain was the foremost team in international karate competitions, a club called the Wolverhampton YMCA was, for a period, the top club in Britain Therefore, bythat time, one of the finest karate clubs in the world

The YMCA club was, in ht together sohters who just so happened to want to learn the art of karate at around the same place and at the sao anywhere, fight with any other martial style, under any rules and use whatever referees you like The team won so many tournaments that it would be ireatest achievements were two British All-styles titles, five national Wado Ryu championshi+ps and, in 1976, a national Shotokan championshi+p they became the only team, in the history of British karate, not to practise the Shotokan style ever to do so Hirokazu Kanazawa, arguably the greatest-ever Shotokan karateka, nanimously led the applause as the YMCA triumphed over a tea the contest, Kanazawa sensei hts that had taken place between rival schools while japanese karate was in its infancy: the 1976 Shotokan Karate International cha, one of the bloodiest competitions ever to have taken place in Britain A year later the tournament was made exclusive to Shotokan teams as the inter-style rivalry had led to so many injuries that it was considered unsafe to continue with its 'allcomers' policy

Within the YMCA's ranks were one world, three European and twelve national chae to train with thehts were not limited to what happened on the competition mat or within the dojo and many of the YMCA karate team were involved in situations of real ferocity out on some very mean streets, solorify any action or person, but to si and experiences I underwent to becohter

The practise of htenment, and this book is a record of the path I walked as a er man, and of the personalities, the triumphs, the adversities and the pitfalls that I encountered along the way

Ralph Robb June 2006

Chapter One

Under the sword lifted high

There is hell o ahead And you have the land of bliss

Miyamoto Musashi+ (1584 1645)

THE BIG GUY had a knife This was not a fil competition This was real, this was a uy too: Jerohed in at two hundred and fifteen pounds of almost pure muscle and unfortunately for theability that one day would ht champion of the world

There weren't too er than Jerome, but the man with a black t-shi+rt stretched over his ured that he must have been from out of town because he was not the sort ofby his behaviour, he obviously knew nothing of the reputation of the two htclub's door The big stranger had ignored the queue and led his gang to the entrance He claimed to be a relative of the owner, but et to the back of the line Eas nowhere near as big, but at a little more than six feet, his lean frame reminded me of the world chah perhaps he carried even roup shouted that no man could treat them so disrespectfully and live People in the queue i over in their attery shouts echoed a bass that filtered out fro wo drawn

I watched from the foyer, and like the rest of the onlookers, I was excited and fearful all at once But no one was looking atdraood time with a couple of friends Panic pushed the crowd out onto the road, but the chance to see a genuine street fight kept theladiatorial contests in ancient Rome, they were drawn by the spectacle of violence and the scent of danger I may have been inexperienced but I felt compelled to step forward and help out my two fellow karateka: as formidable as they were, a ratio of six to two did not seeain, no one seemed to notice ht of the blade that had caused the woman's screaaze away One of the gang had thrown a punch at Ewart, a British light-heavyweight all-styles champion, and had rapidly paid for his rash action when he hit the ground with a sickening thud Another of the gang brushed past ht, led and lashed out Now oblivious to the ed to put him into a chokehold He was unconscious within seconds and I lowered hiround just in ti in thetoward Jerouid steps forward It was a response the man with the knife had not expected By this tiround and the crowd had spread across the street in a large arc; I sensed that a good proportion of the for , but like the rest of the onlookers I was curious too This, after all, e trained for; this was the life-or-death situation ere told to i our bodies in the dojo This would be a ain as hespeed Jerome moved forward to , he sidestepped and the knife went past hinized his ht in the dojo The japanese call it iri) the result can be devastating, as the attacker's own runt and the sound of the blade dropping onto the road as Jero htened and then a fist crashed against his jaw The crack brought a gasp fro face,s folded, as if he were about to sit on an invisible stool, before an instinct for survival straightened theered down the road like a drunk with another three groggydoice as he went The hed and slowly stood up He swayed and scratched his head as he tried to figure out what had gone on He did not even look atcoh for him to take off after them

My initial apprehension had been instantly turned into exhilaration There was a clarity to the technique Jerome had used that had previously eluded me I proain in the dojo This was the first time I had seen it executed with such brutal perfection I said as much to Jerome He smiled down at me and shook his head as he told me it had been far frohtly as he threw the punch, otherwise it would have knocked the big man unconscious Eas pu guy get away, but should have run after him and finished hi; he was still lying aardly against the concrete steps If it were not for a trickle of blood fro peacefully Eas deadly serious when he said that anyone who drew a knife on hiht su attitudes: Jerome had been content to disarm his opponent, but Eould only have only been satisfied with the armed man stretched out in the road Part of me wanted to say that I had rendered one man unconscious, but neither Jerome nor Ewart seemed to be aware of my contribution and as I looked across the street to the police station I thought it would be for the best if I said nothing about it Two police to theain consciousness and applauded I thought sarcastically and I feared that theyover to arrest the three of us I was back to being apprehensive again: hoould I explainto a nightclub?

After an ambulance had taken away the man on the steps, I had wanted to leave but felt duty-bound to stay in case there was more trouble I was also convinced that if the police did not turn up, then the big guy would be back with reinforcements Jerome and Ewart carried on as if coood actors, or they genuinely didn't share any of uessed that the troubleht in Accident and E his broken jaw fixed ires

It had not been the first tiht, nor would it be the last I grew up in an area of tohere there were a lot of fights; it was a place where a large nurants from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent had settled and there was often trouble between them and the local white youths My parents had arrived from Jamaica three years before I was born and I was followed into the world by three sisters Consequently, most of my leisure time was spent in the company of my male cousins and friends Violence, or the threat of violence, was a constant co the streets toAs a child of no more than twelve years old I had witnessed brawls between kids of ht with serious and violent intent One vivid childhooda bottle during a fight with the intention of pushi+ng it into the face of another kid, who only two minutes before had been his best friend But that was an extresters was uhts, such as a foul while playing soccer, or the alleged theft of a sweet

But there were also more serious threats in the town in which I lived: it was common back in the 1970s for a black roups of whitethe nerve to walk along a street in a particular area Many of htening encounter and as a result there were parts of town that my friends and I refused to visit But this attitude was by no means exceptional, nor si s and territory

The nuclei of our little gang were my cousins Clinton, Errol and Trevor, our friend Leslie and me Whether or not it was simply the hostile athters I areater experience of the world had led thehening up process involved arranging fights for sley let it be known that they had placed money on the result and did not expect ive me a taste of what to expect froht, they stakedsun Such were their reputations that no one dared to rescue me It was a tactic they had picked up from some western movie in which Jimmy Stewart, or perhaps John Wayne, had been si desert by Apache warriors

Besides real fights, the gang's free ti fu movies Errol, Clinton and I spent our Friday and Saturday nights at the Colosseum cinema where the audience would be ninety-nine percentfu ers and the rat-infested cineht weekend shows The atmosphere in the Colosseum was always very different to what I would find at the cinemas in the town centre, as there were always plenty of people in the audiences illing to supply a running co fu stars, wang Yu was the favourite at the Colosseuuys of e the badly scripted, poorly dubbed Cantonese filrind of daily life; their carefully choreographed fight scenes acted as a release for people ere otherwise preoccupied with thoughts of real violence It was easy to fantasize about thrashi+ng either the cops who hassled us, or the thugs who attacked us, as si Yu himself, his popularity was, in part, due to his name: it had not been corrupted with a 'Bruce' or a 'Jackie', from which we surnificant phrase for young black people This later turned out not to be strictly true, and as wang's popularity grew his na Yu But this uncoet in the way of unalloyed hero-worshi+p His fighting style was also ad than Chan's Furthermore, as his films only featured Chinese people ere transported to another world in which the hero wasn't always a white man, and it was the japanese, rather than black ht, shortly after we had left the Colosseu of white men armed with clubs Probably frustrated that they could not find an unaccompanied victie boys We scattered and I ducked into an alley that led into back streets and rear gardens The men must have sensed easy prey and followed ood athlete butin a tank of treacle Breathing hard, I rounded another corner and sos violently clashed as our bodies collapsed onto the hard ground Fearing imminent death, I screamed out loud

”Shut up,” croaked a familiar voice, ”this way” It was Clinton: he had returned to help h wire-mesh fence Withinobscenities and shaking theto get over the fence As they continued to hurl their threats I wanted to get away, but Clinton stood his ground with an air of contemptuous indifference I stared on in disbelief as he opened his flies and began pissing through the e, the men jumped back, as if Clinton's urine was a deadly acid

On tre to see Errol and to look for the safety of a crowd ”So, Ralph,” he said toto start training with the rest of us?”

At first I was too angry, or too scared, to speak My lungs were still burning and h the he referred to was in karate at the local YMCA At first I had been dis: I was supposed to be the tough guy of our little group, the one who took part in bare-knuckle fights in order to win money for Clinton's older brothers, and I had already told him that I did not need thisinvolved The YMCA karate club had a fearsome reputation, and I had heard tales, recounted in the most reverential tones, about the instructor who had once beaten up a gang of hell's Angels and had knocked out a genuine Chinese kung fuClinton's older brothers who trained there; about injuries; about journeys to the hospital; about guys who thought they could handle themselves but who had quit after just one session ”No,” I had previously told Clinton, ”I'll stick to my athletics” But now such a response seemed pathetic because I knew that behind Clinton's question was the idea that we should have stood and fought, that we should have levelled the club-wielding white guys in a fashi+on si Yu's

A week later I enrolled at one of Britain's toughest and most successful karate clubs In retrospect I aed my life, because it was not until I left school and entered the adult world that I fully appreciated just how perilous the place in which I grew up could be

Chapter Two

There is tireat amount of practise

Miyamoto Musashi+ The Ground Book

”ICHINISANshi+ ” The sensei's calls were rhythmic and hypnotic For more than two very intense hours we had punched and kicked up and down the length of the dojo It was an exercise that was punctuated with exchanges of techniques with a partner before we returned to our lines and started all over again ”IchiNiSanshi+ ”

The instructor as putting us through all this agony was Eddie cox He was a broad figure whose deave him a presence that made him seem far more powerful than anyone else in the dojo Years before, when I had first joined the club, the first thing I had noticed about hi froreat lued in one of the local foundries for only one purpose: to inflict pain With his dark skin and broad features, he looked like a shorter version of a young George Fore in his eyes hness that I had heard while I was still a schoolkid had not done him justice But it was not just karate that had hardened hihest school in town before he had ever started training Until the day it was closed down, St Joseph's had a reputation for turning out more criminals than academics and was nickna the Catholic secondary school were of Italian or Irish backgrounds and Eddie was one of only a handful of black pupils an experience that had left its mark In an institution in which you were either predator or prey, Eddie decided it was better to becole The tales about the severity of the training sessions he ran had been no exaggerations either There had beenhi a pulled muscle, a sore abdomen, or a bruised face

After , Clinton and I were brown belts and it felt as though we had becoer family unit A few of us within this extended faes of a promotion that would put us on par with some of the black belts Still in our late teens, ere so sure of ourselves that we brashly thought that, on a physical level, ere already as good as the dan grades The harsh training regi and hard, but our youthful lie the established 'food chain' so that it was e, there would have to be a confrontation I would have done well to rees: Be careful what you wish for, you et it!

The style of karate practised at the YMCA was Wado Ryu, which, according to modern translations, means 'way of peace school' Wado was created by a japanese jujitsu master named Hironori Ohtsuka who blended the art he had studied fro system that only became universally known as 'karate' in the 1930s When Master Ohtsuka visited the Wado Ryu United Kingdom national championshi+ps in 1975, the first year the YMCA had entered the tournament, he had commented to other japanese instructors that out of all the karateka ere co, it was Eddie cox's teah praise indeed, and had probably been bestowed by the kancho (the head of the style) because of the attitude of the YMCA fighters Though it had roots in older philosophies and traditions, Ohtsuka had developed his style of karate during the period when japan wasmilitary forays into China and Manchuria, and it was first and forened to be a potent combat system