I'm sorry but it looks like what has happened is that a person with a history doing kajukenbo (as well as being a golden gloves boxer etc) has trained someone else in a modified version of what he had originally studied (Liddell) that has been tailored for doing MMA. This doesn't really sound much like what I have heard kajukenbo to be. I understand that it is/has been pared down for MMA but doesn't this in essence take away the essence of the system and reduce it to the base techniques that are common to many systems? I just think I find the connection between kajukenbo and what John Hackleman to be teaching is a bit tenuous. I could be wrong ... (I notice that you left out the names of people like Sid Asuncion, James Mitose, William Chow, Henry Okazaki, and Bing Fai Lau. I assume that this was to simplify things) As far as being progressive goes, how would you rate stuff like Won Hop Kuen Do? Is it equally a version of kajukenbo or something differrent in it's own right? Thanks LFD
The connection is who trains with who and how long. It isn't that complex, but it can be riddled with politics so often people have to go to the sources and hear what they say. Why not just listen to what John Hackleman says for himself (provided this link works for you): [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnS_BWqBXqc&feature=gv"]Interview with John Hackleman form The Pit - YouTube[/ame] John Hackleman says he stayed with Walter Godin (Kajukenbo/Chinese Kenpo) from 1970 until GM Godin's death in 2001. That is well through the time John Hackleman created The Pit and had been training Chuck Liddell. No I didn't leave out people for any reason. I took the list right from a post in Kajukenbo.com by Professor John Bishop. Even GM Harper's website (http://www.kajupit.com/news.htm ) lists the lineage for John Hackleman's The Pit as: The Pit’s Family Tree is as follows: William Chow —> Kajukenbo Founder, Adriano Emperado —> Walter Godin–> John Hackleman... WHKD under GM Al Dacascos is one of the branches of Kajukenbo. Currently, there are four distinct, "recognized" branches of Kajukenbo: Emperado method, Tum Pai, Chu'an Fa, and Wun Hop Kuen Do. GM Dacascos is a great teacher and a great martial artist. I've only trained with him a few times at seminars. He has a student, Sifu Kevin Jackson who I've trained with a few times. Sifu Jackson is teaching "WHKD: Dacascos Tactical Systems", which is a more direct self-defense system, leaving out the kata/forms and such. Now is "WHKD: Dacascos Tactical Systems" still WHKD and Kajukenbo? Both yes and no. It is WHKD and Kajukenbo, most definitely. At the same time, it isn't either, it is something else. This is why it is best to just shut up and train. Politics and "connections" are only as good as the blood, sweat, and tears we all share with each other.
My reply post got so long. Some of your original message got lost in my emphasis on avoiding "politics" in looking for "connections." Let's start with defining what makes a martial art system. In my definition, the system starts with the passing of knowledge from one family member to another. In more modern times, this would be passing knowledge from teacher to student. It is not a system until knowledge is passed on. Can we agree to work with this definition (not that other definitions are not valid, but this definition is only for purposes of seeing my point of view on the matter)? We can call this the "family model". From what I understand, the "family model" of martial arts is not based on techniques, but is based on principles. The techniques are allowed to be modified and changed as needed by each generation, but the principles stay the same. When you have a system like Kajukenbo, it is very heavily influenced by the family model. Sijo Emperado and the other co-founders created Kajukenbo back in 1947-1949. They were all young and the system was very basic. Years pass with mainly Sijo Emperado passing on the system to students. I think this can be attributed to the other co-founders going off to fight in the Korean war, leaving Sijo to handle classes. It is a good ten or more years later and some of the students start to change the Kajukenbo system, such as to add in things from other martial arts. If the stories I've heard are correct, they basically had to prove to Sijo Emperado that what they were teaching worked. One example would be with Jon A. Loren. Grandmaster Loren started incorporating the concepts of Tai-Chi and Southern Sil-lum into his Kajukenbo classes. While visiting Sijo Emperado, GM Loren had to prove how effective his stuff was. As a result, Sijo Emperado gave GM Loren permission to use the name Tum Pai, and GM Loren's teachings became one of the recognized branches of Kajukenbo. Speaking of the situation with Hawaiian Kempo and Chuck Liddell. The influence that comes from Kajukenbo through Walter Godin to John Hackleman, only John Hackleman could tell you. My best guess is that the training and principles greatly influenced John Hackleman, but the Kajukenbo techniques/tricks were not as important. What Chuck Liddell got from John Hackleman is certainly not original method Kajukenbo as taught by Sijo Emperado... however, it is descendent of these teaching, so long as the core principles are respected. This is why it is hard to see Kajukenbo. Kaju evolves to each situation. Kaju folks in MMA, train MMA, not formal Kajukenbo. But they are still family. Sorry, another long post, but I have another example to add. Back in the 1970s, a few Kajukenbo schools got really into karate point fighting and a few others into kickboxing. One of these schools, who was into the point fighting tournaments, trained almost all their time for competition. They got rid of training forms/kata and only trained what worked in competition. They got a lot of new students because of their success. However, as told to me, they got to a point where they had nothing more to teach these students. They then realized that they only were teaching a portion of the system. This school added back in the forms and techniques they were missing. The point is that nothing is new. MMA schools that have backgrounds in something like Kajukenbo, after a while may come to realize that they are missing other portions of a system. One of the core principles in Kajukenbo is that there could be multiple opponents and they could have weapons. As MMA schools get bigger and to a point where there are some beyond the pure competition, they may find that they need to go back to some of the old school things in order to fill in missing gaps, like the ability to deal with multiple attackers and weapons... a core principle.
I'm fairly sure that WHKD is a recognized branch of Kajukenbo. Between the different branches of Kajukenbo I believe that they just put a larger emphasis on different portions of the styles in Kajukenbo. But down to the principles they have, it is kajukenbo.
As an aside, wrist locks are legal. There are a few reasons you don't see them (hard to set up, gloves and wraps are designed to stabilize the wrist), but I've seen them attempted on a few rare occasions.
Oh, thank you for clearing that up, I just never saw them ever, and those are probably good reasons why I never saw them haha. Learn something new every day.
That's one of my favorite videos. The submission may have components of small joint manipulation and torque on the elbow joint, but I believe it ended up being a shoulder lock that Akebono tapped to.
Clearer version with a slow mo replay at the end: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0ny-jE1SD0"]Royce Gracie vs Akebono - YouTube[/ame] The submission comes at the moment Royce takes pressure off his shoulder in order to attack the wrist.
Nice slow mo at the end. The official call was "submission by shoulder lock (omoplata)". The wrist lock component was used to weaken Akebono. Athough the camera can be deceiving, if you look at the slow motion, you might be able to see that Akebono's left shoulder rolls forward and in that instance, Akebono taps out. Akebono had already tapped out from the torque against the shoulder by the time Gracie shifted pressure off the shoulder and more to the wrist lock. The technique ended up being very similar to Nikyo in Aikido.
His shoulder is rolling back when he taps, the pressure is coming off it and his arm is pretty much straight. How can there be pressure on the shoulder? Not sure where you're getting the "official" call from, but Sherdog has it as a wrist lock.
I'm not sure. There is a wrist lock involved, but it appears to me that the wrist lock is used to apply more pressure to the shoulder, similar to how Nikkyo lock is applied in Aikido. This guy seems to think it is some kind of high-breed wrist/shoulder attack: http://www.punchkickchoke.com/2008/03/royce-gracie-vs-akebono-k-1-2004.html 2) The Omoplata Wristlock A less complicated manuever than the "Omoplatarmbar" I featured a little while back, it shows that wristlocks aren't completely useless, but they still require multiple points of control. He had that Omoplata control position, the stalling point before you go for the omoplata, because in no-gi fighting, you need to be sure before attempting a high-risk manuever like it, and he used it to go for a writlock/kimura hybrid instead, as Akebono had his posture completely broken down, and with his size, there wasn't much chance that he was going to sit up and stop the submission. (I call it a hybrid because it seems to attack the wrist and use the shoulder. Here is a picture of Nikkyo/hijishime, it is a shoulder lock, but look at the wrist lock involved in it. Here is a sequence (in the sequence for Nikkyo, there is pressure on the forearm through pressure on the wrist and elbow, which leads to a shoulder lock with wrist control): Also, IMHO, the thing about cameras (unless you got one of those 2 million frames per second or some other high tech set up), is that they are like strobe lights. You always are seeing snapshots of what is happening a little after the fact. So it is hard to tell exactly where the torque is being received. There is pressure on the wrist, but the breaking point seems to be in the shoulder to me. Of course, maybe Akebono should be the one to say where he felt the pain and damage that caused him to tap. I could not find anything about it from him. IME, wrist locks rarely tap anyone out without breaking the wrist in competition. There is just too much adrenaline involved for the pain to be a warning signal. Instead a wrist lock can be used to weaken and set up a submission on a large joint, such as the shoulder. Now if the goal is to attempt to break the wrist, then wrist locks become more practical in use. The other alternative is you can use a wrist lock to control someone temporarily if they are not willing to really resist (e.g. they are not willing to really fight back).
I use this finish all the time, rather than having read about it on the internet. It's nothing like an Aikido hold down where you're trying to control his whole body by progressively locking the joints up his arm, the omoplata holds him in place while you use your upper body to apply torque to the wrist. Here are some videos of people much, much more skilled than Akebono tapping to wrist locks in competition. http://www.veoh.com/watch/v14253303gbzAA9sM?h1=Marcelo+Garcia+vs+Pablo+Popovitch [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipC9ngclruQ"]Claudio Calasans x Wesley Salatiel by X-COMBAT - YouTube[/ame]
My BJJ instructor, who I crossed trained with, submitted an opponent using a wrist lock in competition too. The point about wrist locks in competition I was making is that they often break or damage the wrist before someone will submit to one. I can see your point though. I may be bias in that I use wrist locks to stun and "move" the opponent. Their reaction to the wrist lock feeds into what I do next. The part about it being Nikkyo is that Nikkyo is not a single technique in Aikido, it is a set of many techniques. What they have in common is the shape of the opponent's arm. That shape of the arm where Akebono tapped was one of the two shapes in Nikkyo for applying the lock.
When you do them with your opponents body free they are very hard to finish, when you hold them in place with your legs or pin them on their back first it gets much, much easier. Like any joint lock, really. Any plausible finish for a shoulder lock is going to involve bending his arm...
Here's a more clear example of an attempted wristlock in MMA (Modafferi-Howe II, R2). I'd encourage you to look up R1, simply because it's a good fight, but pertinent to this discussion, from about 4:12-4:55, Modafferi makes several wristlock attempts from the Omoplata (leg-entwined shoulder lock) position. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGStxs8GBYI"]Roxanne Modafferi vs Jen Howe (rd 2, 3) - YouTube[/ame] My experience is that flexing, "goose-neck" style wristlocks are very hard to pull off with wraps and gloves; I think the wraps account for about 85-90% (rough estimate) of wrist stability. However, twisting wrist locks, similar to what I believe Aikido calls "sankyo", aren't really effected by the gloves/wraps. Incidentally, Sherdog lists Royce's win over Akebono (ne: Chad Rowan) as a wrist lock: http://www.sherdog.com/fighter/Royce-Gracie-19 Since there's no regulating body in Japan, where the fight took place, I take Sherdog's account to be as "official" as it can get. They're usually very good about things like that, especially high-level events.
In Aikido, both Nikkyo and Sankyo apply twisting torque to the wrist that is felt through the forearm. These twisting techniques could be done slightly differently to isolate the force on the wrist or the elbow, leading to injury of the wrist or the elbow, but Aikido techniques tend to apply the techniques more as a "stretch" for safety reasons rather than as a break. It is these twisting techniques that aren't always safe to train against a resisting opponent due to the pain level not always being an indicator of the damage done. Very similar reason to why heel hooks are hard to train safely, for example. As for "goose-neck" style wrist locks, IME, the opponents hand wraps do make it harder to bend the wrist off of the initial entry. One of the setups for wrist locks like kotegaeshi in Aikido, for example, is to redirect the force provide from the opponent's punch, push, or grab to break the posture. Hand wraps help prevent the bending of the wrist off of the initial setup, thus making them very hard to do off a punch. On the other hand, the wraps reinforce the knuckles and not the fingers. If a "goose-neck" style wrist lock is successfully set up (note that the wraps makes this setup more difficult), then at that point, it is more a matter of technique rather than simple leverage. One of these techniques is after getting the "goose-neck" style wrist lock on, bend the fingers of the opponent's hand inward so that they make a fist. This is a much weaker structure for them and a much more effective finish for "goose-neck" than allowing the opponent to keep the fingers straight, IME. The wraps can actually help in getting the opponent to bend the fingers into a fist.
As an aside, Rebel Wado, or well, anybody here that views this, do you practice Kajukenbo yourself, or do you just have some good knowledge in the style? You seem fairly well versed in Kajukenbo so I was just wondering. Just before I forget haha.
