Who is this Boztepe guy and why does everyone hate him?

[IronFist]

I'm clueless. Someone fill me in?

Iron

[SevenStar]

Wing Tsun proponent and love interest of former KFO member, Kungar. He is known the the numerous brawls he's been in, and it I remember right, at one point in time, had some beef with they gracies.

[IronFist]

Is he good, or does he suck? I think I saw a video of his for sale somewhere once.

Dude, do you have awesome chi yet? hehehe :)

Iron

[Reima Kostaja]

http://64.45.10.30/pages/EMIN%20POTOS/EMINRUN.jpg

Emin Boztepe is world famous Tae Bo instructor.

Billy Blanks students hate him because there's some controversy about Tae Bo lineages and Emin teaches modified Tae Bo.

http://64.45.10.30/pages/EMIN%20POTOS/EMINWORKOUT3.jpg

[KenWingJitsu]

sevenstar is basically correct. Ask on the wing chun forum, you'll get more answers.

[Ryu]

Reima, that avatar is giving me seizures.


Ryu

[straight blast]

I'd be interested in hearing anything about him too. About all I know involves him and Willie Cheung, and the more I hear about it the less I know. The only thing I can think of that distinguishes him from the rest (aside from his little feud with the Leung Ting/K, Kernspecht group) is that he's the only WT (or WC, or whatever) practitioner who regularly fights or has fought that I've heard of. If there are any others, please enlighten me.
I've read some of his stuff & his theories on fighting seem pretty sound, but there is much debate whether it is his or if he flogged it from Keith Kernspecht.
Sigh...
Wing Chun.
Great Art.
Crap politics :(

[Reima Kostaja]

:D Haha, captivating avatar isn't it Ryu?

[Yung Apprentice]

OOOOOOOOH AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Mesmerised by pretty colors from RK. Nah but for real that looks trippy

[NafAnal]

whatever happened to old matey kungar anyways?

[rubthebuddha]

emin claims to have been in about 300 fights, not having lost a single one. i'm not sure as to the validity of this, but no one's stepping up to argue with him or prove him wrong, so i don't question it all that much. i've felt his elbows in my back several times and he's turned me into a pretzel occasionally, so i know better than to question him. ;)

originally, emin was just a skilled and hard-working fighter within gm kernspecht's ewto clan. he fought william cheung (if you want to call it a fight - it was pretty pathetic) and claimed victory that day (cheung's camp does, too, which helps clear EVERYTHING up nicely :rolleyes: ). anyhoo, after the cheung thing, emin got popular very quickly, and the ewto took advantage of it. emin continued to train hard, and eventually, gm kernspecht authorized him to take over WT in north america. eventually, emin began to get popular here, while enjoying huge amounts of notoriety and great success back in europe (he also ran the scandinavian chunk of the ewto).

anyhoo, flash forward to recent history. emin's relationship to his sifu, gm kernspecht, has been getting worse over the past few years. he had owed large amounts of dues to his sifu and sigung leung ting, and those debts got larger and larger. eventually, emin stopped paying them altogether. also, against iwta (the parent organization that all wt orgs were under) rules, he continuted to teach seminars in areas that other sifus in the organization had rights to. no sifu in the iwta is allowed to teach in another sifu's region without permission from that sifu. it's bad for the organization and it can cause a lot of problems between sifus. emin was told not to by his sifu, yet continued. eventually, he was reprimanded, but he didn't follow the restrictions set down on him. he was then told he could not each in europe at all for a while, and he began pulling away. he had also began marketing videos to be sold internationally without sigung leung ting's permission, some of these were direct copies of gm kernspecht's blitzdefence, and some were instructional videos on the advanced sections of chi sau. again, he was told to cease, and he didn't. he was too dependent on his income from seminars in europe and his videos to welcome such a reprimand, so he began forming his own organization (EBMAS). he was further restricted for additional acts that were contrary to iwta rules and his sifu and sigung's wishes, and eventually he announced his separation from the ewto, iwta and his instructors altogether.

now i must say that this is what i have gleaned from several different sources within both emin's camp (including emin's own announcements) and gm kernspecht's camp (including gm kernspecht's responses and responses of his senior students). if i'm wrong on any of this, i apologize. i'm not perfect.

for information on both sides:
emin's camp: EBMAS at http://www.wingtsun.net

and gm kernspecht's response: http://www.ewto.com/emin/index_e.htm

on the ewto site, there is a 28-page acrobat file that offers quite a bit of detail, has scanned documents from emin (they're his -- i recognize his handwriting) and many other students, and other such stuff. one of the best summaries of the whole thing can be found by clicking on "STATEMENTS" at the top of the page, and reading sifu mike adams' response.

and now for david's personal opinion. read on if you wish. ignore if you don't.

first off, emin is a tremendous martial artist. no one can argue that effectively, because the only way to do so would be with your hands and feet, and i don't know if anyone out there who would argue has a chance against emin. he's downright amazing. period. he's also a good teacher. i've learned a lot from him at his thrice-yearly seminars he gave in this part of the country. his organization and following here and in europe would not be as big had he been a crappy instructor.

however, emin has his faults. he grew up using his muscles to defend himself (a turkish kid in germany? yeah, lotsa rumbles), and that doesn't seem to have changed. when things get nasty, he begins to think with his muscles. when static grew with his sifu, he didn't take the humble way out and instead let their relationship grow distant. this only compounded as the problems grew worse, and eventually it seems that no longer regarded his sifu as his sifu. to make matters worse, emin was (still is) living a hollywood lifestyle, and headquartered his organization in hollywood. bills got huge and his ability to pay back his sifu (he still owes him tens of thousands of dollars) lessened every year.

it also seems that emin had the split somewhat planned well before it happened. long before many of the sanctions against him, he began telling the north american instructors to begin using his EBMAS logos on all their letterhead, websites, etc. eventually, when he announced his separation, he already had much of his EBMAS system in place.

one more thing, and this is about finances. often i hear about the WT family being greedy, and i have a few responses to that. emin charged individual students $150 per year to be members of the awto. what did i get out of it? a fancy passport and that's about it. when emin split with the iwta and gm leung ting took over north america personally, he dropped the rate down to $60, $10 of which goes back to the school you study at (my school waived this fee and only charges $50). i'm not saying emin's greedy, i'm just saying he had bills to pay and we paid for them. my main point is that gm leung ting is nowhere near greedy. to further illustrate this point, i had paid through for almost one more year with the awto when the split happened. many other students were in a similar situation, and gm leung ting honored that previous contract, even though he never saw any of the money.

in summation, i have a lot of respect for emin as a fighter and a teacher. he can do amazing things and he can teach you how to do them as well. he's also a very nice guy (personal chats with him were pretty low-brow, but he didn't care about rank with his students; he and i would just bull**** every now and then before seminars, and that made me feel good). however, i don't feel he ran a good organization and i don't feel he acted appropriately to his sifu or sigung.

that said, i'm now two cents poorer again, but i hope it's worth it. props to all you WT folks, regardless of iwta or awto affiliation. heck, props to you WC folks, too. and the rest of you MAs -- you're all good.

[myosimka]

There was a great deal of negative stuff floating around the web as the UFC got up and running in the early to mid 90s. He publicly took up the Gracieson their standing challenge but never went to a Gracie gym to back it up. They attempted to to schedule it in other forums/locales and he started backpedalling badly. This was primarily through private correspondence which the Gracies and the UFC promoters later published. Can't blame them for bringing it out though because Boztepe was calling them cowards all over the internet and elsewherewhile ducking them. And his story for why he wouldn't fight changed each time they responded.

Plus the whole deal with William Cheung and the way that challenge came about seemed sort of scuzzy to me. Sort of an ambush that Boztepe prepared for and Cheung did not. Plus Boztepe has 20years on Cheung. Which is sort of ironic because he accused the Gracies of deliberately challenging people past their prime physically.

I have seen his students and some of his tapes and while I am not a WT stylist it seems pretty solid. I don't doubt his abilities as either a teacher or martial artist. But he clearly has an attitude and a big mouth. and that's why people hate him.

[LEGEND]

I hear he is a good instructor in wing chun arts also. And yes...he did challenge ROYCE GRACIE and ROYCE said sure...but EMIN did not want to fight in the UFC saying no honor in ppv. So ROYCE said do it at an LAPD station where GENE LEBELL and BENNY THE JET sometime teaches...but EMIN rebuked and said no worrying about legal implications...ROYCE in BB magazine...called EMIN a CLOWN and said if EMIN wants to fight then come to TORRANCE where they have been accepting challenge matches since the beginning or at a ROYCE GRACIE seminar.

Emin in all regards is a very capable wing chun man...but once again...he has not been known to enter any well known events k-1...san shou...boxing...mma tourney for us to judge if he's more than an INSTRUCTOR.

[KenWingJitsu]

"long before many of the sanctions against him, he began telling the north american instructors to begin using his EBMAS logos on all their letterhead, websites, etc. "

rub the budha, most of what you say may be correct, I know some of the details & some of what you sa is true. But remember there is Emin's side & there is Leung Ting & Kernshpects side of the story. This part is definitely not though. The EMBAS logo etc, came AFTER the split.

"So ROYCE said do it at an LAPD station where GENE LEBELL and BENNY THE JET sometime teaches...but EMIN rebuked and said no worrying about legal implications"

This part of it is false. It was Emin who suggested to do it in a parking lot of the LAPD...or any parking lot for that matter. The Gracies were only interested in doing it in the UFC. Emin wanted a "street" fight, Royce wanted a cage fight.

[rogue]

If I remember correctly, Royce wanted the fight to be in the gym at the LAPD, not the parking lot. It's also incredibly stupid to have a "street fight" in the parking lot of a police station for obvious reasons.

[baguatc]

Royce and Emin was goin to go at it in my living room. I was inviting some of you dawgs over for a beer to watch and maybe place some bets. Somehow that part of the story never made it to the press though.

[LEGEND]

KEN...this has already been confirmed...ROYCE suggested the police station for several reasons...RORION sometime teaches there along with Benny the Jet and Gene Lebell...Emin instead sent a lawyer saying there was a danger of some sort blah blah blah...Royce then gave up and PUBLIC put this out in BB mag...u can look it up in one of the issues years ago...I was curiious at the time cause I WAS a wing chun man. Royce was simple...look I don't know where u want to fight me now...but if u want come to my dojo or one of my seminars...hell EMIN did to WILLIAM but why not a ROYCE???

[rogue]

Too busy with his 300 street fights, which by now you'd think he'd have done some jail time.

Never heard a bad word about Emins teaching ability though.

[rubthebuddha]

KWJ: i know there are bound to be errors in there, but emin's order for the EBMAS name changes were announced to the instructors in a letter dated july 10, 2001

http://www.ewto.com/emin/index_e.htm page 3, bottom

the date for emin's first letter of resignation is july 18. he edited it a few times; the first, shown at this same link, page 23 was his resignation from the ewto; later versions came out after GM leung ting ordered him to pull all his EBMAS stuff on july 19. emin later edited the letter to reflect GM leung ting's order, and he pulled himself entirely out of the iwta. emin kept the same date of july 18 on the document.

one thing about this all that bugs me -- in the july 10 letter, emin ordered instructors to pull down pictures of both GM kernspecht and GM bill newman, his instructors back in germany for WT and escrima, from the walls where students bow to images of the masters. to me, that just reeks of something obvious.

anyhoo, i know most of what i'm saying here is based on documents provided by gm kernspecht. but that's all i the tangible evidence either side is offering. emin hasn't done a thing to properly back himself. he's put up his letter of resignation and a few letters from his fellow students who are unhappy with the whole thing, but that's it. nothing remotely tangible, and that disappoints me. i honestly like emin. he's a great guy and a phenomenal martial artist, but i think he screwed the pooch on this one and a lot of it is plain to see.

again, i'm not bashing. that's my simple opinion on the recent events. i'm quite unhappy about the whole split and how it has negatively affected the WT family, but maybe the family needs to take a look at itself and see how things are happening. it is a family, and i'd love to see it be a big, healthy, supportive one. i'd like to see WT, WC and VT become familial again. can you imagine if leung ting, william cheung, yip chun, yip ching, WSL's senior students (names escape me right now and i feel like an ass because of it) and a whole bunch of other students of GM yip mangot together and started talking shop, compared notes and refined their techniques together? maybe get them to work together for one month in hong kong, away from distractions and politics. just them. indeed, that'd be an awesome sight, and we'd probably learn some awesome shît.

[rubthebuddha]

you probably won't hear a bad word about his teaching, either. he's really **** good, and i've been lucky enough to have learned from him for a while before the split.

sad i am that i no longer have him as an instructor, but happy i am that GM leung ting is taken over north america and will be teaching seminars here A LOT. :D

[rogue]

That's got to be a weird situation, no matter what I think about Emin the guy worked his hind end off to promote his art here. Good luck with the GM that sounds very cool.

Do the Monkey with me!

[Ralek]

Yeah. Emin was only interested in gettin press when he challenged Royce. He was offered to fight in UFC and a shot at 60,000 dollars but he turned it down. He was offered to fight in the gracie academy but he turned it down. He wsa offered to fight at the police station but he turned it down. He was offered to fight Royce at his seminars like he did Williajm Chueng but he turned it down.

If he didn't want to fight then why did he challenge them in the first place? Plenty of people have fought the Gracie's in challenge matches. Why did Emin have so much trouble showing up?

[fmann]

RTB, the split probably occured way before the official resignations. That's why all those changes were being made earlier.

[rubthebuddha]

as far as the decisions on emin's side, yeah, i'd say long before. gm leung ting's decisions were made in july. i remember my instructor and other instructors scrambling to do what they could on behalf of sigung to keep the family together. but it seemed to lots of us that emin didn't really have his heart in saving the family. gm leung and gm kernspecht both continued to make concessions and compromises, but emin didn't give an inch to meet rules that every other sifu had to follow.

i know and experienced a bit more than was made public, and emin may have had some decent gripes with his sifu. but nothing excused his behavior or separation, in my opinion. but it's his call. he can do what he wants, and i wish him the best in it, but i don't personally agree with his choices.

[KenWingJitsu]

Ralek and LEGEND.......it's obvious which side you're on. I can't be bothered to argue with you. Emin refused to fight in the UFC, he did not refuse a street fight; Rorion did.
The issue of Black Belt you're talking about is the JULY issue of 1995. Both their sides of the stories are in there. I have the issue. Do you? Read it again. Maybe the passage of TIME (6 years!) has dulled your memories.

rubthebudha......you seem to make some valid poiints, but could it not be that Emin had already decided to leave BEFORE he wrote his resignation letter, and that all that crap had gone on for a while before it became public? If so, then the dates being a few days off may not be important. Anyways, either way i don't really care, which is why i haven't looked into it further. i know I'll get to benefit from his training because he's d@mn good, so I tend not to care much about politics happening half a world away (or about stuff that happened 6 years ago).

[LEGEND]

Ralek and LEGEND.......it's obvious which side you're on. I can't be bothered to argue with you.

"Comment like this especially from a NEW GUY who just started posting is ridiculous! I could care less about RORION and EMIN...I wish them the best of luck in teaching and making $$$. It has been a well known fact that the GRACIE in TORRANCE accepted challenge matches...all u had to do was show up...they video tape it...hmmmmmmmm...EMIN did the same at a WILLIAM CHEUNG seminar no??? It would have been no problem for him to drive down to TORRANCE and have a match up with ROYCE."

[rogue]

So Emin wanted a street fight? Does that mean that Royce & Rorian could just jump him coming out of his house? Could they pack?

Emin wanting a "street fight" is moronic.

[Merryprankster]

So, Emin turned down a $60,000 shot at a title in the UFC, during the earliest time frame, in which the rules were:

No biting
No eye gouging
No fish hooks
No time limits

Whereas Ron Van Clief, a 51 year old man, turned up to fight...

And Fred Ettish, who everybody picks on, had the guts to show up and put on an amazing display of fighting spirit despite being completely outclassed...

I'm sorry, but what a wuss.

I have no idea if he's a good fighter or not, but what a wussy thing to do, ESPECIALLY if his mouth is as big as it seems to be.

Put up or shut up. That's all I ask.

[rubthebuddha]

if someone has pictures of royce and rorion hiding in the bushes at emin's house, i wanna see them! :D

[Tigerstyle]

if someone has pictures of royce and rorion hiding in the bushes at emin's house, i wanna see them!

There are no pictures of that, because the Gracies refused the streetfight challenge, remember? ;)

[myosimka]

and yes, I am not on Boztepe's side. But I am not a Gracie guy either(prefer Machado). But they have never run from a challenge. Perhaps stacked the rules and scenario a bit to favor GJJ but then again you have to have some legal limits.

Just want to make sure I have your side of the story right. Emin Boztepe wanted a street fight. If so, why did he then refuse to fight a Gracie at a gym unless they provided legal assurances to the tune of financial restitution in the event of an arrest? He wants a publicized streetfight but won't fight at a gym because he might get arrested for assault?? Interesting reasoning. You are also forgetting that Rorion refused a fight after twice offering to let Boztepe fight Royce, the UFC challenge. BTW, this is what Boztepe originally asked for. Later, he said he would only fight Rorion.

I've read both sides. Emin involves a lot of backpedaling and changing his complaints. The Gracies in my mind offered fair shots in multiple forums. He never made counteroffers(well he did one time say, Your dojo is a biased location. We could do it at my place.--hunh??) I have seen his stuff and think he's probably a decent fighter but I am not impressed by some of his political BS. Plus the Gracies have backed up what they have claimed against all challengers(to Sakuraba's finanical gain) So if you give me a choice between believing the Gracies were ducking a fight and Boztepe, I am going with Boztepe.

And does not fighting the Gracies make you a bad martial artist? No, of course not. But calling them out publicly and then ducking them is what angers so many outside the WT world.


As to why the WT can't stand him, read above. I don't know it well enough. But a leopeard always shows its spots.

[Rolling Elbow]

There should only be one picture on the wall: Yip Man. Every system has one recognized master..he was and is it. You can play offshoot system forever..if your ssytem traces to someone else than that is fine..if it decends from Yip Man, his pic should be the only one hanging.

As for Botzepe's pic on the wall?!!! = EGO MAXIMUS + 100.

The guy may be tough but his knowledge and personal growth will suffer due to greed and because he feels he no longer has anything to learn. Sad..

[fmann]

Originally posted by Rolling Elbow
The guy may be tough but his knowledge and personal growth will suffer due to greed and because he feels he no longer has anything to learn. Sad..

Greed, right. That's why most of the fees and what not were cut, some more than half in certain locations? I know my unlimited class fee went from $165 - $95 here in the NYC.

And perhaps it's not that "he feels that he no longer has anything to learn," but that he feels that his sifus no longer want to earnestly teach him. As in teach him objectively as teacher and student and not with politics involved.

[rubthebuddha]

i'd not be surprised if the drop in rates is just both sides trying to look good and using the same method. and as far as not having anything to learn? i don't know about the pole form, but i'm pretty darn sure that he hasn't been taught the knives. in addition, according to gm kernspecht's response, emin didn't want to pay for his lessons with him anymore. a sifu is a sifu, and just like any student, we should do our part to help them keep their doors open. i know that kernspecht is not running shy of cash these days, but every other sifu in europe pays their fees, so why shouldn't emin?

again, not bashing the guy, only his behavior. very few sifus in the world would ask you how they look and laugh when you asked if they wanted complete honesty and told them they looked like shît (he had just finished about 16 hours of seminars in two days in alaska and had a really nasty case of jetlag). i was never one of his advanced students (i was just promoted to begin program 9 last night :D ), but that didn't matter -- he was friendly and casual with me. like i said, i like the guy. i just don't think he made some good choices lately, and i think the way politics happened really fùcked everything in the wt family up.

know what i think? i think all the WT family, WC fam, VT fam, BJJ folk and maybe even a few other folks should all rent a huge, padded room and beat each other senseless with pipe insulation. the stuff is soft enough so it won't hurt (it may stun you a smidge), but i think if all these hosers can get their aggressions out on each other and work themselves silly, then maybe go out for some guiness and drink it up like a good irishman would, it'd work itself out.

come on, you can see it now: william cheung and leung ting tossing darts with a pint in hand, emin and rorion and royce at the pool table playing a game of cutthroat (no, not with knives), maybe even viktor parlatti and andrew draheim playing drunken air hockey. cripes, guys, what a site this would be.

and the pictures! oh, the pictures!

[rubthebuddha]

anyhoo, it all just sucks. the iwta lost a tremendous teacher and artist, and the awto lost i think around three-fourths of its student base and its four biggest schools. both organizations are each at a loss in their own ways, and i just think it's poopy.

[KenWingJitsu]

My last word on this is...go read the JULY 1995 issue of Black Belt and you'll see who really refused a no rules street fight. It was supposed to be Rorion first, but he refused, saying he wanted Royce to fight because he was 'retired'.

[rubthebuddha]

having not been on the WT scene until well after emin and the gracies has their pis-sing matches, i'm not all that keen on the details. every attempt i have made to find more out usually gets me left with some bull****, one-sided person saying "emin's a ***** because he didn't fight" or "the gracies are all panzy-*****es because ..."

what i'd like is something with substance that actually has something to offer. does anyone have any links they would suggest?

the same would also go for background on what led up to emin's grand day out with william cheung.

[Merryprankster]

Ah, yes...

Because, as we know, Black Belt magazine has only the highest journalistic standards and tip-top articles.

THis is a mag that put out an article on Comrhac Bas, I remind you, and published something about the "Hidden Grappling in TKD."

Yup. Sounds like my new MA news source!!

[Kristoffer]

havent read the whole thread,
Emin seems to be quite popular in scandinavia. Im not really interested. But all WC people seems to have an ego bigger than australia. Whats with the attitude fellow MA's? calm down

[LEGEND]

LOL...this is getting silly...so EMIN wanted RORION not ROYCE...so when ROYCE was willing to step up to the plate...EMIN back down??? You know...the way this looks EMIN seems to like to fight older men don't u think???