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This next Saturday the 25th, Gary Romel and I are giving an internal arts demonstration at a local outdoor Karate tournament in Oklahoma City, Okla. If anybody is local and wants to come out and support CMA or just meet some friends, please let us know. Gary will be demonstrating Taijiquan and I will be showing some Baguazhang.
Seriously, It's nice to see you posting again Chris.;)
Chris,
What style BGZ?
Thanks, count...with Sam Wiley no longer in circulation here, SOMEBODY has to fill the void of the long-winded post, so I'll do my best. :P
Bai He, my stuff is mostly Gao style, with a couple of other influences. I'm kind of a mutt, I guess, since even on top of my teacher's material, my personal expression of the art is also influenced by my heavy SE Asian background as well.
Everybody has their own flavor, that's what it's all about.
Were you learning from Marcus Brinkman?
No, my primary neijia instructor was Li Xian. I only met Marcus this year. I and a student attended one of his Hou Tien classes last Spring and then I, Gary Romel and another student met with him for a semi-private lesson at a local park. I only regret that I wasn't able to call him one of my teachers.
I'd love to meet Mr. Brinkman, I heard he is the goods
as far as IMA goes.
Where is this OKC tounament being held?
Who is hosting it?
The last Krotty tournament in OKC we went to was a joke. The few CMA people who showed got no respect.
Most Karate tournaments ANYWHERE are a joke, it's simply the law of averages. As far as our reception by the Karateka, I'm not really concerned. First, I've been doing my thing long enough not to give two flips about what some 18 yr. old short-timer thinks one way or the other. Second, I seem to remember Machiavelli saying something about how it's better to be feared than respected anyway. ;)
Actually it was better feared than loved. :cool:
Just to avoid giving the wrong impression, I don't intend to go down there and start cleaning house on a bunch of poor defenseless Karateka. The demonstration itself will showcase only those responses of a definite non-lethal nature, given the family-oriented venue. Unfortunately, I won't get the chance to even touch on weapons. :(
We did our neijia demonstration at the tournament today and things went well. Our demo time was excruciatingly short, but sweet. All we had time to do is for Gary to announce to the emcee that we would be demonstrating Taiji and Bagua and then we went for it. We received some very good compliments for our display so apparently the audience liked it. Gary and two of his students also competed in the point sparring tournament. Gary got robbed of quite a few points because he wasn't told that his open-handed strikes wouldn't count as points, no matter how solidly they landed...only closed fists counted. In all, we had a good time and were glad to be introducing CMA to a Karate/TKD crowd.
My only regret is that I didn't get to thump some enlightenment into a couple of CMA detractors. Oh well. :P