Al Colangelo? Insta-internal? Take any UFC fighter?

[ewallace]

check your p/m Gary.

[gazza99]

Al,
As you probably already know many questions are being asked about you at www.kungfuonline.com . Apparently your alledged V.P of Marketing (Tom Marsh) is there severely damaging your credibility. He has said you do not train women in a very vulger manner, made various threats, insults, and provides no fact, and does not answer serious questions. If you would please visit the main discussion forum and enlighten us all.

If not here are some highlights and quotes from your Marketing rep. that may come back to haunt you. Im sure the local womens rights groups would love to hear the second quote!


""Don't start preaching now boys, it's wayyyy past that time. Time's acoming for the proof and you gotta pay the fiddler, eh? We'll find out what you really are made of..."- Tom Marsh

""Hey, we don't deal with chicks, so your being full of ****, is self-explanatory. And to sign up? Since no balls, better stay with
Barbie Dolls, this stuff is way over your head, huh?"- Tom Marsh Marketing V.P-mindboxing .com

other quotes-
"Anyway, without answers to the original questions and, at this point, without reparatory explanations and apologies from Kungfu Bandit, I will have to assume that Mr. Colangelo's entire operation is tainted with fraud"



"I decided to bite the bullet and order one of his videos. The material was okay, but nothing groundbreakind and definetly overpriced. Nothing that would turn one into an unstoppable fighting machine as they would have you believe. You know the old cliche "fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me". I'm certaintly not going to buy anymore from him"



"I honestly don't know how ppl like Colangelo can sleep at night knowing that there are poor unfortunate souls out there desparate enough to believe his advertising and potentially putting their own lives at risk because of it."

"please thank Al for bringing all of us KFO posters together, from Knifefighter to you Gary we all agree on something."

[gfhegel21]

This thread is really, really funny. I love how "Tom" keeps relating to us what "Al" has told him to do. Talk about sounding schizophrenic.

I would say this. You guys have probably noted the increasingly threatening tones this guy is using. If he is mentally unstable, I would be wary of meeting with him on anything other than neutral grounds.

That mindboxing web site is ****ing hilarious. Did you see the pictures of Al at the Indonesian web site in DC? He poses with the doorman in several of them, and adopts some sort of pseudo-martial stance out in front of the joint. Most of the Indonesians in the joint seem to be looking at him like he's a drifter or madman or something.

It's exceedingly unlikely anybody will succeed in meeting with this fool, but I certainly hope a meeting happens and posts the results here.

This guy belongs right in there with Rich "biker" Mooney. Notice how the pattern is the same? Attempts to appear reasonable, followed by angry, incoherent and vaguely threatening responses, followed by posts by alternate identities (in Al's case, these bogue testimonials, in Rich's case, his "napoleon duarte" identity).

And I love the part where he talks about "thousands served" (i.e., the notion that there are thousands of people enrolled in his mindboxing crappola). I figure it's pretty much just Al, a couple of friends, and a P.O. box running this whole mindboxing scam.

[gfhegel21]

The claims on his site really remind me of those comic book adds a la Count Dante. What's sad is that the "count" could more or less back up his claims, being, evidently, a decent fighter (not to mention hair stylist and criminal).

We've got the following:
Ashida Kim (flamboyant, egomaniac and paranoid freak, starring in his own porn videos--see "Amorous Adventures of Ashida Kim")
Rich "biker" Mooney (at least he never claimed you could learn his magical tricks in one or two hours)
John "Count Dante" Keenan (who was a fighter at least)
Al "mind boxing" Colostomybag

Anybody I forgot?

[MonkeySlap Too]

John C Kim - "Champion of ALL Asia" Criminal, con artist, and cult leader.

THe only difference is I'd bet everyone on that list could beat up John C Kim.

[gfhegel21]

Ah yes, Iron "seven story" Kim. Thank you for reminding me.

And I forgot,
soke Harley "sexual shockra" Swiftdeer, huckster extraordinaire.
See http://www.ten-no-kishi.com/sokes-lineage.htm for details (don't let this relatively inocuous page fool you--this guy is all about getting together for group vaginal massages, see http://www.tantra.com/energy.html and especially http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issue...l/1/index.html)

Also,
Rod "I will roshambo you for it" Sacharnoski
Grandmaster Irving Soto

[gazza99]

This one is funny, I dont know who should hate him more, the Neijia communtiy, or the MMA community?

"I had a few words with Mr. Colangelo a couple of years ago. He had on his website that his practitioners had defeated a Machado black belt in a street fight. I called and asked which Machado BB it was (there are only like 10). He wouldn't say.

When I told him to take the reference off his web page he threatened me a few times and promised to send some of his Samoan mafia friends to my house to let me "experience mindboxing for real". Then he started calling me up everyday on conference calls with his students from around the country where they would tell me how great mindboxing was and how it was "just like cocaine".

I gave him my address and he promised to send his representatives in Houston, TX to come see me. I offered to go see them, but he never would give me their school address. He eventually took the Machado reference off his website."



Gary

[Hai_To]

Has anyone checked out his forum?

Mindboxing Forum

There are 581 posts. Just about all of the posts are by the same person. I flipped through the list of posts (because I'm bored at lunch), and all but three were by the same poster. That is scary.

[gazza99]

Thats Al posting, its a newsletter forum apparently.

[Hai_To]

Looking at that forum makes me think the man may be a little obsessive.

[Chris McKinley]

I've just had the opportunity to review the Multiple Attackers videotape by Al Colangelo recently. I thought it might shed some light on the current slow-motion demise of his credibility taking place in this forum. Before I get to it, it should be noted by potential customers that this tape is in no way an instructional video, even though that fact is not revealed in the advertising on Al's website. It is, in fact, a 1 & ½ to 2 hour long infomercial for the Al Colangelo system of combat. This of course begs at least 2 questions: 1) why is the consumer asked to spend $60 merely to see an ad for Al's material? This brings to mind the term "chutzpah". 2) Let's assume I'm a completely naïve consumer with no martial arts experience and, for whatever reasons, I'm absolutely sold on the Al Colangelo system....lock, stock & barrel. Now what do I do? I have just ordered, purchased and received what I thought was Al's method for dealing with multiple attackers only to find out that it's an AD for Al's method for dealing with multiple attackers. At what layer of purchasing do I actually receive the "how-to", the instructional portion of the system? There are three other videos that Al sells....are they too further advertisements for Al's methods?

To make what was originally a very long post substantially shorter, I'll cut right to the chase and reveal what Al touts as the Dim-Mak Poison Hand Death Touch Iron Palm (a confusing if not contradictory title at best that attempts to fuse Taoist and Buddhist unrelated concepts together). Here it comes folks, drum roll please......it's a friggin' basic flat hand, cupping palm strike from Baguazhang delivered in a diagonal forehand manner with the right hand exclusively. Not that it really matters, but it's executed from a Tiger posture, which in Al's case means a crude typical bow stance with the weight on the front leg and the strike delivered with the opposite side hand.

Now, quite literally, this is something I teach to my brand new beginner students of Baguazhang on either the first or second day of their training. Is it because I too, like Al, believe that genuine internal striking ability can be taught/learned in a matter of hours instead of years? Well, no.....not exactly. Real neijia skill still takes dedicated effort over time, typically many years. I teach that strike so early in a student's training because there simply isn't much of anything more simple or basic that I could teach them. The move is hardly the pinnacle of advanced internal skill that Al hypes it to be. There are only two differences between what Al does throughout this tape as Iron Palm and what I teach my new students: 1) Al does use a little bit of anjing, which to those unfamiliar with neijia concepts, means an expression of wavelike energy. "Follow through", to put it oversimply, though in Al's case, a more sophisticated definition is not called for. 2) I teach my students a helluva lot better structure and mechanics than anything Al displays anywhere on this tape. For someone claiming to be an internal artist capable of reproducing his skill in others in mere hours, his internal structure.......hmm, what's the appropriate word........ah, yes........sucks.

For the first ½ to 2/3 of the tape, we are shown repeated demonstrations of the same basic "attack" on Al by the three grapplers. What this means is that the three line up facing Al and each, in turn, one at a time, advances on Al at a moderate speed. Al delivers the basic Bagua palm strike to the head or shoulders of each grappler, causing the man to list ever so slightly to one side in reaction to the blow. After the strike, the grappler continues moving away from Al in order to give the next man in line the opportunity to approach Al and be "taken out". Now, maybe it's just me, but I've actually taken out an opponent on more than one occasion and, to a man, they were rendered at the very least unable to prosecute the attack further, if not worse. Maybe my definition of the phrase is a little different than Al's though. We do get to see one major variation on this pattern of attack. That is, each grappler approaches Al as before, only this time holding a large Thai-style pad which Al strikes. This is apparently to prove that even through a heavy pad, Al's strikes will still "take out" three grapplers.

Still, after all this, it's somehow hard to be mad at all the demonstrated nonsense. Sure, the "grapplers" were merely big men demonstrating not even a shred of high school level grappling skill. Sure, they "attacked" Al one at a time instead of all at once. Sure, they not only weren't taken out, they could have easily continued their attacks as if they hadn't been struck at all. Sure, they wildly exaggerated the effects of Al's blows in each series of testimonials with comments like, "if it can stop me, it can stop anybody". Yet....through all this, there's a certain something about the whole mess, maybe just about Al himself. If nothing else, his infectious enthusiasm for what he's doing makes it hard to be mad at him about the fraudulence of it all, like a new puppy adopting a wounded look when you scold him for chewing up your shoe.

Al treats his discovery of one of the most basic palm strikes of Baguazhang with such genuine giddy enthusiasm that it reminds you of a young child finding a brand new training-wheel special under the tree on Christmas morning and declaring, "Wow! Gee, Mom & Dad....this is the most fastest bike in the whole world!" In other words, watching Al is kind of cute, albeit in a somewhat nauseating way.

So there you go, folks. I've let the martial arts magic bullet cat out of the bag now. You can all collectively end your current memberships, sell your uniforms, and quit training in whatever obviously inferior methods you have currently been employing and march on down to Al's place to sign up. Line forms on the right. Do remember though, Al isn't doing it for the money....he's quite particular about whose money he'll take in exchange for video advertisements. He only wants YOU, not just anybody.

In the interest of fairness and perspective, I should mention that under most circumstances, I normally do not take the time to call out or otherwise debunk those I've run across in my 27 years of martial arts experience whom I consider to be suspect or outright frauds. I have normally neither the time nor the interest to do so. Like everyone else who takes this stuff seriously, there's too much training to be done. What makes this particular occasion different is not the goofiness of the material reviewed thus far. That was merely entertaining enough to share. What to my mind justifies the public commentary is a short little portion near the very end of the tape in which Al demonstrates his methods for going empty hand against a knife-wielding and then a short club-wielding assailant. A method which he claims will allow the practitioner to not be touched by the weapon. As "proof" of this, he uses the age old demonstration of having the attacker come at the defender with a magic marker, a method used to safely illustrate just how many times a defender might be cut during a typical knife attack.

Despite the fact that we are never clearly shown how much or how little the defender got marked up during the mock attack, the real problem I had with the material shown is that the next person who attempts it in a real knife attack will likely be killed. The attacks shown were woefully unrealistic, with the knifer attempting only one or two strikes or cuts over the span of about 5 seconds, and with those attacks swinging short of the target anyway. For those of you who do any realistic knife training or who, like me, have faced a blade in a real-life encounter, you know the utter fallacy of Al's presented scenario. It is precisely because I have been there that I take exception with Al Colangelo's material as shown on this videotape enough to write such a lengthy post. It is my opinion that the material shown (if not ever actually taught) on this tape is potentially dangerous and even life-threatening to students who may attempt to use it to save their own lives in a real street attack involving a knife. If not for this section, I could easily have ignored the overhyped silliness on the rest of the tape. Caveat emptor, my friends.

[txwingchun]

Thanks for the review of Al's infomercial tape. It's a shame that people buy this garbage without knowing any better thinking it's legit. Al needs a good old fashion A N AL fisting.

[Mojo]

Here is a short segmant from one of Al's video series on womens self defense and also how to deal with knife attacks.

www.jkd-kbh.dk/video/karate.wmv


Judge for yourself !

[gazza99]

Nice post Chris, Ill be quoting that one in my next and last email attempt to AL, the knife thing just puts it over the top, its criminal.
Funny clip Mojo!

To our great suprise Al hasnt emailed me back since I called him out on everything. Perhaps a few of you should send in your comments! His email is EAGLEPROT@aol.com

Gary

[ewallace]

Nor have I received anymore emails from "Tom" about flying up to Maryland since the first couple of emails Saturday night.