Originally Posted by
Judge Pen
I started training under him in 2000. I had obtained my first degree in Virginia from another teacher, quit training once that teacher died and while I was in law school, and found his eldest son was teaching close to where I lived, so I went to his class. As a result, I came under the Mullins' teaching through my 4th degree when I got burnt out and stopped training due to time constraints and nagging injuries.
I don't know all the dirty laundry in the system and what happened with Mullins before I started training with him, but I can comment on my experiences with him while I trained with him. In my opinion, he is a very talented martial artist. He doesn't ask his students to do anything that he can't do himself. He works as hard as any person I've seen in his training. He always had the utmost respect for Sin The. Before all this happened with the Soards I even heard him tell a student that was moving west to luck up a school under the Soards. When I came along, there was tension between most of the schools under Master Leonard and Master Mullins with a lot of it being Mullins' decision to stop wearing gis. I know that there was a difference of opinion between Mullins and Leonard about a lot of things, but I never heard Mullins disparage Leonard's ability as a martial artist. There was respect in that aspect of their relationship.
Having said all of that, Mullins is a human like the rest of us, and there were things I heard or saw that I didn't agree with, but it was not the stuff that you describe. Sure he has an ego, we all do to one degree or another, but it was not unreasonable. He was also very humble and complimentary of his contemporaries. He was not greedy and while he taught for a living, he did not force students to take extra classes to advance or regularly teach seminars or "festival forms" for extra money. The teaching of extra material in a seminar was rare.
As far as how he treated his students, he was an excellent teacher and always appropriate. There were several female students in his class, or the classes of his sons, and I was friends with most of them and I never saw anything inappropriate or heard of it from any student.
"themindreader" I'm not trying to debate you or discredit anything you have posted, because I was not part of the system, or a student of Master Mullins, at that time. I have a different understanding of the Van Over situation, but all I know is second-hand. Even if everything you said is true, who you describe is not the teacher I knew and trained under for over 9 years. If he was the person you describe, then he has grown as a person. Lord knows I would hate for my youthful indiscretions to follow me forever.
I honestly believe that Master Mullins is one of the best teachers in the system and I probably wouldn't have stayed as long as I did but for him and his sons teaching and martial abilities.
I wonder who "themindreader" is and what his agenda is? Anonymity is one's right on a forum I suppose, but it always makes one's opinions and motivations suspect.