is sifu michael haley(earthdragon) ligit or not

[mantisking]

mantiland,
why is it so hard to understand that sifu michael haley(earth dragon)was and still is a sifu of 8 step preying mantis under me (sifu dean economos). you know who i am and if you forgot just look on www.8step.com under lineage and you will see my name under grand master james shun as a fifth generation. as i said before even though he may or may not be ligitimate i still trained under him for 20 years and michael haley trained under me for 10 years. so where is the problem. we are not a part of your federation anymore. so we are not qualified to teach 8 step in your federatoin anymore. we're still qualified to teach to the rest of the world, just not in your federation. michael was not paying 100 dollars a month in union dues so he is not qualified to teach in your federation anymore. do you understand it now it is not that difficult. sorry for any incovienience this will be the last you hear from me.

[count]

mantisking,
I for one would appreciate hearing from you often on this forum. It would be sad if the rumors about earthdragon are true. If you can track him down, tell him "count" said hi and I hope he's alright. Open minded people are rare around here. Especially with a lifetime of skill to back it up. Most of us who know about the history of 8 step already know the truth when it comes to the lineage, not that it matters when it comes to practice or skill. I agree with you about Mr. Shuyn skills. I just wish more respect was givin to the ones who actually deserve it. Funny thing is, the people I'm talking about couldn't give a shit.

peace!

[Serpent]

Wow, that ego is nearly bursting this thread at the seams.

[KC Elbows]

So, let me get this straight. This teacher didn't teach the guys twenty years ago right, so they can't teach unless they learn it the way he teaches it now, which is right, as opposed to before, which was wrong, and so, because of his error, these other guys shouldn't teach? And of course, everything he teaches is time honored and traditional, except the newer stuff is more time honored and traditional?

John C. Kim keeps his instructor base in line using the exact same idea(of course, that's not what is happening here) : tell them that without him, everything they've learned is nothing, then badmouth them if they leave, and tell everyone they're not qualified to have schools even if they ran whole chains of schools under him. Or more, have his frontline instructors do the badmouthing for him.

Not making any relations between the two, of course.

Doesn't it seem logical to assume that the earlier US students would've been trained more exclusively one on one with the grandmaster, before he had a strong instructor base in the states to teach, and thus the original instructors, in and out of the system, were trained more by him than the present instructors, and at their beginning stages of training: and so if there was a failing in their training, it was that grandmaster's responsibility, and if the grandmaster is the best teacher in the system, then wouldn't logic dictate that newer students who get less time under him get lower quality teaching than those earlier students, in and out of the system, who came up under him when the system was new to the region? Just a little question.

[mantisking]

andy miles,
You really hit the nail on the head KC Elbowes. I promised myself I would leave this alone after what I had to say. I've been reading this forum for 2 years now and this is the first time I contributed something I feel very strongly about. I spent a large part of my life training with Grand Master Shun. For 5 years living in San Francisco, I trained with him 6 days a week 4 hours a day I was his number one student that whole time and I learned a great deal of fighting techniques that he didn't share with anyone else. I was the first and only student to leave the nest and opened the first 8 step school in the East Coast. For your information andy milles there was no federation it was just me and him. I started the federation with him. 75% of the students that teach his version of 8 step and tai chi were my students and my student's students. So without me there would be no federation. Not to say that Master Shun wasn't a big part of the federation he was.
to this day i still have the upmost respect for Master Shun and I still care about him a great deal, but people change and sometimes need to move on, me being one of him. And just for the record I've experinced your new improve sifu trainig program first hand. ?why? because I learned and taught your programs in his school. I was living and teaching in his school for 2 years and I video taped all the levels of the sifu training program. I'm not knocking it, it is a good comercial program for what it is but it isn't the real deal. Ask any senior disiple how my fighting abilities were with the old shell of a system he taught me. I am telling you the truth and there is no reason to lie. I devoted my life to the martial arts so I know what's going on. So keep an open mind when someone with more experience tells you the facts. no disrespect intended.

[Water Dragon]

What happened to Earth Dragon? He was a little goofy sometimes, but he was pretty cool.

[count]

Originally posted by Water Dragon
What happened to Earth Dragon? He was a little goofy sometimes, but he was pretty cool.

Well if that's not the post calling the kettle black.

[Serpent]

Originally posted by mantisking
to this day i still have the upmost respect for Master Shun and I still care about him a great deal, but people change and sometimes need to move on, me being one of him.

I really respect what mantisking is saying here, but I had to point this line out. It just cracked me up!

Me being one of him.

LOL.

WD - there's a rumour floating around the board that Earth Dragon is in jail for selling drugs out of his school. Seems like a hell of far fetched claim to me but no one has yet been able to confirm or deny it.

[baldmantiz]

i thank you for finally contributing after all of this time sifu dean. i was one of sifu mike's students in buffalo and trained with him for 4 years. the other students and i had always hoped you would come to buffalo again to visit the school. i hope the rumors are not true about sifu and would be very surprised if they were. take care,

andrew

[KC Elbows]

Do tkd students benefit from consistency? Because, in my experience, tkd schools are consistently unrealistic, and the realistic ones aren't consistent with the rest, but instead choose effectiveness as their core value.

As for the curriculum, it sounds like it's nothing new to one old member, there's probably others. I'm not sure what made you feel it would be otherwise, but either he was teaching the system before or he wasn't. There is no concievable "oh, I never showed these core parts of the system, but had you teaching".

Anyway, my assertion still stands: no matter what, the early guys had their entire training under the grandmaster, the newer guys didn't, and no level of reorganization will change that. Every move they learned was learned directly from that school's source, not intermediaries who were not considered qualified to run schools outside the organization, if that stance is to be believed.

I've heard that argument before, and it's a logical impasse. If the sifus aren't qualified to teach outside of the main organization, and they taught you, you can't get the same quality lesson as those who learned it all from the grandmaster, whether those students are still in or not, provided they were longtime and serious practitioners. If, however, you take the position that they can because of the organization, you are saying that the instructors still in the schools can move and teach on a par with the grandmaster at some level, and so are qualified to teach without the organization.

One would assume that teachers at any time had a grasp of the fundamentals. Are you saying that those who learned the fundamentals from half trained intermediaries to the grand master will have superior fundamentals to those who learned those fundamentals from the grandmaster himself? How?