A Tale of Two Masters

"Remember this, boy; A real teacher is like real gold. Hard to find, and too valuable to let go of." - Pendekar Herman Suwanda

Shortly before Chris Petrilli left Washington state for Arizona, a popular martial arts “concepts” teacher came by class a couple of times. Here was a man who was highly touted by Master Petrilli, himself a world-class Eskrimador, and we were encouraged to make friends with him. Chris went on and on about how this guy was a master of Wing Chun, Kali, Pentjak Silat, Kenpo, blah, blah, blah. He would approach us at different times during class and say “You should go train with ----, he could help you with your Wing Chun”. This supposed “master” had invented a wooden dummy form, and claimed to have “revolutionized” the martial arts because of it.

I didn’t trust him ON SIGHT. Call it what you want, snap judgment, gut instinct, whatever. Something about this guy smelled wrong, and it blinked in the back of my mind like a small warning light.

Because we would soon be looking for a new instructor, most of us (Chris’ students) tried to get to know this man a little better. Now, until this point, I was still a strict traditional practitioner. If my teachers said it, I would follow without question. My thinking at the time was typical of many martial artists who buy into the mythos of the student-teacher relationship in martial arts.

My eyes were about to be opened.

Chris and the “master” had both spoken about his supposed skills in Wing Chun. There is a saying in Wing Chun that few people know of: “You can talk all you want, there’s no place to hide when the hands cross.” The sticky hands exercise, known as “chi-sao” is a close-contact method of training Wing Chun Kung Fu, and one that I have paid particular attention to in my training. I respectfully asked this “master” if he would roll with me (in Wing Chun, chi sao is often referred to as “rolling” because of the motion the arms make during the exercise) He agreed, and two seconds after we touched hands he sent me into the door with a sucker punch.

Chi sao is easy for that sort of thing, because the unspoken agreement when you touch hands is that you are there to work TECHNIQUE, not to spar. So you leave yourself open on purpose for the sake of the drill. But only an amateur would exploit it. Or someone with something to prove.

I picked myself up & asked him what he was thinking…His reply was pretty sad: “Well, I thought it was important to show you what serious Wing Chun training was about”. The entire class was stunned, they saw how it went down and none of them thought I deserved it.

Later Chris said to me; “He did that for your own good”.

WTF?? My own good? And what good was it? If he was trying to prove that anyone could get in a cheap shot with a trusting person, well, mission accomplished I suppose. Otherwise, all I could see was a oversized jerkoff hiding behind some bullshit rank or another, but no real presence of true skill. I have crossed hands with people like Augustine Fong, Francis Fong and Chung Kwok Chow. None of these world-renowned masters ever saw the need to sucker punch me to prove a point, and I was MUCH more combative with them. But again, because Chris said it was so, I let it go. Although I didn’t trust Captain Steroid, I trusted Chris. But as I would later discover, even the best of intentions can pave a road to Hell.

The last straw came when the “concepts master” showed up in Seattle to do a seminar for us, the decade-long students of Chris Petrilli, as well as Dan Inosanto, Cacoy Canete, Herman Suwanda and many other teachers. Understand this, he was playing to a packed house of advanced martial artists, almost all of whom were specialists in Southeast Asian martial arts. And what insightful, thought-provoking skill did this critically-acclaimed “master” bring with him?

Boxing footwork, off the jab-cross-hook combination. Shuffle forward, shuffle back. Duck-swing-duck. First year baby-deb stuff, and no weapons work at all for a $100 three-hour seminar. To say we felt ripped off was a fucking UNDERSTATEMENT. The teacher who hosted the seminar almost had a mutiny on her hands, and there was serious discussion of demanding our money back. Since she was in the same boat as us (and a Petrilli classmate) we backed off and simply vowed to NEVER give this guy a cent more of our cash.

There were other related incidents, but they are too many to describe. In the end, none of Chris’ student cadre went to this guy, even though he was closer than a lot of others we DID choose to go to. We just couldn’t justify putting up with a mountain of bullshit from a steroid-infected blowhard, when we had been getting quality information from one of the best in the game for years. The scales simply didn’t balance.

This would prove to be the wisest move we unwittingly made, as the supposed “master” Chris had been touting just the previous year was eventually kicked out of the system for screwing him over, the one guy who had promoted him all along. We finally saw the truth of this man, whose web exploits and petty sniping have shown him to be as small and mentally weak as a second grade dropout. He consistently tries to out-shout anything that appears as more advanced than his material (not a difficult job) and if he can’t buy his way into it he publicly decries it as bullshit. Over the years I have had problems with this guy when he runs into his own inadequacies and has to turn elsewhere for answers. He’s emailed me, sent threats against myself and my family, and made a general ass of himself.

In retrospect, I picked up a few hard-learned lessons about what a “master” of martial arts really is, and exactly how much of my time/loyalty/life they are owed. So, lesson learned: A black belt doesn’t mean automatic respect, or trust. A title doesn’t grant skill, and knowledge is no guarantee of actual learning.

So from 2000 until 2007 I continue my training with other teachers while keeping these lessons in my pocket. I never let anyone inside my guard, and was often criticized for not relaxing during a demo or drill. Well, tough luck. Better you than me.

Last spring I attended my first Gathering of the Tribes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It was here that my eyes were once again opened by Maha Guro Brian “Buzz” Smith, of the American Maharlika Kuntaw Association. And what the concepts master had destroyed for me over the last few years, Buzz restored in a few hours.

I met Buzz by accident. I wasn’t planning on going, and only ended up doing so at Mushtaq Ali’s insistence. Thank the Seven Gods I did. Buzz is as far from the typical martial arts master as the Sun is from the Oort Cloud. He taught his session and was all over the place, making himself available to whomever wanted knowledge. I approached him cautiously, and asked small, unassuming questions related to his training, but in a very self-effacing way so as not to arouse suspicion in him.

Buzz took me aside and told me everything I asked about point-blank, with no ego or self-aggrandizement. I was stunned at his willingness to openly share knowledge with me, a complete stranger, and admitted black sheep of the Southeast Asian martial arts community. A recurring phrase I heard from him all that weekend was “Here, let me show you”.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing; He was actually giving away knowledge with no thought about it at all, or acting as if he was bestowing the keys to the friggin’ kingdom on me. His movements were crisp and sharp, and his transition from empty hand to weapon was seamless. We spoke at length for a few hours over the weekend (and many times since) and he has gone a long way in restoring my faith in the true path of a teacher, what one can and should be.

Instead of contrasting our styles to discover how different we are, Buzz is constantly looking for parallels. He’s always pointing out this motion or that technique, a lock or flow that we do that seem related. Buzz looks for the joining of things, not where they swerve apart. His students are taught to think and act for themselves, to look for the keys and motions that make a technique work. I have met a few of them this past year, and they are all a credit to him. Anton, a student of Buzz who was at the Spring 2008 Gathering, was skilled and fluid, and a quick study when he didn’t understand something. This is what a student looks like when his teacher has his best interests at heart.

I have had the distinct pleasure of training with Buzz three times in the past year, and every session is an eye-opener. There is no pretension in Buzz, if you ask for it he delivers. He is not condescending in his methods, if you don’t get what he’s saying he will bend over backwards for you until you do. He doesn’t make you feel small or unintelligent if you have problems understanding, he takes it upon himself to see that you DO.

There are teachers and there are teachers. The master recommended by Chris Petrilli was (and still is) pretty much his own fan club, trumpeting his so-called skill with videos and distance learning programs while denigrating other instructors twice his mettle. Buzz, in comparison, is tucked away in a small town in Michigan, with no advertising agency, Paladin Press videos, or even much of a web presence. But he needs none of this, his skill and technical excellence speaks for itself. He is a soft spoken man, but his art is solid. Few people claim to be his exclusive students, yet nobody leaves his circle empty handed.

So, there is a lesson here for all of you training your hearts out, and doing anything you can to learn from the best you can find: Be careful who you give your arm, your time, or your loyalty to. There are very few who deserve all three, and even less who can lead you to the kind of mastery you seek if you are more than a casual practitioner of a martial art (ANY martial art). Your gut reaction to a person can tell you a lot about them, and that’s important in this practice where you must put your trust and well-being into a strangers’ hands. Respect in the martial arts, like any other place in life, is a two-way street. Anytime it’s not, the scales aren’t balanced and things slide off one end or the other. In other words, someone will suffer at some point, because a lopsided relationship cannot be trimmed without pain of some sort.

But if you find someone who can show you the path without demanding your firstborn in exchange, or reign imperiously over you when you don’t understand something, someone who embodies the picture of what an instructor should look like…Recognize what you have and value it.

Because gold is easy to mimic but impossible to create.