IKC 2014

 

The International Karate Championships reached it's 50th anniversary edition this year, and it was based regarding location once again as a tribute in Long Beach, California, the United States. Me and my dad traveled there to participate for our fifth IKC tournament.

Our national Dutch team was pretty large combining the Kenpo Karate schools, and this time, some of us had been given professional clothes to wear during the events happening. As always, the program started with seminars being given by remarkable black belts.

Mohamad Tabatabai, one of my favorites, guided us through the importance of how ground techniques are more relevant than ever with the uprising of Mixed Martial Arts. He advised us not to neglect it, offering an alternative towards thundering hammers while subsequently teaching us mountain side control and other ground movements.

Eddie Downey, an Irish, hold a seminar which was basically about remixing and fluctuating techniques in one flow or another. Bob White did what he does best as always, which is giving us sparring tips using correct kicks and punches while he was accompanied by one of his best pupils; a female who is 6 times champion of our freestyle competition.

After lunch I was introduced to Mike Stone, who was the very first IKC champion from way back in 1964. He had a 91-0 winning strike at one point, and now 50 years later, he teached us his philosophical standpoint about believing in yourself with everything in life in order to accomplish success.

At first, I was impressed by his life story, but the more I thought about it, the less I could uphold his philosophy much longer. Nevertheless, I was impressed by his willpower and some other points he made about living life right now in this moment, energy and love. Unusual seminar, but I was listening.

Norman Sandler is another regular and a well liked master who gave us extended looks at circling wing and twirling wings this time, while concluding the seminar with the statement that you should never get choked in any situation. I believe it was this session where he grabbed my hand and turned and twisted it in a very painful effective way.

Zach Whitson, who I previously attended in Utrecht 2012, had a difficult seminar surrounding effective grapple movements, as well as showing of Filipino martial arts with knives. Grapple techniques can look confusing at first, but it's simply a matter of remembering how to use your hands in various ways.

The next day, I attended seminars of Jeff Speakman, Steve LaBounty, Barney Coleman and Mike Pick, while getting two more lessons from Sandler and Tabatabai as well, although different in content. All of them had different teachings to share.

My favorite seminar out of them all turned out to be LaBounty's, for his content was about body contact, and many close up movements were present using wrestling techniques as well as parting wings.

Mike Pick, a 10th degree grandmaster of American Kenpo, had a very scientific way of approaching the art using physics, consciousness and calculations, while simultaneously keeping it philosophical as well, and he has been training for over 40 years. He was by far speaking the most intellectual out of all masters in my opinion.

Jeff Speakman has been addressing and promoting his Kenpo 5.0 system for years, but this time, he introduced to us version 5.05, which is an evolution of Kenpo and Jiujitsu groundwork. Similar to Tabatabai, he strongly suggests that our martial arts must go with the times and change for the better in order to be able to combat ground experts in the future.

Barney Coleman was another Irish with a very hard to understand way of speaking, but at the same time it felt authentic somehow too. His content turned out to be the most dissapointing and bland, but I did like how he continued to repeat his "Huaaaa" warcry to us all the time.

After these two seminar days, the tournament was about to happen as always, but before that, I attended the special Friday Night Line event, where many regular black belts would perform techniques on each other.

There was 1 black belt that stood out from the others, and his name was Glenn I believe, a tall black man who had a contagious laugh that everyone in the ball room seemed to notice. What a passionate and happy go lucky man he seemed to be!

The tournament was split up into two days. My team participated at both days, getting a lot of medaillons, while I only performed with freestyle sparring individually on sunday, getting no rewards. Still, I enjoyed that moment, and I liked the ambience of not only seeing Kenpo Karate in action, but several other martial arts as well such as Muay Thai.

While I enjoyed the program of IKC 2014, this time, the organisation behind it was more terrible than ever to be frank. Many schedules were uncertain in location, time or other ways, there was no tournament opening, my workshop tickets were only controlled once, and a spontaneous meet & greet and a few other events suddenly happened.

As far as I know, no prominent speech was given towards the history of the range or memorable moments of the IKC's itself, and it just was all so uncertain in general. No mention of Ed Parker either, atleast during the Luau dinner or any other event I was present.

This seriously hurt our experience on a background scale, and now we aren't so sure if we would return for another edition if this is organized the same way. Still, it was a historic tournament anyway, and I am glad to have participated and experienced it while seeing old and new friends come together under American Kenpo Karate. I was greeted by masters White, Tabatabai and Sandler, which felt great, while I greeted another legend Bob Liles, whom I have all met of course at earlier tournaments.

And I got the chance to meet Benny "the Jet" Urquidez, who is an astonishing and well respected master of martial arts. I also loved his scenes in both movies starring Jackie Chan as well, and his latest book was very interesting to read. You can expect a review of that soon enough.