Memoirs of a Karate Fighter (5 page)

I was first in the changing room, so I could strap myself up without anyone seeing. After five minutes of light exercises I could feel the bandages loosen and imagined them unravelling altogether during the lesson. I took them off again and waited to see what Clinton would bring me.

Three or four guys had got changed and ambled into the
dojo
before Clinton arrived. I figured I would now have to put on whatever he had brought in the privacy of the solitary toilet cubicle. “So,” I said expectantly, “what have you got?”

He rummaged through his kit bag and my anticipation was heightened with every drawn out second it took for him to find what he had brought me. Finally, he thrust something into my hands. It was not as if I had not seen one before, but it still took some time for me to actually work out that Clinton had brought me a bra to wear. I was about to let out a torrent of abuse as he said, “No joke, Ralph, that's what it's designed for. Just put the foam in the titty bags.” The sounds of someone approaching had me rushing over and stuffing the bra back into his bag. Weaknesses of the physical sort were not the only ones to be unmercifully exploited at the YMCA; our friend Leslie was a master of finding out some embarrassing fact and then using it as a part of his version of Chinese water torture. I had seen and heard how he had driven grown men to the verge of tears with his constant taunting. Part of me was convinced that Clinton was not serious and that he was making a point about how stupid I was for thinking that I could train with such an injury.
If it was ever discovered that I had worn a bra, in any circumstance, I would have had to move town, never mind karate club!

A couple of guys dropped their bags and headed into the
dojo
before I let Clinton know that I did not appreciate his insane offer. “Insane?” he said. “Do you mean more insane than a guy with a broken chest thinking he can train here, of all places? Ralph, buck up your ideas and at least tell Eddie about it and that you can't do any sparring for a while.”

I was about to remind Clinton that he was not to mention my injury when Trog walked in from the direction of the toilet cubicle. He greeted us with a broad grin and I immediately worried that he had overheard what Clinton and I were talking about. I decided there and then that I would have to take my chances and train without any protective padding on my chest.

The first hour of training was as strenuous as usual but my chest had not given me any serious trouble. Stretching was followed by the two bows to signal the beginning of the lesson proper. Any latecomers were allowed to train, after a penalty of fifty press-ups on the knuckles, provided they got to the
dojo
during the preliminary exercises and before the call of “
Sensei ni rei
!”

One of the secrets of the YMCA's success was the manner in which the students were taught how to apply the techniques they learnt while moving up and down the hall in lines. In traditional Wado Ryu karate there are a number of graduated sequences of prearranged fighting techniques that Hironori Ohtsuka had devised.
Yakusoku
(sometimes called
kihon
)
kumite
involves an attacker and defender in a series of techniques which teaches the basic principles of Wado:
irimi
(entering);
kawashi
(avoiding);
nogare
(escaping);
nagashi
(sweeping away); and
taisabaki
(body control). Many similar techniques and footwork are found in other martial arts such as kendo and aikido and I had witnessed some of those principles put into devastating effect when Jerome had disarmed the huge man with the knife. Tatsuo Suzuki then developed
ohyo gumite,
(semi-free fighting) in which the techniques are more like actual fighting but again both attack and defence are prearranged. Eddie Cox and his fellow senseis developed this further with several forms of sparring in which the attacks were prearranged but the methods of
defence could be a choice of two or three techniques. A prearranged attack would be countered with a technique of the defenders' choice; and then the free exchange of techniques in a controlled fashion that was called ‘slow-sparring'. Slow-sparring involved the execution of techniques at less than full speed but this was something of a misnomer when practised by the senior grades. To the untrained eye it still can look very fast when performed by black belts as their eyes and reactions have become so attuned to the movements of the
karateka
in front of them. In one celebrated case a TV crew had turned up to film Jerome Atkinson and Declan Byrne after the former had become the world heavyweight all-styles champion. Dutifully, the pair slow-sparred, but the film crew said their kicks and punches were just too fast. They slowed their techniques but it was not until the fifth take that the cameraman was happy – mostly because Declan Byrne had hit the hard concrete floor so many times in the previous four takes that he could hardly move during the final attempt to get it right.

Cox sensei ordered us to make two lines that faced each other. One side would attack in any way it wished while the other defended – but this time no blocks were allowed and only punches could be used as a counterattack. I paired off with Clinton first and did the attacking. He was back on form and slipped and avoided everything I threw at him before he came back with a flurry of light punches to my head and body. I had my go as the defender until the sensei called out for us to change partners, and I looked up from tidying my
gi
to see that my new partner was Trog.

As usual, Trog had a smirk on his face. For a man with such a broad and powerful build he was very fast and flexible and was known for his
mawashigeri
(roundhouse kick) to the head. In a change from his ordinary tactics, most of his attacks were aimed at my body, so I countered with a punch to his head called
nagashizuki
, a front hand technique which is thrown while one swivels the body to avoid an attack. Even though he was not managing to hit me, I could see just how much force he was putting behind his kicks, but I saw this as nothing unusual as we were often reminded of Takamizawa's adage of being cruel to be kind whilst training. It was not until we had swapped roles that I realized what Trog's smirk was all about. As I attacked he concentrated on throwing punches
to my body, even though I was purposely covering up and leaving my head unguarded. He must have heard Clinton and me discussing my injury when we were in the dressing room. We were often told that when facing an opponent there were two emotions that we had to overcome: our own fear and our own anger, as both can make the muscles stiff and less efficient. I let anger get the better of me and started to attack with even more venom. This was a big mistake as one of the principles of Wado Ryu karate is to make use of an attacker's own power and strength against him. The harder I attacked Trog, the harder his blows were smacking against the damp flesh of my forearms. But I could not stop myself; with each attack I applied as much force as I could muster while I gave out a loud
kiai
. He came back with counters accompanied by his own
kiais
; and in this case he who was shouting last was shouting loudest. As it had to do, one of his blows finally got through; I could feel his largest knuckle sink in between two of my ribs – but the pain seemed to travel along my bones and converge at my sternum. I moved back to a starting position and realized I was in a predicament, mostly of my own making. If I let up in my attacks, Trog would sense it and claim a moral victory, but if I continued to attack with the same intensity – and he hit me again – then I doubted if there was any way that I could remain on my feet, and his victory would be complete. Hell, I thought, I'm not backing off. This time using the painful lesson I had learned from Jerome, I threw a feint before launching a kick. Trog took the bait but was not as committed to a counterattack as I had been, therefore when the ball of my foot hit his chest he went over onto his back. The results may have looked more spectacular than when Jerome had kicked me – but in falling backwards Trog had taken part of the sting out of the
maegeri
. Whatever else Trog was, he was a fighter and was quickly on his feet to rush at me with a combination of punches that had me scrambling backwards. I managed to parry every punch – except for the last one. It was not as hard as the one to my ribs but the punch that landed just below my collarbone had my eyes watering. I thought I had made a good job of disguising my yelp of pain as a kiai but it brought me to the attention of the sensei. He watched me attack another two times; I was trying as hard as I could but all strength had drained from me and I could feel myself weakening even though Trog's punches were missing or hitting my arms.

After the final bow Eddie Cox called me to one side and delivered the devastating news that he was ordering me to stop training for a while. I protested, but he was insistent. “Ralph,” he said, “there's no way I'm letting you train with that sort of injury. I was watching you all the lesson and you're only doing yourself more harm than good. Do a little light stretching at home but you are not training here for two weeks.”

I went and got changed; too upset to talk to anyone, especially Clinton, before I headed for home. I was feeling betrayed as well as hurt.

BY SEVEN-THIRTY the factory had wound down; its heavy machinery was now at rest. The slumbering giants would not be roused again until the morning. Everything would remain still except for the occasional shadowy figure of a maintenance worker clambering over the huge presses. Oil can in hand, he would lubricate the bearings that were impossible to get at while the gargantuan machines were in use. The workers who operated these mechanical brutes were mainly immigrants from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent. They seemed to know little, and care even less, about the hazards associated with such occupations; despite its perilous nature, the work provided an opportunity to escape from a poverty-stricken life.

When I had first encountered these machines, as a boy straight from school, I was absolutely terrified of them. The department known as the stamp shop was hot, dirty, noisy and dangerous; it was a part of the factory that I thought was very close to hell on earth. It was at this time that my feelings towards my father changed from one of adolescent resentment to a grudging respect. I knew he worked in conditions similar to those I had seen in the stamp shop but up until that point I had not appreciated the sacrifices he had made for his family. He had put food on the table, and with my mother had established some sort of foundation
on which my sisters and I could build our lives.

The machine Mick had been working on still refused to work in the correct sequence. He told the rest of the crew what was wrong, but clueless and bored, most of us just nodded and hummed as though we were trying to think of a solution.

However, I was thinking more about the training sessions I had to miss. The more I thought about it, the more I convinced myself that someone had told the sensei about my injury so as to sabotage my chances of fighting in the first team at the British Clubs' championships. But my ambitions were not going to be foiled so easily. During the day, Mick and I had sneaked into a deserted area at the rear of the factory to practise combinations of kicks and punches amongst the old disused machinery. I still felt some discomfort in my breastbone, but Mick was no Trog: we always kept the techniques light as we were aware that we had to be in a fit state to continue with our work.

As the debate about what was wrong with the machine became more heated, I simply wanted to lay down my tools and get to the YMCA so as to keep an eye on those I figured were my rivals; yet I knew this would have been unacceptable. There was an unwritten rule amongst the maintenance workers that meant we stuck together as a team until a job was finished. But the team's frustration had begun to wear away our solidarity. The mechanics blamed the electrical circuitry and the electricians blamed the mechanical sensors. It was reaching the point where everyone working on the problem began to fear that we might be there for the night. But, thankfully, the maintenance engineer in charge of the whole department finally got the thing going after a bit of nimble finger work. We were too mentally exhausted to cheer.

On the way out I threw a slow, playful
gyakuzuki
at Mick and he blocked it with
soto uke
. “Shouldn't you be training tonight?” he asked, immediately sobering my mood.

I told him that I would not make it to the
dojo
in time and he asked if I wanted to go to his place for a little training and a bite to eat. Training was always preferable to watching.

Mick's standard of fighting was nowhere near the level of what would be found at the YMCA, but what he lacked in ability he more than made up for in determination. Once we got to his house he suggested that
we went for a run to warm up. Such was my competitive streak that I did not like to refuse. I had the reputation of the YMCA to uphold, which banished all thoughts of my sternum, and before long I was out with Mick pounding the damp streets. Every now and again he would halt and have us doing press-ups on our knuckles before resuming our run. Despite being firm friends, we still felt the need to prove ourselves to one another, or perhaps we were trying to prove which one of us practised the better style of karate.

Our attitudes had their origins in what had happened in Japan when Ohtsuka left Funakoshi to set up his own school many years before either of us was born; it had been akin to a religious schism and its legacy was an attitude that was very similar in nature to sectarian bigotry. In the early days, when the YMCA had travelled to the north of England to enter tournaments organized by Shotokan groups, the team had often fallen victim to unfair refereeing. For a time Shotokan officials would not recognize a roundhouse kick unless it was delivered with the ball of the foot (in Wado Ryu it is normally the top of the foot that does the striking) or a
uraken
(back-fist) strike which sometimes would be thrown in competition rather than a punch in order to cut down the risk of injury to an opponent's face. When up against that sort of officiating some unfortunate competitor normally ended up getting hurt as a frustrated YMCA team member was compelled to give a demonstration of the real power in his kick, or punch. But the YMCA persevered and continued to enter Shotokan tournaments because they liked the spirit for which Shotokan competitors were renowned, and had an attitude which made them the least likely to roll around the mat feigning an injury to secure a win. Luckily for the YMCA fighters there were referees like Terry O'Neill and Steve Cattle amongst the officials. They were genuinely very tough Shotokan men who had competed – and triumphed – in all-styles competitions at an international level and had honed their skills on nightclub doors in the rougher parts of Liverpool. Perhaps it was their confidence in their own abilities that meant that they did not display the partisanship that bedevilled so many karate competitions. Men like O'Neill, Cattle and the great Kanazawa recognized those who were like themselves – true fighting men – and when refereeing a match involving YMCA and Shotokan fighters they always officiated with absolute impartiality.

I was not hung up about styles; I had fought and sometimes lost to fighters from other schools of karate. One of my more memorable fights was a great scrap which I lost to a Shotokan international fighter named Ronnie Christopher, and I took such experiences with as much good grace as I could muster. In fact, like the rest of the YMCA team, I respected individuals who had given me a good fight rather than any particular style or club. When I had enrolled at the YMCA, I had been unaware of the existence of more than one type of karate; like the vast majority of beginners I had no idea about Wado Ryu, Shotokan, Goju Ryu, Kyokushinkai and the rest. But Mick liked to talk up Shotokan's many strong points and had often dropped a hint about coming to the YMCA to train. It was my concern for his safety (rather than any criticism of Shotokan) that made me point out what I saw as a flaw in a movement or technique that would be mercilessly exploited by the majority of my clubmates. They did, after all, have something of a track record of beating Shotokan fighters who were a little more proficient than Mick. I did not know whether what I saw in his technique was down to Mick personally, or his style, but it made me make up all sorts of excuses about why he could not accompany me to the
dojo
.

Following our third set of press-ups on the wet road I felt something go ‘ping' in my chest. It did not hurt that much but I took it as a warning sign and suggested to Mick that we head back to his place, preferably at walking pace. Mick could not help but show that he thought he had scored a point. “Maybe I'm practising some inferior style, Mick,” I said sarcastically and he laughed loudly as though I had read his mind.

As boxers had found out long before, it can be detrimental to one's performance to continue training at the same intensity right up until the day of a tournament. While the sort of training I was doing with Mick was great for building stamina and spirit, it was a little too intense for me in the run-up to a major championship. Before an important competition the club's six-mile runs on Sunday mornings would cease in favour of a one-mile jog, and the hour's training in the park would be replaced with twenty minutes of stretching. Very strenuous training carried the risk of injury and in the period just prior to an event the YMCA team concentrated on speed, technique and sharpening the mind and reflexes.

There was a heavy punch bag hanging in Mick's garage but I resisted
the urge to use it as it was as hard as concrete. Instead, I had Mick attack me with a few of the techniques commonly used in competition. To the dissatisfaction of many
karateka
, the rules were becoming increasingly restrictive because of safety concerns (as a result of a few deaths and very serious injuries during competitions) and also a hope that karate might one day be accepted as a replacement for boxing as an Olympic sport: apparently, members of the IOC were not keen on the sight of blood. Therefore, it was with some confidence that I could ask Mick to use no more than a half-a-dozen different moves, knowing that they would represent the majority of techniques I would come up against at the British championships. We spent the next two hours going to and fro and analyzing the effectiveness of particular tactics. My chest hardly hurt at all but the pace of training in Mick's garage could not compare with that which was customary in the
dojo
. When we had finished in his garage we had something to eat while watching a kung fu video and debating if any of what we were watching would work in real life.

“Maybe after the championships you might ask Eddie if it's all right if I did some training at your club,” Mick said, as I was leaving. I had lost count of how many times he had said something similar to me and I was running out of excuses. “Maybe,” I replied, “some time after the championships.” His face brightened, but while walking away I said to myself that for his sake, it would be a very long time yet.

Clinton called on me and I asked him outright if he had ‘grassed' on me. He vehemently denied doing any such thing. “Don't think you can take Cox for a fool,” he said. “It wouldn't take a genius to work out there's
something
up with you. And I hope you're not training with your mate at work, Ralph. You've got to ease up and in some ways that's going to take more strength than you carrying on training. Rest and you've got some chance of fighting at the championships, carry on with what you're doing and you're letting everyone down, because there's no way you'll be fit.”

He had played the loyalty card very well. To be British all-styles clubs' champions would mean a great deal to the YMCA because all the best teams from other styles and governing bodies would be competing, and it would settle any remaining arguments about which was the top club in the
whole of Britain. In its travels the YMCA had triumphed over most of them already but this was an event in which the opponents would be consistently of the highest calibre; there would be no easy matches and every one of us had to be at our best. “Yeah,” I finally conceded, “you're right. I guess I'm being a bit selfish.”

“Stupid was the word I was thinking of,” he said.

“Hey,” I said, “try and be a bit more graceful in victory.”

Before he left, I confirmed the arrangements for our Friday visit to the nightclub. As usual, I would be picking up Clinton and Leslie on the way to the Rising Star but this time there would be another two, more attractive, passengers also hitching a ride.

It had taken half a can of WD-40 to get my old car to start. The Hillman Avenger, never reliable in the cold or damp, had once again caused me to let out a string of curses which only ceased when the engine finally roared into life. Grim-faced, Clinton was sitting on his doorstep waiting for me. “You're late,” he said.

I was still annoyed about the car's starting problems. “I know, I can tell the time,” I replied, irritated that he would grumble, considering I was the one who had decided to bring him along, despite Leslie's protests. Three minutes later I turned the car into a quiet residential area and Leslie was out at the first beep of the horn. He slid onto the front seat of my car, wearing his trademark sly smile and exchanged greetings with me, but he ignored Clinton. After a short distance I drove into the car park of a tower block, not unlike the one in which I now lived. Leslie seemed more energized than usual and ran to the intercom at the flats' entrance. After the briefest of discussions he returned to us with a wide grin that made me feel uneasy. “The two of them will be down in a minute,” he said, as he retook his seat.

“Only two? What am I going to do?” asked Clinton.

“Not my problem,” said Leslie. “I wasn't the one who asked you to come out with us in the first place. You and Ralph can share, or you can get out and get yourself a life.”

I gritted my teeth: Leslie's harsh remark was more evidence that what remained of our childhood gang was fracturing still further. My cousin
Trevor and a couple of his friends were the first to fall away as four of us joined the YMCA; they had neither the inclination nor the necessary discipline to subject themselves to the harshness of karate training. Cousin Errol kept at it for a while but at green belt stage he discovered he liked cars and girls a lot more than being kicked and punched.

A rap on my window broke my thoughts and I was surprised to be confronted by a very voluptuous figure straining the seams of a very skimpy garment. Leslie laughed and opened his door before he tilted his seat forward and offered a hand to the two women who clambered onto the backseat alongside a bemused and wide-eyed Clinton. “This is Ruth,” said Leslie, as the bigger of the two got in. She stood at least six inches taller than Leslie. Her friend was small in comparison; it was the first time I had laid eyes on her but she made an immediate impact. Her tight white dress hugged her body and contrasted with her cool dark skin. The long, braided hair complimented her angelic face. “And this is Cleo,” Leslie added, before he retook his seat.