09/15/2026
Part 2:
Stan - And I didn't. So, we taught them to watch and listen carefully in order not to miss anything. And that was the big startup of our martial arts relationship. After that, I was still actively practicing judo and jiu-jitsu, and he said, "Maybe
you want to learn some of this stuff." And I said, "Yes, sir. So, he took four of us, and we started working in the classroom and the drill instructors' barracks, where we all resided at the time.
Stuart - Did Ron stay there?
Stan - No, he didn't because, at that time, he was married to another island girl and stayed off the base. And, uh, anybody taught it in the classroom after work around 6:00 pm. Then, we opened a dojo in Old Town, San Diego. And so there were more students, and by the time the dojo in Old Town opened, we must have had about ten students at that time. And that developed into quite a large school. That was the largest school he ever had. The time when you guys got married in maybe or just before, the biggest dojo in Anaheim, or profitable dojo, in Anaheim. I think basically that would be the introductory phase. While I was studying with him in the old days, military types who did martial arts for a living, we have extended that into our liberty column, so our weekend training involved going around and working out in other dojos and traveling as far away as Arizona and northern California, to meet, chat with, and work out with students of other martial arts. He was always encouraging his people to go out and study with other people and develop themselves, and then if they did that, they would come back. He liked what you learned, well, because Sensei Ryfinger went out, learned Aweonage, and brought it back to my dojo, and then, so eventually, it was incorporated into the system. That's why it came from a Sh*to-ryu kata which came from the Sh*to-ryu System of Mataishi in Hawaii. So, it's just like stuff keeps going full circle. I love it.
Stuart - What about Golden Crane?
Stan - Golden Crane came from my father's dojo in Okinawa. And that's called the NTA - Northern Training Area. It is the northernmost point of civilization on that sixty-five-mile long twelve-mile-wide island, OK? And Master Odo, I always assumed that Odo knew all about that form, but I think Marron introduced it to Odo because…
Stuart - I think so.
Stan - My father never showed it to him, and I learned it from one of my father's students, who I met in Vietnam. So, it was introduced in the Vietnam era so that was about in 1969 or 1970.
Stuart - Are you telling me that it is really an Okinawan kata?
Stan - It is an Okinawan kata. And this guy Andersen, I believe, was a direct student; he was stationed at Camp…
A pan clambers down so the name of the camp is muffled.
Stan - …of Okinawa, a Marine also, he was the guy that learned that from my father. And taught it to me, along with several other forms. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, Andersen also came up with Golden Crane, I'm sorry, Mountain Giant.
Unknown Man - I've seen Mountain Giant in Tracy's school.
Stan - Well, Tracy, you're liable to find anything at a Tracy dojo because…
Unknown Man - Why do they have that form?
Stan - …where the Tracy brothers trained, and they're students of Ed Parker…
Stuart - Oh, is that the connection?
Stan - Yeah. They're Kenpo people, and they decided that they were going to become rich and famous, so they innovated franchise karate in America.
Stuart - Do you believe that they are the first franchise?
Stan - You bet.
Stuart - Was Ed Parker's the first commercial dojo? I've heard that.
Stan - I don’t know. I think so because Trias's dojo was essentially his livelihood. The United States Karate Association was started in 1946. OK? And Ed Parker started teaching in Pasadena in 1955.
Julie - Yes.
Stuart - Fifty-five?
Stan - Something like that. Very close proximity to when Ron and the timing of Ed Parker coming to the States and Ron coming to the States is very close.
Stuart - Is that so?
Stan - But these franchise guys like the Tracy boys, famous guys like Joe Lewis. OK?...
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …came to the United States as a Shodan, not even authorized or qualified to teach. I'm not sure he was a Shodan. When Mike Stone came to the United States from the islands, Mike Stone was only a brown belt. OK? Also, a Shorin-ryu student, but Lewis studied in Okinawa, and Stone studied in Hawaii. Now, these two boys came together to California. When he got out of the Marine Corps, Joe Lewis went to Tracy’s and opened a franchise; he became a black belt and started teaching Tracy Kenpo in Oceanside, California. Then he hit the tournament circuit and said, "Well, I'm a Shorin-ryu kind of guy…
Laughter in the background.
Stan - …OK? And everything he did was just, I mean, was just show with Shorin-Ryu style, you know, the reverse punch and lunge-punch and side-thrust, punch, kick, and intimidation, and all that was just, you know, either Shorin-ryu or some Okinawan external system. And then he became eclectic, and then he disavowed all his previous teachers…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - and if you ask, I bet you, if go to Joe Lewis today and say, "Yo Joe, "Yo Joe, what did you think about teaching for the Tracy brothers in Oceanside?" He'd say, "Get out of my face I'll kick your butt."…
Laughter.
Stan - …he would. And how soon do we forget…
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - …you know? I believe that if you forget your roots, you may become rich and famous, but you're not going to be one of my friends.
Stuart - Yeah, I agree with that.
Stan is talking away from the mic.
Stuart - But he also had a Tracy Kenpo punch... Is that how he started?
Stan - Tae kwon-do style....
Stan is away from the microphone, cooking.
Stan - Tae kwon-do is, the closest I can give you is it's like a Korean style, it's amazingly it's Korean. He's one of the few that runs a Tracy franchise…
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - …but they could be teaching anything. Because that's the Tracy boys, when they get their franchises, if you look promising, they say, "Oh, how'd you like to run a school for us in X city or wherever you live? Hmm? Listen, let's sit down and talk about it."
Stuart - I think they still pretty much do that in the newsletters I've seen. It seems well organized. As you're saying, it's sort of lost its tradition...
Stan - What tradition? They stopped teaching Kenpo in; let's see, when did their first franchise happen in 1959 or 1960? That would be one of their first franchises. And I don't think their first franchise instructor was a Kenpo guy…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …he wasn't even a Tracy student. They didn't care. And so that's where the term "eclectic" came from
Chuckles from Julie.
Stan - …because they didn't care.
Stuart (laughs) - That's a martial arts term.
Stan - That comes from Hawaii and northern France.
Laughter.
Stuart - What's the difference between the idea of Ron Alo, then? It's OK to take things from systems that work and Tracy's, which do the same? There's a fundamental difference. They just take whatever they can get.
Stan - The fundamental difference is that the Tracy's will allow you to teach, or would, at one point in their careers, allow you to teach out of control. Whatever you are pleased with, use their name, set yourself up in the franchise, and do all your advertising and all that kind of...
Stuart - But it does not really have much to do with the after-effects.
Stan - Absolutely. Nothing at all. In a controlled environment of the development of Alo-Kenpo Karate, what you have is an addition, expansion, and innovation, all of which are still key to the practice of the art. Sometimes, we used to do Takiyoku forms to warm up. Takiyoku comes from Oyama, which is known as Oyama karate.
Stuart - OK?
Stan - And we did those forms...Yeah, as a warm-up. We still do four of them.
Stuart - Now, when the style was recognized, the procedure...the style was recognized, was this other than a procedural matter...as a style versus an extension of Karaho, which became Alo Kenpo? Right?
Stan - In June of 1969, it became Alo Kenpo.
Stuart, it became Alo Kenpo in 1969. What was this? You were telling us a little bit about this guy, Guru Gutierrez. What was the process of that? What was the purpose of that recognition? What did they do?
Stan - The process was of mutual respect and admiration, OK? And the recognition between the past because of that process, the exchange of ideas and understanding between two martial artists of the same age with not similar, but not dissimilar, backgrounds as martial artists. It doesn't matter what language you speak...
Stuart - It seems that traditional martial artists recognize themselves, right? There's a difference; I mean, anybody can make up a name. People do that all the time. It seems to have something to do with established traditional martial artists who recognize stylists.
Stan - Early on. OK. We're speaking about apples and oranges now. Everybody knew that Alo was doing his own thing. Then what occurred in this recent thing? What was the recognition recently? It wasn't 1969 when I got that letter.
The question is not audible.
Stan - No, no, no, it's been recently. It was the second meeting that Ron Alo had with Guru Gutierrez. Gutierrez says, "I'm going to give you official recognition. The leader of what the hell, yeah, but that’s not another system. There's an
organization, yeah, but those are ours, and in that organization, there's, he said, "You are a master. Has anybody ever recognized you as a master?" and Alo said, "Well, no, I don't think so."…
Laughter.
Stan - …or something like, "only me.”
Loud laughter.
Stan - …and so he said, it was Christmas time, and he had gifts for the kids, and he served this Indonesian variety of Okazu. He said, "This certificate indicates that I recognize you as a Grand Master of your own system, developer of your own system. That's what that was all about. And so, he became, by the grand master of another organization, recognized as a Grand Master of his own style and leader of his own organization. Prior to that, in fact, he received his certification through the International Kenpo Karate Association from Ed Parker as a seventh dan at that time. Because I must tell you, I still believe that in today's martial arts environment, commercial martial arts environment, and those are terms that don't necessarily fit well together, chuckles, but in the commercial martial arts environment, if you don't have certification, you don't have squat, OK?
Stuart - That's right.
Stan - There's no place to go and nothing to do; you can forget about it if you don't have a bunch of trash hanging around the wall and a bunch of trophies in the window; you don't have a student in the building. OK? In this environment, certification is important. But truly, in a martial arts environment, if you take commercialism and exorcise it, thank you, from the martial arts, then you have no need for certification.
Stuart - Uh huh, that’s true.
Stan - In the old days, if you were a black belt and somebody said, "Where did you get your black belt?" And I said, "From Alo. And I had people asking me that a lot of times. They say, "You old people, huh?" And they walk out of the dojo. And if I said anything else, they'd have beat the s**t out of me, OK?...
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …because we police our own. But you didn't have to have a certificate to go with your black belt. Alright? And in fact, you didn't need a black belt, necessarily, to be a good martial artist, but if you were going to be a teacher, you most probably were going to be wearing a black belt or black sash or some other representation that showed you were an expert. OK? Not a Grand Master, not the big high monkey monk, the big kahuna, not any of this other horse hockey. Just that you were an expert teacher, that's all. A professor. The fifteenth-degree Professor Chow.
Stuart (laughing) - So the fifteenth Dan was just a con?
Stan - I really think I read all that stuff, you know. I talked to Alo about it, you know? And we agreed that Chow probably did that just to drive people crazy.
Stuart (laughing) - Well, that's perfectly in line with ...
Julie - people writing those letters saying, "What did you think, 15th dan? Why did you fall for that?"
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - So I think maybe that's not a hoax. Because you know what it was, what it symbolized? I mean the declaration as a 15th degree.
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - It wasn't a hoax. I think it was just trying to get people's attention…
Stuart - Oh yeah.
Stan - …And you know what? Today, if you look around, you see trash like "Grand Master Fred Firdley" 5th Dan. Fifth Dan! And then you see a Grand Master of Shotokan. Yes? Shotokan! Funakoshi would spin in his grave rapidly if he saw guys say, "I have this videotape. I'm this great high-grand mucky-muck, I'm the supreme ultimate grand master of Shotokan, and I made a videotape, and on the bottom of this, it says Fred Firdley, 5th Dan. OK? And I'm saying, wow, Jesus, I missed out on something, or I got hit too hard…
Laughter.
Stan - …incredible some of the crap that goes on.
Stuart - Uh huh. Great Grand Master and most exceptional person.
Stan - Yes. They get off the airplane in a black belt. Move to another city, nobody knows me, here I am, Great Grand Master Who- do-wazz, but if I don't advertise as a Great Grandmaster, and I hate the advertising industry for this reason if I don't advertise as a master or grand master or you know, the number one competitor in northeast Taiwan or some flash in the pan, do you think in today's commercial environment that I'm going to get any students? If I say I'm traditional, I'm organized, the guy says, "f**k you." I'll not get students.
There seems to be some inaudible disagreement in the background from another man.
Dan - That's right, you don't. But if you don't have to advertise at all, I say, "Listen, I insist you go look somewhere else, and if you think that I am the one you want to learn from, well, come back, and if not, I'm a very happy person.
Stuart - So, where do you think the system is going now? What are your plans for the future?
Julie - I don't know.
Inaudible response.
Stuart - No?
Julie - Just going to let it evolve.
Stuart - Do you like teaching any particular types of students?
Julie - Just people who want to learn.
Stuart - Anybody that wants to learn.
Julie - Anyone who asks questions and asks a lot about martial arts and shows that they really want to train. I have a couple of students who are about the art, not just for physical fitness, you know?
Stan - For now, though, I have plans; thank you…
Laughter.
Stan - …I'm going to reopen this cognac.
Stuart - What are your plans, Stan?
Stan - My plans are basically to continue my personal development and to assist Julie with the, if not growth, at least the stability of the organization, and if possible, therefore, the growth of the organization. So that, uh, what we are born to perpetuate, our obligation, will be fulfilled if we continue to perpetuate this art in the name of its founder. And that's my job. And that's what my future consists of. While I'm doing that, nothing precludes my personal development and expansion into other areas of endeavor, be they martial arts-related or not, as long as I fulfill that obligation. That's what I'm going to do. That's it.
Dan - Is that the same as "Keep on keeping on?"
Stan - That's it! That's what I'm gonna do.
Stuart - So what about some tall tales of martial artists? I hear about all these stories about "breaking 100 boards with a single glance..." Have you got some good ones? They don't have to be verified, just useful for students to hear about.
Stan - I think, well, maybe, from our own experience, I mean, you read about all these egos- guys. This guy's got a couple of books out and has iron palms; this guy is the Iron Palm guy. OK? He writes articles about breaking, and he always says, "Well, if you use spacers, you cheat; if you do this, you cheat; if you do that, you cheat...if you can't break with sheer internal force, then don't try, don't bother. But his breaking is internal focus externalized into external focus. Which we refer to as Ki or chi. And uh, I think what Alo developed late in his career was the development of maintaining the internal focus while still breaking, in other words, using the focused element which your entire mind, body, and spirit…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …to break with. Thus, being able to place your hand on two and a half inches of concrete or four inches or whatever you feel capable of that particular day, then if you don't have diarrhea in the morning or whatever, you do this, you hit from a good foundation position. You break the two and a half or four or six whatever inches of concrete, here, or here, and wherever the spirit resides, that's where you break from. He used to always p**s me off because I would be giving a breaking seminar and, you know, you burn up your stuff after a while; if you start out with reality you say, well, today I'm going to go in, I'm not feeling really good, and I start with the heavy stuff. So, you stack up a bunch of blocks, and you break it, and you move on to Set # 2, which is four inches of concrete flat stacked, set up on stanchions, on a rug, so there are all kinds of resiliency, you know, you hit it, and you know…
Stan is demonstrating something.
Stan - …that's what happens to me about three or four times…
Stan is demonstrating something.
Stan - …really p**ses me off.
Stuart laughs.
Stan - You know when I understood that? The last breaking seminar he taught. Julie knows all that stuff; he taught me this, and he taught other students a long time before he taught this. He was holding out on me, you know. Well, that p**sed me off too, but he always held out on me. Maybe he thought I wasn't capable or wasn't ready or something. It was like my grandmother, who didn't give me my first taste of rhubarb w**e until I was thirty-seven years old because I was too young. Laughter.
Dan - I suspect he taught you other things.
Stan - So anyway, we did this routine where he took me to the back of the dojo. He said, "Break this board.” I said, "OK." Sometimes, he lapsed into Hawaiian lingo. And so, he set this board down here; I said, "OK, how do you want me to break it?” He said, "Put your hand on here like this." He didn't break it. He said, "Oh yeah? Sure, I will." On my best day I can't do s**t like that you know?” So, he told me, “Grunt but don't fart.” We were in the back of the dojo…
Laughter.
Stan - …put your hand right here like this, get in a good foundation position, and then decompress, don't externalize your focus. Don't take the power that's built here and externalize it into your break. He said, "Decompress. He said, "Make everything just bear down on it and then drop your heel-palm when you bore down on it and boom, and it's gone, so after trying to break my hand about six times and not being able to accomplish that, I finally did it, OK? And then I graduated to concrete, which for me was always easier to break anyway…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …some psychological thing I have about lumber chewing up my hand in bad dreams and stuff. But anyway, we had this occasion to, at one point, break that, and I kept working at it. And I didn't have it exactly right. You know, I could feel it when it wasn't exactly right. Something was wrong with my focus. OK? And then at the last breaking seminar, the last tape we have of Ron is the breaking seminar before that, so a year later, almost to the day, we did another breaking seminar, and I just stood around talking, and I just went " ...it was nice it was very nice, felt good...
Julie - Very smooth.
Stan - …and what happened was I suddenly concluded that I understood what he had been trying to teach me for the past year and a half or however long it took me to overcome my severe stupidity. So that, and as far as I'm concerned, you can break glass, you can break flaming brick, you can break flaming people, you know, you can do whatever...you can cut watermelons in half on people's bodies with giant swords... you can do whatever kind of flashy trash you want to do to impress the world. Still, when you understand yourself enough, and you can be or not, that you can internalize or decompress and break without moving the focus or externalizing the focus, you've got your s**t together. OK? Then, you're an impressive breaker, and then all the other guys that break with power or the other guys that externalize their internal focus or their Ki or Chi, they can do it for the rest of their lives, or what I did for the first thirty years of my martial arts career, they can break using a using a combination of power and externalized focus, or Ki or Chi or whatever the mystery ingredient is OK? But until you reach a total understanding of yourself and your focus is internal, you can't do anything in the martial arts; I don't care what art you practice or who you are, or how long you have been doing it.
Stuart - What about realistic practice? I mean actual self-defense situations. Have you seen him in action, in real time, in the dojo?
Julie - Ron was a bouncer.
Stan - There's a pub called the Crow's Nest. It may not be there any longer. It's nestled between the Marine Corps base at Terminal Island and the Naval Station in Long Beach. In fact, it's on a side road that is right next to the Naval Station in Long Beach, about six blocks down. And a lot of squids or swabbers or navy guys hang out in there. If there are any navy guys present, they should forgive me…
Loud laughter.
Stan - …I only said that because I thought he was asleep, you know what I mean.
Dan - I probably heard that word.
Stan - We were talking about that the other day. That's pretty funny. Anyway, a lot of Filipinos hung out at this place too, and uh, and there's a lot of ethnic pride that goes with being a Black or a Filipino or a Guamanian or a Hawaiian or whatever, and all the Island boys are brothers, you know. The Filipinos are from the Philippines, and they don't necessarily get along with Island boys from Hawaii or Polynesia. Nonetheless, there were always a lot of combative environments in this particular pub because the Marines and Sailors from the area felt that the best possible recreation after you got so blasted you could hardly walk was to beat the snot out of somebody else; you know? That was good recreation. Well, there were two of these guys on opposite ends of the pub; Ron was in there with a friend at the bar, the two men had been having an argument or something, and one of them, as I understand it, threw a bottle at the other. I'm at work at Ternal Island, I'm five minutes from the Crow’s Nest. OK? One throws a bottle and tries to tag the other guy with it, but it ricochets off Alo's friend’s head. So, Alo says, "OK, listen,” I think he had a girlfriend and another friend with him, and “who was the guy?”
Julie - I don't know.
Stan - He had somebody else with him, this is 1969. He said, "OK, you guys go out the front door; I go out the back door. OK?" And I think they're going to follow me. Ron says they won't bother you. Because then he went over and gave them his judgment of their stupidity, and then he went back and sat down, Ron did…
Julie was still laughing.
Stan - …so then they got together, and they started chatting about, "See the guy over there from Hawaii? We're going to beat his butt, see." So, he knew that, or he perceived that, so he sent his friend and the girl out the front, and he went out the back and into the alley, and he's surrounded by a dozen Filipinos. One of them is bearing a knife. Now, probably all of them are bearing knives, but one of them has exposed it. OK? Cause everybody knows that all Filipinos carry knives. OK? Everybody knows that.
Dan - a riddle: If you don't have a butterfly knife, you can't be a Filippino. At least you can't go to a bar, that's for sure…
Laughter.
Dan - …stay home.
Stan - So anyway, he goes out, and these guys surround him. Now, he just bought a brand-new pair of white bell-bottomed polyester britches. They were beautiful…
Laughter.
Stan - …I still have some in my closet. Course, the waist hasn't fit in years, but you know, the bells, anyway, he goes outside, he gets surrounded, and he's thinking to himself, he tells me, first of all, before he left the pub, I should relate to you, that he called me and said, "Stand by, and if I need help, I'll give you a call." OK? And I said, "I'm right here. And, of course, I've got this 6.7 acres of Marine Corps property for which I am solely responsible at this juncture, and I figure, "Well, hell, I can always rush out, lock the gate behind myself, and go down and help Alo and then sneak back in or something. I got the key. I got the gun; I'm ready." So, I said, "OK, I'm ready. I said, "If you need my help, just call me back. He said, "OK." That's when he had left, and then they had surrounded him, and then he's speaking to himself, "I'll have to take out the guy with the knife first because he presents a clear and present danger," as the novelists are now saying. And so, he says, "OK." He starts picking on this guy right away, and they have a little conversation. Alo tells him what a dummy he is because he's from the Philippines, not Hawaii or someplace nice like that. And the guy rushed him, and Ron nailed him, and he swept underneath this way, and he threw the guy. OK? And then, after he threw him, he just followed through on him. I don't know what he used exactly, what kind of technique. And when he threw the guy, the knife hand swept up, and these baggy polyester-white brand-new brand-spanking new bellbottoms and thank God britches got cut. OK? And then he really got p**sed. And then he took out everybody else in the alley, two cop cars came rolling in, because the guys at the Crow's Nest, the owners and staff, and the bartenders were very good at calling the cops, came rolling into the alley, came to a screeching halt as Shihan Alo was walking out of the alley. He said, "You better hurry up them buggers in there had a big fight." He kept walking, and so the cops went in and arrested all the Filipinos in town, and that was great. What a night. He didn't call, so I finally called him and said, "How did it go?" "Oh, no problem, I didn't need your help.” So, this is the same evening. So then, a couple of days later, he told me what had happened. I said, "Wait a minute. “And so did everybody else. I heard this story from everybody else first, and finally, he says, "Well, I didn't really need your help. There were only 12 of these guys.
Laughter
Dan - How could he call you if he was in the middle of something?
Stan - Well, no, no, that's what he said. If I need your help, I'll call you back. So, I figured he knocked somebody out and ran away. You have to understand the logic of Ron Alo. "I'll find a phone somewhere...
Laughter.
Stan - ...in the middle of this fight, you know?
Dan - Kicking and calling somebody at the same time?
Stan - I really thought that's the kind of logic he had. I remember he had a girlfriend in San Diego one time; this was about 1965 or 1966, probably 1965. And he had a girlfriend, and they had been arguing off and on for days about something, petty things like we all do you know?
Stan shifted his focus to dinner.
Stan - And so, is that overcooked? Slightly overcooked? What time is it? It's only 7:00; it's almost 8:00. Is everybody hungry?
Julie - Let's eat.
Stan - OK. The only thing we have that's good to eat is rice.
Laughter.
Stan - Everything else is stocked up over here, thank you.
Stuart - What about Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee?
Stan - Chuck Norris is an extremely nice individual.
Stuart - Is he?
Stan - When he had his little dojo in California before he became rich and famous, he branched out all over the place, and he had outstanding instructors and students. Everybody used to drop in; Mike Stone used to drop in on him…
Stuart - Un-huh.
Stan - …to work out. We dropped in on him to work out. And he was an extremely nice man; no, Chuck Norris wasn't a fighter…
Laughter.
Stan - …Mike Stone was a nice guy. OK, I don't think that Chuck Norris has been spoiled by fame. To a certain degree, Bruce Lee was, he was spurred on by fame.
Stuart - Did you know him?
Stan - I did not know him. Ron knew him; I did not know him. Ron knew everybody, or everybody knew him because everybody recognized him almost immediately when we...but then, he looked like two other famous martial artists, not the least of which is Nishiyama.
Julie - Uh huh. Do you know Nishiyama?
Stan - He looked like Nishiyama, who at the time was the head of the JKAH fan club association. And people would mix them up all the time. If he was in southern California, at a tournament that was an open tournament, and Nishiyama wanted to be there to judge, even though he was a Shotokan kind of guy, he preferred closed tournaments; if the two of them were in the same building, people would just go "Who's who?”
Laughter.
Stan - … trying to figure out who's who. So, I guess that's the reason for patches and stuff on, identify, …
Stuart - Laughs.
Stan - …at any rate, he knew a lot of those people who developed fame later; he never sought that himself, Ron Alo didn't. All the other people, when I first met him, still carried with them, in their hip pockets somewhere, the martial arts philosophy. I'm doing this because I want to be able to defend myself, perpetuate my art, and become a better person. OK? Basic old Samurai philosophy…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …that kind of went by as people developed fame and fortune and everything, a lot of people got the big head, and I think that Mike Stone and I think he's still a nice guy, but his downfall was when he started seeing Priscilla Presley in Las Vegas after the Four Seasons became a popular tournament in California. And he was part of that organization. Ernie Reyes' Sr. and Ernie Reyes' Jr….
Stuart - That's the little boy?
Stan - …he's the little boy that was in “Sidekicks,” a Walt Disney production, and recently was involved with the Ninja Turtle thing and all that stuff. And Ernie Reyes Sr. is an outstanding martial artist, but he's also a bit caught up with himself…
Stuart - Is he?
Stan - …and I think that Jr. is going to turn out the same way. I think that some of the hardline old traditionalists, Fumio Demura is one, and Kennedy worked out with him, and he'll probably never change. Nishiyama will never change. Nakayama's dead now, but he never would have changed…
Stuart & Julie - Yeah.
Stan - …all those heavies, those Shotokan and Goju-Ryu stylists, specifically the Japanese guys and the Okinawan people who have been imported to teach, will not change. But the Americans who brought this back, all the service people who brought this back from various areas overseas, always seem to be adversely impacted by fame. And there are some exceptions like we know some guys like John Leoni. John Leoni was one of the first guys I met. John Leoni, I met him the same weekend we went to Pasadena for my first meeting with Ed Parker. And John Leoni had just won the San Francisco Second Annual Martial Arts Championship Tournament by defeating all comers. OK? And what an extremely nice individual he was. He was a good buddy of both Ron and Ed Parker. OK? Ed Parker himself was a fine and warm kind of guy. He was a very nice man, and I always enjoyed and appreciated meeting with him. And I don't think that he was one little bit spoiled by fame…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …I think that his purpose in life was just to perpetuate his art…
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - …and he developed a lot of fame. I never quite understood this because you've got two guys on the same career path. You've got Ronald Moku Alo over here and you've got Edmund Parker over here. And these guys are traveling over the same career path, teaching the same art from the same roots; one of them uses one approach, and one uses another approach.
Stuart - What are the different approaches?
Stan - Well, one of them has a college degree and understands, has a little better business acumen, OK? And he's teaching from the perspective of this business, or this particular art that I teach is going to be my livelihood. And the other guy has it differently. Ron Moku Alo starts out saying, I'm going to teach this art., OK?...
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - …and doesn't promote for many years while he was teaching, until many years after he's been teaching, that it's going to become a commercial endeavor. So, he's lost years of ground in developing a commercial understanding or business acumen. OK?...
Stuart - Yeah.
Stan - …I think that's the primary difference because these guys were just two outstanding, innovative martial artists, and each one of them had their own concepts and their own methodology and their mannerisms, and one of them was almost a religious, multi-religious, and scientific in his approach…
Stuart - That was Parker?
Stan - …Ed Parker, OK? And the other was almost sacrilegious…
Laughter.
Stan - …but extremely innovative in his approach. And nonetheless, they both had quality people. If you went in the early days of tournament karate in California, if you went to the tournament, the winner was going to be a Kenpo person…
Stuart & Julie - Yeah.
Stan - …nine times out of ten, that winner would come out of an Alo dojo or a Parker dojo. OK? And the reason Julie mentioned earlier tonight was that was ten or twenty years ahead of everybody else in their thinking. And they just kept developing and developing and developing…
Stuart - Uh huh.
Stan - …and knew how to train people and get people to give them the most. OK? And recognize things about people that nobody else did. He always said, "We're going to have this association. You're going to be the administrator, you're going to be the chief instructor, you're going to be the administrator, OK? Because you're an excellent mouthpiece…
Laughter.
Stan - ...you can talk, and Julie can teach and whatever you know? Every time he would talk about, "Well, I'm going to get back into teaching actively..." and everybody was hoping that he would do that, you know, because he was such an outstanding, insightful instructor, and he would just pick things apart and figure out ways to make you do better…
Julie - Right.
Stan - …and it was unbelievable, and I don't know what it was. It was some kind of magic, but he never developed fame in terms of commercial fame, in terms of becoming a movie star, whatever, and maybe sometimes he was sad about that. I think most of the time, he was probably glad about that because his goal was, "I'm going to teach this art."
Stuart - non-commercially, in a sense?
Julie and Stan - Right.
Stan - And then his goal was, "I'm going to make this art." OK? "I'm going to make this art.”
Julie - That's the way of a good instructor, as he just pointed out. Some people teach certain things. Like I remember taking algebra. I failed the first semester because this teacher was taught a certain way. This is the way you teach algebra, and she couldn't explain it any other way. You either understood the way she was telling you, or you failed the course. Well, I failed the course because I didn't understand what she was trying to tell me. He could tell you 10, 20, and different ways to do the same thing…
Stan - Oh yeah!
