Working with Warriors - Land of the Rising Sun
Gary trained there for two and a half years and was a member of the famous Ikebukuro Jujitsu club, a collection of Westerners all training in different arts who would meet and pool their knowledge and work out together. He also met and trained with the legendary Steve Morris (if you don’t know who Steve Morris is, find out) as well as spending time in Okinawa and training with Morio Higaonna. Spiers shares some great insights and anecdotes about the conditions of that early training in Japan.
The next chapter, chapter five, is an interview with a man named Tommy McNally, or Tommy Mac. He was a veteran doorman and a mentor to both Terry O’Neill and Dennis Martin in their early days. He first met O’Neill when the karateka was training in the YMCA by throwing weights into a mat to build explosive power. Disturbed by the noise Tommy and his training partner Tony Buck checked out what was going on. Later O’Neill (age 15 at the time) joined the two men in their wrestling practice and the rest, as they say, is history. Tommy took an immediate liking to the youngster and took him under his wing eventually getting him onto the door at the Cavern night club, famous around the world for being the birthplace of the Beatles.
Tommy has plenty to say about the state of wrestling in Liverpool at the time, along with anecdotes on the various local hard cases and some basic information on how to approach door work; the kind of advice he gave Martin and O’Neill when they were starting out. Tommy Mac was also there when Terry O’Neill’s athleticism finally emerged. Remember, referring back to Working With Warriors part one, that O’Neill was anything but a gifted sportsman. He had had surgery on his knees as a child and was forced to use a walking stick for a year. His doctor had told him that he would never play sports. Well, near the Cavern at one particular time there were some waist high barriers. Tommy and Terry had to transverse them. Tommy slid over while Terry, with no hesitation, did a full tuck jump bringing his knees up to his chin and sailed over. From that moment on his clumsiness was gone and something just ‘clicked’. By the time he was working at the Victoriana (another club), Tommy witnessed O’Neill knock three guys out in one kicking movement, without ever putting his foot down between techniques. Another time Tommy was crouching down to set himself up to strike an opponent’s groin when suddenly his target went flying back. O’Neill has launched himself into the air, over Tommy and executed a picture perfect flying sidekick to KO the guy. This was real fighting against real opponents.
Tommy also worked with Gary Spiers later and was impressed with the New Zealanders ‘verbals’, the ability to talk would be aggressors into not fighting. Actually, it wasn’t quite as simple as that. First this huge, hulking Maori would put his arm around the trouble maker, nice and friendly, and begin his spiel while slowly squeezing harder and harder. That was enough for most people and a fight would be avoided.
Owing to the influence of the people around him, the next natural step for Dennis Martin was to head over to Japan to train firsthand with the masters. He left Liverpool in April, 1973 for a six month stay. His first stop was with Morio Higaonna and he began training twice a day, a schedule he would maintain throughout his stay. A few weeks later Terry O’Neill arrived, coming ahead of the British team for the JKA World Championship. O’Neill had many contacts, one of whom was the internationally famous Donn Draeger. Shortly after Martin, accompanied by O’Neill, made his way down to Okinawa and the Jundokan dojo of Miyazato sensei. Returning to Tokyo, Martin found himself making up the numbers in the British squad and competing at the tournament. Towards the end of his trip Dennis was graded to second dan by Higaonna sensei, becoming his first black belt in the UK. Martin engaged in the conditioning that Goju ryu is famous for but eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn’t the healthiest method of practice.
Over this period Bruce Lee had died at an early age but not before completing work on his masterpiece Enter the Dragon. Martin returned to find the martial arts in a serious boom period. His club grew and he groomed several key people that would work with him in the personal security field later on in life. Martin continued teaching until 1991 when the demands of his body guarding courses and contracts meant there just wasn’t enough time to do everything.
At this point (about one-third of the way through) Working With Warriors shifts from being centered on the application of martial arts - and karate in particular - in door security situations to Dennis Martin’s work providing professional security, both personal and team, to various contractors, starting with the Miss World pageant. Over the course of his career Martin retrained himself in the use of firearms and CQB (Close Quarter Battle) as well as in surveillance and first aid (to potentially deal with bullet and explosive wounds). He came into contact with former members of Britain's elite Army units as well as Special Forces personnel.
These pages are not without interest and to be fair it is Martin’s book, his biography, and it would be remiss of him not to cover such an essential part of his life, but for the average martial artist these details fail to absorb in the same way that the bouncer stories do.
As noted, Dennis got his first big break when he became involved in the security for Miss World. This was in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre when Arab terrorists killed Israeli athletes. The Israeli government insisted on tightened security for events such as Miss World and so one thing led to another and Martin found himself protecting Miss Israel. There was also a strong domestic terrorist threat from the IRA in Britain and one particular cell was active in London. Martin suddenly found himself in a whole new world and the need for training beyond empty handed self-defense forced him away from karate. He initially impressed his boss and was thus asked back in future years; enjoying the work he decided that VIP protection was something he enjoyed and that he seemed to have an aptitude for.
Working With Warriors then briefly returns to life on the door in Liverpool and introduces Terry O’Neill’s film career. O’Neill had a small part in Conan the Destroyer (attacking Grace Jones) alongside his hero Arnold Schwarzenegger and thereafter pursued an acting career with more interest. There are some amusing anecdotes in relation to Terry’s film and TV work and the book provides some details unavailable elsewhere.
The anecdotes continue to come thick and fast and these make Working With Warriors highly readable. There is some minor repetition of points but the approach taken is very personable. There are too many to even attempt to recount but one of the most amusing involving all three, along with a man named Brian Waites, another early martial arts pioneer in Britain, was when Martin, O’Neill and Waites ganged up on Gary Spiers while on a long train journey. The three finally managed to pin the huge Maori warrior and were about to (finally!) claim victory when Spiers did the only thing he could do: he 'snotted' them, snorting mucus at them and forcing them to release their grip. Victory to Mr Spiers.
The next business move for Martin was to hold a training course for body guards. This would also allow him to make contacts and begin grooming a group of committed individuals for any future work. The response was incredible and things moved forward, even coming to involve the legendary ex-Regiment veteran Lofty Wiseman. As most reading this are from the USA, take the time to check out Lofty on Google. He is certainly a man who knows what he is talking about. Perhaps of familiar note is that he was tasked with helping set up Delta Force in the US. In his time he was the elite of the elite.
Here Martin’s body guarding experiences melded with but moved away from his martial arts background as he had to come up with a training program that met certain requirements: it had to be easily taught but needed to be able to be used effectively under stress of an actual lethal attack while wearing normal clothing. Martin created CQB and began to turn away from his karate background.
CQB was more heavily influenced by the work of W.E. Fairburn and E.A. Sykes than by karate or other traditional (Asian) martial arts. The original syllabus was used to train commandos and special operatives during the Second World War. Another strong determinant was Kill or Be Killed written by Colonel Applegate and recommended by Lofty Wiseman as the core text for training SAS members. Applegate was an American student of Fairburn. CQB emphasizes a complete approach to combat, covering armed and unarmed situations with all skills building and complementing one another. Students do not train one way for unarmed combat then another way when using a knife.
The success of these initial body guard courses led to a presentation in the US in 1988. This was hosted by Evan Marshall, a Detroit Police homicide detective and a veteran of numerous gun fights. The course was again a success and with more contacts came more opportunities and more courses followed. One of these contacts was Nick Hughes, a huge Australian ex-doorman and member of the French Foreign Legion and a man who would go on to further success in the field of protection and teaching his FIST system. Hughes is the survivor of one encounter when he took on twenty one attackers, some of whom had weapons. The full details are covered in Working With Warriors but even though Nick thought he was staring death firmly in the face, after three minutes the police arrived and he lived to walk away. Three needed ambulance support and eight were in various stages of unconsciousness. The rest had fled.
Again, as with the earlier look at VIP protection, these chapters on body guarding may not be of direct interest to many martial artists. Virtually all of the people mentioned are unfamiliar to me, though they may well be ‘names’ in the actual industry. The information though is, as always in Working With Warriors heavily interspersed with amusing anecdotes that keeps the book readable.
