Terry O'Neill
Terry O’Neill is currently ranked 7th Dan in Shotokan karate and is one of the senior instructors in the KUGB (Karate Union of Great Britain). He was the former captain of the British karate team that defeated the Japanese in the 1975 World Championship and he held various domestic titles throughout his competitive career. He was the former editor and owner of Fighting Arts International magazine, which maintained an extremely high level of quality throughout its publishing history and really set the standard for all other magazines to follow. Friends with Arnold Schwarzenegger, O’Neill also pursued an acting career which saw him play small parts in movies such as Gangs of New York and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In much of his early adult life, O’Neill was also a bouncer in Liverpool where he perfected his ability to knock people out with devastating kicks to the head. Really.
Gary Spiers
Gary Spiers was born in New Zealand before making his way to Australia. He pursued his interest in various martial arts and put his knowledge to good use until a very serious fight (details follow towards the end of this review below) forced him to leave Oz. He made his way to Japan and trained in both the Japanese and Okinawan versions of Goju ryu. While there he met Terry O’Neill and the two became firm friends. Spiers eventually ended up in Liverpool after being invited there by O’Neill. He began working the doors of night clubs and quickly built a reputation as a fearsome fighter who could ‘do the business’. Later, when the British karate team traveled abroad Spiers was taken along to make sure the world class karateka behaved themselves and didn’t step out of line! His experience led him to create his own approach to combat named Applied Karate (or Ga Ryu, as Dennis Martin labeled it) and he established a security business that provided top notch bouncers for various venues throughout Britain. Sadly Gary Spiers passed away in 2001 at the age of 57 due to a heart attack.
Dennis Martin
Dennis Martin originally got into Shotokan karate under Andy Sherry and Terry O’Neill at the famous Red Triangle dojo in Liverpool. He too began working the door and gained first hand insight into what did and did not work. Though his particular approach to street fighting, Martin eventually moved into the study of Goju ryu and also spent time training in Japan and Okinawa. His interest in Japanese martial arts would eventually pass though as he focused on CQB (Close Quarter Battle) which was heavily based on techniques developed in World War Two which emphasized practicality and simplicity in learning. He wrote a very popular regular column for O’Neill’s Fighting Arts International magazine entitled On Guard while building a career in the personal security field before moving into training people to work in the same field.
Working with Warriors: The Early Years
Working With Warriors is primarily the autobiography of Dennis Martin as far as his life in martial arts, door work and body guarding are concerned. Interspersed between his own experiences are observations on Terry O’Neill and Gary Spiers along with interviews with associated characters and, best of all in my opinion, a reprint of the original interview given by Spiers to O'Neill and published in the magazine Fighting Arts International. I can remember when I first read the four-part interview and being highly stimulated by it. One thing that I got from it was the realization that I was not bred to be a street fighter. The experiences of Spiers (as well as O’Neill and Martin along with people like Geoff Thompson, author of Watch My Back) are from the extreme end of violence. They are way beyond the verbal insults escalating into pushing and shoving and maybe a punch or two that some of us will perhaps experience and enter the realm of life-or-death where there are potentially fatal repercussions, or heavy legal penalties, associated with the level of damage meted out. Reading about how these men have lived their lives and used their art (all three come from a karate background and all were trained in Japan when a black belt really meant you could fight) will, I think, help the reader clarify his or her own aims as far as training and the potential use of a martial art goes. While many may fancy themselves as a hardened pavement warrior, a safe look into the reality of that world and how violence permeates your daily life may cause some to reconsider.
Working With Warriors starts with how Dennis Martin got into martial arts. Like many in those days (early 60s) he first started with the more popular and more widely available judo. He next saw what must have been an amazing demonstration of Shotokan karate put on by Masters Enoeda, Kanazawa, Kase and Shirai (from the JKA). After this he started training at the famous Red Triangle dojo in Liverpool under Enoeda sensei and Andy Sherry sensei (currently the highest ranking Shotokan practitioner in the UK). Terry O’Neill was also training there and the two shortly thereafter struck up a lifelong friendship. Training at the time was hard and often severe with sparring being virtually full out (with no protection).
As Martin progressed though the ranks of Shotokan he became more interested in Goju ryu. He preferred the arsenal of shorter range techniques and made the switch.
It was through O’Neill that Martin got involved in door work. Martin was a regular at the world renowned Cavern Club in Liverpool, made famous as the home of the Beatles among various other bands. O’Neill was on the security there and Martin was impressed by his senior’s ability to ‘do the business’ for real and not just in the dojo.
Terry O’Neill had become interested in physical culture at an early age through his exposure to the Tarzan character. Like Martin, his desire to become a competent fighter first led him to take up judo. O’Neill was not physically gifted as a child. He had surgery on his knees and had to use a walking stick for a year. His doctor told him that he would never play sports. Years later he broke his ribs while competing at the European Championships and when visiting the hospital, he had the same doctor that had given him the bad news when he was a child. He notes that had he listened to his doctor it would have been ‘the kiss of doom’ for him.
Terry O’Neill began his karate training at the age of 14. Later he got involved in wrestling with Tommy McNally and Tony Buck, an Olympian and a champion. It was Tommy that invited O’Neill down to The Cavern and was the first to offer him door work. Terry at that time was just 16 and had to wear multiple layers of clothing to make him look bulked up and a little more intimidating. Tommy also suggested to the youngster that he start bodybuilding and he put on nearly a stone of muscle in 6 months.
While this was going on O’Neill had been knocked back from the Police cadets due to poor eyesight. He had a tough decision to make: he could wear contact lenses, but they would be dangerous to him while doing karate. He opted to pursue his martial arts and continue working on the door.
His first fight didn’t last long but it taught him an important difference between practicing techniques in the air and actually performing them against a live opponent. He kneed someone in the groin, one of a pair of assailants, and suddenly felt a blow to his face. Suspecting that he had been punched by the other of the two, he was nonetheless dazed. What had actually happened is that after striking his opponent, his adversary’s head shot forward and involuntarily head butted Terry full in the face. He simply wasn’t ready for this kind of reaction. Luckily another doorman stepped in and finished the fight while O’Neill nursed a nose pouring with blood.
O’Neill didn’t do much of the fighting at the Cavern before it closed when he was 17. After various gigs he ended up working at what would become the Victoriana as the head doorman. Here he really cut his teeth. During these years he also perfected his ability to knock people out with a round house kick to the head and his reputation grew. He was, at that time, the youngest black belt in the UK.
The Victoriana was where Dennis Martin and Terry O’Neill, already friends, started to work together on the door. They also started training on a regular basis with one another and a stronger friendship grew with them taking frequent trips to London for special courses and to see the latest films in the West End. During this period O’Neill headed over to Tokyo in 1970 for the first World Karate Championships. While there he met a superb Goju ryu master named Morio Higaonna (readers of the old Fighting Arts International will know that years later this Okinawan warrior featured regularly in the hallowed pages) as well as a ‘really interesting bloke' called Gary Spiers.
Dennis Martin first met Gary Spiers on the day he arrived in England in 1971. He had made his way over from Japan. Originally from New Zealand, Gary had spent some time working and training, under the famous Bob Jones, in Australia. From there he practiced in harsh conditions in various dojo in Japan, specializing in the Goju style. Some of the stories about Gary are fearsome and he was nicknamed ‘The Animal’. For anyone looking for an insight into personal violence at the sharp end, Working With Warriors is worth the price and the read just to learn about Spiers and his exploits. One story is of how he forced an opponent’s head into the drain along a roadside. Another is of how he picked up a massive slash across his face fighting, with friends, against a large group of Italians who were all tooled up. Apparently there was some confusion about the word ‘mate’ which is Italian sounds something like homosexual. A final extreme story relates the conditions in which Gary Spiers had to leave Australia. After having refused entry to a couple of soldiers at a club, the two returned later to find Gary enjoying a post-work meal in a nearby restaurant. Deciding to start a fight they had the better of it until one of them lost an ear…bitten off by Spiers and never found, so where that ended up is anyone’s guess…and the second ended up going through a second storey window as he hurtled around trying to escape. He was subsequently hit by a cab and killed. Gary made himself scarce and friends got him out of the country and he ended up in Japan.
Soon after Gary Spiers arrived Terry O’Neill began publishing Fighting Arts International, a high quality magazine that, in my opinion, has never been surpassed. The most popular interview ever published was between Terry O’Neill and Gary Spiers, and chapter four of Working With Warriors reprints the first part. In this part Gary talks about his early experiences boxing and wrestling and how his training was always geared to being practical. Next he became enthusiastic about karate, seeing value in the kicks. He also relates some of his earlier fighting experiences in Australia, including the battle with two soldiers that led him to leaving Oz and going to train in Japan. I will continue with some of his stories in the second part of my review of Working With Warriors.
