The Salisbury Tales – part six The Salisbury Blues

Later that spring I reached Blue Belt and my wife Yellow. Kata it was Naihanchi (Naifanchi, Nihanchi alt. spellings) and Wansu time.

Class remained focused about ½ kata and ½ kumite. Then in a blue moon Sensei would start class by calling out games and that’s all we’d do, run races, wheelbarrow races, etc. It kept us from becoming stale.

I continued to travel and was training 3 or 4 days a week, focused on my studies but now aware of what some of the seniors were doing. One of the guy’s went up for his black belt examination, the only testing Mr. Lewis held, but the actual testing was not open and none of us knew what it represented.

The club also participated in more tournaments, of course only a portion of the club were attending. I remember Karl Hovey’s in Virginia. A huge tournament by Bob Maxwell held outside of Washington DC, with maybe 50 seniors judging the black belt forms at the same time. There were no ties in that division. As we traveled far to attend them, we were almost always early, and that day arrived around 9am but my division wasn’t called till almost 7pm. Made for a very long day.

Aaron Banks had organized a full contact league and was holding a tournament in Baltimore. Mr. Lewis’ had been contacted to provide a demonstration between two of the fights. The IKC black belts were going to do a breaking demonstration and they spent a lot of time preparing for it. I was asked to contribute to the extent that they needed help holding Al Bailey horizontal at shoulder height. A stack of cinder caps were placed on his stomach and Dennis Lockwood would break them with a sledgehammer while standing on a chair.

The day of the event we drove over to the Baltimore Civic Center. One of the demonstrations involved I believe Frank DiFelice taking kicks to the groin and four simultaneous strikes to the throat. He had a very deep gravely voice. Four of Mr. Lewis’ black belts were asked to deliver the strikes for his demonstration. They followed Mr. DiFelice’s instructions how to strike, but they weren’t pulling things either. It was interesting to watch in practice as well as done in the ring. I never volunteered to learn those skills.

Our demonstration time arrived and I watched the dust fly as those cinder caps broke.
The day was far more eventful because of the fights. In an earlier contest one competitor tried to block a kick with a low block and broke his arm. Then in the main event Butch Bell (a student of Ron Collins) was to fight the league middle weight champion, Kasim Dubar. Bell was in the ring and very focused. Dubar was talking to the press outside of the ring, and then entered to showboat high kicks. When the fight started Bell didn’t kick he just waded into Dubar with hard punches and in a flurrey dropped Dubar. He recovered and rose to continue fighting. Again Bell just tore into him, backing him into the corner and then delivered maybe 15 of the hardest body shots I’ve seen. He stepped back and like a board Dubar fell forward, not breathing. The Physician wasn’t ringside, being back stage to treat that broken arm and only the quick response of the judge, Johnny Kuhl from NYC saved Dubar’s life. The highlight of course was Mr. Lewis taking everyone out to dinner on the way home, me spending time with the black belts.

Funny what you remember. Later that year in August the latest issue of Official karate covered the event and I had my picture in the magazine. Of course you could only see my obi the way the break was photographed, but it was still me. You don’t get bigger time than your obi in Official Karate.

So training, traveling and training, tournaments, events in the arts one evening Mr. Lewis asked me to come into his office. I saw that Charles Murray was in there with him. Mr. Lewis explained to me that Charles was going to be home from college for the summer and was planning at teaching a self defense course at a hotel in Ocean City, Maryland. The IKC black belts were going to help him with the demo and would I help too. I replied “Sure.” Then he told me that they wanted me to spar with Charlie for the crowd.

Was my goose sunk, and for the next several weeks all that was on my mind was I was going to have to fight Charles Murray.

Just as Mr. Lewis had trained in Okinawa in 1959, Charles had received his Sho-dan and in the USAF was stationed in Okinawa in 1971 and trained with Shimabuku Sensei during is tour. I heard stories about how he was a ferocious fighter, as a teenager he faced Howard Jackson, then the top middleweight fighter in the US and almost fought him to a draw. When Charles was home from college and would drop in to work out, he’d take the strongest brown belt and work them over. If one of the black belts from his generation of IKC would show up, you’d just watch in amazement as they’d tear into each other.

And I was selected to fight Mr. Murray in front of a crowd and all my instructors across the Eastern Shore. I had no idea how to do it. The entire time before the demonstration nobody said another word to me about it.

The day arrived, the crowd on the beach front of the hotel was huge and there were over 20 IKC seniors present. I think I also did Seiunchin kata. When it came time for the kumite demonstration I was putting on my safety gear and Charles hadn’t worn any before and I had to show him how to put it on,

I was standing there, all of my instructors watching me facing a non stop fighting machine. Mr. Lewis shouted “hajime’ and I did my best to tear into Charles………I don’t remember much of what happened. Later I heard some of the instructors were aghast that I jumped into him and he proceeded to work his techniques up and down my body. I think they felt he was going to destroy me. Someone told me they tried to tell Sensei we have to stop the fight before he kills Victor, but Sensei let it go.

I wasn’t hurt and just remember fighting and being nailed often as I was trying. A blue belt trying against a 2nd dan. It seems they never thought to mention that for demonstrations you just play and I guess I was chosen to make Charles look good (as if he ever needed help). Aside years late Charles showed me he had a movie of our fight. It looked pretty much as I remember, one of the spectators at a ringside table had a great time watching me getting pounded.

So I got out with my skin intact, Charles, a year later would graduate as a Minister. There’s a lot to his story, sometime I’ll share a bit of it that I know.

The rest of the summer I remember preparing for an IKC shiai (the size of a small tournament itself) working Wansu hard and always training.