Hi all, thanks for all the comments on this one. Opinion seems to be pretty much universal. I've shown it to quite a few people this weekend and they were equally unimpressed. Some non-martial artist friends thought it was a joke!
This is going to be a long post - BE WARNED!
Before I go any further I'd like to say that I have a lot of respect for both George Dillmans and Leon Jays physical abilities. I've seen Leon Jay at 3 seminars now, 2 of these I was really impressed with, the other I'll explain in a minute. And as far as Dillman goes, I think he is an extremely powerful and fast fighter, and honestly believe he has a fantastic knowledge of the Martial Arts.
Now, I fully understand some of the bad press both Dillman and the DKI (Dillmans organisation) have received over their PP work (prior to the No Touch Knockout Stuff), and partly agree. Not one of the knockouts I have ever seen done by the DKI has been done in a realistic way against non-compliant people. But, I think that to do a KO against someone going full power at you, you'd have to KO them at full power, so for safety reasons I can see some reasoning. Basically I want to state pre-rant that I do respect the abilities of both Dillman, Jay and others amongst the top DKI ranks who I've seen. They have alot of theory on the PP's which I'd like.
To give an example of where my respect for the DKI stood, up until March of this year I was extremely interested in becoming qualified with them.
Sorry for the lengthy intro, but I think the rest of this post is going to be extremely anti-DKI, so I wanted to give them the respect I feel Dillman deserves. Now, I'm going to be speaking from the point of view as a consumer and someone who is planning on dedicating a fair part of his life to the study of PP fighting.
In March I went to a Dillman seminar hosted over here in the UK by Leon Jay. A group of us went along from my club, and had a great time during the Dillman slot. He was funny, gave alot of good information about Kata Bunkai, PP's and stances. One of his guys stuck a point on me that brought my knee's up to chest and landed me in the fetal position on the floor, cool!!!! Dillman taught for a good 3 or 4 hours so we really got our moneys worth. And I was convinced that I wanted to become a DKI instructor! I know that some of the stuff wouldn't work in a live situation, but I have enough practical experience to adapt it.
We had a break then Leon Jay came out to do a slot. The first thing he had us do was to stand behind each other and try to pull each other using our chi. I've seen a UK TV Magician/Mentalist/God called Derren Brown do this, so I wasn't really that impressed, but stuck with it neither the less. I got my stuff from Dillman, so I was happy.
Then he got us to stand in a four or five lines of about 20 with our hands resting on the person in fronts shoulder (in the same way that they were during the clip). Leon then stood behind us all and used his chi to pull us all back. I can honestly say, and I speak for 5 others aswell, that not one of us was pulled back. I'll openly admit that we moved, but this was due to the 10 people in the line in front of us pushing back on me, not because we were being pulled backwards. Leon then proclaimed that he had moved 60+ people using his chi. As I said, I have nothing but respect for Leon Jay, and his farther Prof Wally Jay, but this was a joke. Photo's were taken of us all, and I suspect that it hit the magazines too. I can state caterogally that I was NOT pulled back, I was pushed back. If the people in front of me were pulled back I can't say, but I felt absolutely no pulling sensation whatsoever, I declare that experiment a failure. I feel embarassed to have been part of it. I still hadn't lost complete faith in the DKI though.
I got back from the seminar and started seriously looking around the web for more info on the DKI and kept on reading about Sound K.O's, Emotional K.O's and lots of No Touch KO's, alarm bells really started ringing.
Now, I'm going to take a moment to look at this objectively, let's for the sake of arguement agree that something is happening here. I don't think that anyone will argue that something is actually causing these guys to go out, I think what we're arguing is what is actually putting these guys out. Now we've covered NTKO's till the cows came home, were milked and died of old age in another thread, so I'll skip over what I thinks happening, but state that something is making these guys KO. Knocking people out has obviously combative applications and thus needs reasearching. So lets say this is a new Technology. Now I work with I.T and have to develop applications regularlly. If I release a program that crashes and fails every 10 minutes I'll be a laughing stock and loose all crediability amongst my peers and customers. Software crashing every 10 minutes shows that it hasn't been tested well enough and more importantly that I don't know enough about it! I see the NTKO stuff as that.
Dillman is a very clever man, I really don't think that he'd persue something that didn't have some merit. But is this stuff ready to be released in the wild? No way! Will it it ever be ready? Don't know. I would have thought with the James Cameron humiliation on national TV the DKI would have learnt, but obviously not. That program has made the DKI the laughing stock of the Martial world!
Sorry for the long post, but this really effects me as a Martial Artists quite alot. PP's is an area where I wish to specialise and hopefully contribute too. It is an area that already has many many doubters, and having the worlds most famous PP fighter humiliated on world wide TV makes us all look like nutjobs!
In case you haven't noticed I'm no longer persuing a career with the DKI (think after this post I've not really got a choice!), and have been lucky enough to find the Dragon Society International run by Rick Moneymaker and Tom Muncy. Through them I have found out about Russell Stutely, and am now persuing a path of study with combat orientated PP specialists. I haven't yet met Mr Stutely, but have had a few discussions with him over the email and brought some of his DVD's. He definately appears to be preaching from a book that I want to follow, I'm going onto a weeks camp with him in november so I'll let you know. If there's one mention of No Touch KO's though, I'll be on the first flight back (I have faith though, and think that I'll be signing up for the next camp!).
So, as far I as I'm concerned as a MA's consumer, the DKI have lost my respect and money. I'm a young and mouldable instructor looking to expand his horizons and the DKI will not be getting my money!
Would anyone from the DKI be willing to join in this discussion??????
Gav
PS. Sorry for the long post! I have issues!
Previous Topic
Index
