You may or may not know me, just in case you don’t. My name is Dexter Kennedy; I’m one of Mike Genova and
Keith Vitali’s black belts. While practicing my craft at Genova Karate I had the pleasure of being Richard Jackson’s sparring partner before he became Super-lightweight champion of the Professional Karate Association. I received my black belt in 1986, and opened a school that same year in Harlingen Texas. When I turned forty, looking for a sport to maintain my level of fitness I turned back to karate and started competing in tournaments again to only find out things were pretty much the same way they were when I left, to be honest they were actually worst. I’d gone to several local tournaments and in some of the divisions one could win a trophy by just registering, there were so few competitors inn some divisions you would wait the entire day, for your division and maybe have only one fight or two and win first place.
What’s happening to tournaments? Are we losing are competitors to MMA type events, is it no longer a thrill to compete in a karate tournament?
If you were to ask me, I would say it’s most likely because we have nothing to offer beyond the tournament.
Consider baseball, football or basketball. A competitor can start as early as age 4 or 5 years of age. Learn the fundamentals, gradually improve and as he or she gets better they can still play or compete at higher levels or progressive levels if you will in elementary, middle, high school, or college and if things work out well enough for the competitor there’s the chance of becoming a professional. Also consider, the United States isn’t the only place where there are professional leagues for these sports but they usually it starts here.
I write to you because firstly I respect you as a martial artist, and secondly due to your expertise you have a certain level of influence in the industry and your community. As a result of MMA, what changes have you made to your school or studio? Have you added boxing, and maybe grappling because of the events you’ve seen on pay-per-view (MMA)? One would have you to believe this is new but boxing was added as early as 1960’s with John Coulon and grappling with Gene Lebell even earlier so these techniques have always been part of martial arts. I personally think we’ve failed by not considering our mass population of the 18.1 million plus practitioners in the US and taking into consideration what platform would work best for the majority and not the few.
I think we both can agree that a martial artist, with the proper training, education and dedication can be more brutal and deadly then on without. So the fact that I choose to spar with kicking techniques versus grappling techniques has no real bearing to who is the better fighter. So with that being said, I would like to focus on growing the sport and presenting the best package for entertaining the public. We’ve already had the best marketing possible. That’s right, movies like Enter the Dragon, Fist of Legend way too many to list, superstars and martial arts superstars. So why isn’t martial arts a national league sport like the NFL, or NBA? I think it’s because of our thinking. We need to really think about is what would be best martial arts venue to gain the majority of the public.
