“Mister James... Hope all is well. Kinda walked into a knife discussion the other day... Stayed quiet and listened...Reminded me of the knife stuff you teach... aside from knowing it was fun and effective, I was curious to know its background... Phillipino? Kali? Text me when you get a chance to settle my curiosity. Thanx.”

-CB

Thank you, CB.

I do not teach anything. There is nothing I am qualified to teach other than grocery clerking and janitorial tasks and I am done with the laboring phase of my death on earth.

Things are well—with good people in a bad place.

Staying quite and listening is the most important survival skill there is. Keep it up.

I knew that all martial arts knife stuff was phony, because I had really used knives for defense and attack. So, when I wanted to look into a skill set as a control study alongside the knife violence survey I was doing in 1998, Chuck Goetz and I decided to spend 2 hours, three mornings a week stabbing and cutting each other in knife duels. After a few years of this, people who taught and took knife classes began asking us to work with them and they found out that their rarified art melted on contact with our experiential fart. Then, men like Damien Kestle with legit credentials, sparred with us in our experimental format and started murdering us in fights, adapting their skills to real contact. This caused us to borrow, counter and develop methods and evolve.

We then started stick fighting and melding these experience-based skills with martial arts doctrines and adapting blade to stick and stick to blade and using each together and it became great brutal fun.

I have fought in a 2007 Maryland Open tournament judged by a Kali master who told me that Kali was the name of a Hindu goddess renown for her many-bladed dooms and that the name was just borrowed by Flip escrima men who wanted to generate bullshit appeal to idiot American Martial Artist beliefs in the superiority of all things Asian over all things Caucasian.

I have fought with, for and against Philippino escrima, kali and arnis men and have found them to be competent instructors, mediocre fighters and good business men, and generally nice to socialize with. They are not the supermen Americans suppose.

I coach novice fighters. Coaching is assisted learning, helping a person emerse themselves in a knew activity.

Instruction supposes a curriculum and certification.

I have neither, just experience, so I help novice fighters self-learn with weapons and fists.

Teaching supposes a desire to impart ability and preserve an art through a student. I have no such desire and actually dislike any kind of teaching.

I do train, which is helping experienced and/or trained fighters to adjust and adapt and add to their skill set.

If you are interested in this approach I have written a lot on it and there are some training videos on the Modern Agonistics tag on our table of contents, as well as a free manual with photos. See the tab at the top of this page.

Thanks for your interest—stabbing and cutting other humans with dull blades while they try to do the same to you is the most fun thing I have ever done.