 The history of Kempo in America is an interesting trip, albeit with an often bumpy road. Now, Ed Parker brought many martial arts influences to the country and contributed a major martial arts revolution in the United States. Today, we have a special guest with us. He was there in the beginning, training with Mr. Parker in 1959, all the way to Mr. Parker's death in 1990. He was the first seventh-degree black belt under Ed Parker, and he took his knowledge of Kempo into his own direction and now runs the International Karate Connection Association. He was there in the beginning, he saw the transitions, and now he has established his own branch of the art, and he's here with us today to talk about the legacy of Kempo in America. Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Master Chuck Sullivan. So, first of all, I'd like to welcome you so much to our show, Mr. Sullivan. I really appreciate your time spending with us, and we actually got to speak to one of your students, Aaron Cohen, who gave us a little bit of insight on your system. He was a guest on our show, and he couldn't speak any more highly of you than he did and what you teach. So, we're really excited to talk about your history in Kempo and where you've taken it today. You've got deep roots in the history of American Kempo starting with Ed Parker. How did you get involved in the art to begin with? It's kind of a funny story, and I'll tell you. Other people have heard this before, but it's true and it happened. My brother-in-law came home, and I had always wanted to study Judo because it was the only thing available when I was a kid, but it wasn't available to me. I lived in Chicago, and there was no such thing as a dojo of teaching Judo any place in the city, and even if there were financial considerations, it would probably have been considered impossible anyway, so I didn't get a chance to do it. So, I grew up a one and two, and I'd done a hitch in the Marine Corps. I was out for five years, almost to the day, five years. My brother-in-law came home one night, and he said he lived with us. He had just got out of the Corps himself. He said, did you know there's a Judo school up on the Boulevard, 2D Boulevard, which is two and a half blocks from my house, and a block over. And I said, no, well, where, where? And he told me. So, I rushed up there, and the place was closed. So, I'm looking in the window and there's some mats on the floor and a desk in the chair. That's about it, really. And then I'm a little disappointed the place was closed. So, a couple of guys behind me, leading us a car, one of them says, you interested in that? And I turn around, and two guys say, yeah, I am. How much does it cost? How much did the Judo lessons last night? And he said, well, we don't actually teach Judo here. Look up on the roof and it's J-U-D-O. Well, that's kind of funny. Okay. Well, there's some other words on the window. And I said, what's this Aikido? And he says, no, that's Aikido. And I said, well, what is it? He said, well, we don't teach that either. Now, I'm looking for Alan Funtz. I'm looking for a candy camera. They're pucking me, you know. And there was one more word. I'll give it a shot. K-R-A-T. What is correct? And he says, no, that's Karate. And I said, he rolled the Karate. What? I never heard. What is it? I said, I finally understood it. And I said, what is it? He said, well, it's a striking artist. And I decided, I think it'll slam anybody down or throw anybody over your shoulder or, you know, through a plate glass window or nothing. Well, he said, would you like to see somebody? Yeah. And he started showing me some stuff. Yeah, it was pretty nasty. Now, I'm not some 16-year-old kid fresh out of high school or in high school. I'm not easily impressed. I've been in the Marine Corps. I've met some killers. Real get down. Honestly, I got killers. And I knew what life was all about. And this kid was showing me some stuff that I said to myself, I wouldn't want to mess with him under any circumstances. So I got pretty interested right there. And I said, can I come by and watch a class? He said, yes. So I came back the next day. I think it was the next day. No, they were only there two nights a week. That's all they were there. Just two nights a week. Obviously, it couldn't last long. If I hadn't got there when I did, I would have missed that opportunity, too. So I said, I did. I watched. And Jimmy Brown was teaching the class. He was a brown belt. And I said, wow, wow, wow, wow. Where do I sign up? Well, he didn't want to come again, you know, next time. And then that's what I saw the man. Ed Parker was a little over six feet. And he was trim and lean, all black hair, except for one silver streak right in the middle. When I saw that night, blew me away. That man had such energy that when he moved, it crackled off of him. And it went through the walls and permeated the building and it was wild. So I said, you know, I'm in. I'm in. And he says, so have a seat. Why do you want to study this art? What? I'm being interviewed to join his organization. And I thought about why do I want to study it? Well, for one thing, I was in nowhere near the physical condition that I was in when I was in rain. And that's that's one thing I want to get in shape. I said, I see people pumping iron. I'm not interested in that. And I said, this, this read looks interesting. But I said, really, I said, the reason that I want it is the same reason I want car insurance. That I have to buy car insurance. I don't want to buy car insurance. I have to buy car insurance because when you need it, you really need it. The rest of the time, you don't need it. Fine. I look at this the same way. I want it if I need it, but I'll never use it if I don't need it. It had been an Aikido school and it had been run by an Air Force Sergeant who would train the guys that when he gets transferred, he'd leave his most advanced student in charge. And at this time, he didn't have an advanced student advanced enough. He sold it to Ed Parker. He said, you know, I got nobody. If you want it, you can have it at a decent price, whatever it was. I don't know what the deal was. But he said, why don't you do a demonstration for my guys. And if they like you enough, don't. He got every one of them. I mean, he didn't demonstrate. He got every one of them. I mean, he transferred right on over. And then he closed up and we had to drive. There was two and a half blocks from the house. Now I had to drive 20, about 24 miles up to Pasadena on surface streets twice a week after I got home in the evening. Fortunately, the class was late enough that I could attend. And I did. And about half a dozen of us did. And then about three or four of us and then about two. And if I just got that on myself, that's how I got started. And it's not a not a glorious story. I didn't, you know, there were no trauma. I just something I saw. I loved immediate. I mean, immediately, I just I fell in love. And it just fascinated me and it always has to this day. A lot of people don't realize that the the Kempo that Ed Parker taught back in the fifties is very, very different than what is known as Ed Parker Kempo today. Can you tell us a little bit like what it was like training in that original system of Ed Parker Kempo? It was very simplistic. We had three major things with the basics. We trade on the basics. I can't tell you how we train on the basics. I mean, that's all we trade on at first. And then we got into a little bit. We got into techniques, which are self-defense techniques and freestyle. We freestyle a lot. And then there was there were the form the forms aspect, which was very, very small time. But we trade hard on the basics. I mean, we would our keys would be clinging to us through sweat. It was relentless basics. Now, I saw people get so good so fast because we had so little to do as far as material. We just kept practicing the same thing over and over. Somebody once said, what would you rather? Who would you rather fight? A man that practices a thousand kicks once a piece or the guy that takes practice one kick a thousand times. Obviously, don't be with the one kicker because he's going to kick my butt. That guy has got that kick down so so incredible. I'll give you an example. We do a snap kick that are great. We use the ball of our foot. We call it a ball kick. We call it a ball kick for two reasons. And Parker said, once you use the ball of your foot, two, you're thinking of balls. So it's a double, double purpose. That's how we use it. Now, Aaron has trained so hard in Kama Gan for so long. They use a shovel kick. It comes up, swings up, a pendulum comes up. I've seen it done by other people. Don't care for it. And when I saw him do it, I said, he says, I'm trying to get your kick. I said, stop. You've got this kick down so well because I couldn't do it at all. I had half the power that I had with mine. This is because I've trained with mine so long. I get all the power. I get all the focus. I get everything. I said, then stop. Just don't even try to change it because what you've got is fantastic. I like this because it's actually showing right off the bat. I mean, I think that's kind of the nature of Kemple in general. It's like, look at what else everyone else is doing and kind of find the value in that, integrate into what you're doing. And if it works for you, great keep it. If it doesn't discard it, but at least being aware or being cognizant of what other people are doing and being able to implement that, I think is critical in the martial arts. A part of what said, he didn't care if the system was Zulu. He says, I'm going to find something good in it. And then he would, you know, he would take from that. I'm a bigger thief than he was any day. I will take, I will see something of yours and take it in a heartbeat. And sometimes you wouldn't even have to show it to me. I mean, how it's done technically, I could figure that out for myself. I've been this long enough. I know how the body works, especially in relationship to martial arts that I can, you can figure it out. Well, part of it's got to be understanding, you know, how to do the tool, but also understanding when it can be used and recognizing those openings to make it effective. Yeah, or it creates its own openings or whatever. I mean, we have two techniques that I got from Jimmy Woo. Because I don't know if you know about what happened with Ed Parker during the early days when he lost his entire advanced class. I can tell you about because I was there. There's not many people around today who were there. Ed Parker was ready, his second book, The Secrets of Chinese, can I say. And he was visiting San Francisco, picking the minds of some of the Chinese elders up there, and he ran into Jimmy Woo, who was nine years his senior. He thought it would be a good idea to have him collaborate with him on the book. So he invited him to come down to Southern California and stay with him at his house. So he supported him. I mean, he's just supported the man on his stay down. So they were collaborating on the book. Well, Jimmy Woo obviously looked at what Ed Parker had and looked at what he had, and it was no comparison. And Ed Parker made a very serious tactical mistake. He put Jimmy in charge of the class, whatever he couldn't make it, and he couldn't make it more often as time went on. So Jimmy Woo got to teach the class and learn, get acquainted with all of the guys and start moving them, pun intended, away from Ed and on to his own thing. And one of the things that he told, that he sold the guys on, because I stayed in contact with one of the guys that went with him after he was there. So I got to know what they were doing, how they were doing it, a little further down the line, not much, but a little further. And one of the things that I asked Leonard at this friend of mine, I said, how did he get these guys? Because he didn't get me. I wasn't as close to the hierarchy of that class. I was kind of on the lower end. I had just joined the class of a brown belt. I was expected to be part of the move, because he got every single person in the advanced class except me. I was the only one. But I didn't care for some of the things he was doing as he was doing it. I mean, how do you expect somebody that lies to the corner with a cigarette in his left and teaches you a glass? What? A cigarette in his mouth? Yeah. Yeah. First of all, just smoking low or work outs. There were just things about the man that I just couldn't get behind. Some of the things I liked, some of the stuff I liked. But I didn't like it as an entire system. I liked little bits of it. So I stole them. We have been assistant today. They're wonderful. So that all happened and they split. And one of the things that he's told them about was he said, Ed Parker has taught you everything he knows. Come with me. I'll teach you the real thing. Well, he didn't have the real thing to begin with. He was more of a con man. And he said one of the things he said was, Ed Parker is moving too slow, meaning that he should be, his school should be all over the country. He should be in charge of the East Coast. This guy would be in charge of the Northeast. This guy would be in charge of the Midwest. This guy would be in charge of the South. That didn't happen at all. That never happened. The furthest they ever got was the crappy end of Hollywood Boulevard. That's where the dojo lived and stayed and died and whatever. Anyhow, Jimmy Woo had some really good stuff. But selectively, not as an entire system. As an entire system, it was horribly lacking. But the thing that he impressed me about these guys was Ed Parker taught him everything he knew. So Ed Parker obviously said to himself at that time, you want more? I'll give you more. I'll give you so much you can't handle it. And that's what happened. There's some really fascinating old footage, black and white footage of you, Mr. Parker, running through the techniques. And I love those clips. I love seeing, it looks like they're technical videos. What was the purpose of those? Were those more for documentation? Were they instructional videos? What was the objective behind filming those Kempo films? Beautiful that you should ask. The real objective was, at that time, the early 60s, so few people had seen Kempo. And Kempo was nothing till you see it move. His books were wonderful, but a book is a book is a book. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a motion picture has to be worth a million because it moves. You can see the dynamics. You can see the person doing it. You can see it. You can see what's happening, the cause and effect. And what I said to him was, we've got to make some films, and 8mm film was the only thing at every household at that time. And pretty much every household did have it. And I said, we'll do it in 8mm. And so I proposed to him. I said, because he's who he was, because I was who I am, I said, we'll do this. I'll do all the technical stuff. I'll get all the equipment. I'll do all the advertising. I'll take the orders. I'll fill the orders, all like that. We'll do a 60-40 split, 60 to you, 40 for me. He said, well, let me think about it. So the next time we got together, we used to work out after the class was over. He and I was just, he was teaching me things. He said, well, he was teaching the other class. But I think he sort of tested it out. I mean, then he'd teach it to us. So we got together the next time. And I said, by the way, have you thought about my proposal? He says, I love it. It's a great idea. But that 60-40, he says, that ain't going to work. And I thought, oh, okay, I'll overstep my bounds. What's it going to be? 75, 25, 80, 20? And, you know, and he says, no, Chuck, it's got to be 50-50 out of 100. He really, he knew that I was going to be doing so much more than he was going to be. And he told me, he says, anytime you need me to be at a play or whatever, you tell me what you need ahead of time, he says, I'll be there and I'll have it. And he did, he's a marvelous partner. We got along, our partnership was beautiful. What's great, though, is like watching these films back and they're still pretty intact out there. I like how you guys didn't, you know, applied them on each other, but they needed to step by step walk through. So as a student at that time, they could learn it in person and get that instruction and then use that film later as a resource or a reference if they just needed to kind of remember a step or a technical detail. I think those films really, really serve well to preserve the art. And of them, I have one of his books here. This is a Parker book. Is that the same material? Because I saw a lot of similarities in the film to this book. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Same curriculum? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. Well, I had, that's another thing. He put the syllabus on me. He said, I'm not going to have time for that. I thought he was going to do it. Naturally, it says system. I figured he was going to do it. No, no, no. No, you do that. And he says, and you take half of what you'll have to take. I want you to do half and I'll do half. So what prompted Mr. Parker to change from this set of curriculum to start to adapt it into what is known as American Capital today and what was your involvement and your overview of that when it started to happen? Well, like I said before, I saw people get so good so fast and come around the 70s. Nobody was making black belt. Nobody was getting their black belt anymore. I mean, it just seemed like everything stopped for a while. The syllabus had gotten so big. When Vic LaRue was managing the Ed Parker School at West LA, I quit teaching basically his syllabus in the 80s. In fact, when Vic opened his Friday connection on Hawthorne Boulevard in Hawthorne, he wanted me to be head instructor. And I said, what do you teach? He says, well, we're going to be at Ed Parker School, so we're going to teach, you know, Ed Parker's syllabus. I said, the whole thing? He says, yeah, I said, I'm going to teach. I said, what time is the beginner's class? He said, well, you don't teach the beginners. You want to teach the advanced class. I said, you haven't gotten an advanced class. You're just starting it. Where are you going to get an advanced class? Well, the old guys are going to come back. I said, no, no, no. The old guys are gone. Don't count on the old guys. You're going to get a new set of old guys. That'll be the ones you're creating now. So he said, well, you know, he'll teach the basics. And that's like, I said, really, the head guy should always teach the basics. But that never happens. To me, that's the most exciting part. Anybody can teach an advanced class. You don't teach an advanced class. You just conduct the class. They know the stuff. They know the material already. But you're teaching them the basics. And I asked big guys, who taught you your basics? Because you did it. I said, all right. Were you satisfied with them? Well, yeah. I said, I'm going to teach these people too. And I did. And because the basics are the most important part of the art. That makes everything work. And I'm curious now to use that as a transition into the international karate collection. How did that get started? Like, how did you return back to that with Mr. LaRue? And how did that system start to develop from that point on? Well, the, well, first of all, he started the karate connection. And he had that for about five or six years. And then he moved out to the desert. His mom became a widow. And he was his own child. And he moved with his mother out to the desert to be with her and get her established and all like that. And he was coming into town two nights a week. 250 miles. Two nights a week to be in Ed Park's class. So we were still in Ed Park's class. We never cut our, you know, our religion at all, ever. And he was, he was coming into that. Well, then eventually, all right. Here's what happened with, with, you're talking about the video syllabus that we created. All right. That's an interesting story too. Because Vic kept coming at me. We got to make videos. I said, no, we don't. He said, but we gotta, everybody's doing it. I said, ask me if I care. I don't care what everybody's doing. I'm not going to do what everybody's doing just, just because they're doing it. I said, no, I said video first. I said, look, I tried teaching by eight millimeter film. Can't be done. I said, video's the same thing. You can teach my video. You can barely teach this with people standing in front of you for God's sakes. And one night. We're standing right in my driveway. And I remembered something that had happened two years earlier. I think you must be in class and he says, Hey, he says, I heard it. I'm sorry about Chuck Norris. You'll get a kick out of it. So what is it? He didn't realize it. Chuck and I were friendly competitors, but put the emphasis on friendly. Well, he says, Chuck Norris wanted some rank on his black belt, but he, he couldn't afford a trip to Korea. So he sent an eight millimeter film. What do you think of that? I said, I think it's great. I said, really? I didn't think you'd go for that at all. So why not? If his instructors told him what they want to see and he showed it to him, what's the difference to be standing there doing it? Or if it's something you can't mess with eight millimeter film. There's no such thing as special effects. So if he sends him to him, I said, I think it's great. And all of a sudden I said to the big, I said, you know what? There was practically no home video in 88 at all. But it was coming. And I knew that I knew it instinctively at the time. This is what's going to take over eight, eight millimeter film. And it did. And it just killed the eight millimeter film industry. I said, somebody sends us. First of all, we tell them what we want to see. We show what we want to see. A test in karate is not like a test in school. It isn't how much you know. It's can you do it? We know you know it because you're running a class learning it. So we know you know it. Can you do it? We want to see you do it. That's what's going to convince us. That's what's going to elevate you in ranks. So I said, you know what? I said, now I said with video and being able to speak and tell them what they're doing wrong and show what they're doing wrong and tell them what they can do, how they can do it. Right. And show my year. We're going to get it to do it. Right. I said, sometimes you're going to take more than once. Now we got to put the old, I got to that video. This is going to be unfair. Well, it took us two years, two years of planning because the two years we spent four nights a week. And my little dojo here going through every technique in the red book, the big red book. I don't know if you heard about the big red book, but it contained all of Ed Parker's techniques till that time. And we just went through that book and I just crossed that. I crossed that. I crossed that. And I look at this and I said, I like the beginning of this and the ending of it. We keep the beginning and we go to the ending on another one. So we finally took two years of culling through that book. We did it because we knew we had an agenda. We knew we wanted to teach it, how we wanted to teach it, so on. So we knew we had to do that if we're going to keep it American Keppel or Chinese Keppel, which is paying homage to its origins. That's based on why we call it a Chinese Keppel. This is the transitional point then from the material that you're teaching now from Ed Parker material. This is the beginning of the roadmap to what you're teaching today. Yes. Breaking down the techniques was very insightful. We kept the best throughout the rest. Basically, that's what we did. We examined it to the point. I mean, I'm sure that a lot of people have preferences. They like some techniques over others. Why? Because they work. So I want to touch upon that too because I see a lot of issues with today. I mean, yes, the number one problem is the curriculum is massive and I've heard a lot of different stories. A lot of people talk about what they like, what they didn't like, but there seems to be a lot of scrutiny against Keppel because there seems to be people who just focus on memorizing techniques versus taking the time to break them down. Like what you guys did, stripping them down to the course, finding the values, finding the principles and taking what works. So when you really stripped down Ed Parker's Keppel, there's a lot of academic information there in terms of principles and rules and concepts. How much of that did you keep intact for your system? Or did you start from a whole new fundamental level basically from the ground up? We did that. We basically started from the ground up. We even changed some of the basics. Like the neutral bow. We raised our rear heel because it loads up that rear leg and it allows you to move much faster. I got that. I saw that in Steve Mahomet who started out in life as Steve Sanders. He was in our school. I promoted him all the way up to Black Belt. He calls me his teacher. I learned as much from him as he did from me. Simply because he was a natural. I mean, there are things that we picked up along the line. If you're observant, good for you. If you're not too bad, you're going to miss a lot. You've got to be watching. You've got to be, you're always learning. We're always learning. I'd like to return back to the topic of putting together the video program because at the time you were doing this, like you said, you were coming from the eight millimeter films and now you're seeing the benefit of these, these video cassettes with sound and color. And you can do more instruction with it. What was your overall reception when you tried to implement? So once you guys actually put down your core curriculum, you recorded it and you're trying to cultivate and spread it out there. Did you get a lot of pushback? Was there a lot of stigma from it? Criticizing? Oh. Oh. Oh. I quote you from somebody that was high-ranking. He said, I can't believe what some people have done to the system. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, but pushback. Oh God. Yeah. Now would it partner have, have agreed? I don't know. I don't know. He came about just before he died, but he never got a chance to see it. We had actually made the, we were working on it while we're still going and then visiting him and then working out, you know, one night a week at his place. If we'd always maintained that, that relationship, you know, when, when I started, he knew everything and I knew nothing. So naturally I, I forgave on everything until a certain time. Now what about from the technological point of view? Now you're promoting, you know, you started putting your curriculum on video and sending the video out and even, even just a few years ago, there was a lot of scrutiny about learning video online and websites through video. What kind of pushback did you meet at that time in terms of the method of teaching and distributing this content through video services? Well, in the beginning, a lot of people did say, you can't teach through video. You can't teach through video. Then along came the pandemic and all of a sudden everybody's teaching through video. Yes, you can. As long as you're, as long as you have a relationship with, with your students, where you can show them what he's doing wrong and tell them how to do it right and then watch and do it right. Now you're teaching. There's absolutely no difference than teaching in person or teaching by, it takes longer. Now today, oh my God, today it's so great. Everything is done through the computer. You can, you can have it right now and you can get your reply right now. It's fantastic. Of course the people that we've, that we've trained, I'll tell you, I'll put our black ones up against anybody's anytime. Now I understand too, I'm talking to Aaron. He said that you guys have a, a master caught a, a required for black belt. Can you tell us a little bit what that is? So 55 techniques or then in a, in one color. So the master caught is the only one that we have the best form. Well, we, we also, I also teach the two bands that I teach the staff set and I teach short form through, I like sure of them. And once they go through the program, what happens when a student reaches black belt? Is there still, are there other levels of black belts degrees? Is there more curriculum past that? Or is it more just time and grade in the system? How does, how does the journey proceed past black belt? We have sanctioned every black belt that has come through the system, no matter how many generations down the line he is. One of our brown belts, I'm sorry, one of our black belts recently wrote to me and said, when are we going to be able to promote ourselves? Nobody can, can promote to black belt except the organization. It has to be sanctioned through the organization. So every black belt has come through the organization. With, with Ed, where he lost it was, he made me a black belt. I made a black belt. That black belt made a black belt. That black belt made a black belt. And that black belt. So before you know it, the last thing Ed Berger said to me before he died, I think three days before he passed away, he said, I don't know what to do. And I said, what, what's the problem? He said, well, I go out of these promotions and I sit there and the only thing I recognize is the names of the techniques. It's too late. That ship has sailed. It's gone. It was gone. The minute that you didn't see who I promoted for black belt. And after that, the minute he did, you didn't see his, his or his. You get three generations now. You have absolute, it's like, like I said, the only thing he's going to recognize is the names of the techniques because they've all been changed. But yet they're doing it in his name. They're a Parker black. No, they're not. No, they're not. So with us, they, yes, there's 10 degrees. And, and at 10th degree, that's, that's a thank God they kept an attempt. I hate to think of us like the Masons, a 32nd degree black belt. The 10th degree is it now had Ed Parker stayed alive and he remained alive to my age. He might have been able to hold the line. He might have been able to do that. And I mean throughout, throughout the art because if, if we didn't go any higher than, than he had mandated see with him that the deal was you could only come to within two of him, two degrees of him. So the highest anybody could ever reach is eighth. So if I was an eighth, the highest I could promote would be seventh. So that means you would have to go to him for the eighth. So he would, he would always keep it in house. And the highest anybody, whatever God would do any, I didn't have to, I was having with seventh. I was one of the, the handful that made seventh under him. Oh, I can start to tell you about this, this, this fellow, the black belt is, when are we going to be able to promote ourselves? I said, never. He's really, I said, no. That's what makes us so unique. Every black belt that's gone through, how many generations down from the source, no matter how many generations has come through the system. We have seen him. We have sanctioned the black belt. We have tested him. He does his, his tests through us and either he gets it or he doesn't get it. He takes it again and he takes it again. See, Ed Parker had started at a time when it didn't even exist. I mean, nobody thought about that. He started at the time when nobody knew what the word cry meant. That's right. No, no, no. When I started out earlier, people knew they didn't even know what the word meant. Nobody in 1959 when I started knew what the word meant except for the very small handful and I'm talking a small handful of people that knew Ed Parker personally and were involved with him. Otherwise they had no idea what K-A-R-A-T stood for or how to say it because we all said karate at the beginning and inside, I said, well, Chuck, is that anything like karate? Karate? I said, it's supposed to be the same thing. It's supposed to be, I try to explain, it's supposed to be pronounced this way but we lost that battle, obviously. A long time ago. It never, it never popularized as karate. But it did as karate. I mean, really, of all the people who know what karate means, no doubt whether 10% of them know what K-Po is all about. K-Po never got popularized beyond the people that are in it and have studied some of the systems also and made a study of the systems. I was lucky. I could have gotten involved in Shorokan. I could have gotten involved in Teksudo, anything, really. I was very, I have been able to study with anybody I wanted. I mean, I knew all the gunners, I knew all the guys, I know their systems, I've seen them all. I've made a study of them insofar as I want to, I want to learn about and what they are. And except for Bruce, I could have studied with Bruce but I don't think I would have ever forgotten my K-Po background either. Like Danny Anasano. He's got his own thing but he's still got a lot of K-Po in it. So, starting from where you did with Ed Parker and his first version of K-Po as it transitioned into American K-Po and as you guys started to craft your current Chinese K-Po system, what is in the future or what do you hope for the future of your current Chinese K-Po? What would you like to see it happen or happen to it? I am grooming the next generation because I'm an old dude. I'd like to say that this crisis was a white belt but anyway so at 91 years old I'm, you know, I'm getting there and I know I'm not going to be around forever so I'm grooming the next generation and I've got people behind me that are going to be taking over and they're already doing more within the situation, within the organization than I was willing to do after a big retard so I didn't want to do it and I've put them given them the responsibility of doing certain things and they're doing it so I think the IKCA is going to be alive and well for a long, long, long time and I think that, see when Ed Parker went everything went to hell everything, it just imploded on it so because he had no line of continuation at all he had nobody to continue it on he had delegated anybody to do that I don't know if he could have I really don't know if it would have been possible under the situation that he had being so ownership of everything, I just, I don't know but I've made I'm damn sure that the chronic is going on without me with or without me, in fact I'm down to right now I'm only responsible for 6th degree and above, I've given the responsibility for the promotion to these other people and I'll do it as long as I feel like doing it as I can do it, but beyond that then it's going to be their responsibility and I see it being more powerful and stronger as the years go by and as far as the self-defense part of it until man develops another arm to block with or punch with or another leg to kick with we're still working with the same equipment so you know we're going to be good for a long, long, long, long time and I guess my final question to you is is there anything that you wish you would be asked that you haven't been asked about your system you've done a hell of a job you really have you've gotten into the little corners and creases of it to the point where I really don't think so, I mean even down to like this last thing about what do I see in the future for it strength and unity and continuation of all so thank you very much I certainly appreciate what you've done for this afternoon definitely like to thank you so much I mean this was very insightful I've known several people who have trained in the Karate Connection and they've always said very positive things about it and I was really curious to talk to you about it myself like to speak with Aaron Cohen he can't talk enough and I want to thank him for putting us in contact with each other because there's so much history here and there's so much important history and I think it's important to realize where roots come from and how they develop because things are going to keep developing in the future 100, 200 years from now who knows what's going to be popular in those days and I just think this whole idea of understanding legacy and where arts go and how to maintain the core elements of what work I think is a vital part of being a martial artist so I just really thank you for your time today and sharing your experience and perspective with us this was a phenomenal eye-opener for me wouldn't it be interesting to come back 100 years from today just for a day and be able to turn on your computer and look at it and see put a couple karate and see where it's gone in the last 100 years well thank you so much just for your time I really appreciate it we look forward to seeing what comes of Karate Connection and what comes from the future so again thanks for your time today thank you for having me we'd like to thank Master Sullivan for his time sharing his history with us today I am always fascinated to talk to those who will travel on a different Kempo path so many similarities yet so many differences but we can always find something that we can learn from now if you'd like more information on his system or online training program there is a link to his website in the description below now for those of you who want to get to a more greedy debate about Kempo who served in the Israeli military and works as a tactical advisor in Hollywood now we get into some of the more uncomfortable conversations that many Kempoists don't like to talk about so let's go