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[whitewolf]

Interesting-i notice that many many instructors (especially in traditional arts)-dont touch on what is going on out there-Myself i am passing on the stop 6 steps-in fact we review it almost at every class i give to both the seniors and to the class at the athletic club-i dont talk  much about the flinch that is the discusson here-what i touch on is more like -ohh get out of the way-fight/flight/freeze subjects-and go into actual
techniques- or discussions on  various self defense seubjects-
I use Hocks various principles which are as far as i am concerned up to date-
R/s WW

[Hock]

More history since time passes and few people sit around campfires anymore and keep the stories alive.

One way that Blauer got quite a bit of negative news in the late 1990s was his reputation for trying to put legal restrictions on a lot of things/moves he did.

You see Tony Blauer is a known pioneer of the trademark and as a result  "the patent craze" in training. In this beginning many other police trainers followed Blauer and also tried to legally own physical moves. As if it was cool or somehow that "holding a trademark or patent" turned you into an Einstein inventor.

Martial artists thought this was insane and we all asked the common question..."How can you legally own a kicking combination?" So, one craze is he started, and/or really popularized was the trademark/patent/martial craze. Shortly after that a few webpages starting popping up of groups of cops doing training and invariably there would be a cop and bio in which it proudly headlined that...

"Bobby Jones holds three patents-pendings on ....
insert moves named cool things."

(...applause awaiting....it was like an elbow, a knee and an arm pull...called something like the "Tallywhacker Compendium." )

Then Tony Blauer was inadvertently in the kick off the second related craze, the severe backlash factor to these trademarks and patents. Quickly, the tide fell back on them. Blauer too. He got a bad reputation for being a teeny prick about his stuff and threats to sue.

I know for a fact that the rank and file cops in the country resented the fact that they were going to learn something and not be able to teach their friends and co-workers life-saving materials without forking up thousands of dollars and getting a logo tattoo. So Blauer and these trademark/patent-people took a PR blow for trying to codify, threaten and sue people who spread what they taught.

This is a mistake still repeated many times. Darren Levine's Krav Maga group for example, tries to control the Law Enforcement Krav Maga course in a similar vein. Mr Levine, advertised as a law and order prosecutor and God's gift to law enforcement by spreading God's gift of fighting - Krav Maga - to police, somehow won't let them spread life-saving materials amongst them without getting a good piece of the action. Levine tried to control the term "krav maga" via the US court system, and control all the legit as well as false competition coming in from overseas.

Anyway, Blauer did blaze a trademark/patent trail. All of that talk has turned pretty shallow in these days of high, HIGH piracy, and all he can do is piss and moan about "intellectual property." Always a tough problem this day and age, no matter who the person is or what the property is.

Hock

[noload]

Came across this...
http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/copyright-trademark-patent/3536-can-martial-arts-moves-copyrighted.html

Though why would anyone bother with piracy and even legit instructors putting techniques on youtube? In this day and age you have to add some kind of value to your easily pirated or copied product to bring in cash.

[Hock]

Anyway.... it is important to understand the scientific differences between

Startle / Flinch
      and
Conditioned Response

The uneducated get them confused. To confuse an entire system doctrine is a real, mucked-up, systemic problem.

Hock

[Hock]

In the end, my quick review...

   Blauer has a very small system. It only handles a small amount of problems. It is heavily, over-based on some false premises as a sales pitch such as a misleading version of the "flinch" and the disproven Hicks Law. It does seems to attract a "certain kind of person."
   He tries to stretch his "SPEAR Arm" way overboard into a one-stop-shop-solution, making his small doctrine confined and dangerous. What is small is not the price.
   Added with the heavy expense to do it, and to "be an instructor," and the fact that he might actually be one of the most disliked people in martial arts today and has been for tens of years now (and that comes after you really get close to him and know him) Blauer and SPEAR will always be a "no-go" for me.

Hock

[Electronic Worrier]

In regards to the earlier question about Blauer and the southern California JKD people...

Been hearing from a number of folks since this started and over the weekend. A half a ton of in fact. But, a question came up here on the JKD past of Blauer and since I know those guys from back then and they read this forum, some responses came in...(and this is one of the reasons why I make the statement that Blauer wanted to be the Canadian Paul Vunak.)

"Blauer studied at the Inosanto Academy for about year...he attempted to approach Vunak and proclaim himself as one of the new Bruce Lees.  He did it in such a way as to say Vunak was one too and they should team up and work together.  Vunak thought Blauer was an idiot and believed that what Blauer had to say was a blasphemy to Bruce Lee's memory. If you compare his skill on videos with Vunak's at the same time, Vunak was light years ahead of Blauer. Still is."

So, you can add about 1 year period of some classes of martial experience right at the Mecca, the Inosanto Academy. It would be to his benefit to list time with Dan. Yet he doesn't?
 
Hock

Hi.  If I recall correctly, Tony stated explicitly in his promotional material back in the 90's that he never trained with any of Bruce Lee's associates.  Yet, he opened a school in Montreal around 1990 and was teaching wooden dummy and hu bud - stuff that was straight out of the Jeet Kune Do curriculum!  The reason this is so interesting is that Tony Blauer is always complaining that people are ripping off his system without giving him credit or financial compensation.  This list of people includes Richard Dmitri, Sammy Franco, Geoff Thompson, and even Paul Vunak. 

It has never been clear to me how someone can claim ownership of an idea or a technique.   Could Ed Parker have sued someone for doing Five Swords if they had not attended a school within his organization?  The idea is ridiculous!  The reason this is so interesting to me is that if what Hock says is true then Blauer did exactly to Dan Inosanto what Blauer claims others have done to him.  Did Tony have permission or authorization from Dan before he opened his Chu Fen Do school?  Did he ever give credit to Dan?  Keep in mind that all I'm doing is holding Tony accountable to his own standards.

So, Hock, would you mind telling me who your source is for Blauer training at the Inosanto Academy?  Because it is actually not common knowledge that he did so.  He kind of just appeared in Montreal doing his version of Jeet Kune Do.

[Hock]

Well, Richard Dimetri readily admits his time with Blauer and mentions Tony's name frequently I am told by attendees. EVERYBODY knows the Blauer/Demetri story. No problem there. but Vunak? NO WAY! The sad thing is that Vunak still teaches almost the same material as he did in the 1980s, well before the Blauer "phenom."

That quote you repeated about Vunak and Blauer and Inosanto came straight to me when this little fiasco got some air time on this forum. I was rather swamped with anti-Blauer sentiments. So, let me get right back to you on that. But several people were around back then. All that was pretty much common knowledge in the 1990s. I may email you that. I would have to track those old-timers down.

Blauer never opened an "Inosanto school" in Canada so no one in the Inosanto world would care what he did. And he wouldn't mention Inosanto  so they wouldn't care. Therefore, he would need no such permission. We all in the States just thought he had invented and opened his own style and school in Canada.   

But, let me say this. According to my friends deep in "the business" in England (and these are NOT Blauer fans by the way)...some guys I trust very recently told me that Geoff Thompson DID INDEED take some ideas off of Blauer, and that in some fairly recent, public interview Thompson did admit this. I know and believe these guys. BUT, I do not have that interview in my hands.

Hock

[Hock]

Electronic Warrior, I assume that you know that, Tony Blauer went to acting school in southern CA? (It was not a college it was one of those "tech/trade" schools). That Branden Lee was also in this school at the time? In some classes with him. This was all on Tony's earliest webpages, but all that is loooonnng gone now. Wiped.

In one of Blauer's earlier webpages, Tony paid a large tribute page to Branden Lee when he died. Tony was obviously enamored with Lee and JKD, based on those pages. (some people suggest even Tony purposely positioned himself there in that school to rub shoulders with Brandon. Because there were a LOT of acting schools. WHAT a coincidence! This I do not know, just conjecture from southern CA. )

JKD - "way of  the...."
Chu Fu Do - "way of the..."

Him doing Hubad way back then- In my opinion from living through that era and tight in the Inosanto world at the time, almost nobody was doing hubad in the late 80s, early 90s unless you crossed hands with the Inosanto people. Nobody.

But you have to ask, does anyone really care? It was 20-plus years go, and we can all easily establish that Blauer is just a mess. So, investigating southern CA to complain about his first school in Montreal and try to win some moral point about copying material....is it worth it? We all know. And he knows, but he'll never admit it. We agree with you.

Blauer invigorates such...such hatred and dislike, that some people still kick this 20-plus, year old stuff around. But, I understand that. What a long string of nice, educated people that truly dispise him! Must be a very ugly history.

Hock

[Canuk]

Just to be clear. The Blauer system isn't even a blip on the Canadian Use of Force scene. I know of no police service or military unit that uses his system. I have met UOF instructors that have taken his courses and added bits and pieces of it to there own teachings, and PPCT and Monadnock and and and and etc.

[Electronic Worrier]

JKD - "way of  the...."
Chu Fu Do - "way of the..."

But you have to ask, does anyone really care? It was 20-plus years go, and we can all easily establish that Blauer is just a mess. So, investigating southern CA to complain about his first school in Montreal and try to win some moral point about copying material....is it worth it? We know. And he knows, but he'll never admit it. We agree with you.

Okay.  You're right.  Consider the matter dropped.

[ghostrider]

The problem with all of this is that almost everyone is borrowing something from someone else in some form or the other. Ideas are not primary property once its released into the world. Even Ed Parker, as great as he was borrowed from other sources. Some of his 1st generation students even created a number of the sets and forms that American Kenpo uses today. You can see Kenpo students and instructors arguing over the merits of the techniques to this day. Then there was that time when Darren Levine tried to sue the Israel military over the use of the "Krav Maga" name. Due to his wanting sole ownership of the name. People will do crazy things to control ideas and if anyone borrows or even comes up with something like it then they threaten to take you to court. Human nature is a funny thing isn't it? When will they learn that where hand to hand combat is concerned there is nothing new under the sun and it doesn't belong to them alone.

Well I guess where money and control is concerned they will never learn.

[Hock]

Last week I saw America's Funniest Videos TV show for the first time in a long time and I saw one of their patented Boo/startle-flinch clips.

A woman unlocked her door and entered her apartment, all on hidden camera. She was holding an umbrella by way of  a lanyard/cord in her right hand. A friend was bent behind a kitchen counter, hiding. The friend jumped out an went "BOO!"

The woman's left hand dropped straight down. Her right hand and arm swing backward in a big, wide circle and hit the friend right in the head with the swinging umbrella at the end of its cord. She really flinched-startled. Eyes wide. Mouth open. But no SPEAR.

We know now the SPEAR is really a common response to a loud sound. This woman responded with a very common "directional specific response" to a visual surprise/affront that in no way resembled the SPEAR.

The clips just keep rolling in with a variety of responses to the five senses. 

Hock