Who Are Your Martial Art Heroes?

[isshinryu5toforever]

My sensei, of course.

Jet Li: I met him, and he seems like a wonderful person. He was very friendly and willing to take time to talk. Pretty down to earth.

Park Dong Geun: He was the all-Korea champion in Taekwondo for like 7 years in the 1960s, became the first coach of the US Olympic Taekwondo Team in 1988, and is probably the sole reason why I found an interest in Taekwondo while I was at university. He's a very intelligent, thoughtful man who would do anything for his students, but would tear you in half if you attacked him. I spent a lot of time hearing stories about him from my coach, and of course, met him a few times.

[Athena]

Bruce lee - for the obvious reason that he is awesome

and Pat Morita - though I don't think he really knew/knows karate XD still, mr. Miyagi is awesome and was one of my early inspirations to try out martial arts.

no offence to jet Li and jackie chan, who are also awesome, but these two are the ones that I think of first

....oh... *went back to read previous posts* ...i already posted..dang it's been so long i don't even remember where it was that I posted in XD

so if anyone has the power to delete posts, you may do so to this one. thank you

[Kuma]

In no particular order:

(1) Mas Oyama

(2) Morio Higaonna

(3) Masahiko Kimura

(4) Bas Rutten

(5) Jon Bluming

(6) Andy Hug

(7) Joko Ninomiya

( Hajime Kazumi

[KarateGeorge]

1) Bruce Lee

2) Chuck Norris

3) Tony Jaa

[ElShaft]

Bruce Li was an inspiration when i was younger however recently ive been reading the teaching of Egami and other Japanese masters attempting to get a better grasp on the philosophy of karate

[wanderingbudoka]

Gichin Funakoshi

Bruce Lee

Gozo Shioda

Jigoro Kano

Aldo Nadi

Wally Jay

Mas Oyama

William Fairbairn

Col. Rex Applegate

[bushido_man96]

Aldo Nadi

William Fairbairn

Col. Rex Applegate

Some nice Western additions here, and some that are underappreciated in my mind.

[KarateOx]

Miyamoto Musashi and Choki Motobu. Two misunderstood warriors who thoroughly followed the Bushi way of life.

[ninjachamp8]

I would say Bruce Lee is my hero of Martial Arts. I was only in my teens when I saw the movie "Enter the Dragon" and I was totally in awe of what I saw.

Bruce Lee always considered himself a martial artist first and an actor second. As a martial artist, he was way ahead of his time in developing his own style of martial arts he called jeet kune do. His martial arts incorporated the most practical techniques from various combative disciplines as he moved away from the traditional and classical techniques.

Of course Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme came in later but Bruce Lee was by far a class of his own.

[quinteros1963]

Yip man

Seiko Higa - The forgotten Master of Goju Ryu!