From Lee to Li: An A–Z guide of martial arts heroes. Ben Stevens
BRIGGS, KAREN ‘THE WHIPPET’
Forty-five at the time of writing, Karen Briggs has been World Judō Champion no less than four times. (She first won the title in 1982, aged eighteen, and successfully defended it at the 1984, 1986 and 1989 Judō World Championships.) She was twelve years old when she began practising judō, having previously been obsessed with becoming a professional footballer.
Known as ‘The Whippet’, Briggs would commonly ‘warm up’ for an intensive judō training session with a 6—to 8-mile run. The only thing that ever slowed her down were injuries—these included a broken leg (sustained while attempting to throw an opponent), and a right shoulder which was prone to popping out of its socket. Indeed, it was this troublesome shoulder that was responsible for finally ending Brigg’s career; in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Brigg’s much younger opponent—the Japanese female judoka Ryoko Tamura (who had, ironically, previously declared that she idolised Briggs)—deliberately targeted the damaged part, something which enabled her to secure victory.
Karen Briggs now runs a judō club for children in her native Hull, East Yorkshire. In August 2008, she revealed that she’d recently had a breast removed due to cancer, but with typical fighting spirit went on to state that the ‘…future looks good’.
BROWN, DENNIS
One of the first Americans (or so it’s claimed) to train in the martial arts in mainland China, Dennis Brown gave up a promising career as a computer technician at the age of twenty so he could concentrate fully on being a kung-fu instructor.
Following his training in China, he was able to open his own school in the United States, and soon grew so well-known that he was called upon to act in the martial arts’ movies that were being made in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington DC has made Brown their ‘Official Consultant of Wushu for the People’s Republic of China’ (wushu is Chinese for ‘martial arts’), and in 2000 the magazine Black Belt listed him as being one of the ‘25 Most Influential Martial Artists of the Twentieth Century’.
Brown, meanwhile, continues to emphasise the fact that the martial arts should be a way for people to improve their characters—not just learn how to fight.
BUDDHABHADRA
More simply known as ‘Batuo’, Buddhabhadra was a wandering Buddhist monk from India who has been immortalised as the founder of the Shaolin Temple, which is synonymous with wushu in China.
Batuo drifted into China around 464 AD, where he began preaching Buddhism. It must have taken him a while to achieve the necessary popularity, because only in 495 AD did the Emperor Xiaowendi (at the time busy with his attempts to make Northern China more united, including forcing its inhabitants to wear the traditional garb) give permission and the necessary funds for a shaolin si (’young forest temple’) to be built as Batuo’s base.
It was, by all accounts, something of a modest structure, with a round dome as its shrine and a small platform where Indian and Chinese monks translated Buddhist texts from Indian into Chinese.
It’s worth noting here that, at that time in China, Buddhism was praised more as being an educational system concerning how one should lead one’s life, rather than as a religion.
Thus, under Xiaowendi’s rule life did get a bit easier for his subjects. Short periods of imprisonment replaced mutilation as a punishment for many (not particularly serious) crimes, while the sick and the poor could expect to receive a certain amount of what we might now refer to as ‘care in the community’.
CASSEUX, MICHEL
Michel Casseux (1794-1869) was a pharmacist who did much to develop the French martial art of savate (pronounced ‘sa-vat’), also known as boxe Française, or ‘French boxing.’
Evolving out of Parisian street fighting techniques that were, for whatever reason, particularly popular with sailors—including high kicks and ‘slaps’ rather than punches (to avoid the legal penalty for using a closed fist)—savate (the French for ‘old shoe’ or ‘old boot’—presumably a useful piece of footwear to wear during combat) was given a number of rules by Casseux, such as no headbutting, biting, or eye gouging.
A savate practitioner (if male, known as a savateur; savateuse, if female) was at something of an advantage when facing a boxer, as savate made—and continues to make—free use of such ‘standard’ martial arts’ leg techniques as a roundhouse kick. (Only the feet may be used when kicking; knees and shins are strictly forbidden.)
CHAN, HEUNG
The founder of the kung-fu system named Choy Lee Fut, Chan Heung was born in 1806. From an early age he was an avid student of kung-fu (first taught by his uncle, a Shaolin fighting monk), then in his early twenties he sought to expand his knowledge by seeking out a hermit named Choy Fook. (Choy, a former monk and martial arts’ legend in his own lifetime, lived on a nearby mountain. He apparently had a number of ugly scars on his head, which had resulted in his unfortunate nickname ‘Rotten Head Fook’.)
After some months of searching, Chan Heung eventually succeeded in finding Choy Fook, who seems not to have been particularly fond of company. Chan then trained under Choy for around a decade, eventually pioneering his own system which he named after Choy Fook and another teacher who’d instructed him, Lee Yau-Shan. (The Fut in the title, incidentally, is Cantonese for ‘Buddha’—something which Chan Heung believed imparted a ‘spiritual’ element to the system he’d evolved.)
Having fought against the British in China’s Opium Wars, Chan Heung later went to San Francisco, where he opened his own kwoon(martial arts’ training hall). He died in 1875.
CHAN, JACKIE
Born in Hong Kong on 7 April, 1954, Jackie’s parents christened him Chan Kong-sang, meaning ‘born in Hong Kong’. (Just in case there should have been any confusion over the matter, presumably.)
Almost as soon as he could walk, Chan was practising kung-fu with his father each morning, which it was hoped would help to instill such noble attributes as honesty, courage, and perseverance into the young boy.
When Chan was seven years old, his father was offered a job as a cook in the American Embassy in Australia. So off he and his wife went, leaving young Jackie in the tender loving care of the Peking Opera School.
Actually, there was nothing very tender or loving about the school. The child students there were drilled relentlessly in the martial arts, singing, acting, and acrobatics—all skills they would need for their intended life with the Peking Opera. The children were expected to learn quickly—and learn quickly they did; that is, if they wished to avoid being beaten and otherwise reprimanded in no uncertain terms.
Chan made his acting debut, aged eight, in the snappily entitled Seven Little Valiant Fighters: Big and Little Wong Tin Bar, and as he got a little older, found work as an extra in various other, long-forgotten films. He graduated from the Academy aged seventeen, only to discover that the Peking Opera would now not be requiring his services after all—it was no longer very popular, and was thus in the middle of firing rather than hiring.
Further limiting Chan’s employment opportunities was the fact that he could neither read nor write—two skills the Academy had apparently neglected to teach their students as they jumped through suspended hoops while singing operatic airs.
Desperate, Chan decided to become a stuntman, quickly earning a reputation for his almost suicidal