JD, Master Smith and the Three Second Fight
Among all fighting art practitioners a rule of thumb holds inevitably true: those who lack physical superiority tend to add undue emphasis on discussion of fighting. In other words: those who concentrate on the physical training are believed to be physically superior, while those who become more knowledgeable are believed to be physically inferior. I have no reason, based on the minimal experience gained in this regard, to dub this assertion unfair. Rather, I stress here that physical superiority is often times overrated, while the potential knowledge to be gained in all aspects of life, physical and otherwise are predictably and often regularly underrated. So was the case, as I discovered through my own personal exploration, of life and the arts.
My older brother, Jesse Delbert Greathouse III, being born exactly one year and half of one day before myself, was bestowed the motor coordination and immunity of a baby prodigy. For my part I was born early and with severe difficulties, sharing none of the size and muscle capacity of my brother. In fact, since birth I’ve been encumbered with several classic physical disadvantages as well as personality quirks, while my brother JD, seemed perfectly endowed with all the necessary commodities of a natural-born soldier. While JD’s personality fearlessly inserted him into conflict head on, I reacted quite different, often avoiding conflict to my ultimate disadvantage. I was a coward.
At age 12 my parents liberated both of us into a local Taekwondo dojang. Owned and operated by Rodney Smith, a low ranking black belt with two decades of experience, American Accelerated Taekwondo was a school for young men and women in need of discipline. JD’s unconquerable spirit quickly won the attention of Mr. Smith, who promoted him to orange-belt within a few short months, while I remained at the bottom of the ranking, watching kid after kid accelerate past me.
I learned the art of watching other students excel, after a year of consistent training I was still forbidden from sparring. JD, on the other hand, had been sparring since the third month, and took to it like a fish to water. Mr. Smith would conduct the opening drills and exercises, observe the students’ forms individually, then as it was time for the students to adorn their sparring equipment, I was sent by myself to the bench press machine in the corner of the room to work on fortifying my muscles for the hard work ahead of me. I’d watch the students sparring as I lifted and try to learn what I could from that distance.
JD was inevitably ordered by Mr. Smith to attend a locally established tournament, one which seemed, according to Mr. Smith, challenging but just in it’s rules. At this time taekwondo had not become an Olympic sport, and while the familiar protective equipment, the chest and headgear in particular, had become a mainstream component of tournament fighting, the rigid rule structure of Olympic taekwondo had not yet been invented. Contenders where allowed to punch and/or kick to the protected areas of the head and torso, all other techniques (chops, elbow strikes, knees strikes, takedowns etc) had been banned already by respected tournament organizers. JD dazzled the judges in the artistic component of forms, and quickly overwhelmed any and all opponents in the fighting aspect of the competition. Bringing home 1st prize in both categories. Mr. Smith was pleased.
I was lifting weights and watching the students’ sparring, at this time I was an orange belt with two years off and on experience, JD had since competed and conquered a good many number of local taekwondo tournaments and established himself as a worthy competitior in his weight class. As I watched from my corner I saw Mr. Smith raise himself from his seat, and with his trademark grin strode the floor towards the point where JD and a young girl were in seemingly fierce competition. In his thick Arkansas slackjaw he muttered JD an order which I couldn’t quite hear, but must’ve been somewhere along the lines of “go take off your gear.” He bowed and screamed “YES SIR!” then ran to the dressing room, returning to the floor drenched in sweat from the panels where the gear once sat on his head and chest.
The other students, under orders from Mr. Smith, had ceased sparring and sat against the wall in their usual lecture-ready fashion. Facing each other at opposite ends of the mat, the student and instructor bowed and stepped back into fighting position. A student yelled “Si-Jak” and they began the motions of taekwondo fighting. After a few brief feints, maybe 2 or 3 seconds into the bout JD moved in with a lunging, high sidekick at lightning fast speed. In a swift, continuous motion, Mr. Smith clutched the foot in mid-air and with a slight turn of the hips sent my brother spinning and flailing violently across the room and into the corner where the Styrofoam equipment was kept. Not a split second after landing, Mr. Smith had forced JD’s arm behind him and pressed his face into a kicking pad while kneeling firmly on the center of his backbone. JD was paralyzed under the suppressing force of his master.
Afterwards JD, the other students and I were allowed to change clothes and sat in a circle around the window perch where our master gave his usual end of class lectures while parents waited patiently to pick up their children.“JD?” Said the Instructor
“SIR!” which was the etiquette of response to any notion or question by the teacher.
“How ‘come I beat you so easy?” Asked the master.
“…” JD, like most the rest of the student body, didn’t respond to a question which could not be answered in the yes-sir etiquette, knowing that any answer given could be punishable by push-ups. One could’ve almost heard the gears turning inside the young people’s heads while they tried to fathom what the preferred answer might be.
“Anybody?” He held his palm face up and looked across the room.
“SIR!” I said as I stood up. “You cheated SIR!” Mr. Smith’s face lit up with an enormous grin. Such a vivid and moving response I had never seen from the sober and simple minded man. There was an eternal pause, I could feel his gaze like a laser pointed in my eye.
“Very good Joe!” his plastic appreciation gave way to a rush of intellectual equilibrium, an almost meditative state. “Now everyone get down and give me 50 pushups!” “Yes SIR!” screamed the class in a coordinated chorale of obedience. After our pushups were completed, we bowed together to the flags, repeated in unison the sacred tenets of taekwondo, then returned home to our families. The End.
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