Judo Club gets it wrong

HI Folks. Here’s an interesting story…one of the Buntingford Karate Club’s Black Belts was recently invited to go along and watch a training session at a Judo Club (that is out of our area). He turned up and was asked if he would join in. He said that he would. He had taken his Karate Gi and his black belt with him (just in case) and went and got changed.

When he came back into the Dojo no-one bowed to him and no-one acknowledged his black belt. This is totally unacceptable. OK, he wasn’t wearing a Judo Gi but we in Martial Arts should be respectful to one another and certainly acknowledge the presence of a Black Belt even if it is not our own chosen Martial Art. He was then asked to remove the Black Belt and put on a white belt – also unacceptable…he WAS a guest after all!

The club then started to show him various take-downs and our member adapted quite well – however when he offered to show them how we do take-downs they told him he was doing it all wrong – which is rubbish because OUR version of a take-down is for street self-defence and not Competition Judo.  He had not criticised them so why should they feel the need or desire to criticise him? They also informed him that they thought that Judo was better than Karate!

Finally, after suffering this lesson in silence he wondered why a club that thought Judo was better than Karate should hang up a picture of Gichin Funakoshi (the Sensei on our Blog Home page)the founder of modern Karate when the founder for Judo was Jigora Kano (pictured here). Sorry guys, but you’ve got it all wrong!

Sensei Bill.