From Lee to Li: An A–Z guide of martial arts heroes

Following the end of the Second World War, Choi returned to Korea, where for a time he earned his living raising and selling pigs. However, a local brewery chairman happened to see him in action when a heated discussion he’d been having with several men turned ugly. In the ensuing skirmish, Choi quickly saw the men off.

‘Hey, you’re pretty good,’ said the brewery chairman, a man named Suh Bok Sub (who was himself a first dan in judō). ‘Why don’t I pay to have a dojang (the Korean for training hall) built on my premises, so that you can teach there? I can be your first pupil!’

And so it was; in 1951 the two men opened a school named the Korean Yu Kwan Sool Hapki Dojang, followed, in 1958, by Choi’s very own school—which for the first time bore the shortened title ‘Hapkido’.

Having travelled as far as North America to teach his new martial art, Choi died in 1986 at the age of eighty-two.

CHOU, SENG

Seng Chou (480-560 AD) was feeble, slightly-built, and often bullied by the other monks who were resident at the Shaolin Temple. Greatly peeved by all of this, Seng Chou went one night into the Temple’s great hall, where there stood before him a massive statue of the Buddhist military god Jingangshen.

‘If you can hear me, great one,’ whispered Seng Chou in prayer, ‘please help me. Make me strong, and big, so that I can defend myself when next the other monks chide me.’

This continued for several further nights, with Seng Chou praying alone to the fearsome-looking statue. Finally, after almost a week had passed, Seng Chou’s prayers were answered.

‘What’s the matter with you, mouse?’ mocked Jingangshen in great, booming tones, suddenly appearing in his divine form before the cowering monk.

‘The other monks are always mocking me—they call me weak, and useless,’ protested Seng Chou in a faltering voice, wholly unable to meet the god’s fiery gaze.

‘But you are weak, and you are useless!’ laughed the god, swiping Seng Chou around the head. It was the mildest of blows, and yet it knocked the monk flying.

‘I know I am,’ nodded Seng Chou as he picked himself up slowly off the floor, tears appearing. ‘That’s why I need your help to change.’

So obvious was his misery that Jingangshen felt something stir in his otherwise hardened heart.

‘So be it,’ said the god solemnly.

‘You’ll…you’ll help me?’ stammered Seng Chou, wiping his eyes.

‘In a way,’ answered Jingangshen cryptically. ‘But first you must help yourself.’

‘How do you mean, master?’ the monk wanted to know.

‘You must eat flesh.’

Seng Chou recoiled as though stung.

‘Master,’ he said breathlessly, ‘you must know that it is forbidden for a monk to eat the meat of any creature. That is a sacred commandment to us.’

‘Eat flesh,’ shrugged Jingangshen, ‘or be damned all your life. There is no other way.’

‘I…I cannot,’ Seng Chou said miserably. ‘You ask too much.’

At once a great blade appeared in one of the god’s hands, its blade pressed against the monk’s throat. In the god’s other hand was a great sinewy lump of meat.

‘Eat this,’ said Jingangshen, ‘or die by this blade. You asked me for help, and now you must accept what I tell you. There is no other way, except for that of death.’

Hesitatingly, Seng Chou reached out for the meat. He felt sick to the stomach as he began to chew—and yet it tasted considerably better than he’d expected.

And all at once he felt a warm glow start in his arms, legs, and chest. Suddenly he realised that he was stood at least a foot taller than he had before, and he looked gratefully at Jingangshen.

‘I have granted your wish,’ said the god, the meat and sword now absent. ‘Never trouble me again.’

And with that, all that remained was the statue with its fixed, fathomless gaze.

Dawn was breaking as Seng Chou returned to the dormitory he shared with the other monks. They were starting to awaken, yawning and washing with the aid of a water jug as they prepared themselves for the morning’s prayers.

‘Seng Chou, you little maggot, where have you be—’

The usual tirade of abuse stopped the moment the monks took notice of the fact that Seng Chou was a good foot taller than he’d stood before, and that his arms and legs were now like tree trunks.

‘Never mock me again,’ said the monk quietly. ‘Do you understand?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the other monks together, wondering just how such a transformation could have occurred overnight. They knew better than to ask, however.

From that moment on Seng Chou became one of the Shaolin Temple’s most skilled martial (fighting) monks. He was fond of jumping onto rooftops and lifting great weights, while his friend Hui Guang (who hadn’t been given any special powers by Jingangshen) could apparently kick a shuttlecock 500 consecutive times with his feet while stood on a thin iron beam suspended several feet in the air.

CONSTERDINE, PETER

One name consistently mentioned by such premier British martial artists as Kevin O’Hagan, Brian Seabright and Geoff Thompson is Peter Consterdine’s. From the age of fifteen he has been a practitioner of many different martial arts, including karate (in which he is currently ranked seventh dan, and a former England International) and Wing Chun kung-fu, Consterdine also honed his fighting skills in the decade he spent working ‘on the door’ of some of Manchester’s roughest nightclubs.

Like Geoff Thompson (with whom he is joint Chief Instructor of the British Combat Association), Consterdine’s ‘real-life’ experiences of violence have led him to reject a great deal of what is traditionally taught in the dōjō. So many techniques look good in practise, but are (to quote Geoff Thompson) ‘about as much use as a chocolate kettle’ if they are ever used in a real self-defence situation.

Through his lectures, lessons, and videos (one of which, based upon Consterdine’s reputation as being one of the world’s hardest hitters, is entitled Power-strike), Consterdine instead shows techniques that have been fully tried and tested in what he refers to as the ‘Pavement Arena’. As a much called-upon bodyguard and security advisor (his clients having included a number of UK police forces), Consterdine’s work has taken him to some of the most troubled parts of the globe, and few would doubt his credentials when it comes to teaching authentic self-defence.

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DOLMAN, CHRIS

Born in the Netherlands in 1945, Chris Dolman has been described by the ‘Dutch Animal’ Jon Bluming as being ‘…the best all-round student I ever had’. At the age of twenty-four he became World Champion at Sambo, in Moscow, effectively beating the Russians at their own sport, and went on to win numerous medals in the world of ‘freefighting’—which is, as the name suggests, a tournament where expert practitioners of various styles thrash it out to determine who’s best. For a time Dolman, like Bluming, was involved in providing security for the clubs and casinos in Amsterdam’s red-light district, but now he is currently busy training new fighting talent.

DONG, FAN XU

A giant of a man, weighing in at around 300 pounds, Fan Xu Dong was also a master of Wong Long’s ‘Praying Mantis’ style of kung-fu. So expert was he at fighting, and so strong, that it is said he once killed two bulls who tried to attack him as he strolled across a field.

He became a hero when he slew a Japanese samurai warrior who was making his way slowly across China, challenging and killing any Chinese swordsman who happened to be in his path.

Dong had his own challenge instantly accepted by the samurai, who the following morning found himself being sliced in half from the groin upwards.

DONG, HAICHUAN

The founder of baguazhang (’eight shaped palm boxing’)—one of the three major internal Chinese martial arts—Dong Haichuan was born in Zhu village sometime around the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. From childhood he trained in a variety of martial arts, and as a young man was frequently in trouble due to his love of fighting.

He then went travelling around China, often so poor that he had to beg for food but always practising his martial arts daily. He finally obtained employment as a tax collector in Mongolia, where he stayed for around a decade.