As a young teenager I bought every Kung Fu and Martial Arts magazine I could afford. Here are some choice covers I remember well of the mags I snapped up for my collection, which I'm pleased to say I still have. Its now guarded by a crack team of grumpy Ninja, "my most personal guards!" [name that film reference!]
The above edition of the UK's foremost and oldest magazine on the subject, KOA for short, featured visiting Wing Chun Sifu Joseph Cheng, whom I had the great pleasure of training under for a few glorious Saturdays in 1974. I'll write more about Sifu Cheng later.
I, together with the late John Prichard trained with Sifu Cheng at John Darwin's club in Preston. After a while, Sifu Cheng and John asked us to open a branch of Chong Woo Kwan in Leyland where Sifu Cheng would visit us every Friday. Much to the chagrin of John Darwin he neglected the Preston club in favour of ours which prompted John to send a couple of Travellers to sort us out, they only came once, one left with a dislocated finger, the other got a lesson in free fight and never returned. Shortly after Sifu Cheng ceased coming as the journey from London became too much. John and I traveled down there to train but that eventually became too expensive and too tiring so John wrote to Master Leung Ting in Hong Kong who accepted him as a student. John took six months leave of absence from Leyland Trucks and trained with L.T. six hours a day for six months eventually returning to open Europe's first-ever branch of the Wing Tsun Leung Ting Martial Arts Association. One of our students was a 13-year-old named Nick Smart who went on to become a Grand Master after training for 10 years with Leung Ting in Hong Kong and China. [Look him up on Youtube]. I recently met him by chance and it was a joyous reunion as he had been looking for me for 40 years to thank me for all my help in setting him on the path to Wing Chun fame. He currently runs clubs all over the world under the banner of 'Autodefence Wing Tchun', Leung Ting visited us in 1976 and there were many articles published in the press and various Martial Arts magazines which I still have, plus photos of us training together. If you need any more information please contact me at rbill658@gmail.com. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteinside karate February 1986?
ReplyDelete