We recount an unfortunate training accident which occurred at Calasanz Physical Art and Martial Arts Center.
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A guy, [we call him J for confidentiality purposes], he was here training for over 5 years.
He is a kid that just wouldn't grasp the lesson when someone was teaching him, either out of incompetence or stubbornness... at least any lesson involving martial art. There was nothing you could do. So what I did was I remembered the system. "We can teach anybody." "We can teach ANY body." and J was somebody, so we taught him.
What did I put J to do? I put him to get stronger. I gave him techniques to build power. He got over here at age of 16. He had been training here for 5 years, he was 21 years old now. Just knowing the kind of punch that this guy capable of delivering after 5 years of training with me. And I prepared him to do it. I trained him to throw a punch like that.
He would come to the school and he would hit the bag non-stop for over one hour... bare fist.
Just imagine I have you hitting that bag here all the time because you cannot learn the form, you cannot learn the kata, you cannot learn the dummy, so you know what I said... "I'm gonna make him good.. I'm gonna make him as good as anyone." Because you know he cannot learn the kata, but with this training at least he can survive, he can kill the person. So that's what I did with this guy.
And then all that turned. Turns out he was preparing. The reason that the punch got up so... Because the punch was so hard...
It was.. I was just in the office and I came out to explain something to the boxers training here because I was watching them from the office. But you know, if you are like Bruce Lee, if you are like me and you love the martial art you want to help no matter what. So I came out to explain to them a little bit about blocking, about closing the gap by showing them blocking different techniques.
I put J to demonstrate, for the others to help me show them something in training, in calm training. But here I was sitting on the ring and he was in front of me with no weight on his front leg. I saw that at the time, that he was waiting, getting ready to deliver something big, getting ready to unload a punch, just to see if I could block an unreserved shot delivered purposefully, hard and fast towards my head. But even that was not enough, as my gaze shifted to one of my boxers to explain the concept J goes and throws the punch.
He throws a punch like he is in a fight; as if he was in immediate and express danger even, as if his life depended on that punch. He throws that punch so hard, and fully extended with everything he had, it was 100%, nothing held back. He threw every ounce of power his body could generate into that punch. With that power I had helped build for him, that I had taught him how to build over the last 5 years. That amount of energy was thrown straight at me in that punch. If my head wasn't in the way it would have finished well behind my head, that punch was ready to go through my skull, but then it landed, it landed straight into my eye.
There has not been one person who did that ever before, who punched like that in training, in that cool atmosphere. That punch was so hard, he threw that punch to pass through. It was a punch, he was trying to test me. He was delivering this punch trying to test me.
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(Perspective Shift)
As an outsider and witness to this event, [call me K for confidentiality purposes] I was stretching on the low table when it occurred not 20 feet in full view in front of me. I can assure you this was no ordinary punch. It caught Calasanz just in they left eye socket as he was turning his head to speak to another student, a boxer named Nick, seated on his right. Calasanz reacted as a blind man to a silent punch, meaning he did not react at all. (and as we all know the first thing he'll teach you is "head movement" plus he's always made it look the best with that hair) But no, he did not react; with vision averted it could properly be labelled a 'sucker punch'. Without movement of his head it landed solidly.
It sounded like a car accident.
It barreled him backwards from his favourite seated position on the outside of the ring into the
ropes then swaying back forward slowly. He grabbed his head immediately,
almost curling up, and did not move for several breaths. He went to the
bathroom as he was ready and re-emerged to ask me how bad it looked. Somehow he kept his composure with student J. There was a small cut on his eyelid
which was bleeding slowly and a slightly swollen redness began to emerge around his eyes
before my very own.He would heal from this punch over the next 4 weeks or more wearing an eye patch to hide the injury. Every so often he would adjust it to reveal a rainbow, ranging from deep purple to an almost indistinguishable yellow-green radiating outwards from the eye. Still sometimes when he is tired you can almost see something lingering about that area. This was no ordinary punch.
As a first hand witness observer I can assure you this punch was purposefully thrown the way that it was thrown, but I also believe the pugilist was oblivious himself as to why he performed it suchly.
Perhaps he had built someone up so much in his head, perhaps he'd seen too many Dragon Ball Z episodes and just somehow forgot he was dealing within tangible reality, facing a fallible human and not an immortal, fictitious, super-powered psychic-warrior. The world may never know, but this was no ordinary punch.
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