"I was on the circuit myself for years and was competing in tournaments
and that's how I got to meet a lot of people throughout the country. Some
were real while some were just tackin' 'em in there."
An Ex-Instructor Describes His Experience with Calasanz
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Over the years we would host tournaments at the local YMCA for forms, fighting, weapons and breaking. Calasanz would perform in the breaking events to demonstrate his breaking ability which was pretty fantastic. He performed an incredible amount of breaks. At the time he did Ed Brown's tournament he did the most amount of breaks I have ever seen at any point in time in my life, it must have been some sort of record. I believe he broke a baseball bat with his shin and generally, anything I heard about Calasanz I usually took as true because I had seen what he would do and could do in real life.Ed would run these tournaments twice a year which would draw in the top competitors locally, and more than that. People would come from all over the North East. It gave the top competitors quality competition in those disciplines of: forms, fighting, breaking and weapons without having to travel into New York City. I first met Calasanz at one of these local tournaments.
Calasanz, as long as I've known has always been an innovator when it comes to martial arts. He was always working on developing new programs and classes; always trying to do something to better the martial arts. I remember he called me over to his school years ago to have a look at a new class he was running. He wanted to know what I thought about it. Today they call it "cardio - karate". He was an innovator of this and he had it going before all those names came out which I thought was really interesting, and again Mr. Calasanz as far as I was concerned was a quality, was a real martial artist. He was a guy that just kept doing, kept training, kept making his art and is someone I've always respected. He teaches martial art as something to be real, not just a place to pay money and get a 5th / 7th / 10th degree belt.
One of the hang-ups I had years ago was that you could have a school and if you were a real "traditional" martial arts instructor you weren't going to make any money. So a lot of those real teachers left the industry. The reason was that everyone wanted their kids to look like a black belt. They wanted their kids to be able to throw 55 different leg kicks. People didn't want to take the time to do what they needed. They needed forms, meditation, exercises... the real stuff.
Most places having anything to do with martial arts at that time was more for show and tell than anything else because it was such that in those times you could only survive by teaching a lot of kids, and that meant doing a lot of things that weren't so much the traditional way. There are still a lot of those places around that want to get 1000 students and keep them coming in for prizes [belts].
There were, however, at that time other instructors that really were teaching traditionally. I call them traditional martial artists, that really stuck to the old ways. They knew how a martial art was performed, how it was received and how it was really taught. I always think of "Karate Kid" you know, 'paint the fence'. I've always respected that Calasanz taught Martial Art as something to be real. But let's say you went to Japan to learn martial art. You would sit outside for months to get in and you would just sit outside waiting to get in.
So there was a difference between Martial Artists even before I was there. What I saw in Calasanz was a REAL martial artist. He was always real. He meant to perfect his craft, always trying to progress it.
He was a for real guy is what I am trying to say. A good guy. I really like him. He was one of the guys that had real fighting going on back then. He was having full contact fights at his school, [similar to MMA today], "Friday Night Fights" I think they called it. It wasn't so big because the laws of the times wouldn't allow you to openly do what they were doing; but I remember that at one time he was trying to get that going. The boxing commissioner was giving him the hardest time because they didn't want it to take away from Boxing's lime-light.
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