The Origins of MMA in Toronto

This weekend UFC 129 event comes to Toronto. As I walked along University Avenue this week I saw the promotional banners for Lyoto Machita, Gille St. Pierre, Randy Couture etc. Toronto, has the highest viewer count of all cities for MMA events. Who would have realized that Toronto martial artists were the first to bring MMA to Canada, and now UFC is here. The system was actually taught by an Israeli jiu jitsu instructor in the late 1980's.

In the early 1990's as a realtor, I was walking the streets looking to lease an unusual vacant two level shopping plaza in Richmond Hill. I knocked on the door of a martial arts school, left a flier and got a call from and Israeli Martial Artist by the name of Moni Aizik. He was interested in taking a look. I had been brought up in the martial arts and was a first degree black belt in karate from BC. I had met many true "artists" this industry, without much business acumen. However, I had never seen a more astutue business martial artist than this person. We negotiated at length and in the end created the largest martial arts school in Canada at the time, approximately 10,000 square feet. However, in those days schools were sport specific. You either taught karate or judo or tae kwan do etc. Moni envisioned a centre with all the disciplines all under one roof, with olympic quality facilities, large washrooms and excellent air quality control.

In this facility different teachers taught their respective disciplines. Moni taught judo, jiu jitsu and no holds barred fighting. From this club emerged some of the current top MMA fighters, such as Carlos Newton, Mark Bocek, and MMA entreprenuer Joel Gerson. We had seminars with Ken Shamrock and Rickson Gracie, before UFC was even invented. Joel travelled to Japan and beat the reigning champion Shoot Fighter of the time Rumino Sato, in the first round by submission.

Moni has gone on the promote his own creation of martial arts called Commando Krav Maga. He travels the world, teaching seminars and has a portfolio of instructional DVD's. However, I think that it was Moni's Israeli military experience that saw the values of the different disciplines as complimentary as opposed to competitve products. In the Isreali army you choose between artillary, air force, navy etc. In their totality they create a weapon of defence. All arms of the IDF work together. In the old days each martial discipline was competing with one another. Even dsiciplines competed within eachother with their different styles, boasting one was more authentic than the other. This created a fragmented martial arts industry, until one unintimidated instructor, put it all to bed, and said, we are all friends, train your hardest. The Gracie's went one step further and said, let's fight and see which style is superior. However now all UFC athletes train a hybrid of arts. So that is how the Samurai Club was born, and how the Samurai children went on to be a majour contibution to the MMA and UFC world.

Wishing all the fighters, good  luck and safety in UFC 129.


Let's GET It On!


The Adventure Guy 

Harmonica Workshop - Toronto Blues Society April 2011

I attended this year's Toronto Blues Society Harmonica seminar hosted by Paul Reddick. The other musicians inclued Ken Yoshioka, Al Lerman and Howard Willett. Without any doubt these harp artists were excellent entertainers and provided a great amount of history of the harp, and their personal journeys of how they masterd this instrument. The seminar was sponsored by Lee Oskar harmonicas, which is quite ironic as he is a local Toronto boy done good on the harp scene. Interesting that Lee Oskar harps use a plastic comb as opposed to wood which the Hohners (from Germany) use. The Oskar combs are made in Japan, which is amazing, as that is where Ken Yoshiokai started his harp studies. I did not realize how far the blues had impressed a traditional culture such as Japan. One of the highlights was to hear Ken sing and play harp with all the feeling of a delta blues man. Apparently he used to be found on the TTC subway playing harp for the commuters.

However, my majour complaint is that rather than being an instructional forum, the workshop was more of a display of harmonica musicians. Al Lerman did start to give some instruction, but it was short and unstructured. Ken Yoshioka told a great story about when he met one of his great harp heroes, he was reprimanded for not keeping a harp with him at all times. An instrument this small is easy to carry and should be kept by your side at all times!

The best harp instructor I have seen so far is Mark "Bird" Stafford, who led the workshop 2 years ago. Jerome GodBoo is the most technical instructor, explaining how to choose which harp for which key when playing in first, second or fourth position. Barath Rajukumar is the most versatile and filled with raw talent. Shrimp Daddy is great with his deep gutted sound.

Any way you slice it, the harmonica workshop was great to attend. Unfortunately, there is limited supply of youth, learing this art form. There were a lot of grey haired spectators, myself included. I think we need to be reaching out to the kids to learn the way of the harp, if this is to develop in the future.

Happy Harping,

The Adventure Guy