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Gary came down to my club and taught his style which
was Goju Kai karate. This style struck me as leaning towards
more where I was coming from on the philosophical side of martial
combat systems. So I moved across to Goju Kai with Gary and
a little later we opened up clubs in Liverpool and Manchester."
"For me Goju was the real
taste of traditional karate it had combat aspects and a full
array of weapons, all linked in with a philosophical background,
and was quite a way from the sporting connotations which were
beginning to show through on the karate scene at that time.
For a young Liverpool lad like myself who was out to Learn self
defence, I didn't want a sport, I wanted something that would
stop someone stabbing me on the streets of Toxteth, so for me
Goju was the business."
"Goju Kai is a karate system
with twelve Kata's which I wanted to learn; I wanted the complete
system. But you have to remember this was thirty years ago you
couldn't just pop off down your local video shop and grab the
video. So I researched and explored every avenue, to the point
where I was making plans to travel to Japan to the scource.
Then Steve Cattle rang me and told me that there was a guy who
had just come to this country named James Rousseau. He was a
student of Hiagonna Sensei and Chinon Sensei and was going to
set up clubs for Okinawan Goju-ryu. Upon hearing this I went
to see him. I was one of the first black belts in this country
to knock on James Rousseau's door."
"Within months I had met
Chinon Sensei, set up Okinawan Goju-ryu Clubs with James and
became totally immersed in Goju ryu karate, needless to say,
thanks to this turn of events I didn't have to go to Japan to
further my studies. I want to point out at this stage a few
things about Okinawan Karate
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