Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 1 of 14 Hi, this is Matt Numrich here with www.jkdnewsletter.com. During this interview, I ll be interviewing Tim Tackett on several questions which have been asked through the jkdnewsletter.com website. And first off, I d like to thank Mr. Tackett for being here, and just thank you for taking time out, and I m very, very excited with the expertise you re gonna be able to share with us. So thanks again for spending time with us here. No problem, glad to do it. Great. Well listen. Going through your biography is quite head spinning to say the absolute least. If you can do this real quick, and granted we can probably sit here on the phone for hours as you go through this first question, but go ahead and just kind of tell me a little bit about your martial arts career kind of up until this point, and how things started for you, and like I said, some of the highlights over the last several years that you ve had here. Okay, basically I was born in 1941 and after the Second World War, I was a little kid, and I was interested in World War II combatives, the British commando type stuff. You can get some books on it written by Americans who taught combat to WWII solders. One book I have is even called American Jujitsu. I got that book and started messing around with it, and at the same time our town in Redlands, California had a couple of guys who used to be in the Clyde Beatty Circus as well as the Ringling Brothers Circus. We have a very nice circus group here. I was always a member of the YMCA and I did trampoline and trapeze and stuff like that in the circus. Around 1953 a guy came in and started teaching judo. I signed up for the class. It only lasted for a year before he took off. I ended up having about year of judo. Then I joined the Air Force; soon I was married and had two kids, and ended up in Taiwan. And I had plenty of time there cause I was running a service club, my wife was teaching in America school in the daytime, and I was working swings so I started taking what was called Kuo Shu which means National Sport. We would call it kung fu here, but they had no idea what kung fu was in Taiwan. I ending up having three different teachers and got certified in both the mainland and Taiwanese associations. I then came back home to Redlands, went to college, and opened up a kung fu school to help with my college expenses. We called it the School Of Chinese Karate because nobody knew what kung fu was at that time. This was back in the end of 1964. So there weren t really many martial arts schools around. There was a little bit of Shotokan the next town over and a www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 1 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 2 of 14 couple of other karate schools in neighboring towns. So I shared what I knew with a karate black in Shorin Rhu karate and became a black belt in that. And I at the same time I was teaching him Hsing-I and Tai Chi and different forms of Shaolin kung fu. After a while my first student Bob Chapman and I decided that we needed to expand our training. This was back about 1970. I saw Bruce in 67 at the international, so I knew what JKD was. But I live about maybe 70 miles due east of Los Angeles, and I was going to college and just didn t have any time to get down to train at the Chinatown school. After graduating from college and getting my Master of Fine Arts degree, I started teaching high school and felt that now had the time to devote to expanding my training. I really didn t think about taking JKD. Bob Chapman and I decided to go to Los Angeles and take a Tai Chi class, so I went to a Tai Chi school in LA. The instructor wanted to know if I knew Tai Chi, a Chinese guy, and I said, Yeah, I ve studied in Taiwan. He then wanted me to show some to him, so I showed it to him to see if he would take me as a student, and he did. When I walked outside, his assistant instructor followed me out. And as we were walking to my car, he said, Listen, you re not gonna learn anything from this guy because you already know Tai Chi and you ll be a threat. He said, Do you know Danny Inosanto? I said, Yeah, I ve known Danny Inosanto for years. I first met him when I went to Ed Parker s school to just kind of introduce myself, and then Parker had me show every form I learned and all that stuff. I went out and ate with Danny Inosanto after that. That was about, the end of 64, the beginning of 65. So I saw Dan every year at Parker s internationals, as I had students competing in that. This guy was Dan Lee. He asked me if I might be interested in learning Jeet Kune Do. I said that I was, he gave me Dan Inosanto s unlisted phone number. I called Dan, and he said, Oh Timmy, yeah come on down. It ll be really great. Bring some gloves So Bob Chapman and I went to Dan s backyard, and that was how it started. That was the end of 71 when Bruce had just gone off to Hong Kong. Well I m not an original student, but in a way I guess I might be considered that because I was studying for over two years while Bruce was still alive. Anyway, that was that. And then the thing that really happened that opened it up the doors for me was Dan started teaching seminars. The first one was in Aspen, Colorado. That time Dan got a part in part in Sharky s Machine. And the reason that I got to be known in JKD more than some other people is simply that I was a schoolteacher at the time, and was free in the summer. www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 2 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 3 of 14 Dan asked me to go teach for him at Aspen. Aspen led to the California Martial Arts Academy, which I ended up teaching with Larry Hartsell. I ended up going to the Smokey Mountain camp, and that s sort of how all that started. I got a chance to do two Hsing-I books, and then Larry wanted to do a book, so we did Entering To Trapping To Grappling. I sent it to Black Belt Magazine, they said they didn t know who Larry was, and nobody really knew Larry at that time. When they found out who Larry was, they wanted the book, but by that time I had already signed a contract with Inside Kung Fu. So they got mad, I couldn t put my name on the book. After the book was published, they took the Hsing-I books out of print, so that was my punishment. When the second volume was published it had my name on it a co-author, but the interesting thing is that book is that the techniques in it are about 70 percent of Larry s stuff. But the first book that doesn t have my name on it is about 50 percent Larry s and 50% mine. It s gonna flip flop then, huh? [Laughter] Then Chris Kent and I wrote a couple books. One was sort of focusing on the kickboxing; the other one was focused on the Wing Chun elements of JKD. Recently Bob Bremer and I did a book on the Chinatown Jeet Kune Do, and I just have a second one coming out on training methods. And I did a book for Budo Publishing in Spain called Jeet Kune Do, and then there s also bunch of DVDs. The new one has just been released by Black Belt It is a companion to the Chinatown book. There s also some that my group have self produced on the Elements of Attack and Footwork as well as others. They can be ordered on our websites: www.jkdwednite.com. Awesome. Well listen, you know what? I actually got some questions about that as well, so I m gonna get to those. But just real quick, so long as you have such a vast experience, and first of all, just because this is just a question that came on in that I got to ask you, can you go ahead and obviously when you saw Bruce at that first event that you did, can you go ahead and explain into that and kind of explain what your memories were about that situation? I saw him, and I thought he was really fast. But to be honest with you, I had seen really weird, impressive stuff in Taiwan. I worked in a service club on base near Taipei. I was in charge of the recreation needs of the service men. We were on a National Security base on the top of a mountain, and we had to take the bus from Taipei up there. My main job was to take care of the recreational needs of the troops. About once a month I would bring www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 3 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 4 of 14 in some local cultural entertainment. One time I brought in a lot of these old masters. I saw one old man pound nails thru a 4x4 block of wood with his forehead. I saw a lot of very, very impressive stuff. So when I saw Bruce, I thought he was very good and was very fast. But it wasn t until I started JKD that I realized how efficient it was, and how much better it was than the stuff I had already learned, that I really appreciated it. When I was in Taiwan there were two martial art organizations. There was the native Taiwanese, and because the Japanese had been there for 50 years, they gave out colored belts. They also sparred a lot. While not full contact, it was still pretty hard-core. The other organization was composed of the Mainland Chinese who came to Taiwan after the mainland went communist. They just did forms, and didn t really spar. One thing sparring does is let you know works and what doesn t work in the real world. When I started trying to use some of what I was learning in forms in sparring, I discovered that a lot of what I was learning in forms just didn t work. Once I started JKD I discovered that the training methods were much better than what I learned in Taiwan. For example, there s certain way in Hsing-I of getting power that I spent like three years trying to do with the forms only. Finally starting to feel that I could get real power with it, but after taking JKD, I found I could teach it in two or three days using a focus mitts which allow you to feel the hit and get feedback. So it really changed for me when I started the JKD, and I found out what worked and what didn t work. Wow. Wow. Now do you have kind of like a favorite kind do you have a favorite range that you like to work in, or is there a favorite drill that you do today? Not to be political, but we didn t learn, and Bruce didn t talk about trapping range and grappling range and hand range, because you could do that at all ranges. We only worked at three ranges, which are close, medium, and long range. To be honest with you, it is kind of interesting. The way the range thing came out was when we started doing seminars in large groups, things then became much more structured For example, there were these different trapping combinations that were taught, which were never taught that way when there were like ten guys in the backyard. When you had 150 guys you had to structure it a certain way. [Laughter] Organization was the key, right? www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 4 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 5 of 14 You have to. So we started saying, now we re going to work on techniques from the kicking range. But there was no kicking range. It s just that it made it a way to kind of teach it to a large group. So what happened in a way was then that became JKD, but when we were in the backyard it was much more you just learned the basic traps and then you flowed with it. You didn t go to this combination and that combination. You didn t do it that way. But it s a lot easier when you just have a few guys. When you have 100 guys it s almost impossible to teach that way. [Crosstalk] Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And once again, kind of reading through your bio, that s why I understand that one of your main motivations was still wanting to keep that small group structure when you re teaching. Is that correct? Yeah. You pretty much have to in a way to do it that way. Or you re kind of just not watering it down, but you re making it so that the person doesn t analyze like they used to. We used to say for example, when I was working with Dan Inosanto in the backyard, what we would do is we would look at a technique, or somebody would bring in a technique they would see, and we would tear it apart. Now what s good about it; what s bad about it; what s the strength; what s the weakness. It was a constant analysis of everything. And in a way I think that s sort of kind of gone by the wayside. Right. Now do people just kind of almost, just eat what they re fed now? Is that what goes on, where they re not analyzing or you re there critiquing? Yeah. I see that kind of happening. The critiquing isn t there because once you for example, let s say you re a JKD teacher. Then you start working on another art, which there s nothing wrong with that. We can talk about structure later. We re just working in another art. Well, the tendency is not to say, Okay, go to your class. This is what my new instructor s showing me. What s good about it, what s bad about it. You don t do the what s bad about it. I understand. Right. I mean I think the kind of question that I get to kind of ask people who I m interviewing here, I m very interested to see what you re gonna say here. But is there a principle that you used to believe in, or is there a concept or is there a lesson, is there something that you used to believe in maybe several decades ago, that whether because of maturity or experience you just don t subscribe to anymore? www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 5 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 6 of 14 Not in JKD. The interesting thing is I found it really good. Now a lot of guys are coming up with a grappling aspect to training, but Larry and I were doing that way back before a lot of people were into that. But the idea is it s about being able to control the distance. So you got to be able to control the distance of fighting measure and I ve discovered that different Jeet Kune Do teachers have slightly different fighting natures. And they re all good, I don t subscribe to this is the way to do it. Some people s footwork is a little bit different than other people s footwork. Luckily enough, I worked with almost all of Bruce s students y so I m able to show both ways even though I may prefer one over the other. An example of how things change, have you studied any Kali? Yes, yes. Okay. You know Sombrada right? Yes sir. Okay. Well you know when I was learning sumbrada there was no box pattern. With Sombrada, there was no box pattern when we trained in the backyard. Because you know, it was a pattern, and we didn t believe in patterns. So what you would do is you would hit, and then you would hit the next stroke and they would block, and they would hit. But then and he d go, okay now we re teaching 200 people sumbrada. How do you do it? So we came up with a box pattern. Right. [Crosstalk] I m sorry to cut you off, but I just got a really important question to ask you. So are you saying a lot of the organizing principles that people almost can point to and say, There s structure there, there s structure there. Did it come more from trying to teach maybe larger seminar groups or something like that? A lot of it did. A lot of it did. A lot of JKD schools went to the weak side forward stance which goes against one of the basic principles of JKD which is having you strong side forward so you can intercept your opponent s attack with as much stopping power a possible. The idea is to control the distance between you and your opponent, read his preparation, and knock him out. Bruce told Bob Bremer the best way to win a fight is to just reach over and knock him out. So we spent a lot of time on trying to develop really hard power in the straight lead punch. If you go to the other www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 6 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 7 of 14 lead, then it becomes like a boxing where you re doing a boxing jab and using a minor tool to set up a major tool. A lot of JKD groups seem to have lost that basic JKD principles and instead rely more on passive moves. The reason the switchover occurred, really to be honest with you, when we started doing a lot of the Thai boxing, so people wouldn t get confused, it sort of switched over to a left lead then, and a lot of guys kept doing that. But I think now, if you go to the Inosanto academy when JKD is taught, it is taught out of the strong lead there. People in seminars get a little bit confused about that. Once you ve lost the basic structure of JKD, then you I don t think you re really doing it. And there are different groups and politics and stuff, which is a bunch of nonsense. There s people who say you can only do what Bruce taught. Then there s people that say you try to learn as much as you can. I kind go in between, I m kind of in the middle of those two things. I like to research other arts, I like to research stuff to test it, how do they enter, can you deal with it. So obviously we put a lot of Thai boxing drills and Thai boxing into what we do, but we call it Thai boxing. Now Thai boxing has a specific structure. Jeet Kune Do has a specific structure. So what you end up you have two choices then. You either teach both structures, or you take one structure and take what fits from let s say the Thai boxing into that structure. So what we tried to do and it s not necessarily the right way to do it, instead of having a Thai boxing structure and a JKD structure, we do the Thai pad drills but when we do rear leg hook kick we do it from a JKD structure and not a Thai structure, but since that makes the kick a little slower we do not lead with it. And when we add let s say any of the knees of elbows, we try to do it out of a JKD structure. And if it doesn t fit in the from a JKD stance for example, we won t initiate a rear-legged Tai kick, cause it just takes too long, where the Thai s have a more narrow stance. We don t use that stance, so that we just take part of what works for us and put it into our curriculum, but it s not JKD because it s Thai boxing. We call it Thai boxing, we don t call it JKD or concepts or any of that. Right. Right. So pretty much, you call a spade a spade in other words. [Laughter] If we add anything that is not JKD, it has to add something that helps us. It s not adding for the sake of adding or giving more stuff to teach at seminars. For example, I do a lot of the heavy palm hitting from Tai Chi and Hsing-I that I have added to my personal www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 7 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 8 of 14 expression of my martial art. Bruce wrote about it. He called it uncrispy hitting, but as far as I know it was never taught. But it s very, very efficient. It s very good. When I do any of that I do it out of the JKD structure, not out of the Hsing-I or Tai Chi structure, but then I say this is from Hsing-I. Right. Right. And I think that s important to obviously give credit where credit is due, as far as that goes. That s great that you re obviously doing that, that s excellent. Going back to the Aspen summer seminars or whatever, are there any kind of experiences that are just really great memories, or things you really learned or kind of keep in your mind there? Well what s interesting about it, the Aspen thing was interesting, but what s interesting about it, when these things started, the people advertised that Jeet Kune Do would be taught, but when it was time to hand out certificates they said that so and so had studied 8 hours of JKD. And then Dan just went, No, no, no, no, we can t be doing that. So instead of having JKD on a certificate it had Jun Fan. So the whole Jun Fan thing actually started from the summer camps. I did the second Aspen camp and then that folded, and we did the California Martial Arts Academy. And Larry Hartsell came at that time, and I was helping him teach JKD as well as having my own class. That camp was eight weeks long, but most people cam for on of the 1 week courses. If you took the JKD class, for example, and then you had a week where you just did eights hours of JKD. There were usually about 5 different teachers there teaching at one time. Bill Wallace was there, and the ninja guys were there, and there was different groups there. Dan taught Kali and then I taught the JKD one week, and then Larry would teach it the next week and I was his assistant. I stayed through the whole summer. When we taught the first JKD session there where Rick Faye was a part of the class, the sponsor wanted JKD on the certificate, and Dan said, no. He didn t want anybody with a Jeet Kune Do certificate. Bruce said he didn t want a t-shirt with Jeet Kune Do on it, because he didn t want anybody to get beat up wearing a Jeet Kune Do t-shirt. [Laughter] Protect the name right, definitely protect the name that way, right? Right. So what Dan did, he said, Well we got to do something. I promised Bruce I wouldn t teach Jeet Kune Do to the general public, we had a closed-door JKD class at the Kali Academy, but he did not want JKD on a certificate. It was advertised that JKD was taught there, but we put Jun Fan on the certificates. And then www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 8 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 9 of 14 ever since then there s been this thing, is it Jeet Kune Do or is it Jun Fan? As far as I m concerned there s no difference. Show me the difference between a Jun Fan punch and a JKD punch. Another part of the confusion was that Bruce Lee gave out 3 different certificates. One just had the Jun Fan Gung Fu School on it, but was really a JKD certificate as that was the only thing taught at Chinatown. They learned JKD. It was never called Jun Fan. What happened talking to Bruce Lee s wife was that Bruce liked to liked to design certificates. So there are three different certificates running around out there. One used for the actors that said Tao Of Gung Fu. One he used for his private students that said JKD on it. There were three different certificates, but it was and is all one art. Right. Right. Can you go ahead and expand on the experience you had? I mean I love the details you gave on the book, obviously on the books with Larry Hartsell. Can you go ahead and kind of explain how that information and that curriculum kind of came on up, and where those ideas came from? Yeah, when we first started the grappling thing actually came about when Larry wanted to start teaching. It wasn t like Bruce taught that much grappling. When we were learning in the backyard there was about five locks and about five throws out of the trapping. When Dan Inosanto encouraged Larry to start doing seminars, that he should combine his JKD with some grappling. So Dan started working with him a lot on Dumog we started with Dumog throws, the Kali lock flow, and combined it with JKD trapping. You remember how long ago did you work with Larry? What years? Let s see, this would be back in 97, 98ish, somewhere around there. If you look at some of the early DVDs or videos that are out, what we were doing was mostly Kali kind of lock flows after a trap. Have you ever see any of these old ones? When Larry and I wrote the first book we added some of the takedowns that Bruce taught with some basic grapping techniques. Oh yeah, yeah. So what happened was and then when Yuri came over, we started doing a little bit of shoot. All that became what is now called JKD grappling. The perception out there now is that Bruce taught JKD grappling. What happened was Larry just started evolving, learning more and more grappling from many different www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 9 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 10 of 14 sources, and that became JKD grappling. When Sifu Inosanto started the Kali academy, and we had about four phases of Jun Fan, and then we had the Jeet Kune Do class which was a closed, secret class that you had to get voted into. So Dan was all concerned about how to do this with out teaching JKD to the public. He then organizes basic JKD into four phases of Jun Fan. There were three students of Dan s who got to be pretty good. They came to the California Martial Arts Academy and started hanging around started helping Dan teach his kali class. They were Paul Vunak, Chris Kent and Cass Madga My wife was there, and we had an apartment there at UC Irvine. They were three young kids, they were like teenagers basically, and my wife and I sort of became like their parents. They would call her mom and hang out. [Laughter] So I always knew those guys, and it s always been that kind of relationship. I mean Cass was in maybe 21 or 22, and Chris was about 19 or so. It was really interesting. And then the first one who ended up wanting to really go out and start teaching openly was Vunak. Right, right. Dan didn t want him to use the name JKD so it was called the progressive fighting system. Correct, correct. If you kind of tell this how has JKD and the principles there really affected your life outside of martial arts training? Well, it s just kind of a way to look at things and be able to go with the flow, and it hasn t really affected me all that much because I have an MFA in college, and I studied philosophy and I was an Asian history major for a while. Just a philosophical aspect, I always kind of understand that even before, because I read a lot of those things even before I started the JKD. And we ve lived in China, and that kind of a thing. Philosophy was always part of my life actually. Gotcha, gotcha. What kind of current projects are you working on? I know, like I said you got a couple of things coming on out. Can you talk about those, and kind of what you hoped to accomplish when you were creating those things, the DVD and everything? I did the Chinatown book with Bob Bremer, and one of the things we noticed, and you know this too, teaching JKD and try to make www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 10 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 11 of 14 an article or something, there s certain things that you can show and still photographs, but then how the hell do you show broken rhythm in still photographs. [Laughter] Very true. Yeah. So I ended up doing a DVD which just now came out. It is now available on Amazon. You can also it directly from Black Belt People email me and say, Oh can I buy a DVD or a book from you? The truth is when you do a book or a DVD, they only give you 10 free copies. After that, you pay for them. And it s like 40 percent off. If I order DVDs or books, it s the same as ordering them from Amazon. The price is exactly the same, so I don t really bother to sell any. We have some new DVDs that I just made this weekend that will be are own. One s on footwork, and I one s on attack and counter-attack that I can kind of take around to different seminars. You can order them on our website www.jkdwednite.com, and then Jeremy Lynch has some out there also. So those are our own DVDs. I also just finished Volume 2 of the Chinatown book. It s mostly training methods and drills that I picked up from everybody over the years. Are there any train drills that you definitely encourage all of your students to make sure they put some good time in on them? Yeah, yeah. In fact they re in the book. There s a couple in the DVD. There s a guy named Jim McCann, who s one of our guys, who s really, really an absolutely fantastic grappler and kickboxer. If you go on our website, you look him up and find his website. You will see all the amount of experience he s had. He s very creative, coming up with drills and being able to kind of try to work against the grappling, how to move, how to get the power and stuff. So we do an awful lot of that. Our idea of grappling is not to. Basically you have to work on getting back to your feet as fast as possible in different things with no rules. Now we do have guys that fight in the ring. We have guys out here that do it. We have Richie Carrion in Florida, has really been successful in Bodog. He s turned out some champions, and Jim McCann has some guys coming up pretty good now. And he s got a girl who s gonna try to maybe be in the Olympic boxing thing, Elizabeth Keller. We ve been doing a lot of ring stuff, but people go, well the ring and the street, blah blah blah. You can only do part of JKD, and people go oh yeah, automatically I think of the finger jab to the eye. It s more than www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 11 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 12 of 14 that. One of the basic principles of JKD, if we control the distance that the guy steps where you do a shin knee side kick, right. Okay now, barefooted in the ring or with cowboy boots, okay, it s two different stories. It s a big difference. So if you have the footwear and JKD is very much of a shoe art. I discovered that when I was teaching Canada at a ninja school and I couldn t wear shoes, and I go, Good God, that s about 50 percent of my JKD now gone. There s certain things you just can t do. Yeah, yeah. It s so interesting, the talk about the correlation with the ring stuff. Is there stuff where you almost see where the ring fighters, the mma guys or whatever, what is one or two concepts or principles from JKD that you say, Hey listen. If you want to be really successful in the ring, you got to integrate this within your game plan. Is there anything you d say there? Yeah, yeah. It doesn t matter if you re right lead or left lead. You just got to be able to develop a way to distance. I have to almost get together with you sometime to show you, but if you can imagine somebody who is five feet away from you. Then the guy, he ll throw a hand, he ll come in to shoot. And you try to intercept him what happens is he s so far away that your timing in the punch is off and you punch you ll maybe hit the top of his head, or you re gonna miss him. But if you re right at the fighting measure, as soon as he starts to do a shoot, you can hit him right on the end of your punch. The idea is being able to control that punch with such skill and technique. You want to hit a guy with a two-inch penetration and snap the punch with your right on the end of it. And your whole body is involved in that thing. So Bruce wrote about this, it s no secret stuff, but it s kind of in a way been semi-lost somewhat. So it s controlling that distance, and if it s from a longer distance, being able to use footwork. But even it you are at the fighting measure and you punch, the chances are he will shoot under it. It s a different story if he moves first. I always remember way back, a guy named Mark McFan. You know Mark? I have heard of him, I have not met him. He worked a lot with Larry. He was an Air Force judo champion, one of the first really good grapplers we worked with. Way back in the late 80s, he would show up at the Smokey Mountain camp, about that time, late 80s, around there. I remember he said he went to a school in Chicago to teach a seminar. What he used to line everybody up, and then had one come out. He would let tem www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 12 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 13 of 14 defend however they wanted. He would never fail to take them to the ground. Then he got to this one guy that was a boxer, I mean a real boxer. Mark said as soon as he would move, the guy would just hit him with a jab, and he wasn t there anymore. And that was the guy he had the problem with. And I thought well, maybe you want to work on that kind of thing by learning to control the distance. We also had the fortune of working with Bert Poe, who had been a Marine Raider, a boxer, a working cowboy, and a sheriff. He was an old guy I knew for years. When I was teaching kung fu, he was a friend of mine. He married a girl I went to school with. But he thought that what I was teaching was mostly a bunch of crap. At that time he was teaching boxing, and what he called dirty fighting. When he saw the JKD that we were doing he was impressed and became a big part of our WNG family. His stuff was really practical, a few things done well. You can see him on our website doing some stuff. Yeah. Yeah you do. Because of Bert our backyard became a whole laboratory of finding our what was practical and what wasn t. Then Bremer started showing up about 25 years ago, and then we had a guy who was in the first Navy seal team named Sunny Bygum, who had been a boxer. He was our shooting instructor. He showed up. So the three of them would be there, and I would show something from another art let s say. Cause I was learning a lot of different things, and they d say, Okay, if you would do this, this is what I would do to you. So it became a laboratory of what worked and what didn t in the real world. When I was a teacher there was a guy named Neil Postman who was an educator. And he said that what any education should be should give you a built in bullshit detector. Basically, to us JKD became a built-in bullshit detector. It would say, You re just leaving this opening. Bruce would say, What are they offering you. Why are you doing that, because this is what you re doing. I would do this to you. So we started going whoa! Maybe I better not just blindly accept what I m learning in this particular class, doing this particular art. Maybe I better investigate what when I m doing this, what the hell can they be doing to me? Right. So it sounds like it really gave you just a better sense of awareness on those things, right? www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 13 of 14
Tim Tackett www.jkdnewsletter.com Interview Page 14 of 14 Oh, big time. It was big time. It was great to have a guy come in and say, If there s anything I m doing that leaves an opening for you to counter, please tell me as I would rather find out about it here than in the street. Now that s the correct attitude to have. If anyone is showing us anything we look at the strengths. Like Bruce told Bremer, What are they offering you? [Laughter] Right. Better to learn it in training, right? Well listen, you know what. Thank you so much for your time. The one thing I want to do is just mention to people, if they want to get a hold of you, whether your products or more information on your classes or instructors that you have or whatever, can you go ahead and give your website and any other contact information you also want to give out? Yeah, the basic website my email is thtackett@msn.com. But that s contact information, my phone number s on our website, jkdwednite.com. And we also have a forum. And it s really weird; none of my guys seem to go on this. www.jkdtalk.com. I don t know who most of the people who go on there are. A lot of people who post on forums use names like jkdtiger. I don t know who they hell they are. On our website we have a lot of videos, there s a lot of photos, some articles, and other things to look at. Right, right, right. Well that s great. I do teach on Wednesday nights, and I do a few seminars around. I m less and less of those the older I get. Anyway, if interested in learning our brand of JKD email me or phone me. My number is listed: Tim Tackett Redlands, Ca Well listen. Well thank you so much for your time. This has been just great, and obviously very, very enlightening. And once again, you re a man of character given the fact of not only all your experiences, but also just all the distinctions you continuously make as well, so I think that s a huge thing. Thank you very much for sharing that stuff with us, and once again for listeners, if you guys want to ask any more questions to any other instructors, the next person that we have on, please once again contact www.jkdnewsletter.com. And once again Tim, thank you so much for your time and God bless. Sure my pleasure. Bye bye. <End of Audio> www.jkdnewsletter.com All rights reserved. Page 14 of 14