Combat Sports Historian and Martial Artist
After my mother married my stepfather, Ernest Diaz, in 1981, he was looking for a way for us to spend time together. I was camping with the Boy Scouts, so Dad decided that camping would be an effective way for us to get to know each other. A friend of Dad’s owned property and a cabin in Greenville, MO. We
Abe Attell was a tough boxer. He won the World Featherweight Boxing Championship twice. He and his brother Monte were the first brothers to be world boxing champions at the same time after Monte won the World Bantamweight Championship. Abe Attell won his first title when he was based out of the West End Boxing Club in St. Louis, MO.
Judo enthusiasts may be unaware that one of the greatest Judo fights ever film occurred in a movie from 1945, Blood on the Sun (affiliate link). James Cagney, who was a brown belt in Judo, stars in the film as Nick Condon, an American newspaper editor for the Tokyo Chronicle prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. A few Japanese government officials
On Friday, October 21, 1904, five St. Louis Police Officers went to a rooming house at 1324 Pine Street, site of today’s Soldier Memorial, to arrest three men suspected of an Illinois train robbery in August of the same year. What occurred next would be one of the most storied shootouts in St. Louis Police history. During the World’s Fair,
When I was a kid growing up in St. Louis, the only martial art that I had heard about was Karate. Taekwondo was considered Korean Karate. I did not know about any of the grappling arts at that point. However, KPLR Channel 11 ran a series of films on Saturdays for a month featuring Mr. Moto, played by Peter Lorre.
The May 9, 1905 edition of the St. Louis Republic’s sport section contained a story about an upcoming match between local wrestler George Baptiste and the touring World Wrestling Champion, George Hackenschmidt. The paper did not give Baptiste a chance against Hackenschmidt, who just beat Tom Jenkins for the World Championship. If the editor knew “Hack’s” condition at the time, he may have
General William Tecumseh Sherman of Civil War fame had deep roots in St. Louis stretching back to 1843. As a soldier, the US Army assigned Sherman to Jefferson Barracks. Sherman was also involved in St. Louis businesses as the St. Louis Street Railroad Company President until he left St. Louis for the Civil War in 1861. After the war,
3 times over the last 150 years, martial artists created more modern versions of older martial arts. Unlike many prior systems, the innovators of these modern martial arts chose to share this information with outsiders and spread their arts around the world. Jigoro Kano’s dissemination of Judo is the best case study for how to develop and spread a martial
Stanislaus Zbyszko was born Stanislaw Jan Cyganiewicz on April 1, 1880 in Jodlow, Poland, which was part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. Zbyszko chose the ring name Stanislaus Zbyszko because it was the name of a fictional Polish knight. An article in the Walla Walla, Washington newspaper, The Evening Statesman’s on Tuesday, February 8, 1910, publicized Zbyszko’s university and intellectual accomplishments.
For the October 5, 1861 edition of the Cincinnati Daily Press, editors pulled a story off the wire service from the Spirit of the Times. The wire story reported on a fight between former English prizefighting champion Tom Sayers and current English champion Jem Mace. Both Sayers and Mace were touring with English circuses, when they stopped in at a