BOB JONES KARATE

BOB JONES
by
NICK HUGHES

To do him justice you should really track down some pics of him in the old days...such as this one:



Re his charisma...damn, I wish I could bottle it and sell it, I'd make millions. He is another one of those David Koresh, Jim Jones types. If he told all of his black belts in the day to jump off skyscrapers the majority would have done it. Amazing stuff.

As a fighter, unbelievable. I am not aware of him ever being beaten by anyone...and none of the black belts from the bad old days that I know, who were there from the beginning are aware of him being beaten either. He attributed a lot of that to being a red head and yanked to a different school two times a year every year due to his dad's work. Everyone knows, second you arrive in the new school you have to fight to establish your position in the hierarchy so he got lots of experience early on.

His favourite technique in the street was probably head-butts but he could pull most things off.


[Gary Spiers trained and worked with Bob. He also favoured head-butts]

I once met two guys who were room mates of his when they were all younger (neither of them training) and they told me of his regimen while bouncing. He'd run five miles every morning, then do five hundred pushups and five hundred sit-ups before doing five hundred punches into the brick wall on the back of their digs. One morning while eating breakfast the plaster on the inside was shaken loosed by his travails outside and showered them and their cereal in stuff.
He could generate phenomenal power also. One day in Melbourne when I was down there a black belt called Adam West was complimented by Bob on his abs as he'd been working them a bunch. Adam, buoyed by the compliment said "hell Sensei, I could take one of your punches" One thing led to another, Adam tensed, Bob punched and Adam puked all the way to the bathrooms before collapsing in a heap.

I'm also aware of some big name streetfighters in Australia that he fooked up over the years and he also dropped a Samoan the size of a house while looking after Fleetwood Mac in Hawaii with one punch (as told to me by a roadie who witnessed it)


[Bob was bodyguard to Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac]

Part of the reason for producing so many good fighters was the raw material he had to work with and the second reason was the timing. With the martial arts boom on we had literally 300 people walking into the dojo every day to join up. They tried to make space by using new students as human punching bags to clear the way for the new members. The ones that couldn't hack that environment quit, what was left were hard core fookers who, by being put through that process, and working on doors, became giants with regards to fighting.



I doubt there's going to be another period in history where you're going to have so many people trying to join at once that you can afford to bash people from day one to clear floor space. Unique man and a unique time.

The last part of it was the organization. It was a little like being in a cult and you took that name with you. When I stood on that door, wearing that cross and representing Zen Do Kai it wasn't Nick Hughes lost a fight, it would have been "One of Bob Jones' guys lost a fight" and there was no way that was going to happen. It just couldn't which is why you'd get silly shite like fighting 75 kung fu students instructed literally to kill you, and walking out of the building having put 13 or so of them in hospital. I could never do that, but carrying his name on my shoulders I sure could.

I've heard guys in the military talk about similar experiences when fighting. When you have a strong tradition and regimental lore about past members of the regiment and what they had done you just couldn't bear the thought of being the guy who let the team down so you do crazy, almost impossible things.