Professor Jeff Macalolooy training Stephen Abas, 2004 Olympic Silver Medalist, three-time NCAA D1 National Wrestling Champion, for his 3rd MMA fight in 2011.
Kajukenbo Okayama: Tell us about yourself.
Jeff Macalolooy: My name is Jeff Macalolooy. I’ve been training Kajukenbo my whole life. I was one of the lucky ones to start as a child, so I started when I was in kindergarten, back in 1980. I’m also one of the few that never stopped, so I don’t have any gaps in my training. I’ve been on the mat, training Kajukenbo, along with various other martial arts, disciplines, and combat sports, for…43 years now? Yeah, 43 years next month, in April.
I started Kajukenbo in 1980. I started with Greg Lagera, and his group: Crazy Dragons. A couple years later, 1982, I met Joe Bautista, who at the time was married to the sister of Lagera’s wife. That was my introduction to Kajukenbo.
In 1986 I started wrestling. Wrestled from 6th grade all the way through high school, and then had a pretty bad injury my senior year. Before that I was kind of on the fence, whether I wanted to wrestle in college or not, but after I got injured I decided I wasn’t gonna wrestle in college. Which now I regret, but y’know…it’s too late now [laughs].
I started coaching wrestling in 1995. I coached from '95 until 2014 and then I took a year off. I stopped in 2014 because my son graduated. I had been coaching him, all the way up. He graduated, got a scholarship, and went off to wrestle in college, so I decided to stop coaching after that.
But then my daughter decided she wanted to wrestle. So I came back to wrestling in 2015. Coached her for 3 years, until 2018. By then I had put a couple decades into coaching and it was kind of hard for me, because not only do I run my school, the Dragon’s Den, in the evening, but I’m a school teacher during the day, and that in-between time is my rest. That’s when I was coaching wrestling.
Then my daughter decided she didn’t wanna wrestle, and I stopped coaching while she was in high school. But I’m back to coaching this year. I missed it.
So I went back, and my wife was like, “What are you doing? You’re super busy.” But I love coaching. I love being on the mat with kids. And it’s different than Kajukenbo. The approach is different. It allows me to look at martial arts from a combat sports perspective, and also to look at combat sports like wrestling and boxing from a martial arts perspective. It gives me different views on things.
KO: How’re things at the Dragon’s Den?
Macalolooy: We just hit 26 years this month.
KO: Twenty six years?
Macalolooy: Yeah. We started in March of 1997. Taught in the garage for 5 years. My yoga instructor at the time had a friend who was a chiropractor, who was teaching Korean martial arts and was subleasing that space for two nights a week. So I asked my instructor “Hey, uh, I’ve been teaching in my garage for 5 years. Can I sublease on the nights he’s not here?”
I ended up doing that for a couple years until I got my own building. Then the building wasn’t big enough, so 5 years later we moved. Then, again, the building wasn’t big enough, so 3 years later we moved. We’ve been in the same building since 2011, and I don’t wanna move anymore because moving is a hassle. We have way too much stuff to move [laughs].
KO: How many students do you have now?
Dragon’s Den students led by Sifu Elijah No.
Macalolooy: Total number of members in all the programs is…I would say, over 200. I know before Covid hit we were at a high of 245. We dipped pretty low during Covid. There was a chance we were gonna go belly up, just because the business expenses are so much. But luckily because of Zoom, we were able to keep some of the programs going.
KO: How did you deal with Covid?
Macalolooy: The jiu-jitsu program and the wrestling program totally died.
It’s kind of impossible to do wrestling and jiu-jitsu at home by yourself. But the other disciplines we were able to be kind of creative with, and still train. We did this email thing for 2 weeks. We sent students videos, and a workout every day. After two weeks we realized this was gonna last a little bit longer, so we switched over to Zoom.
We did Zoom until June, but some members were like “We want to come back”. The state of California wasn’t allowing it, and then one of the members was like “Why don’t you create a waiver, we can all sign it, to say that we know there’s Covid and we won’t hold you liable.” So we did that and we started training outside.
It was hard, man. Every day, I’d get there early. I brought a blower from Home Depot and a push broom and I would have to clean the parking lot. After cleaning the parking lot I would lay down tarps and mats. It would take me…I got it down to about an hour and a half to set up.
I would hold classes and have my laptop setup on a bar stool, so people at home could see. Whoever wanted to, could come in and train. Sometimes that was just one person, sometimes six to eight people. Everybody else was in these little boxes on Zoom. We did that from June to September.
In California, we have droughts all the time. Fire season. It got crazy in September, 2020. It was like Northern California was on fire. There was a day where there was no blue sky. I felt like we were in a Star Wars movie. The sky was literally red at 10 in the morning.
We couldn’t train outside, because of the smoke. So I told everybody “You guys gotta train at home, and I’m gonna teach classes inside the Dragon’s Den by myself.” But a bunch of people wanted to come in. So they came in.
The fires finally cleared out after a week. We said “alright, no more fires, we’re going back outside.” And then everybody said “We don’t wanna go outside. We wanna stay inside.”
So we stayed inside, but it was still another year before California actually cleared us. I think it was October of '21 when they finally said we could open. But we had been open since June of 2020 outdoors. A lot of the local combat sports gyms and martial arts schools hit me up and were like “Hey, did you reopen? How long have you been open now?” And I’m like “Well, actually...”
KO: [laughs]
Macalolooy: “…for a year [laughs].”
KO: The place you’re at now is pretty big and allows you to teach modern combat sports and traditional martial arts at the same time. How did you end up there?
Macalolooy: The place that I’m in now used to be a furniture store. They went out of business and the landlord actually approached us. We were already in the same complex. The landlord came to us and said “Hey, Bay Area Furniture is going out of business. We noticed that the parking lot’s always full in front of your space. Do you want to move?”
My initial answer was “no”, because it was intimidating to go from 2200 square feet to 5400. But at the same time, we had waitlists for most of our classes.
I sat down with my instructors at the time, my staff, and I said “What do you guys think about this?” They wall wanted to do it. So I said “Well, here’s the deal. The risk is gonna be on me, because when you triple your space, you triple your overhead. Which means we gotta do more.”
So we went from teaching one class at a time to teaching three. We got what we call the front of the house and the back of the house. In the back of the house we have a mat, we have a boxing ring, and we have a cage. I had a custom cage built, 28 feet corner to corner, so we can teach a class in there.
So, for example, on Mondays and Wednesdays on my front mat, which is a 40 foot wrestling mat, I’ll have my Little Dragons class, which is my 6 to 9 year-old beginners. A Kajukenbo class. And I’ll have 1 to 2 black belts teaching with a couple of what we call junior leaders, which are usually our teenagers with colored belts helping out.
At the same time, inside the cage, there’s also youth jiu-jitsu class. We’ll have another 20 kids in the cage. And then on the back mat, there’s boxing. And, same thing: we might have 20 adults, on average 12 to 16 adults, boxing back there.
It’s pretty busy, and I’m able to have three different things going on at the same time. Whereas at the old place we couldn’t do that.
KO: How did you get such a range of MMA and traditional martial arts under one roof?
Macalolooy: Well, there’s a very small percentage of people that cross train and do more than one discipline. The rest only do one thing. When I first started in the garage, I was only teaching Kajukenbo. I started coaching wrestling two years before I started teaching Kajukenbo. So I was already coaching high school and middle school, at two different schools, at the same time, while I was teaching in the garage. But it was separate.
When I went to the yoga center, after 5 years of just teaching Kajukenbo in the garage, I had another friend, Arnel Mendoza, who was teaching in his garage. He was teaching Tae Kwon Do, but he was also doing escrima. He was a black belt in Inayan Escrima. Inayan Escrima is an offshoot of Serrada, which came from Angel Cabales in Stockton.
Arnel and I also had a connection growing up because we wrestled at the same high school at different times. He was also a student of Ted Sotelo, so that was also kind of our connection. He was training with Ted Sotelo, I was training with Ted Sotelo.
I called him up and I was like “Hey man, I have this opportunity to teach but I don’t want to do it by myself.” So we were teaching Kajukenbo and escrima. We were doing five classes a week, on Monday, Wednesday, Friday I believe it was, with escrima being once a week.
When we moved from the yoga center to our own building, we added wrestling. Through USA Wrestling we started the Union City Wrestling Club. My mission there was to be the farm program for the middle school and high school.
There was no sports in elementary school. We’d get these kids from kindergarten to 5th grade and teach them how to wrestle, so that when they got to 6th grade they could join the middle school team. We even coached some of the middle school kids off season.
The middle school season is only nine weeks, but martial arts is year-round. So I was the first one to say “Hey, we’re gonna wrestle year-round. There might not be tournaments year-round, but we’re gonna practice twice a week, year-round.”
We also added women’s kickboxing, which we call our Lady Dragons class, which is a fitness kickboxing class. That came out of demand from the moms. I’m teaching class, and the parents are sitting, watching, and they kept saying “Hey Jeff, when are you gonna do a class for us?”
I said “I will. We’ll do a women only class.” You know, cardio kickboxing was a big thing at the time, but I was like “I don’t wanna teach cardio kickboxing.” Billy Blanks made that Tae Bo really famous, but I’m not teaching aerobics. So I called it Fitness Kickboxing. I’m gonna teach you the same way I teach all my fighters, but without the sparring.
All the women learned how to hold pads, focus mitts, Thai pads, they kicked the heavy bag, they kicked the kicking shield, they did everything but spar. And when we launched our Muay Thai program, which is co-ed, some of them transitioned right into it. The transition was seamless. Now we just added sparring drills and contact.
KO: What’s the importance of having a women only class?
Macalolooy: Actually, I think it’s more powerful for the women to train with the men, but some women just don’t want to.
With kids’ classes, you don’t have a little girls’ class and a little boys’ class. It’s co-ed, and my girls have to fight the boys. I think my girls are tough, because they fight the boys. And we tell the boys, “Don’t take it easy on the girls. Fight them just like the boys.” And sometimes during belt promotions or tests, during sparring, parents come in and they can’t believe how hard the boys are going on the girls.
The sad truth is if someone were to assault any of these young girls, these young women, these ladies…they’re probably going to be assaulted by men. So, if they’ve fought men before, or they’ve fought boys before, and they’re used to it, then they won’t be so scared.
And that’s what we tell the boys. You know we talk about ohana in Kajukenbo. If anything were to happen to any of your dojo sisters, any of your martial arts family here, you’re the one that’s preparing them. If you take it easy on them, then you’re not preparing them. I don’t want you to hurt them or injure them, or have any bad intention. But when we’re sparring, treat them the way you’d treat the boys.
Of course, if it gets out of hand, I’ll step in, or one of the instructors will step in. But we want them to go just as hard.
At the same time: Is it important for the women? The women in our Lady Dragons class love it. They love just being with women. Now, my wife teaches the class. It’s a women’s class, it should be a woman teaching it. I think that’s more powerful.
And now they do stuff that you and I wouldn’t do. Like, they’re doing this spa day. They call it the “Lady Dragons Pampering Day”. They’re doing something together outside of training, and it’s nice to see that bond.
KO: Where did you get the name “Dragon’s Den”?
Macalolooy: That’s a good question. There’s a story behind it.
Crazy Dragons. That was where I started training Kajukenbo. You and me…our lineage is the same. Your instructor, my first instructor, both learned from Great Grandmaster Charles Gaylord.
Greg Lagera got up to brown belt under Charles Gaylord and then decided to start teaching. Which you can’t do without the proper credentials and blessings. At some point, there was a falling out where Gaylord basically said “You can’t be part of this organization.” Greg’s term he uses is “renegade”, saying he was labeled a renegade, or a rebel.
Anyway, so Greg came up with Crazy Dragons. Cause “those guys are crazy, they’re doing whatever.” And because he was no longer under Gaylord, he started coming up with his own curriculum, coming up with his own techniques. But also training a lot of street kids. There were a lot of kids training at Crazy Dragons for free. Greg was great in that he took these kids…it was just like you see with these boxing gyms that are in the ghetto.
These kids were already street fighters. These kids were doing things back in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and he gave them an outlet. Started bringing them to tournaments. They were training at this place in Fremont called “the Old Barn”, which was actually a condemned building in the Irvington district of Fremont.
They trained there until Greg got kicked out. Then Greg started training at all these different places. He never had his own building.
Long story short, in the mid to late '80s, Crazy Dragons closed. I was already training with Joe Bautista and Greg Lagera at the same time, so at one point I was a blue belt in Crazy Dragon’s Kajukenbo, but I was only an orange belt in Bautista Kajukenbo.
I got my black belt in Crazy Dragon’s, I think, in 1985 or '86. I didn’t get my black belt from Joseph Bautista until 1996.
In the mid-'90s, when I was in college and my son was born, I transferred to Cal State Hayward. Around that time Greg reopened Crazy Dragons and he was renting again. It was like a theater, where they had shows. He put a big sign in the front that said “Dragon’s Den”. The name of the school was still “Crazy Dragons”, but it was “at the Dragon’s Den”. That’s where the name was.
That didn’t last but a couple years, and he stopped teaching again. So, when I started teaching in my garage, he told me “hey, I want you to call your school ‘Crazy Dragons’”. And I said “I don’t wanna call my school ‘Crazy Dragons’ because that’s you. That’s not me.” I said “What I would like to use is the name ‘Dragon’s Den’. I like that.”
And he said “Yeah, go ahead and use it.” So that’s where I got it from.
KO: I saw a picture of your Dad, and he had some guns. Did he train?
Jeff’s father, Jess McLoy.
“When I was a kid growing up, I always believed ‘my dad could kick your dad’s ass’.” - Professor Jeff
Macalolooy: [laughs] My dad…no formal training. He doesn’t have a belt in martial arts or anything like that. But he grew up in a place in the Philippines called Tondo. Anybody that’s familiar with the Philippines knows Manila. Tondo is kind of like the ghetto there. It’s like the Tenderloin of San Francisco, or like Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. Basically the hood.
My dad grew up fighting. He’s the youngest of four brothers, and they all boxed. My dad never competed. I don’t know about my oldest uncle, but the second and the third did. We have pictures and clippings from the 50’s, when they were fighting. My dad’s oldest sister, her husband fought in the Olympics for the Philippines. I want to say 1956 Olympics in Australia.
My dad’s second oldest brother was a Diamond Gloves champion. That’s like what Golden Gloves would be here in America, but in the Philippines. He immigrated to America, joined the Navy, then he fought in the Navy. He was the first boxing champion in our family. He inspired a bunch of us to fight.
That’s my dad’s generation. Then, my generation, nobody really competed in boxing. We all kind of got into martial arts and into wrestling. My older cousin, Mackie, who’s my Uncle Mackie's son, is the one who introduced me to Crazy Dragons. He’s also the one that introduced me to wrestling. So our generation was kind of martial arts and wrestling.
KO: Do you have any students going pro?
Macalolooy: Right now the only professional is my son. This Wednesday we’re flying to Mexico. He’s fighting in Monterrey, Mexico. It’ll be his 5th professional fight, in boxing.
There’re two other people that I’ve trained professionally. One of them is my brother, who fought from 2008 to 2012, and then he retired. Then he came out of retirement and he fought last February, a year ago.
Then Steven Abas, who is an Olympic silver medalist in 2004 for wrestling. He was fighting MMA, and he wanted someone to train him for his third fight, so he came and stayed with me for 16 days. I trained him for his 3rd fight. He fought, he won, and then he hung up the gloves after that.
KO: What’s it like training your son?
Macalolooy: I’ve been training him since he was a kid, so it’s pretty easy. It’s fun. It’s like our quality time together. But I’ve never tried to keep him just with me.
Jeff Macalolooy, Jacob Macalolooy, Basheer Abdullah, and Augustus "Jay” Devera II.
I tell people over the years I’ve picked up a lot. I know a lot, I can share a lot, but I don’t know everything. And there’s people at different levels that specialize. My approach is just like Kajukenbo. I know wrestling, I know boxing, I know MMA, jiu-jitsu, self defense, some stick and some knife, but there’s people that only specialize in one thing. And they’re better than me at it.
I coached my son in wrestling from kindergarten all the way through high school. But in high school he also had other coaches that only did wrestling and never did martial arts, or boxing, or MMA. And so, they were able to give him some insights that I wasn’t. Like Steven Abas, for example, an Olympic wrestler. Whenever he was around I would have my son work with him. A couple of the coaches that my son wrestled for in high school wrestled in college. Like I said, I didn’t wrestle in college. They had experiences that could help him and take him to the next level. Then he went on to college and wrestled in D1 for four years.
When he decided to box…we come from a boxing family, the generation above me. But I can only take him so far. So I took him to the amateurs, he fought and did really well. The gym that he decided to go to in San Diego…the reason he decided to go there was because Baret Yoshida was there. That was my brother’s jiu-jitsu instructor.
Just so happened to be that one of the boxing coaches there is Basheer Abdullah, who was an Olympic boxing coach, I want to say 2012 and 2016. He was also the head coach of the army team for like 15 years. All he does is boxing.
Jacob Macalolooy in action.
He is actually my son’s head trainer. Although camps are always split, like this camp he did six weeks at home with me and then he’s finishing up camp with two weeks in San Diego. Come fight time in Mexico, we’ll both be in his corner. Coach Basheer will be the chief second, and I’ll be the assistant.
KO: How do you feel about it all?
Macalolooy: How do I feel?
KO: Yeah.
Macalolooy: It’s a lot of fun. I feel proud, obviously. I feel excited. A lot of people ask me, like, “How can you let your son do this?” And I say “Well, his defense is good.”
KO: [laughs]
Macalolooy: My thing is, as long as you’re not getting hit, we’re gonna keep doing this. But as soon as I see you taking too much damage I’m gonna be the first one to tell you “Hey, you gotta hang this up.” There’s life after boxing. And fighting is a young man’s sport.
You choose your combat sport. But Father Time is undefeated. You gotta know when to stop. So, at least I can be there to let him know when it’s time to hang it up. But as of right now, we’re having fun with it. He’s still young. He’s 27, so he’s in his prime. And I think he’s gonna do well in Mexico next week.
KO: What’s up with your book, “The Gift of Time”? Are you going to release more copies in the future?
Macalolooy: If there’s a demand, yeah.
KO: Was there a reason you wrote it?
Macalolooy: I tore my ACL in 2017. That was…six years ago? I was 43. I was in the cage. I was sparring with one of my...someone who is now one of my blue belts. At the time he was training with Crazy Dragons, with Grandmaster Greg Lagera. It was our open mat. My cousin had passed away and we were doing this first Friday open mat in his honor.
Whenever we held open mat and people would come, I would spar with everybody. That was my way of welcoming you into the school.
So we were in there, and we weren’t going hard or anything like that. And I stepped in for a harai goshi. It’s kind of like a hip throw, but you put your leg on the outside of their leg, and you use their leg to kinda throw them up. But anyways, when I stepped in to turn my hip and elevate the right leg, my left foot got stuck in the mat and didn’t pivot.
I felt it and I knew it immediately. I let go and dropped to the mat. He was like “Are you okay?”
I was like “No. I’m not okay.”
I just kinda butt scooted out of the way, because there were a few groups sparring in the cage. I didn’t let anybody help me. I let my pride get the best of me. I got up on one foot, and I hopped out of the cage, and I went to my office and shut the door. I knew right away I was injured. I grabbed an ice pack, put it on my knee, put ace bandages on my knee. Elevated it. I sat in there for about 10 minutes. And then I came back out, because there was a bunch of people there.
We got all kinds of stuff at the Dragon’s Den, so we got, probably, eight sets of crutches. So I grabbed a set, and now I’m just like crutching around. The next day I went in to the doctor’s and found out my ACL was torn. A complete tear of the ACL, a partial tear of the meniscus. I get two pins, a screw, and a cadaver tendon.
So now I’m off the mat, for like six months. What am I gonna do?
Around that time, one of my boxers, Dave Bermudez, had written a book about boxing. I read it, cover to cover. And my wife turns to me and says "Hey, since you’re off the mat, why don’t you write a book?” And so I did.
I was laid on my back with a machine that basically moves your knee. I laid there with a laptop on my chest and I just started typing. I didn’t have any format. I just...I wanted to talk about footwork so I talked about footwork. I wanted to talk about training in the garage, so I did that. Once I had all these different paragraphs, I started putting it together.
And so, I called the book “The Gift of Time” because that’s what it was. I had this time off the mat and used it to write the book.
I also did a past/present/future thing too. The “past” part was a bit of autobiography. The present part was kinda like...where the Dragon’s Den was at that point in time, and what I was doing at that point in time. And then the future was what I wanted to see happen with my school. Then I did a little section after I healed, with the help of a dad at the Den who was an amateur photographer.
We shot some pictures, a couple techniques in Kajukenbo, a couple techniques in Muay Thai, a couple MMA moves, a couple wrestling moves, a couple escrima moves. For each discipline, there was a few techniques.
I put it all together. Reformatted it all. It was all a learning experience for me.
KO: Are there any martial artists or fighters that you look up to?
Macalolooy: Yeah, there’s plenty that I look up to. I guess we could start with Bruce Lee. He was an inspiration to many generations. Of course, there are those who don’t know much about him, who say he was only an actor, and he wasn’t a martial artist. But I’ve had the opportunity to train with Richard Bustillo, who was one of his students.
Bustillo would tell me “You’re already doing Jeet Kun Do, by taking your wrestling, and your Kajukenbo, and the jiu-jitsu you know, and the escrima you know, the striking from point sparring and kickboxing, and Muay Thai, and boxing, and blending it all together…That’s basically what Jeet Kun Do is.”
So Bruce Lee I guess would be number one. Then Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung.
In real life, growing up as a kid, there was Satch Williams, who passed away in 2011, one of the Crazy Dragons. He was a world champion. He inspired people like Damon Gilbert, who’s another local guy that I look up to. I think the first time I fought Damon Gilbert, we were five and six years old. We fought each other as little kids.
I got really into wrestling in middle school and high school, and he kept going and became this world champion. He’s an Oakland police officer now. I look up to him as someone in my generation.
Bobby Seronio, my generation also. Grew up training with him in my teenage years.
Jeff Macalolooy with Joseph Bautista, Sr.
Within Kajukenbo, of course my instructors for different reasons. Greg Lagera, Joseph Bautista, and Ted Sotelo.
A couple people who were never really my instructors, but I had a chance to train with, along your lines...people I probably look up to the most, in Kajukenbo now, and try to emulate…Melchor Chavez out of New Mexico. I always looked up to him. Back in '93 he already had Muay Thai and Kajukenbo and escrima all under the same roof.
Tom Theofanopoulos, out here in Oakdale. Another guy I look up to that’s running some great academies. He’s got kickboxing, Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu, Kajukenbo. He’s doing it all.
Also from Crazy Dragons...Sonny Titsworth...I grew up watching him and Satch. In fact, Tami Whelan, a pioneer of women’s martial arts...Tami Whelan and Sonny Titsworth got their black belts on the day that I got my yellow belt. They were always like, my idols in Crazy Dragons. They were great tournament fighters back in the '80s.
KO: Where do you hope to see Kajukenbo go in the future?
Macalolooy: Man, that’s a loaded question right there.
I hope to see it keep evolving.
There’s that scene in Enter the Dragon where Bruce Lee is teaching his disciple, and he says, “Don’t concentrate on the finger, or you’ll miss all the heavenly glory.” Everybody knows that scene.
I think a lot of people in Kajukenbo are focused on the finger. What I mean is that I hear a lot of people say “I’ll never be as good as my instructor”, “I teach exactly the way my instructor taught it”...I think that’s old. Out of date.
There’s a lot of people I respect that believe that. I don’t mean to disrespect them. But I don’t agree with that philosophy.
I think what’s happened in Kajukenbo is a lot of people say stuff like “I’m doing it the original way”, or “this is how it was done”, “this is the way Sijo did it”.
But people forget: Sijo didn’t do what his instructors did. That’s not what he wanted. You know, they were blending all this stuff at the time. It was unheard of. Even in the '60s when Bruce Lee was doing it, it was unheard of. When Bruce Lee was teaching, you know, black people and white people, and basically people that were not Chinese. That was unheard of.
So I want what they wanted. I want a better martial art. I want a more effective martial art. I want something up to date that is gonna work now. It’s 2023. I’m changing things in what I’m teaching.
I have students that come back after a break and say “We didn’t used to do that.” Yeah, but you know what? We’ve gotten better. There’s new technology. We’re doing things differently.
My instructor was big on the Kajukenbo Bible. It was like your journal. I’m gonna teach you Pinon 1, you write it down. I’m gonna teach you Grab Art 1, you write it down. By the time you’re a black belt, you’ll have your Kajukenbo bible.
I have my students do that too. But it’s 2023, and my 10 year-old students have iPhones. So I tell them “Record it". Start a folder in your photos app that says “kata”. Record all your katas. Start a folder that says “self defense”. Start a folder that says “grappling” or “striking” or “stick disarms”. Record yourself doing the techniques, so that when you haven’t done it in two weeks or two years, you don’t pick up your notes and be like “I don’t know what ‘step back with my left foot and turn to the right wall, upward strike’ means.” A video would be much better.
So I have my students take videos of themselves. When they test for black belt, they turn their Kajukenbo Bible to me. I don’t check it. I just want to see that they have something. Then I say “Cool. You did. It’s yours. It’s for you.”
Jeff Macalolooy with Ted Sotelo.
Now, I give them the option. If you want, you can send me a link to your Google Drive. Send me a video of you doing all of your punch counters, all of your grab counters, all your disarms. Just so I know that you did it.
What I want from Kajukenbo? I would like to see Kajukenbo evolve. I would like to see the schools that don’t teach grappling start teaching grappling. I would like to see the schools that don’t compete start competing.
We’re a modern martial art school. We compete in modern martial arts. I got guys competing in IBJFF. We got guys competing in boxing. In wrestling. In point fighting. In kata. I know John Hackleman is totally against kata, but we still do kata. I love it.
We are in a generation of CGI. If you watch something from Disney or science fiction, there’s all this CGI. But I still think if you go out to dinner with someone you should be able to pull out a napkin, get a pen from the waiter, and draw something. That’s art.
So yeah, as martial artists, yeah. If you wanna train for the UFC, kata’s not gonna help you. But when you’re Gary Forbach, and you’re in your 70s, training for the UFC is not what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna teach Tai Chi. Which is kata. And it’s gonna promote a healthy lifestyle, and healthy living.
And when I’m in my 70s, I can still do my kata. But I’m not gonna be wrestling anymore.
I think it’s all different expressions of the martial arts. If you want to be a well-rounded martial artist, be good at kata. Be good at kicking. Be good at punching. Be good at grappling. Be good at two-men attacks, be good at weapons.
That’s what I want for Kajukenbo. I want it to be what the founders wanted. A more efficient, effective, modern martial art for their time. They didn’t want to do what their instructors were doing. They wanted to take from Judo. And from Kenpo. And from Gung Fu. From what I understand they all boxed a little bit, and took from boxing.
I want everyone to evolve. And the ones that are stuck...I want them to learn some more. I want them to keep learning.
KO: Do you have any advice for Kajukenbo practitioners or martial artists in general?
Macalolooy: Show up.
Show up and train. Too many people miss class.
I tell my students there’s two things I can’t teach you. I cannot teach you “heart”. If you ain’t got no heart...if somebody hits you and you crumble...
That fighting spirit. I can try to foster it, I can slowly build confidence and build you up, but I can’t teach heart. That comes from you.
The second thing I can’t teach you is experience. These kids that I’m coaching in wrestling...I want them to know a lot. But if somebody’s had fifty matches and you’ve had one? They have more experience than you. It’s the same thing in training. Just show up.
If you start today, and you don’t miss class...let’s say you go twice a week for a year...a year from now you’re gonna have one year of experience. I can’t teach you that. You have to earn that. You have to get on the mat and you have to earn that time.
You can watch a video about a technique, you can do a technique once, but you have to earn that time. You have to go out there, you have to use it. Then you have to try it against someone who I describe as a “spontaneous, unwilling opponent”. We’re so used to bowing, one person punches, and then that person stands there and lets you do their technique on them. That’s not gonna happen in the real world. So, now let’s try it, but I’m not gonna let you do the technique. See if you can make it work.
So my advice to new and current students is keep showing up, keep training, keep sharpening your sword, every day. Otherwise, it’ll get dull.
I recently worked out at a boxing class. I hadn’t boxed in at least a year. It was great. I had a good time. But you know...rest rusts. My timing was a little bit off, my distance was a little bit off. I knew what to do but my body didn’t react the way I wanted it to. But you know what? If I get in and start sparring with that group every Saturday morning I bet you it’ll come back.
A lot of these martial artists out there that maybe were great at one point...it don’t meant you’re great anymore. It goes away. You have to sharpen your sword every day.
To the martial artists who are already black belts, and professors, and grandmasters...don’t be a grandmaster with a gut. If you got a big gut and you’re trying to tell me what to do, but you ain’t doing it...did you do your pushups today? Did you run today?
It doesn’t matter if you know the technique, if you can’t do it. One of the biggest pieces missing in traditional martial arts that I make my students do is the physical conditioning. The stamina, the endurance, the strength. I tell 'em, “You know how to defend yourself is somebody punches you, but if you don’t have the strength to hit somebody hard it doesn’t mean anything. “
If you’re training two days a week in your Kajukenbo class, you have five days a week left. You should be running, maybe lifting weights - not for bodybuilding, just to reduce your chance of injury, and to get some strength.
Show up, keep training, and make sure you do something to supplement your training, outside of whatever it is you’re doing.
The quote I always take from my Uncle Mackie says it best: “Nothing replaces roadwork”.
Jeff Macalolooy is an 8th degree black belt and Professor in Kajukenbo, a 5th degree in Cacoy Canete Doce Pares Eskrima, a full instructor under Richard Bustillo in IMB/JKD, a certified USA wrestling coach, and a credentialed teacher of physical education in California.
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If you enjoyed this interview, check out more writings like it in our recent book, "Blood, Sweat, and Bone: The Kajukenbo Philosophy".
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Japanese Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.jp/Blood-Sweat-Bone-Kajukenbo-Philosophy