Revolution Through Evolution—The Kenpo 5.0 Story

https://www.insidekungfu.live/articles/jeffspeakman

(article by Dave Cater on insidekungfu.live 5-28-19)

Only Jeff Speakman could turn a death sentence into a new lease on life. And he did it through his devotion to Ed Parker and his love of Kenpo.

Let’s face it: Ed Parker’s premature exodus from this earth 30 years ago was a body blow to the martial arts world. First, Parker’s heart attack at the age of 59 robbed us of one of the community’s brightest scientific and evolutionary minds. He had taken Thunderbolt Chow’s kick-ass island creation and made it both a usable and more importantly teachable, self-defense art for the masses. The Father of American Karate stood as a torchbearer for a generation of Kenpo practitioners well-known for their prowess on and off the floor. When you can count Elvis and Bruce among your followers, you must be doing something right.

But like many martial arts savants (the aforementioned Lee a prime example), his attention to the system came at the expense of structure. Within months of his passing, legions claimed belt rankings that would normally take decades to achieve. Fifth degrees became eighth degrees and eighths became tenths faster than you could say “Ed Who?”

Most surmised that Parker hadn’t thought about the future because this was still plenty to do in the present. But then there were others who believed Kenpo’s exalted Father knew right from the start which prodigal son would eventually assume the mantle of leadership. His secret weapon turned out to be “The Perfect Weapon”.

Parker’s personal revelation came on the heels of his art gaining worldwide recognition thanks to martial artist and actor Jeff Speakman, who showed how fast, powerful and devastating deadly Kenpo could be in his 1991 breakout movie The Perfect Weapon. Parker was on set every day there was a fight scene and the pair forged a deep, personal friendship.

“It was just us,” Speakman fondly remembers of his four years of weekly lessons at Parker’s house. “I became very close to him as you can imagine. He would tell me his dreams and visions, what he wanted for Kenpo and how he wanted it to move forward.”

Tragically, after the grandmaster’s death, only a handful of his higher-ranking members chose to follow in their grandmaster’s footsteps. Speakman reminded them about which direction Parker wanted the art to go. They told him he had no place in Kenpo’s future.

“They kept saying, ‘Who are you to change Mr. Parker’s art? You’re a subordinate, you’re a punk, you’re just a movie star,’ I got it all. And I got it from all sides.”

And so three years after that fateful night in Hawaii, Jeff Speakman left the organization Parker made famously and went out on his own. A daunting task for most, but just another chance to prove everyone wrong.

Like when he was in high school and wanted to be a champion diver. They all told him he would fail, so all he did was will himself into becoming an All-American in the springboard event.

Or when he wanted to be an action star but everyone told him he didn’t have what it takes. His seminal performance in The Perfect Weapon catapulted Speakman to an admirable run on the widescreen.

And finally, when they the cold was not a cold but Stage 4 throat cancer and that the best thing to do was get his affairs in order. He not only beat the biggest foe of his life but used the rebirth to give Parker’s Kenpo a ground fighting component.

The product of this “revolution by evolution,” as Speakman calls it, is Kenpo 5.0, a complete street-worthy self-defense system that gives every student the tools to protect himself in any situation. From his world headquarters in Las Vegas, Speakman guides an organization that boasts of franchises—not schools—in 18 countries around the world. He believes it is his charge, his life’s responsibility, to not only preserve one of our time’s great fighting systems but more importantly the memory of the man who made it all happen.

In this exclusive Inside Kung-Fu interview, Jeff Speakman talks about his personal martial arts journey has helped him find peace and satisfaction in his life on and off the training hall floor.

INSIDE KUNG-FU: How the hell did you survive Stage 4 throat cancer? JEFF SPEAKMAN: It was the first eight months of 2013. I was diagnosed in January of that year. My symptoms were masked by a cold that would never go away. So I had pain in the throat and trouble swallowing. Unbeknownst to me, the cold was actually cancer. When the cold went away and the pain didn’t they did a CT scan and it showed that there was a 4-centimeter tumor and it was Stage 4. And you know that Stage 5 and you're dead. By the time it had been diagnosed and we started treatment it had affected my voice. It’s really a tribute to the people at City of Hope in Duarte, Calif., that I am alive today. As soon as the news of the diagnosis came out and went to my students, the entire world came to my side. My students were there sacrificing everything to be with me. They wanted to let me know they were there to provide love and care and we were in this fight together. We had built an international organization based on that theme. It’s not me being the head of the organization and all. We do have our structure, don’t get me wrong. But we’re in this together. We built this together, we’re going to stand together and we’ll fall together. Someone loses a loved one and the entire world comes together. We’re really good at the Kenpo, but the thing that drives us is the love and the friendship and the affection we have for one another. And that’s the foundation of the whole organization. By way of example, the last weekend before I started my chemotherapy and my radiation treatment, which I did simultaneously for eight weeks, some of my black belts insisted on coming into town and going to the mat with me one more time. I asked them please, no. You know, if you’ve gone through this you want to climb back inside yourself. You want to be alone and you want to fight the demon on your own terms. So I fought their insistence to come one more time. Plus, it’s a deeply emotional time. You really don’t know if you are going to live the next few weeks or years. I gave in and we were all going to meet at our studio in Victorville, Calif. I know there are many people in town coming in for this. I’m emotionally prepared for that. I’m sitting there, there’s a test going on and the door opens and people start walking in who I have been close to for decades. And in through the door walks as husband and wife team from Bolivia. They sold what they had to sell to buy tickets. And knowing the sacrifices they had to make to stand by my side—the message it sent to me was that you did what you had set out to do Jeff Speakman, which is to matter. Before your life ends do you matter? Did you make a contribution to the common good? Did you have an impact? I had an impact because I had been a movie star. The message was that my life had been tremendously fulfilled because of those people walking through the door. They were my family.

IKF: Did martial arts teach you how to fight that personal battle? JS: In every way conceivable way, yes. There was a video made by the masters in the art and the one that mattered the most was from Benny Urquidez. A true living legend. This year was the 24th anniversary of my event and Benny Urquidez has been there every single year teaching at the camp and sitting on the testing board. On the video he made he said, “Let’s not just get over this, let’s kick the (bleep) out of it. Don’t just survive, fight. And fight until the end. And that was deeply meaningful. Internally I can tell you that there were two words that came to me with great clarity and great power. And they were, “not yet.” There will be a day that I don’t make it, as there will be for all of us, but the message was “not yet.” I’ve got great things to do and I wasn’t ready to die. And when I get out of this it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy.

IKF: Did you feel that once you got over this you had a renewed purpose in your life? JS: Enormously. And what I am going to tell you took me more than three years to figure out. It was 2013 when I went through this so we’re talking 2016. When I started to get my mojo back and it looked like I was going to make it the overwhelming feeling was, “I have no fear.” And it was clear as day. But that begs the question: what were you afraid of to have the feeling that there’s no more fear. It took me three years to get to that point. And the answer to the question was, “What am I out of fear of?” And with no more fear, it was time to take the position in the martial arts world and in the Kenpo karate world that I felt like I should take. You know, I am no longer constrained by being in deep consideration of what other people think of me or what my senior people who were critical of me thought. There were also many senior people who were not critical and were encouraging this change I made in Kenpo. What came out of the other end is that I no longer have fear of whether they like it or not. I’m going to do it and it’s on a big scale because I know what I’m doing and I know what Ed Parker wanted me to do. I know how he wanted his art to evolve and change and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

IKF: For this generation, which never had the opportunity to meet or train with Ed Parker, tells us who he was as a person and martial artist. JS: As you well know one of the titles he was awarded was, “The Father of American Karate.” To me, he was the Einstein of martial arts. Because even today the physicists that are working on dark energy can thank the functions of equations Albert Einstein created. Same here. Ed Parker was so brilliant that he created a system that could evolve and change over time. And 30 years after his death it has reclaimed the position as the most practical self-defense art for the street. Now, think of what that would have taken 30 years ago. The level of brilliance to put together a system whose nature is based on science and physics and geometry. The mandate was to evolve and change over time to keep Kenpo relevant. This was his entire life; this is what he wanted all of his black belts to do and yet none of them wanted to do it. I have no idea why not. You have to ask them but I got the message. And I got the system and I understood what he thought because I got so close to him. My first movie was The Perfect Weapon. And during that journey of doing that movie and going to his house every week for lessons for four years, I became very close to him as you can imagine. He was on the set during the filming of The Perfect Weapon every day there was a fight scene and the interaction we had—it was just us—and he would tell me his dreams and visions, what he wanted for Kenpo and how he wanted it to move forward. He had this amazing mind, so expansive, and everyone that knew him knew that. Ed Parker’s greatest asset was his intellect.

IKF: Yet, a lot of his black belts didn’t want to take it that way. JS: Here’s what stupefies me 30 years later. How can you be around such a great, brilliant, dynamic thinker like that and not understand who he was?

IKF: Describe what he was like as a man. JS: In a word, powerful. He did everything with a dynamic passion. He was the kind of guy, and I experienced it many times, where we’d walk into a room somewhere, like a restaurant, and the chemistry of the room would change. Everybody would stop and look at him. They had no idea who he was, but he had such “mana”, such presence of spirit. He was a very, very powerful man. You have to contrast that and look at the power and the dynamics of the art of Kenpo karate and its street application. It was brutal beyond measure. That man created that. And yet, here was this very loving, very intelligent man. So you have this yin/yang application. He was a 10 on one side and 10 on the other side. So what I enjoyed about that and about similar things in my life is that I have always sought the attention of people like that, whether it’s in financing or technology or banking or tennis or the gym. To try to be in the presence of really intelligent people and study them—understand what makes them so amazingly powerful that they can reach out across a desk or reach into a camera lens and still impact the world.

IKF: Did he ever tell you stories about training with Professor William K.S. Chow? JS: He did. And one of the things he also did was bring up (James) Mitose. He said that when he began studying martial arts he walked in—with an invitation—to Mitose’s school. He walked in, saw how Mitose was doing his Kenpo, and said, “That’s not it.” So he was never a student of James Mitose. But then he met the Chows and he went over there and watched them move and he said, “That's it.” Remember, he grew up in a low-income area of Honolulu. A streetfighter, tough guy and he knew what he was talking about before he walked in the door.

IKF: There are stories that Professor Chow would send out his students to test their techniques on the streets of Honolulu. JS: That is a part of the history of the art. I never asked Mr. Parker about it, but you hear about many people testing the techniques in the street. But you have to remember that we’re talking about America in the 1950s. Radically, radically different. Nonetheless, let’s assume a reasonable degree of those stories are true and that gives us a street-tested martial art. Whether you liked it or not, whether you liked the people who did that or not I think it was right or not, that’s a different conversation, but it yields an enormous amount of experience and practical application. I don’t need to go out there and do that to know this stuff works, like amazing. And of course, we took it to the next level where we evolved, adapted, and embraced grappling.

IKF: Let’s talk about that. You went from Kenpo 4.0 to Kenpo 5.0. It would be an oversimplification to say you just added ground fighting techniques because that’s what some of the stories say. But it’s a lot more involved than that. JS: It’s much, much more than that. First, let me explain when Mr. Parker was evolving the art—and this is not something we should just throw away—he was evolving the art continuously. This guy was digging deeper and thinking of this and creating a system. See, he created a system. I adapted from the system he created. That’s why he should be in the position of Supreme Grandmaster, so no matter how many “10ths” come under him he will be at the top. Even though there are students who have declared themselves 11th and 12th-degree black belts. But he still is going to hold that position because they wouldn’t be anywhere if it wasn’t for him. So as he evolved the system he would have 1.0, 2.0…He used those as major revelations. The art continued to evolve over time.

IKF: So there wasn’t so much birth of a system but rather a continuous transformation.

JS: As I’m telling you it was two years at least that I was working on this adaptation before I came up with the name Kenpo 5.0. Here I am rewriting the journal where every technique is written down in agonizing detail and up in the top right-hand corner I was doing what Ed Parker did, V 5.0, so I’m trying to think what am I going to call this thing. For months and months, I’m writing page after page putting V 5.0, V 5.0 in the top right-hand corner so I’m just working away because when Mr. Parker died, just the couple of years after he died, there had been a straight degradation of content quality. Not with everyone, not straight across the board but with so many self-proclaimed 10-degree black belts. Now, this is not just indigenous to Kenpo; it really is how martial arts has been distorted in the Western world. Everyone has experienced it. Unfortunately, after he died, Kenpo has been plagued with it. There are so many people who jumped rank and went from 5th to 8th (degree). They would go to another association and go to the next rank up—which you should never do—you should earn it. In our group you do, but they would jump two and three ranks. Okay, that’s 10 years. What good is your belt if you lie about a 10-year jump? 

IKF: Do you think because grandmaster Parker died so young that he didn’t plan for succession or did he want everybody to follow his own path?

JS: It’s one of those two, but more than likely it’s a combination of both. As I got to know him, he was much more the innovator and the creator; he brought science into art. He was more interested in bringing science to Kenpo and to evolving the art on this site and much less involved in the structure, the business the organization on this site. (Hands far apart) And so one side suffered and the other side was enormous. I am assuming that this was a choice he made. Now as an unattended consequence if you happen to check out early there’s nothing but chaos in the wake of your life. So as the years went on I saw this happen with Kenpo. I saw testing go so far south it was unbelievable, which is why I resigned from the IKKA two years after Mr. Parker died. I decided to create something different because I could see what was going on. So that’s when we came to this juncture—Kenpo karate. I had to change the name because I didn’t want to be painted with the brush that these guys are painted with because of what happened. And that’s when I realized that for months I had been writing Kenpo 5.0. And then I realized there’s the name because that’s exactly who and what we are. We have evolved the art—not just including ground fighting, yes, but there are several other innovations beyond the obvious one where we are fighting on the ground now. We have our own system of fighting called “5.0 fighter”, which is very much like a controlled MMA fight, including points for continuous fighting, points for stand up and on the ground. The tap-out is not the end of the fight but it’s the only thing you can get three points for. The groin is a full-contact target and there’s no striking to the face. That’s what makes us different and it’s growing exponentially. We now have franchise schools in 18 countries. And so it’s not just an organization, there are franchise schools in many countries. 

IKF: It’s a movement?

JS: It’s an evolution that became a revolution. You go back to this place that Kenpo was in were the descendants of Mr. Parker have been suing other people because they are using it. I mean I knew him, I loved him, I know that he loved me. I gave him the movie The Perfect Weapon, which launched Kenpo in a whole new direction throughout the world. I knew this man and I know that he would not have wanted any of this to happen. 

IKF: What made him so successful that he could teach Elvis, Bruce Lee, and Jeff Speakman and be admired equally for his teaching three such diverse personalities? JS: It goes back to this incredible dynamic presence he had. It’s called, “The spirit that’s within.” His middle name is Kealoha, which means The Spirit Gift. And The Beloved. His spirit was so powerful and dynamic and it’s what gave him the edge over everybody else. Many, many people contributed to the evolution of Kenpo karate with Ed Parker. And their contributions were tremendously significant, but here’s the part that many people forget: it takes a dynamic presence and personality to teach something to the world, not just to your backyard. That’s where he was clearly head and shoulders above everyone else. His depth of intellect, his passion, his ability to deliver the material, his physical presence, staggering, just astonishing. It’s that rare combination, a perfect storm of all of the personality attributes that gave him this powerful presence that he carried everywhere he went.

IKF: What do your students today get from you that you got from Ed Parker? JS: As you may know I have graduate degrees in the behavioral sciences and so I pay close attention to that. When I began this endeavor I studied international groups and organizations from all over the world and saw the common denominator they had and mimicked that with ours and employed behavioral management concepts that I learned at the university. You take Kenpo karate, whether Kenpo 5.0 built into the system, whether international or not, it is a beautiful logical sequence of events that fits magically in the behavior model of how to control, engage, evolve, and get people to change, evolve and grow. All you have to do is understand what those principles of behavioral management are and it almost is like it was made for this. My thrust is to empower other people, not to look for other people to empower me. Every single black belt around the world knows they are with me, not under me. To take something as powerful and dynamic as Kenpo karate and in my opinion Kenpo 5.0 even more so, and add the enormous world of grappling, to create something so powerful like that and not hold it, which most martial arts organizations and masters do. I put it all out there because I want you to be a better person and have a better life. My success is building you as a successful person. In turn, the energy you are giving back to me is more successful. It becomes a revolving door of incredibly powerful fluid, positive energy where I make you a success and in turn, you make me a success. Together we grow in this life. And what grew out of that philosophy is this incredible cohesiveness that we have. We have combined all these languages and all these countries and we care deeply for one another. We are in contact all the time; I travel all over the world. I’m outside the U.S. for about a quarter of the year. And every time I go on a 12-to-14-hour flight, which is agony in a can or come back I am so excited to see everybody. It’s this reciprocating positive energy that drives me forward.

IKF: What’s the best part of your martial arts day? The beginner class, the private class, the black belt class? What gets is your engine going? JS: What drives me most is to be able to—and I don’t think I could have said this 10, 15 years ago—but after 25 years of pushing the rock uphill—that’s done and we’re on our way. I no longer have the pushback, I no longer have the negative energy that was with me the first few years. “(People were always saying) Who are you to change Mr. Parker’s art? You’re a subordinate, you’re a punk, you’re just a movie star.” I got it all. And I got it from all sides. We’ve transcended above that to the place we are at now. What drives and moves me is to be able to go and experience that success here and all around the world. And see the oneness. The thing that is the anguish of humanity is these illusions of separation, whether it’s race or religion, or nationality. But there are people who benefit greatly by building and keeping these illusions of separation in place. The goal here is to dissolve those. Because if there is going to be a future of people on planet Earth it’s when we lose the illusion of, take the dogma down, take all those things apart and realize we are one. I’m here to say we are one energy for sure in the Kenpo 5.0 family.

IKF: Thirty years from now a student will tell someone he trained under Grandmaster Jeff Speakman. What will he say? JS: What I hope, and I’m certain they will learn it, it’s about giving not taking. It’s about making this world a better place because you were here. It’s not about power. I did the movie star thing and I can tell you flat out, right here right now, it’s a far greater place than when I was making movies. This is infinitely more powerful. Now I probably wouldn’t be here if I didn’t do that—I get that—but that’s looking behind. I don’t look in the rearview mirror. I’m looking forward, I’m looking through the windshield. First, I hope my students would see the deep love and care, and affection I have for all of them. And then, secondly for the art, which in turn is giving them the ability to change their lives for the better. If I do this right, which is what I think Mr. Parker was doing, then when I’m gone this energy continues. He didn’t set it up like that, but I got it. I understood that so I am moving that agenda forward. So I hope the positive energy about bringing down the separations and empowering everybody that we are all one and came from the same place. I hope that those are things people will remember and perpetuate long after my death.

IKF: What happens to Kenpo 5.0 30 years from now? JS: The evolution continues. Often, when I have my groups of black belts together, and especially if they are doing things I don’t approve of that I need to correct, I’ll say, “Look guys, when I am dead you can do it that way. But when I am alive we do it like this. You got that?” This is what brought us this far. To have a stable base, a level of sanity that isn’t about rank. I appreciate and am very grateful that you call me grandmaster. I reached the mastership rank at ninth-degree black belt and there’s a movement underway to see if I would go to 10th-degree black belt next year. So that very likely is going to happen. But I never pretend to be something I’m not. I know my faults and my shortcomings and I get right to work on facing those things. But I also know the strengths that I have. So lead by example, follow by choice.