What It Was Like To Fight In Karate Tournaments In The 1970s

In the early to mid-1970s, there were many karate tournaments, and I participated in several of them. I received my black belt in 1975 from a grandmaster, sensei Fred Corritone, here on Long Island, New York. He was a very tough instructor, and our club, or dojo, did things the old-fashioned way: we earned all the levels or belts. Very physical classes were the hallmark – blood, sweat and tears, to put it simply, and gently! Our karatekas, or karate students, sometimes went to karate tournaments, either on Long Island or in Manhattan, and in other cities. We fight people from every conceivable background and every different style. At the time, most tournaments were “non-contact,” meaning wrestlers were expected to fall short of completely hitting their opponents. However, many times, this did NOT happen, meaning the fighters hit pretty hard, despite the rule against full contact. There were no boxing gloves or safety kicks at these tournaments, as contact was supposed to be minimal.

In one such “no contact” tournament, at Commack Arena in Suffolk County on Long Island, I wrestled at the brown belt level. I was winning a match, when I scored a point against my opponent, and then all of a sudden he hit me full force in the face, thus breaking my nose, quite severely. It was a shock and I had to retire to a hospital. I was awarded the fight, but over the next month, my entire face was swollen and turned completely black, blue, and purple. He had suffered quite a severe trauma. It can be said that my opponent had really lost control, to say the least! I still wrestled in some tournaments after that, notably the Fred Hamilton tournament, in Harlem. That was quite a show. Back in the ’70s, the level of integration that we benefit from today did not yet exist, and our karate club was about the only non-African American in attendance. Of course, that didn’t really matter, as the only thing that mattered was who was the better fighter, regardless of skin color. One of my dojo members won his fight in a very dramatic fashion, executing a beautiful flying side kick, stopping the kick a millionth of an inch from his opponent’s head. That was no easy feat. I won one ending, and then lost to a very good fighter from then on. That tournament was quite the spectacle, and it was a famous competition for many years.

In some of these tournaments, I also participated in the kata competition, the non-fighting part, where one goes through the formal karate exercises, the “forms”. This was really nice, if a bit stressful, as one’s performance is graded by multiple highly rated judges. He required a lot of concentration, good technique and complete familiarity with the kata.

Although I learned a lot from these tournaments, I eventually grew tired of them. I realized, after quite some time, that my interest in karate, in martial arts, was transforming, and I was much more interested in the mental aspects, the mentality and also the angle of the physical form. It took me many years, but I finally lost my interest in pure fighting, which is a big part of karate of course, but it’s just one aspect, and for me at least it became the smallest part of it all. Of course, to reach this feeling, I previously got a decent to moderately good level of karate fighting skill, not great, but at least a good level. I started to move on to something that I felt was even more important: the development of the person as a whole, and for me, fighting was just a small subset of that. Nowadays, I’m only interested in helping people get in shape, using karate and related techniques. Of course, one can learn to fight and defend oneself, but that is less important than being in top mental and physical shape, at least for me. I will always remember the tournaments, as with all my old karate training, as every aspect is a learning experience, and I am happy that I have found what I consider to be the core meaning of karate, and for me that is its Zen aspects, as well as the fitness levels that can be achieved.