The Voice Box: NUTS! How Ninjas Started The Great War... And Other Martial Arts Farces!

MMA announcer Michael "The Voice" Schiavello of HDNet Fights takes a look at Martial Arts farces

When I was 13 years old the movie Kickboxer starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Alexio had just been released and was what all the cool kids were somehow getting into the theatre to watch. 

I was not one of the cool kids. 

I didn’t join the coolness clique until I was 16 and almost expelled for being editor of the “smuttiest, crudest, most disgusting” (as my principal put it) version of our school magazine ever printed. Mind you, to this day that edition of the school magazine is still spoken about in guarded whispers in my high school’s corridors.

With Kickboxer’s release there was great discussion whether what the movie depicted was “real” kickboxing. One of the kids in my year level had ventured that this Dennis Alexio dude was the real heavyweight kickboxing champion of the world. We all didn’t believe him, of course. Then another kid chimed in that Jean-Claude Van Damme was a fifth dan Karate black belt, which we believed. This information to a group of prepubescent high schoolers who spent every night desperately searching for a first pubic hair was akin to Van Damme carrying a machine gun in each hand and having rocket launchers for feet. 

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This was a time when martial arts still held a mystical attraction and when martial myth was still marketed as reality.

“Yeah well my dad is a fourth dan in Karate,” said this kid called Shane. He was one of the school’s top jocks and bullies, and proclaiming his dad a fourth dan black belt elevated our fear of Shane to high-threat level. After all, Shane was one of the inheritors of my high school’s most awesomely atrocious bullying-tactic known as ‘nuts’.

Nuts ... the very word makes me shudder. 

Nuts was a bullying technique introduced to our school by a large Russian kid named Uri. As a 16 year old completing his final year, Uri towered well over six feet tall and was the only kid in school who could slam dunk a basketball and get hang time off the hoop. Looking back now, Uri probably wasn’t over six feet tall nor could he probably slam dunk, but to us cowering nerds who scampered for cover leaving our Uno cards scattered to the four winds every time we got word that Uri was approaching, he may as well have been a Barbarian clothed in the pelt of a jungle lion and brandishing a battle axe.

Uri and his gang of bullies had either developed the nuts technique or had it imparted to them by bullies of a previous generation. Either way, Uri, Shane and the rest of the bully brotherhood employed nuts as their prime weapon and greatest show of who truly held the balance of power in the school yard. Each week they would select some helpless scrawny skinner (this was our word for a kid without pubic hair) and grab him by all fours as the poor kid tried to kick and twist his way free. The unlucky victim’s pleas were deliberately ignored as no one was prepared to interfere and play the hero lest they too were ensnared by Uri, Shane and the bullies and subjected to the horrors of nuts.

After being seized by all fours, the victim was held horizontally in the air and his legs spread eagle. The scrotal area was then aimed toward a nearby basketball pole and with Uri’s emphatic war cry of “Nuuuuuuuts” the victim’s balls were driven into the pole. He was then dropped unceremoniously to the ground in wailing agony as Uri and his Neanderthals celebrated with grunts and high fives.

Let’s take a moment to remember all those damaged testicles from the era of Uri’s schoolyard dictatorship...

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Now back to my story about Shane and his fourth dan black belt uber-dad. 

After delivering us this tidbit of enthralling information, we asked Shane what was the highest dan his father or anyone else for that matter could attain in the martial arts.

“In Australia it is illegal to hold more than a fourth dan otherwise you are considered a lethal weapon, like a gun or something,” he answered.

That ridiculous statement stuck with me. I hold it as a landmark in my memory as the first ever silly statement I heard about the martial arts. When I later began working as a reporter in the martial arts field, I realised it was the first of many asinine statements I’d hear.

Since Shane’s it’s-illegal-to-be-higher-than-a-fourth-dan-black-belt story, I have heard many more gems from the martial arts community and its observers. Here’s some of the best:

• I once interviewed a member of the Black Dragon Fighting Society Ninjutsu group who tried to convince me that the Black Dragons started the First World War. Without a hint of a joke he sat there and told me that the Black Dragon Fighting Society had performed the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that lead to the Great War. Yes, I am sure a clandestine bunch of Japanese ninjas who practiced with smoke bombs, shuriken stars and shuko claws were the group responsible for propelling planet Earth into its first global war. Quick! Rewrite the history books!

• At a Muay Thai show in Melbourne once, while the fighters were performing the pre-fight ritual of the Ram Muay / Wai Kru, I heard a know-it-all husband tell his inquisitive wife: it’s a form of ancient stretching, like yoga.

• I once heard a referee of a Muay Thai fight tell one of the fighters “take your hat off” referring to the traditional Thai mongkol around the fighter’s head

• I know of a martial artist who bestowed upon himself the title of 11th dan

• At a kickboxing show I overheard a man tell his friend, “[the fighter] should use that kick off The Karate Kid. Apparently there really is no defence against it.”

• I once interviewed an Australian martial artist about self defence techniques, in particular defence against knife attacks. He told me that if someone holds a knife to my chest, I should “grab the blade” with my fingers. He then demonstrated how this would work but, of course, he used a rubber knife

• A friend of mine who knows nothing about martial arts told me “there are no such things as ninjas. They were just made up by the movies.” 

• I once had a Kung Fu instructor tell me that all you need for effective self defence is a knowledge of pressure points. Sure thing Confucius! How bout I swing a baseball bat at your head and you stop it with a dim mak?

• A Karate instructor once told me that kata can be effectively employed in a fight scenario. Okay Mr Miyagi, why don’t you perform Tekki sandan kata against Alistair Overeem or Shogun Rua in a cage?

• A Karate instructor once told me that his horse stance was so strong that nobody could move him. Brock Lesnar would beg to differ!

• A Jiu-Jitsu practitioner once told me that Jiu-Jitsu comes from Brazil.

• I once met a Tameshiwara (breaking) champion who believed he was the strongest man in the world because he could break almost two-dozen bricks and giant slabs of ice with a single blow. How about you place the bricks directly on top of each other next time and let me drink the melted liquid from your ice slabs to see if there’s any salt in there tough guy? By the way, Marius Pudzianowski just called and he wants to throw kegs with you.

• A martial arts “historian” once told me that only men were ever allowed to practice martial arts. Hey Einstein, did you know Wing Chun was invented by a woman? A nun no less? 

• A Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner once told me that BJJ is the ultimate self defence style because most fights end up on the ground. “If I’m in a bar and get in a fight with a bunch of guys, I just take down their biggest guy and armbar him.” Sure thing hero! While you’re down on a sticky floor locking up that armbar, his ten mates will be throwing bottles at you and kicking you in the ribs.

• You cannot believe how many people I have come across who tell me they practice Karate and when asked by me “what sort of Karate?” they look at me dumbfounded and answer, “Whaddya mean? Karate, man!”
• A woman once said to me, “I learn Tae Bo. It’s great for self defence.” Oh dear, you’re a violent mugging just waiting to happen, sweetheart.

• A wrestler once said to me Judo throws are weak. As my friend Guy Mezger would say: “Let me Judo throw you on carpet and you’re going to the hospital. Let me Judo throw you on concrete and you’re going to the morgue.”

• Every freak and geek who has said to me: “ Bruce Lee would have been a K-1 world champion and a UFC champion.” Um, no.

* Recently a man told me he was a brown belt in Mixed Martial Arts. Wow!

By Michael Schiavello
ProFighting-fans.com MMA Guest Writer

Michael Schiavello is the voice of MMA and K-1 on HDNet and a regular correspondent for InsideMMA. He commentated the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and The Contender Asia reality TV series. He can be found online at: www.thevoiceofficial.com and at Twitter "SchiavelloVOICE."