2. There are plenty of fighting styles that are not classified as MA (Asian MA).
So why be surprise to see some thing that doesn’t fit that paradigm?
You missed the point.
Its very common here to point out that MA does not just mean Asian arts and the fact that the term was first used in Europe to refer to European arts. Simply you don't have to call something a MA for it to be one. Until recently Boxing and Wrestling were called MA because they weren't Asian doesn't stop them from being one though.


3. What should 52 look like? Should it look like Kung Fu or Karate or any other excepted MA or fighting style?... Name the fighters the changed the landscape of Boxing, and Jack Johnson is on the List. There were others but he made an impact that’s why he’s there.
We don't care what it looks like we just want to see it. Thats the main request that has been put out. Jack Johnson has nothing to do iwht it.


What makes a system a Martial Art? Martial implies military and does some knowledge of warfare. This tells me that when people engaged in battle they were not fighting with their bare hands. And if this is true as I believe then this makes since (Ogun god of Iron, the path finder, weapon two Machete) (Shango god of war weapon two Battle axes).
Yes but if you look at military training you will see the same formulas throughout history. You had your major battlefeild weapons (generaly polearms and archers), secondary weapons (swords, axes, clubs, etc) then you have your infighting skills which were used in the loss of a weapon or to retain your weapon or to set up a killshot when in close. (Jujutsu, kampftringen, wrestling, etc).



Yes. This xenophobia you speak of is a myth. There's white 5 Percenters, white NOI, white Panthers, white Vice Lords, white BGD, what have you. Not only were there white men in all these organizations, but they often tend to be (in)famous enough to hold a little status. Now, thats not to say you can just drag your dorky ass into the hood straight from the IT department, but its not impossible to infiltrate black criminal culture. In prison, yeh, I'd imagine it'd be damn near impossible, but finding someone on the outside shouldn't be that hard.
You beat me too it.


First off I have tape, and I have demo 52 for Jason Coach the mod on MMA.tv history forum... He was going to post but he's a lawyer and he was busy.
I was going to show Stickgrappler we never hooked up...
I live in Staten Island and I'm not hard to find
I have hours of info, but then again I could be just make ish up
peace

If you have video then send me a copy. I will digitize it and share it hear if you want. That would be a huge step forward.


Let me see if I got you right I'm suppose to let somebody I don't know dud my tape. to prove something that cats don't want to believe right.
How about you make the trip to see me and I'll show it to you.
this way you can be judge and jury... Come into Newark and I'll pick you up.
peace

Whats so wrong about pple dubbing your tape? So instead of simply dubbing a vid you want pple to spend money to come up your way?

Cutting to the chase, we have an offer to meet up from RobG, who is a very experienced MAist and fighter; and an offer to meet up from BrotherD, likewise a font of knowledge on the 52s, who is willing to share. They are both based in NY.

I've had some correspondence with both these guys and frankly I think that they have a lot in common. This could be a great opportunity to get some of this material down on tape and broadcast it. Everyone would learn something. What say you, gentlemen?

Yes. This xenophobia you speak of is a myth. There's white 5 Percenters, white NOI, white Panthers, white Vice Lords, white BGD, what have you. Not only were there white men in all these organizations, but they often tend to be (in)famous enough to hold a little status.
That's cool. Can you gimme some links to the more famous ones?

Cutting to the chase, we have an offer to meet up from RobG, who is a very experienced MAist and fighter; and an offer to meet up from BrotherD, likewise a font of knowledge on the 52s, who is willing to share. They are both based in NY.

I've had some correspondence with both these guys and frankly I think that they have a lot in common. This could be a great opportunity to get some of this material down on tape and broadcast it. Everyone would learn something. What say you, gentlemen?

Yes please. I for one find this a fascinating subject.

I'd respectfully ask that the "senior" members of the forum remember that BrotherD is a guest who has posted here to help us with our understanding of what the 52 is. References to Yeti Scalps and the time honoured bullshido chant of "If it ain't on video then it ain't real" do little to move us forward in an analytical assessment of this system or urban myth.

Here we have an opportunity to move beyond the usual internet forum discussions of 52 and really start to scratch the surface. Please don't offend the man who has been good enough to offer up his time to help with this ( and for no benefit of his own).

I first heard about JHR/52 blocks years ago in an old Punisher comic (the writer back then was a big martial arts buff) and in an article about the Lethal Weapon movie so I was interested to find this thread.


There you have it NY and NJ people - Brother D has generously offered to show his stuff. Sounds like a golden opportunity. I hope someone takes him up on it and documents the experience.

While we're waiting, it's worth noting that Jason Couch - a moderator at the MMA-tv History forum and a highly respected MA researcher in his own right - recently met with BrotherD and is preparing a detailed account of the 52 based on that meeting.

I'm in contact with Jason and will ask his permission to cross-post the report here, or link to it. It might take a while - as BrotherD mentioned, Jason is a lawyer and has an extremely heavy work-load.

Greetings ddlR...
What can I add that hasn't already been said. It's has if we cry BS enough then cats will get upset and say see I told you it's real, Only to have naysayer’s say yeah but I bet it can't be so system. Whatever You can't please everybody
and I'm not going to try. Truth is I like the way guys on this forum critique.
You guys are very knowledgeable so I understand why you keep batting your eyes on this topic...
1. There is more than one style of Boxing, and as it goes Blacks have been boxing in this country since 1700's and longer. What ever the fight was we did it.
But I'll take what is documented.

2. There are plenty of fighting styles that are not classified as MA (Asian MA).
So why be surprise to see some thing that doesn’t fit that paradigm?

3. What should 52 look like? Should it look like Kung Fu or Karate or any other excepted MA or fighting style?... Name the fighters the changed the landscape of Boxing, and Jack Johnson is on the List. There were others but he made an impact that’s why he’s there.

But what of Sam Lamfort? Jack didn’t want to fight him anymore I wonder why.
Any way At first site 52 seems to flashing (dirty boxing ) and Bad Kung fu
And on top of that it’s just not real….
Ok…
Let me start here



BrotherD ....not to nitpick but you do mean Sam Langford in relation to Jack Johnson .....and it was never documented that Jack turned down a match with Sam....even though Sam was a bad muthafucka from all the accounts I've read.....

As to 52 ......if you have video just upload it to the site I'd personally like to see it ....not saying I believe it or don't ....but would like to see it just the same......

As far as it coming from the South and all ...well maybe......but I'm from Mississippi with folks in Parchman (now MSP) and Angola and have never heard or seen anything coming close to a system of fighting coming out of those prisons or being in those prisons..........I grew up fighting .......and never had one of the older cats show me anything that could be considered a system of fighting.........

and maybe I just wasn't fortunate enough to see those things.......as to old schoolers mostly wanting to fight.........not sure but when and where I grew up it was all about doing whatever they had to do..........and mostly ended with somebody getting shot or stabbed ..........the only cats fighting were usually boys not men........and usually young boys........the grown men in my day as is now were quick to put a blade to you or a bullet in you.........and that's the South I know...............

But anyway BrotherD ........if you do have video showing JHR/52 could you please put it up ......because right now all we have is the word of 2 or 3 men with no video evidence .......plus I can't afford to go all the way to NY .....


MississippiRed

SB,

whether or not the 52s/JHR exist is not an issue for Tom Green. He's met and trained with practitioners of the style, including Dennis Newsome. I don't think that proving its existence to members of this forum is high on his priority list. He has a professional interest in the style and is concerned with researching and documenting it at the academic level.

That said, as we mentioned much earlier in this thread, the 52s would make a dynamite subject for a serious documentary. There has actually been some talk about that elsewhere within the past year.

Now that BrotherD has joined the conversation again, you have the chance to question a man who is, to the very best of my knowledge, a genuine, living, breathing representative of the old-school 52s.

If BotherD would be willing to work something out with Asia to post a representitive video sample of 52 here then that would move the discussion forward.

You don't think he just meant that it was indeed the bum rush? I watch **** all the time and say "yeh, thats that bum rush". That doesn't mean that I'm witnessing the secret black ninja scrolls.


I described all this earlier in the thread:


The only direct, personal experience I have had in this area has been discussions and informal training with my brother-in-law, who was a hardcore gangster during the '80s and early '90s and who recognises my description of the lore surrounding the 52s, although he refers to it as Bum Rush, a term corroborated as being cognate with the 52s in other sources. Several of the key elements (a consensual streetfighting "style" based on slap-boxing, "flash moves" and tricks with their own names, etc.) are present in Bum Rush, for what that's worth.



Personally, I wouldn't call what I have seen of Bum Rush a "style", either. It's basically slap-boxing with the rules even more relaxed than usual and includes (one way or the other) some specific tricks, including a move (also, confusingly) called the Bum Rush, which seems to have no application other than as a way to blindside someone with a tackle; frankly, it's more of an ambush/mugging technique than"self defense". There is also some creative use of the elbows in defense and a few tactics that are vaguely similar to some of the psych-out rituals you'd see in Capoeira. The best thing I've gained from it so far is a technique for bridging the gap and trapping the lead hand against a cautious opponent.

The informal training I've done with my brother in law tends to turn into skill-sharing sessions anyway, as he considers Bum Rush to be kid's stuff and is more interested in mainstream MA and making a legit living as a MA instructor. Also, he's 260 lbs of powerlifter and I'm not, and we like each other, so we've never taken things to conclusions!

Then the Villain asked the same question you did, and I replied:


My brother in law is the only guy I've trained with who uses the term in this way. I've met some of his gangster buddies and they might use it similarly - I didn't ask, and haven't sparred with them, and don't plan to.

From our conversations it seems that, within my brother in law's gang on Chicago's south side during the '80s, the Bum Rush was as I described it above, a blend of slap-boxing and street tricks. To me, before I met him, the bum rush or bum's rush was a specific technique for ejecting drunks and other undesirables from bars, etc. , and also a metaphor for getting rid of someone you didn't like.

I don't know what else to tell you; it's obvious that the term is/was used differently in different places and contexts. We're talking about slang, after all - see this link for a range of other meanings http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20000713

BrotherD ....not to nitpick but you do mean Sam Langford in relation to Jack Johnson .....and it was never documented that Jack turned down a match with Sam....even though Sam was a bad muthafucka from all the accounts I've read.....

MississippiRed

I've seen early film footage of Langford fighting - he had astounding skills.

On the topic of xenophobia in black secretive societies, I should point out that often rejection isn't because of what you think it is. Even if you're not just a dork, you may not have done enough research into how to behave. In the situation in which we were told to do our homework, we got rejected because we simply greeted the guy wrong. Like five times. Had we been white and greeted him properly, we'd have gotten a pass. We chalked it up to looking like suburban dorks however, which wasn't the issue at all. Took me three months to find out what exactly sparked the fight.
Is being dorky a way of classifying a certain kind of people? I mean -- when I say someone's dorky, it's because he's socially awkward, with respect to the norm in which I'm around. So when you mentioned being dorky, does that accurately reflect the judgement those guys were passing on you?

I think you're being a little vague with the term black secretive societies. Could you be more explicit in terms of what groups you mean?

That may have been your best post Osiris.

It's definitely a good start. Os's link about the white Vice Lord above was incomprehensible at first. I had no background so I had to troll the web and wikipedia to find enough articles about the Vice Lords and CVL and SVL until I could better grasp the historical and social significance of the article. And even still I don't have a good idea. I think the whole area has been outside of my education, formal or not.

Frankly, unless he has something more to offer than anectdotes, I'm not impressed. All we have now is another guy on the net telling the same stories everyone else is, more or less.

Read the posts - BrotherD is offering to show anyone willing to make the trip to meet him (with an open mind). He's not offering anecdotal evidence.

This is not a philosophical question, how long until we get the evidence?

I've been communicating with various parties by PM and email - as it stands, BrotherD's offer is still open.