Southend-on-Sea, England: Kung Fu master Tony Anthony and Avanti Ministries

[stubbe78]

And thanks for the link, it looks credible

[stephenprunetti]

Email to Malcolm Down, Authentic Media.

'That day the enormous animal rested her big head against my body and let me scratch her behind her ears.' -Taming the Tiger, Tony Anthony.



Hi Malcolm,

I think debating species, sub-species, and the habitat of wild tigers is entirely avoiding the issue. Please read the above quote. Do you think this scenario is based in real events, or is based firmly in the mind of a deluded fantasist? I put it to you that the vast majority of 'Taming the Tiger' is pure fantasy. Or to use a more profane term, bullshit.

It saddens me to say that all the communications that i have had with you and Tony, whether by email, telephone, or in the case of Tony, face to face, have been at best evasive, and at worst deceitful. And have done nothing to answer my (and many other people's) questions. It greatly disturbs me that Tony Anthony is travelling the world, selling his book, and passing off his bullshit story as true events to large numbers of people. I have no idea about the amount of money this nonsense has generated for you both, but every penny has been made through lies and deceit.

I will be contactineg Tony shortly, and inviting him to address his critics directly. Maybe he could post his response on the forum at www.bullshido.net. I know this is an entirely futile action on my part, as any reasonable person can clearly see that 'Taming the Tiger' is a pack of lies. But i am interested to see what Tony has to say. Especially as regards his claim of shooting a man in the head, within the pages of his book. An admission of murder is something that most people don't take lightly.

Sincerely,

Stephen Prunetti.

[stubbe78]

Eventhough your harsh way of writing will do you no good Stephen, I understand you, I am just as frustrated.
I wish I could say that a more friendly and diplomatic approach would be of more gain, but my experience is that it just leaves you with even more answers and that it just provides them easier ways to handle the truth in strange ways.

[stubbe78]

Eventhough your harsh way of writing will do you no good Stephen

Put in a "probably between "writing" and "will" ;-)

[stubbe78]

Hey Stephen, any news?

[stephenprunetti]

Malcolm Down.

Hi Stephen.

Thanks for your email.

The point i am making is that Tony saw what he saw. In the end it's hard to prove one way or the other and as with most biographies there will always be incidents where you just have to take the authors word as truth.

With regard to your conclusion about the book as a whole and your opinion of Tony, we will simply have to agree to disagree! As the publisher we stand by Tony and his book. You are of course at liberty to pursue your efforts to counter the claims he makes and i'm sure in the end the truth will prevail.

With regards to the financial proceeds from the book, what i can tell you is that every penny of Tony's royalty's go back into buying books which he largely gives away so making money is actually the very least of his concerns.

Regards

Malcolm

[littleoldme]

His website is actually quite interesting

some of his fellow evangelists
http://www.avantiministries.com/evan...entonbaker.php
http://www.avantiministries.com/evan...onyanewton.php
http://www.avantiministries.com/evan..._jamiekidd.php (check his biography tab)
http://www.avantiministries.com/evan..._biography.php

they all seem to share a "misery memoir" dramatic past, their bois all either hint at or specifically mention a criminal past.

I have no problem at all with people who got into crime and made bad choices as an adolescent going on to help others avoid the mistakes they made, in fact I think that can be a wonderful thing. However given what we know about Tony I feel very uncomfortable about how this particular group of evangelists is being presented to people.

If Tony's boi is a complete lie maybe that is true for one or more of the others

http://www.tangle.com/view_video?vie...dec78cbb791ecb


If you look at their events calendar here http://www.avantiministries.com/eventsdiary.php it appears that there is only very basic information available, nothing that could identify the schools or other projects that they visit with any certainty. I wonder why?

[littleoldme]

Hi Stephen.

Thanks for your email.

The point i am making is that Tony saw what he saw. In the end it's hard to prove one way or the other and as with most biographies there will always be incidents where you just have to take the authors word as truth.

With regard to your conclusion about the book as a whole and your opinion of Tony, we will simply have to agree to disagree! As the publisher we stand by Tony and his book. You are of course at liberty to pursue your efforts to counter the claims he makes and i'm sure in the end the truth will prevail.

With regards to the financial proceeds from the book, what i can tell you is that every penny of Tony's royalty's go back into buying books which he largely gives away so making money is actually the very least of his concerns.

Regards

Malcolm

If you look at the various Tony Antony videos on youtube you can see that he does in fact give away lots of signed copies of books to children.

When I have worked with children nobody in my organisation is permitted to give personal gifts to children, for obvious boundary reasons. Any little freebies that we give to children are given only through teachers of youth workers.

Even if all of the money from Tony's book royalties go to buy more books, then Malcolm must be absolutely raking it in, as he effectively profits from the sales of the books directly through sales. He is in the enviable position of publishing Anthony's best seller and even the royalties he pays to Anthony go back into book sales. He must be laughing all the way to the bank

As for Anthony's revenue, I would have thought that most of that would come from ticket sales to evangelist events and through donations.

This is interesting

The following shows the true impact of your gift...


http://www.avantiministries.com/giving_financially.php

[buzzbevan]

FFS

There are no Bengal tiers living in China. Bengal tigers live in India, that's why they are called Bengal tigers.

The only Chinese tigers are the Indochinese tiger and the South China tiger, the latter being one of the 10 most endangered species in the world.

No tiger lives safely in China, as the massive demand for tiger parts for TCM makes a dead tiger a phenomenally valuable thing.

If Tony Anthony claimed to have encountered an ordinary golden tiger in China and that it just chilled out with him and let him scratch its ear the story would have been ludicrous. The claim that it was a white tiger just takes the already incredible story into cloud cuckoo land.

You could contact the people at any one of a number of tiger conservation charities and they would confirm this.

The Big Cat Haven in Florida might be a good place to start as they published this article about white tigers.

http://bigcathaven.org/cats/wild/whi...s_genetics.htm

prehaps he met the white tiger on a visit to his local zoo?!

http://www.colchester-zoo.co.uk/inde...our.whitetiger

[littleoldme]

Stephen
check your youtube messages

:)

[littleoldme]

another of Avanti Ministry's evangelists
http://www.avantiministries.com/evan..._biography.php

a C&P of some of it for those too lazy to click on a link

"We moved to the roughest housing estate in Europe (Drumchapel, just outside Glasgow) and that is where I learned to use violence to solve a situation!


A few years later we moved to Merseyside and I got interested in Martial Arts and became pretty good at it. I then started work as a bouncer and then moved into bodyguard work. I got involved with a highly professional group of ex-soldiers from various countries and we became a great team. Our company would use us to clean up troubled nightclubs. Hit them Hard and move on was our Motto.


It was not long before I ended up doing some serious debt collecting for some of our close protection clients which then lead onto us choosing our own 'Jobs'. I was soon involved in international kidnapping of men that had stolen from some of our clients. I became embroiled in a world of Shotguns, kidnapping and Money! Subsequently, I ended up in prison serving a 5 year sentence for extortion."

(emphasis mine)


He only got out of prison in 2007 and he's already working for Tony Anthony

OMG it gets worse

http://www.destinyedinburgh.com/real...in_prison.aspx

[filehelp]

He came to my highschool about 4 years ago, where he quickly shrugged off any questions regarding martial arts and his "3 time kung fu world championship".

In this talk he also explained/boasted about how he killed numerous men as a bodyguard. We were all pretty shocked that he freely admitted this but didn't do any prison time related to it.

Dailymotion - Taming the tiger Tony Anthony part 1 - une vidéo Vie pratique@@AMEPARAM@@http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x6gkal@@AMEPARAM@@x6gkal

First couple of minutes of the video version of "taming the tiger" is a pretty handy intro for someone that doesn't know to much about his "story".

[littleoldme]

Filehelp

Thanks for your post and that video

Can you please describe Tony's visit to your school?

How old were the children who saw his presentation?

Did he give free books to kids?

I'm very interested in hearing about his visit in as much detail as possible

Thanks again

[stephenprunetti]

The truth will prevail, that Tony Anthony is a fantasist.

Hi all,

Let's not digress too much, here. Some of Tony's fellow evangelists may well be very genuine and sincere people (although, i admit all those biogs at avanti ministries don't make for light reading!)

I originally read 'Taming the Tiger' because a Christian friend of mine passed it on to me. This lady is an old friend, a very sincere and devout person. It really upset me, when she asked me if i enjoyed it, that i had to say, 'It was interesting, but unfortunately i believe this man is a liar.'

I don't know which parts, if any, of 'Taming the Tiger' are true. For example; he may well have been in prison in Cyprus at some point. He may be, as he claims, half Chinese and have been brought up in China. I don't speak Chinese and have never been to China, so i have no grounds to doubt this claim (although, there are two very articulate book reviews at amazon.co.uk, were the writers express their belief that Anthony has no knowledge of China at all.)

I do, however, know that Anthony has little or no knowledge of kung fu. Many of his claims are pure fantasy of the highest order: Stroking wild tigers, carrying cauldrons of molten metal, escaping across a desert terrain after a gun-battle. His book also contains many other demonstrable lies. He states that martial arts are illegal in Sweden, this is not true. Quite a mistake to make for a kung fu world champ, (this in itself, a total misnomer). Anyone out there ever heard of the 'IKF?' According to Mr Anthony, they're an international kung fu organisation that got him work as a bodyguard. But in reality, this organisation does not exist outside of the unsophisticated imagination of Tony Anthony.

I urge anyone who, like me, is concerned that this fantasist is travelling the world, recounting his bullshit story, to do all they can to expose him. Place a book review on amazon. Email Tony Anthony and his publishers with your queries. Contact local churches, schools and other organisations where he is due to speak, with your concerns about this man.

Many people already know that Anthony is a fraud. I would dearly love to see him exposed completely.

[stubbe78]