Karate The early 1960s with Wally Szlagowski By Rob Dobson (March 2009) I joined the Blacktown Judo & Karate Clubs in the early 1960s training in both Judo and Karate. I quickly found Karate much more to my liking and dropped the Judo. Wally Szlagowski was the chief Karate instructor and at the time was probably in his late 30s; although he was not a large man, he was all muscle and very powerful. Many of the students described Wally’s fists as ‘battering rams’. We soon found out why when we visited Wally at home and saw part of his training routine; he was doing partial bench presses of more than 500 pounds weight, which we believe was in excess of the world bench press record for his weight at that time. Wally was a humble man and would always welcome new or improved techniques into the style. The Blacktown club encouraged visitors from other clubs and especially from visiting Japanese ships. If a visitor knocked someone down with an excellent kick or punch, you didn’t make the excuse that you were having a bad day; you tried to learn the new technique. We always trained on the concrete outside of St Patricks hall, doing push ups on our knuckles on the concrete; it was not uncommon for visitors or new starters to tear significant chunks of skin off the soles of their feet when sparring or doing Kata's. I recall Wally breaking house bricks; first one at a time, then two at a time and then three bricks stacked one on top of the other. When I saw him setting up the three bricks I thought that he was crazy and would never do it, but break three bricks he did! The Blacktown club was always a tough club, the unwritten rules were that you should hit your opponent but not cause any permanent or serious damage; broken ribs were OK but not broken arms, legs or jaws. We always had bag training to ensure that we held our wrists straight when we punched and similarly so for our kicking. We often went somewhere different to train, I remember sparring with Wally in the surf and discovered how slippery things can get when I blocked one of Wally’s punches which slipped straight off my blocking arm and onto my nose; I have a permanent reminder of that day. Sparring was mandatory with everyone required to spar with three different opponents at each training session. We often had to spar one handed with the other hand holding our belt behind our back; we then had to swap and spar with the other hand. At other times we sparred two on one; it was initially surprising that the ‘one’ did so well and we learned to keep the ‘two’ in each others way. Wally had a great breadth of knowledge and for example even taught us how to defend barehanded against dog attacks; we would have other sessions where we were attacked by someone wielding a chair or baseball bat – anything goes. The most important lesson I learned from Karate, mainly from sparring, was that ‘either the problem will beat you or you will beat the problem’. This ‘never back off’ approach allowed me to progress on to a very successful career; success that I would not have been able to accomplish had I not trained under such a gifted and tough Master as Wally Szlagowski. From; Peter Laszlo (Jan 2010) Waldemar Szlagowski – Ageless Superman A Short history of the original Blacktown Karate Club. I have the honour of being Wally’s first student, so some of the history may be of interest to the current generation of students. My involvement with martial arts began in August 1959, when I was in first year high school. As a poor migrant kid, we lived in Leichhardt, and one afternoon, purely by chance, I wondered into the old Leichhardt Police Boys Club on Norton Street. I was welcomed by a huge policeman, with typical Aussie hospitality, his name was Reg Dowton, and I later found out that his brother was the famous local wrestler, ”Snowy” Dowton. Reg, who was also a wrestler, took me under his wing, and introduced me into the judo club, which trained three times a week, on thick wrestling mats and not the traditional “tatamis” , which at that time were almost unheard of, and apparently cost a small fortune. Thanks to Reg Dowton’s encouragement, by the middle of 1960, I was competing and winning in the Police Boy’s Club tournaments. Constable Ernie Chambers, a 2nd Dan, was in charge of judo in the Police Boy’s Club movement, and he also took me under his wing, and as a result, I became involved in many judo tournaments, exhibitions and television appearances. These two gentlemen and the Police Boy’s Club movement had a profound and very positive influence on my life. God bless them, both. The Police Boy’s Club did what it was originally founded for in the 1930s – it took a poor migrant kid off the streets and made something of him. At this point, I must pay tribute to the Boys Club movement, which produced many outstanding Judo players. These included Ted Boronowski (Olympic medallist), Danny Simmons, the Byrnes brothers, Warren Richards (“little Kano”, Olympic medallist), John Hinwood and many, many more. Around 1961, I learned some basic Karate from an ex army guy in the Judo club, who happened to be in Japan at the end of WW2. At that time, around the end of 1961 he was almost retired, and subsequently moved interstate. Unfortunately, I lost track of him, forever. The basics which I learnt were indeed basic, and probably very flawed, but they did provide some sort of foundation and ongoing interest in Karate. I punched and struck whatever was near me, made a rough punching post in our backyard in Leichhardt, and generally regarded myself as being quite proficient. During early 1961, Ernie Chambers mentioned to me that he knew of someone running a small Karate club in Bankstown or Blacktown, by the name of Wally, who was also a Judo player with a rather fearsome reputation. I took the train out to Blacktown one evening, and found the St Patrick’s School hall, where, to my surprise there was a very active Judo club, with at least 30-40 people on the mats. It was run by a very amenable “pom” by the name of John Capper, who soon directed me to a middle aged fit looking guy, who at time appeared to be doing some basic Karate movement in one corner of the hall. After a short and very curt conversation, he asked me if I actually wanted to do some Karate or just talk about it. I was quite insulted, and told him that I had a good basic knowledge but there was obviously things that I could perhaps learn. What a mistake, as I later found out, many people who had the same flippant attitude, were very quickly despatched by Wally. He suggested that we have a light spar, just to see what I actually knew. When I had a close look at his forearms (Wally always trained with his sleeves rolled up) and his fists, my stomach suddenly sunk, and I thought to myself that perhaps my self anointed skills may not be as quite as good as I first assumed. I assumed a classic forward stance, for the first and last time, then came an ordinary, fairly slow and deliberate forward punch from Wally which I tried to block. Basically, it was similar to being hit by a 3 inch steel pipe, and I automatically retreated (very quickly) about three steps. For the rest of the session, all I can remember is continually running backwards, after many feeble and laughable attempts to block his punches and kicks. I was also on the receiving end of his fearsome circular Shuto (which I later also adopted) and my sore ribs and black and blue forearms took weeks to heal. He always connected, with an uncanny accuracy, but pulled back without actually causing any lasting damage, a testament to his skills. Never once was I able to actually move forward and attack, it was futile, and utterly impossible. In a real contest, with actual contact, I estimate, even today, that I would have lasted no more then 10 seconds with Wally, despite my “skills”, relative strength and youth. I was 16 at that time. When we finished the session (read: I finally stopped retreating and running backwards) he did pay me a tribute by saying that despite my running away (Wally always called a spade a spade) I did actually try to use some techniques, which in effect could do little harm to anyone. He invited me to Bankstown, where he had a class at the Evening College, twice a week. I thought to myself that I must learn from this guy, and I must last the distance. This was the beginning. One final image has stuck with me, from this faithful evening in 1961. When we finished, Wally took his jacket off, to get changed. What I saw was a physique, not huge, but all strength, arms like steel pipes, and fists made from concrete. This may sound melodramatic, but anyone who knew Wally, will attest to the truth of this statement. Strangely, or perhaps not, 30 years later, he looked almost the same. At this point I must apologise to all concerned, as I may not recall everyone who was involved in the club at that time. I started training with Wally in Bankstown and also at Blacktown from early 1961. I was training with him, non stop, and around late 1962, the then club established a relationship with a Mr Konishi, who was master of the SeiKuKan style. As our hard style was somewhat based on Oyama’s Guju style which later became Kyokushinkai, we tried to establish a connection with Mr Oyama, but to no avail, for reasons unknown even today. At that time we had a young Japanese executive, Shohachiro, training with us in Blacktown, who was a 2nd Dan, from Kyoto University. I “found” him at the then Japanese Trade Centre in Pitt St, and he became a frequent visitor to the club, whilst he was in Australia. He later acted as a “conduit” to Mr Konishi, who later “legitimised” and recognised the club and the gradings, through Shohachiro. He kept in contact with us for quite a while after he returned to Japan, but we eventually lost contact. We never did establish contact with Mr Oyama, but I believe that he may have replied to a letter, inviting us to train in his Dojo. At that time in the 1960s, this was financially and logistically impossible for any of us, and it was not until quite a few years later, that a number of Australians went to Japan, the most prominent being Merv Oakley, Neil Atkinson and John Taylor. The then Blacktown Karate Club, began to grow and in chronological order, George Pandu, Rob Dobson, Vladimir Pijov, Russel Beha, Jeff Daley, Alan Thomas and others joined, and remained. My apologies to the other contemporaries, but these guys remained the most prominent in my memory. We also had the first lady student, Maria, who was excellent, and was later graded to 1st Dan by Wally. She later went back to Holland in the late 1960-s, but someone may have more recent information about her. These guys and many others, all became supreme, very hard, no nonsense fighters, and I earnestly believe that their fighting prowess has stood the test of time and I would like to pay my tribute to all of them. Each one of us, developed our own individual style, but in essence, what Wally thought us, formed the basis and remained with us, until this day. Around the 1960-s and 1970-s, we gave many exhibitions around the Blacktown area, alongside the Judo club. These exhibitions were extremely high standard and the breaks, remain pretty well unmatched, even today. Three examples have stuck in mind, amongst the many others, so once again, apologies to anyone else not directly mentioned. The first one was, of course Wally, breaking two house bricks with Shuto, and then around 14 tiles with a fist strike. In fact, Wally did break three house bricks on a number of occasions, during the usual Saturday afternoon training session. I also witnessed Wally during a number of visits to his house, doing bench press with over 500 pounds (well over 200 kilos), and those of us who trained with weights, will appreciate that this is super strength territory. The second one was myself, and the reason I remember, because it was one of those freak, clean and smooth brakes – it was 12 tiles with Shuto. The photo made the front page of one of the Sunday papers, but unfortunately I do not have a copy. The third one was Rob Dobson, breaking around 12-14 tiles with a flying elbow strike, very spectacular indeed. It should be noted that these were the locally produced house bricks and roof tiles, and not the Japanese clay variety. Wally, George Pandu and myself trained together regularly up to the mid 90-s. These were all straight, almost two hour non stop, kumite sessions. Some were fast, some were slower, some were experimental, but the bruises and broken bones attest to the fact that time did not soften the style nor the strength of the strikes. What else can be said about Wally ? He was respected by all of us, he never considered himself arrogantly superior to his students and to other styles, and most of all he thought all of us fighting skills and humility. His strength was legendary, but as a person, and as a friend he projected just as much power. I am proud and privileged to have known him and to have been trained by him. May God bless him in the great Dojo in the sky. Peter Laszlo