MA and ME (Cap.9 PROFESOR Carlos Damasco

MARTIAL ARTS and ME (p. 9)

Professor Carlos Damasco

Today I am going to write a different note. It will be from the instructors and teachers who have accompanied me over time and who have taught me things about the martial arts that I have practiced and still practice and they bring me good things for me. I always rescue the best things. In reality it is the man and his circumstances.We all have lights and shadows as human beings that we are. I have already said in previous notes that back in early 1973 I started with Karate Goju Ryu, Japanese style of the cat Gogen Yamaguchi.My first instructor was Mr. Ricardo Sosa Ferreira, now deceased. We were practicing with him for a year and for reasons that are irrelevant, but rather we are going to give the explanation, he went to Brazil to perfect himself a little more with his teacher and he himself told him that he was going to settle in Mexico, something that It was very difficult at that time to go to see him frequently. He invited him to get involved with the Kyokushinkaikan style, a style that has its principles in Goju Ryu.There he was introduced. He was tested and etc, etc, other times, other things and he was recognized for the first dan that he was, the one he had. He came here to Montevideo, he explained the whole situation to us. The students accepted, we really liked the style. A much stronger style. It is more or less known what Kyokushinkaikan is. With him I have learned many things, very important things, I had a great admiration for him. When I was very young, we changed that style, we gave a lot of things. I was one of the first graduates, that is, with the blue or light blue belt, which is the first degree after the white that Kyokushin has to. I was a Goju Ryu green bar belt and spent years with Ricardo Sosa. He had the opportunity to go to Japan more than once, he practiced with Master Masutatsu Oyama, with great masters such as Seiji Isobe, who is still alive in São Paulo, and great masters, some who have disappeared, others who are out there, such as Master Shigeru Oyama, who later created his Oyama style in the United States. I have seen him here, bringing Japanese, filling the Peñarol Palace, being the line judge of that participation that was made, of having taken advantage of many things, I am even saying that Mr. Sosa was a witness at my wedding, I will tell you a question Barbara. Coming to the media at that time to the press. Something very important. A standout in martial arts. With his lights, with his shadows. Years later, unfortunately, he lost the representation of Kyokushinkaikan due to things that were not very clear, but in these cases it is always about money, money, the famous money. He continued to teach, but at a much lower level, he lost that popularity that he had. Many of his students (I had already stopped practicing at that

time) who had been my classmates were dividing groups territorially and belonging to the same association, later there were already divisions, how are they now and how is it happening in the pyramidal styles that when the creator of the style dies is divided into several issues. I say I continued to maintain that affection for Ricardo Sosa beyond things, because I say, I am talking about the man, the instructor, the one he taught me and what I feel. Years later I was able to have contact with him, he lived in Spain and he passed away a few years ago, but I have great memories of him. There are people who remember him, he was an innovator. There is a before and after in Uruguayan Karate with Ricardo Sosa. Well, after that, I always played a lot of soccer, I had a big fracture of the tibia and fibula, I was away from many things. A few years I was in a cast for almost seven months with a permanent limp. For almost a year I recovered and started doing things again. I had gained weight, a series of things and near my house I saw that there was a place that taught Taekwondo and I went there without much effort, simply to practice. I was in my early twenties, but I started with that story and I met Professor Andrés Ríos, who was second dan of the WTF, as it was called at that time today WT, representing the Uruguayan Taekwondo Federation, directed by the Technical Director at that time Byung Sup Lee sublime introducer of Taekwondo here in Uruguay. And that is to make a special chapter, but he was the one who introduced Taekwondo, which was not really the word taekwondo what he did. He actually comes from Moo Duk Kwan's Tang Soo Do. Then there is a story that I do not want to tell, that the Koreans who lived in the countries, all switched to taekwondo and what they basically did was use the forms, the poomsaes, as they say in WT. I was a student of his for a few years, I graduated with Master Lee, that is, we are going to say collaterally, I was a little student of Master Lee and I met many people. I met Professor Rubén González, and I have a separate chapter for him, also the one commonly known as Petaca, which is Leonardo Priore, Daniel Sena, Milton Garrido, Álvaro Rodríguez and a few more that I have left along the way, a few black belts that I frequented when I went to give exams at Master Lee's, back on May 25 and Colón, at the Academy that still exists today and is run by one of his sons.The story is that I practiced with Maestro Rivas reaching the Red Point Blue belt graduation and there was a political problem here, like all things that happen, money, politics, politics, money and there were some expulsions from the Federation of many teachers , among them Andres Rivas. I continued for a while, they went to the International, that is, to the ITF. Kwang Duk Chung came here, changed a series of things, from degrees, etc., a country was changed by degrees in short, that's where things are going. I was there for a while, I did not like certain performances on personal issues and I relate to Rubén González, who was not in the Uruguayan Federation but followed the WT style. He depended on Argentina, on the Chung Do Kwan Association of Master (today Grand Master) Oscar Tajes. I linked up with him at the Belvedere Bocce Club, there by Carlos María Ramírez almost Agraciada in front of the police station that is there. I already knew him, but I didn't trust him, finally I started doing various things, practicing and learning a lot about the sporting style. Rubén González is someone very special in the sense that he was a brilliant competitor, he was the South American champion in the category beating the best Argentine competitor of the time, Juan Carlos Mangoni and that can be corroborated there, if I am not mistaken, around the year 1985 in the 58 to 64 kg category in a brilliant fight. They had a great technical advance of themselves with respect to the competition. I graduated with him as a red belt. At the time I traveled with him to Argentina. I had the chance to teach somewhere. I linked up with Master Oscar Tajes and was authorized to give classes as a black belt, like Dan Bo, which they called him there at the time and later to take the exam for first dan. That was at the end of 1986. I ended up taking the exam for First Dan in 1987. I got to know Master Tajes a lot with great didactics, a very technical man who had already traveled to Korea several times at that time and then continued

to travel many more times. . Even today he travels, he is 9th Dan and the Master of knowledge gives us a great imprint, he is Advisor for South America, also with his lights and shadows. A man who is very distant from people, he is a man who does not take first-class terms, he has an old Korean style, let's say and a more martial man. At the time of his change, that is, I still have contact with Master Oscar Tajes, for the Seng Do association, which was the largest in Argentina until recently under Master Carlos Filipa. I follow Rubén González, we changed, I wasn't convinced about the subject, but well, following my teacher. Also the lights and shadows of Rubén González, who soon stopped teaching and left me with the legacy of Seng Do, but I was left alone there. His students scattered, he devoted himself to work. He didn't want to know anything else. Also issues, in this case of money. A chosen one. I always say with all due respect that I have a great friendship with Rubén Gonzalez "Rubén, what is left over from your feet has sometimes been a little lacking in your head" and with all due respect because in Argentina he would have been a always big. And I told him to take a little root there, but he never did those things. That is why I say the man and his circumstances. The man with his lights and his shadows. I continued with Master Filipa and learned many things. He was coach of the Argentine National Team in the sports part. A lot of things. Unfortunately, the teacher Carlos Filipa, who came here to Uruguay, brought him a lot of very interesting things, but unfortunately he has had a legal problem that I know little about. He has been accused of child abuse on trips he was on and well, and I leave it out there because I don't have a notice and I'm not a lawyer to mess around with those things. But that happened, sadly. I have been separated from the teacher for years. I have continued with my stories, at the time, stopping giving taekwondo, never practicing it, giving taekwondo classes, but always practicing, always firm. I dabbled a lot in boxing, nine years of boxing. I went to learn as just another practitioner, because honestly, for better or worse, I didn't want to be in the Uruguayan Taekwondo Federation here. I disagree with a lot of things and they are personal, I tell them as they happen, I think that in the end it does not bring anything better to anyone. I met wonderful people in Boxing. A great coach that I had, just without knowing, lives very close to my house, Juan Carlos Rodríguez, known as El Cabeza. A great trainer. I learned a lot with him. I was with him for years and after he retired from teaching I was at the "Seconds Out" academy for a case exceptional, the owner, Chiquito Pereira, who was a professional boxer, today very old, over 80 years old, his son William Pereyra is with his wife Mayra Moneo, a boxing great today, he has two titles, he has recently fought again and won in Argentina. A Rosseau and Governor Viana are there. A special chapter for them, for the little one, for the great admiration. They have behaved very well with me. I was able to take the boxing coach course led by them. A course that a Cuban came here, the methodologist Michel Álvarez, a great who gave an exceptional course endorsed by "Knockout Drugs" the Ministry of Sports and the Uruguayan Boxing Federation. I had the opportunity to do two courses and I ended up doing the advanced course, which has also given me a lot, because I consider boxing to be a martial art or I consider it to be similar to that. It is from the line of that story, because I really say that boxing has sometimes been despised, you have to practice it and you have to do the training that is great and very sacrificial, because boxing can be fought or it can be done recreationally. This is also like martial arts, one does not need to compete, I say, that goes according to the taste of each one, but it can be practiced very well and it is a great sport, trainer of many things. So good, I remember these very important people. A few years ago, now going on six, I did Hapkido, a Korean martial art, basically self-defense with the 4th Dan master, Mario Da Silva, a great teacher, a great friend. And we are also going to say a little in the autumn of my life facing this story that I like very much. Those circular self-defense movements that Hapkido has with a certain similarity, although they are shorter movements to Aikido, all in the Korean style, big kicks. Something

that really costs so much. And it costs me a bit being a little older in this story. And a few years ago I returned at the insistence of Master Mario da Silva to teach Taekwondo and I returned to that story. I already knew the teacher Alexandre Gomes from Porto Alegre, who is 8th dan of WT taekwondo and at the same time is a hapkido teacher also 8th dan and he gave me the representation of the Chang Moo Kwan school, which is one of the original Kwans of Korea, Despite the fact that today there are kwans, let's say, as if they were clubs or private entities, everything is governed by the Kukkiwon, but each one has their pride in belonging to a Kwan. In this case I belonged to a Chung Do Kwan, which was the first school, the first Kwan that taught something similar to taekwondo without the name of taekwondo, which was actually Shotokan Karate, because that is also nice to talk about. Taekwondo arises from the majority of Shotokan Karate practitioners during the Japanese occupation, that many people studied in Japan, children of Koreans and, well, they learned there. So a great value for Master Alexandre Gomes, who is a great master this year, will surely be here in Uruguay. I will soon travel to Porto Alegre to take classes with him. He has already been here in Uruguay and I have met him on trips to Argentina, a great person and a great teacher. More or less I have made a course of people, things, lights and shadows. As I have my lights and my shadows and one gives the best, but often makes mistakes. So I think this was a note to feel human, to know that teachers are human beings, with that history, with that imprint, the good and the bad. We are not all gold coins so that everyone loves us, but many endure in memory. Andrés Rivas too, which I didn't want to say, he has already physically disappeared, he also contributed his things to me, I already said sometimes you agree with something, at other times you don't agree, but basically something is always left, the good is left and the bad and always from that you really learn. Last case, I am graduated by the master of 4th dan, that's why I still want to go with him to develop and perfect some technique and for him to see me at this moment live and direct, because we have seen each other through Zoom cameras, which it's not the same, so okay, this is a different note. I wanted, I was inspired to do this, I hope you like it and that it is enjoyable. In all measure. Until next time.