The Rented Hall Where Taekwondo Began

In 1946 a karate teacher named Lee Won-kuk rented the assembly room of a small religious hall in Seoul's Gyeonji-dong. He called his school Chung Do Kwan, the Blue Wave School.

Within a decade it was the largest martial arts school in Korea. Its black belts taught at the Military Academy, staffed an entire army division, and founded new kwans of their own. Then, in June 1959, a single newspaper statement expelled three of its most senior members, and the school split.

The men on both sides of that split went on to build modern Taekwondo, in Korea, in Vietnam and in the United States.

Who owned that hall, why the founding date is still disputed, and what is fact rather than legend: the full story is on Dojo and Ring.

Read the full article: Chung Do Kwan, the Blue Wave School Behind Taekwondo

 

 

Kimura's Armlock at MSG: The 75-Year Judo Thread Behind UFC 334

In 1951, at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio, Masahiko Kimura pinned Hélio Gracie and twisted his arm behind his back until the Gracie corner threw in the towel. The lock still carries his name.

In June 2025, Kayla Harrison won the UFC bantamweight title with that same kimura, seconds before the end of round two. On Saturday she defends it against Amanda Nunes, the woman who stopped Ronda Rousey in 48 seconds.

That is not a coincidence of technique. It is a line that runs from Mitsuyo Maeda's lessons in Brazil to Madison Square Garden, and it raises a harder question: why did so many Olympic judo champions struggle in MMA, while Harrison keeps winning?

I went through the records of six Olympic judoka who fought in MMA, and the answer is clearer than you might expect.

Read the full analysis on Dojo and Ring.

The Street Fighter Who Wrote His Own Kata

Hideyuki Ashihara was known in Japan as "Kenka 10-dan", a tenth dan in street fighting. When he left Kyokushin in 1980 and founded his own organization, he could have thrown out kata altogether. He did the opposite. He designed a new set of forms in which every movement answers a named attack, so that a student training alone is still, in effect, fighting someone. Why would the most pragmatic rebel in karate rely on the most traditional teaching tool there is? The full article on Dojo and Ring covers the Sabaki method, the curriculum and the kata families, with a structural analysis.

 

The Karate Champion Who Left Kyokushin to Stand Still

In 1974, Jan Kallenbach was European karate champion. Around the same time, he walked away from Kyokushin to train with a Japanese man who held his classes outdoors in a Tokyo shrine park, in street clothes, and spent much of each session standing perfectly still.

That man was Kenichi Sawai, and his art, Taikiken, had already drawn in some of Kyokushin’s hardest fighters, including Hatsuo Royama. There were no kata and no belts. There was a motionless stance called ritsuzen, a slow friction step, and then full-contact fighting.

What was that stillness actually building, and why did fighters at the top of a brutal system take it seriously? The full article breaks down each Taikiken method and separates the documented history from the legends.

Read the full article on Dojo and Ring.

Exiled to Shikoku: The Karate Outpost That Outgrew Kyokushin

In the 1960s a suspended Kyokushin instructor was sent to a small town on the island of Shikoku. Far from Tokyo, Hideyuki Ashihara began teaching his students to step off the line and attack from the blind side, techniques that Kyokushin tournaments did not allow. His dojo produced champions, rebels and the founders of new styles, and eventually broke away altogether. Why did this method emerge in a provincial branch and not at headquarters? Read the full story and a structural analysis on Dojo and Ring.

French Cane Street or Sport

In nineteenth-century Paris, a well-dressed man did not need a sword. He had his walking stick, and the fencing masters of the boxing and savate clubs taught him how to use it. A century later, one Swiss master, Pierre Vigny, was teaching London gentlemen to drive the short end of an umbrella into an attacker's ribs.

Today the French cane survives as canne de combat, a fast and spectacular sport with masks, padded suits and a feather-light chestnut stick. It even has a new chapter: in 2026 the men's world title went to a non-French fighter for the first time.

But somewhere between the boulevards and the gym floor, something was left behind. What exactly did the sport keep, what did it drop, and could a modern canniste still defend himself with a real cane?

I went through the history, the rules and the old self-defense methods to find out.

Read the full article on Dojo and Ring: Is Canne de Combat Effective for Self-Defense?

The Monk Nobody Can Find: Hwa Rang Do’s Strange Origin Story

According to its founders, Hwa Rang Do was passed down in secret for 57 generations, until a Buddhist monk called Suahm Dosa handed it to two young brothers in a temple in what is now North Korea. It is a powerful story. It is also one that no outside source has ever confirmed.

What we can document is different, and arguably more interesting. Both brothers trained for years under Choi Yong-sool, the founder of hapkido, and stood at the center of the network that produced hapkido, Kuk Sool Won and their own art. Then came America, Special Forces instructors and a reputation for secret warrior skills.

So which part is history and which part is legend? I went through the founder’s own interviews, the association’s timelines and the academic work on the Silla Hwarang to find out.

Read the full article on Dojo and Ring.

Why the Kru, Not the Fighter, Removes the Mongkon

Watch any Muay Thai bout in Thailand and you will notice a small, precise moment. The fighter finishes the Wai Khru, walks back to his corner and lowers his head. He does not take the headband off himself. His trainer lifts it away, whispering a short prayer, and only then does the fight begin.

That gesture says almost everything about the mongkon. It belongs to the relationship between teacher and student before it belongs to the fighter. It must never touch the floor, it decides how fighters enter the ring, and for decades it shaped where women could and could not stand.

But how old is the custom really? The popular answer is "ancient battlefield tradition." The documented answer is more interesting.

Read the full source-critical article on Dojo and Ring: Mongkon: The Sacred Headband of Muay Thai Explained