Category Archives: Biography

BOOK REVIEW: Inside the Lion’s Den by Ken Shamrock

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Inside the Lion's Den: The Life and Submission Fighting System of Ken ShamrockInside the Lion’s Den: The Life and Submission Fighting System of Ken Shamrock by Ken Shamrock

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Inside the Lion’s Den is two (thin) books in one. The first, and longer, part is an autobiography of MMA fighter Ken Shamrock, and the latter part is a guide to his approach to submission fighting.

The first fifteen chapters form the biographical portion of the book. As is common in the modern biography, it doesn’t follow a chronological format. It begins at the height of Shamrock’s UFC career in the mid-1990s and introduces Shamrock and the Lion’s Den (his dōjō in California.) The book does, however, go back in chapter 3 and pick up with Shamrock’s childhood, beginning in 1969 in Savannah, Georgia. Shamrock had a suitably turbulent childhood to merit inclusion in the book. He lived with an abusive father and then a step-father unprepared for such a handful as Shamrock, before he ended up at the ranch of Bob Shamrock who would eventually become his adoptive parent and an important member of his entourage. Ken Shamrock had a raucous and—as is constantly repeated—rage-filled youth.

As might be expected of the biography of a fighter, one trained to psych himself up and psyche opponents out, the book can read a bit narcissistic in spots. Having said that, a fair amount of space in the biographical portion is devoted to topics beyond Shamrock’s fight career. There’s some space devoted to the development of UFC, but even more devoted to Shamrock’s fighters. There’s a chapter that follows a day of tryouts to get a slot as a Lion’s Den fighter. It’s entitled “500 Squats,” reflecting the fact that individuals must first do an insane number of squats as the first round of elimination during the tryouts. Later they’ll have to engage in sparring/rolling with legs burned out as an indicator of how the individual can gut it out. The book offers insight into how an individual goes about breaking into a career in Mixed Martial Arts.

An important theme of the biographical portion of the book is how Shamrock becomes less rage-prone and grows into an adult. This is both the result of the practice of martial arts and his familial relationships–most notably his spousal relationship. This is the human interest part of the story that centers around the man’s most prominent UFC accomplishments.

Perhaps the most important question one can ask about an autobiographical account is whether it’s accurate or not. There’s obviously an incentive to paint oneself in a more favorable light than an objective account might. There’s a professional co-writer of this book, Richard Hanner. One might expect that a professional journalist co-author would lend credulity to the work as that individual has a professional interest–based on reputation–in making sure the details are accurate. Whether Hanner’s presence lends credibility is hard for me to judge (he’s not a national name), but the work does read authentically. Shamrock, unlike politicians, admits many mistakes over the course of his life, and lets the reader know what his takeaway lessons were. Of course, as a public personality, there’s a lot that he couldn’t be duplicitous about if he wanted to, e.g. his fight record and details in the ring.

The last nine chapters are Shamrock’s guide to his submission fighting method. He covers a lot of ground from nutrition to advice for the day of a professional fight. Martial artists will not find a lot of groundbreaking information in this section, but rather will have to dig for nuggets of wisdom in the details. The submission techniques will be well-known to practitioners of judō, jujutsu, and submission fighting. The “crucifix” was the only technique I hadn’t seen before, and for all I know that one may be well-known to Greco-Roman / Pankration wrestlers. The photographs in this section are helpful in communicating Shamrock’s message, but are relatively sparse and small-format compared to the typical martial arts manual.

I enjoyed this book. Shamrock came across as an intriguing multi-dimensional character, and the manual offers a good overview and some important tips on subjects including nutrition, fitness, striking, grappling, and submissions.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Tao of Bruce Lee by Davis Miller

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The Tao of Bruce Lee: A Martial Arts MemoirThe Tao of Bruce Lee: A Martial Arts Memoir by Davis Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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While one expects this to be a biography of Bruce Lee, the first half of it is much more an autobiography of the author that is loosely themed around Bruce Lee’s influence on his life. It’s an unusual book in this regard. However, while my description may induce visions of a dismal read by a self-absorbed author, it’s really not so bad. The latter half of the book is much more tightly focused on the events of Bruce Lee’s life—or, more dramatically, his death.

To be fair, there’s not much material for a Bruce Lee biography. Few lights have shone so bright that, while brief, they provided decades of afterglow. Bruce Lee was just in the news last week as he was made a character in a new MMA video game—over 40 years after his death. (It might seem odd for Bruce Lee to be featured in an MMA game, but while movie Bruce Lee showed us high-flying, high-kicking kung fu, Bruce Lee the founder of Jeet Kune Do emphasized the ability to fight at all ranges, against opponents of any style, and in a pragmatic fashion.) But Bruce Lee the movie star delivered only four completed movies as an adult (though he had a childhood acting career unrelated to Kung fu.) Martial Artist Bruce had only one real fight that anyone knows about and even it remains a subject of great controversy to this day. There are competing claims about who came out on top, to what degree, and how. According to the book, there’s not even much of a sparring record of which to speak.

With the proceeding information in mind, it might not be such a surprise that the author took the tack he did and still produced only the slim volume that he did. Miller’s description of his own life pulls no punches and he spares himself none of the embarrassment incumbent in being a young man seeking to emulate the squealing man with the fists of fury. He doesn’t come across as the narcissist that one might expect from a person who devotes at half of a biography of a global superstar to his own obscure juvenile years. In fact, his profile is of a scrawny kid who got his fair share of wedgies and other bully-induced torments. The autobiographical parts are more homage than self-aggrandizement.

Just as Miller is honest about his own lost pubescence as a scrawny kid, he will win enemies with his frankness about Bruce Lee and those in the gravitational pull of the kung fu superstar. Those who deify Lee will no doubt be displeased to read intimations that he died not on a walk with his wife and from a rare adverse side-effect of a prescription—but non-illicit–drug, and instead died on the bed of a lover from a hash or pot overdose.

Furthermore, Miller tells of how Bruce Lee told his students to stop teaching Jeet Kune Do, because Lee was worried about where it was going. Miller goes on to report about how Bruce Lee’s martial art went awry according to many. Then there is the suggestion that Lee had little first-hand fighting (or sparring) experience on which to build such a combative art in the first place.

However, the overall portrait of Lee is of an exceptional human being, and one who had such a wide range of influence, from fitness to philosophy. While the Bruce Lee physique is now much sought after and regularly seen among movie stars, all the leading men of Lee’s era were doughy by comparison. (One may look no further than his Way of the Dragon nemesis, Chuck Norris.) Lee wasn’t just a movie star and martial artist; he was also a philosopher and thinker. While it’s true that he didn’t produce much in the way of novel ideas, by Hollywood standards he was a regular Algonquin Roundtable member. Lee oozed charisma so powerfully that after all these decades he’s almost as likely to be seen on a T-shirt as Che Guevara—don’t ask me why the Latin American Guerrilla fighter is so popular in silk screen, but that’s beside the point.

To sum it up, this isn’t a book about Bruce Lee, it’s about how his life and death shaped so many other lives—starting with Miller’s. While I didn’t count pages, there seems to be about as much space devoted to the events surrounding Lee’s death as the events of his life. Of course, there’s a bit of sensationalism, but inquiring minds want to know. People are intrigued about how a man who looked to all appearances to be one of the healthiest men on the planet could have died so young. (It’s an interesting irony that Bruce Lee’s almost complete lack of body fat—estimated at under 1%–could well have exacerbated his oversensitivity to whatever substance killed him.)

I’d recommend this book for anyone curious about the life and death of Bruce Lee.

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BOOK REVIEW: Ip-Man Portrait of a Kung Fu Master by Ip Ching, et. al.

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IP Man: Portrait of a Kung Fu MasterIP Man: Portrait of a Kung Fu Master by Ip Ching

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Ip Man led an interesting life. The master of Wing Chun Kung Fu lived through tumultuous times that included the Boxer Rebellion, the Sino-Japanese War, and China’s Communist revolution. After the Japanese occupation he served for a time as a police chief. Coming from a wealthy family, he experienced a riches to rags fall when the Communists took over. He had to move from his home in Foshan to Hong Kong. His use of kung fu was not restricted to the training hall, but, rather, included a few real world altercations. A couple of films have been made(loosely) about his life.

All that being said, this book doesn’t do a great job of capturing the life of this intriguing man. To be fair, the book isn’t really a biography proper–though the title might lead one to believe it was. However, it’s not entirely clear what the book is. Its fifteen chapters are each built around a principle and use vignettes from Ip Man’s life to illustrate how the Grandmaster lived virtuously. This makes the book seem more like treatise on martial arts philosophy and/or strategy. However, some chapters do a better job of making clear what the actual principle is and how the events of Ip Man’s life exemplify them than do others. In some parts it does a great job but in others it’s only lackluster.

There are some fascinating stories about the man’s life in the book, but they are generally told in a lifeless manner. In part this may be done on purpose as we are told that Ip Man eschewed embellishment and favored humility, but it makes the reading experience less than gripping. It’s also probably that some of the details were lost when Ip Man died in 1972. This lack of detail leaves one at times wondering. Throughout most of the book we get a picture of Ip Man as a virtuous warrior. However, there is one vignette in which we read about the Grandmaster picking a fight with a man by taunting him with humiliating insults about the man’s appearance. Ip Man does this to teach his student a lesson in courage. His lesson notwithstanding, this behavior paints Ip Man as anything but virtuous–rather than a humble martial arts master he becomes a pathetic bully. The author, Ip Man’s son Ip Ching, suggests that this might have been a setup for the student’s benefit, but with the prior assent of the bullied man. At any rate, there was no fight because the bullied man backed down–whether because it was staged or out of genuine fear remains unknown.

For some readers the most surprising omission will involve a lack of any mention of the man who was far and away Ip Man’s most famous student, namely Bruce Lee. There may be a number of reasons for this omission, including a desire to prevent the teacher’s story from being overshadowed by his student’s fame. However, most readers would probably like some inkling of how the ill-fated superstar came to train with Ip Man and what he learned from him. In fact, the only reference to the entertainment aspect of kung fu is a picture caption that shows Shek Kin, the villain “Mr. Han” from Enter the Dragon, at Ip Man’s funeral.

I would recommend this book only for those that have a particular interest in martial arts. It does offer tidbits of interesting events from Ip Man’s life as well as a few great life lessons. It benefits from being a concise book, and thus is not a major time investment to read. However, I don’t know that–short as it is–it would hold the interest of the general reader. Hopefully, someone will take on a more extensive English-language biography of this fascinating man’s life while there are some key people still alive to be interviewed about his life story.

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