Since my youth I have always found the martial arts to be interesting. I was a big guy but not the biggest, so I was always challenged by the bigger guy. Back then, fighting was just what we did. When I turned eighteen, a friend of my brother’s asked me to run a security team for him at a popular night club in Ybor City. Over a span of eighteen years, from 1994 to 2012 I had the pleasure of serving as Head of Security for eight different night clubs and bars throughout the Tampa area; Masquerade, Empire, Vertigo, The Edge, FlyTrap, Hoodoo Lounge, Zar, The Dubliner. Many of these establishments were the biggest and most popular of all night clubs and bars. One in particular, easily the most frequented, was The Edge. The weekend headcount could easily reach 2,000 people. This is where my Sifu, Matthew Balducci was a bartender and where he and I first met.
In those eighteen years, I had been faced with countless confrontations and encounters. I had been in more fights than I can recall. Before my Ving Tsun martal arts training I had confidence and strength but confidence doesn’t win a fight and if you fight with strength alone, the stronger person will win.
Ving Tsun showed me how to relax the tension in my body, while keeping my mind focused. How to breathe calmly while under stress. How to control the fight, not be in a “fight”. How to use efficient alignment of my body or “structure” to overcome someone without using strength. Using the Ving Tsun methods I was able to; subdue, restrain and remove often enraged and out of control individuals. This was accomplished by using their momentum and direction of movement to allow them to get into a position that compromised their structure and took away their attack. What Sifu taught me ensured my success in every one of those confrontations. Never once in all my encounters did I fall to an opponent. I have my Sifu, his sifu and the Moy Yat Ving Tsun Kung Fu System to thank for that.
After my Sifu passed away, I became close with my Si Gung and he accepted me as a Grand Indoor Special Student. Under the explicit instruction from my Si Gung, Thornton Williams, I studied and trained my martial art very hard for many years to learn and complete the Ving Tsun system in its entirety.
Today I run a martial arts school in my hometown of Seffner. My students and I are close too and I’m excited to teach them how to use the concepts and techniques that were passed on to me. Thornton Williams still visits the school from time to time to share his knowledge and impart his wisdom from decades of studying the martial art Ving Tsun and from when he was state Judo champion in his youth.
I hope you can come by and experience the excitement from learning something as profound and effective as Ving Tsun Kung Fu, for mind, body and spirit.
~Ariel
