Pleased as Punch

You’ve heard of a three-ring circus. Now get ready for a different kind of sensory overload experience: a 37-ring martial-arts tournament showcasing more than 2,500 leg-kicking and arm-punching men, women and children.

On Sunday, the Bren Events Center at UC Irvine will host an all-day competition featuring members of the United Studios of Self Defense, which practices a form of karate known as Shaolin Kempo.

The Lake Forest-based company has 31 franchised studios in the Orange County area. It also has about 100 other facilities scattered throughout the rest of California and seven other states including Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire and New York.

“We have other regional tournaments in areas like Northern California. But [our twice-a-year Orange County tournaments] are the big ones,” said Paul Taylor, president of United Studios of Self Defense.

“This is our flagship tournament, if you will. This is representative of the whole company.”

The event will begin at 8 a.m. and conclude at 6 p.m. Contestants will be divided into numerous divisions based on age, sex and ability.

Taylor says there will be participants as young as 4 years old. But he doesn’t expect many entrants older than 40. United Studios of Self Defense attracts students of all ages, he says, but competitive situations like this usually lure younger people, who tend to have the quick reflexes needed in martial-arts competitions.

‘Controlled Fighting’

The event, which is being billed as the 1998 Winter Grand Championship Martial Arts Tournament, will feature three areas of discipline: sparring, kata and weapons.

Sparring is the only category in which participants compete in the ring with an opponent. But while you can expect plenty of fleet-footed action at the Bren Events Center, don’t anticipate the type of bloodletting or body hurling that you might find in a Jackie Chan flick.

Sparring is not considered a full-contact event, explained Taylor, an instructor with a seventh-degree black belt. There are some hits, but if it were a contact event, there would be bloodshed, so this is what he terms “controlled fighting.”

“Your level of rank determines the amount of distance between you and your opponent,” Taylor said. “Because they don’t have much control, we don’t allow beginners to get too close to each other because they’ll end up hitting each other [in a way that might injure one of them]. As the person gets higher in rank, their control level gets higher, so we allow them to get a little closer with their strikes.”

Kata is a solitary discipline that consists of a prearranged set of movements that students are taught during their training. Each competitor is expected to demonstrate the moves in a specific order. That person is then judged on how well he or she executes those movements. Taylor compares kata to a choreographed dance routine.

The weapons competition is simply kata performed with a weapon such as a sword or spear. Each individual kata exhibition or sparring match takes only two or three minutes.

Two judges score each event. With 37 rings operating at once at the tournament, attendees will have a broad choice of age, sex and skill groups they can observe at most times. But all of the weapons exhibitions are slated to take place at 5 p.m.

Also, there will be an instructors competition at noon, which could prove to be the highlight of the day. Taylor says the United Studios of Self Defense tournaments can be powerful recruiting vehicles for the company.

“A lot of friends of the competitors come to the tournaments,” he said. “They don’t know anything about it and they see the tournament and they get excited about it. They like the atmosphere. It’s a competitive and exciting atmosphere. Then they decide to get started.”

Becoming a student at United Studios of Self Defense requires a $99 registration fee. The newcomer is given a 170-page manual that explains the training and skills required to become a black belt.

Students are given the option of taking group lessons ($75 per month for three one-hour lessons per week) or private lessons ($125 a month for four lessons of 30 to 40 minutes each).

While numerous martial-arts studios have come and gone across the country, Taylor says United Studios has been able to succeed and expand because it offers private lessons and treats karate as a full-time business.

“We were the pioneer of private lessons,” Taylor said. “Most studios just teach group sessions. A lot of karate studios are also part-time. They do that in the evening, and the instructors have other full-time jobs. We don’t do that. Our instructors are full time and are training all the time. Plus, we teach them how to run the studio as a business. We take this completely as our career.”

Taylor says the company, which was founded by Massachusetts transplant Charles A. Mattera in 1988, hopes to increase its presence throughout the country. It recently kicked off its first school in Arizona. Three more franchises are scheduled to open in that state in the near future.

United Studios’ Shaolin Kempo style involves two disciplines of karate: Shaolin kung fu and Okinawan Kempo. Taylor says the Kempo system is taught first because its more linear movements are easier to learn. The Shaolin system is more complex, he says, and requires more circular movements.

The Shaolin style dates back 2,000 years to China’s Shaolin Temple. “The Shaolin style of martial arts was the original system of martial arts,” Taylor said.

“Buddhist monks in that temple practiced exercises for meditation and good body development. When they found they were being attacked by bandits, they took their exercise movements and they formed them into a fighting style called Shaolin.”

The 1998 Winter Grand Championship Martial Arts Tournament will take place between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Sunday at Bren Events Center, UC Irvine, Mesa Road and West Peltason Drive, (949) 824-5000. Tickets: Adults: $6. Children: $5. Younger than 3: free.