Archive for June, 2002

Nice To See You, Wherever You Are!

Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Geoff Thompson

©Marc Wickert www.knucklepit.com

From the Source

Geoff Thompson is widely acknowledged as being the world’s #1 authority on doormanship. With over thirty books, videos, documentaries, a feature film and a decade of real-life experience as a bouncer in some of Britain’s roughest nightclubs, few can dispute the accolades.

But this wasn’t always the case for Thompson who was constantly picked on as a kid. In his debut bestseller, Watch My Back, Geoff recounts how one Christmas morning his older brother discovered him alone and crying out of fear that the beatings he’d been receiving would continue when school resumed in two weeks time. This predicament continued throughout Geoff’s childhood until he was eleven-years-old and embraced aikido.

“Like a lot of people, I got into the martial arts because I was bullied, and I thought the martial arts would be the answer. I thought if I learnt to fight, I wouldn’t be bullied. It was at the time of the Bruce Lee boom, and I wanted to be superhuman like thousands of other kids. That was my main reason, so I could learn to fight, because I thought that would be the answer. Of course later I realized it was less about fighting, it was more about having confidence, having more cerebral strength,” says Thompson.

Discorporation

“You become invisible. What the ninjitsu refer to as ‘invisibility’, I don’t think they’re talking necessarily about actually disappearing, but if you have a huge amount of confidence, because you’ve built up your physical ability, then you become invisible to threat. You’re not seen as a victim to people who want to attack, so the martial arts are very good in that respect. You have to do the martial arts properly and train very hard and go through a forge so you get a tempered blade. And if don’t go through the forge, then there tends to be a lot of insecurity. And being in the martial arts can actually perpetuate trouble, because if your confidence isn’t mature, people tend to go looking for situations to prove themselves.”

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