Posts Tagged ‘Doorman’

Geoff Thompson

© Marc Wickert

www.knucklepit.com

photos © Geoff Thompson

Ever wish you could be the best in the world at something? Ever wish you could win the lottery and make all your dreams come true? Ever wish upon a star? Geoff Thompson is like that: He spends most of his life dreaming. What separates Geoff from most of us is that he makes his dreams come true. And he doesn’t leave anything to chance. He works and works until his dreams become reality. To Thompson, life’s stumbling blocks are merely stepping stones that need to be overturned.

Geoff’s whole life has been a series of hurdles he’s erected for himself. And every day he raises their height. When Geoff wanted to feel safe on the street and decided to stop being bullied, he took up bouncing for ten years at some of Britain’s roughest nightclubs. He wanted to become an author and has now published over thirty books and thirty videos.

“If I only set realistic goals, I would not have achieved anything in my life. I pride myself on the fact that I set goals that others would consider completely unrealistic. In fact, if I had listened to many of the people around me, all my life, I would not have even set goals in the first place, because all of the things I aimed for seemed impossibly grand, even pretentious to them. And yet, it did not stop them from happening. It did not stop the whole universe from conspiring to make my little dreams into big realities,” says Thompson.

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Geoff Thompson with British Judo Champion Wayne Lukin

© Marc Wickert www.knucklepit.com

As stated in Part One of this article, 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.

Watching Geoff Watch His Back

While working as a doorman for all those years, Geoff’s survival skills were continually being road tested. He was working six nights a week, and never experienced a night when he didn’t physically have to restrain somebody or make his own techniques work. And this was against people who were doing everything in their power, not only to stop Thompson’s techniques from working, but also to make their own work. Geoff learned very quickly what was and what wasn’t effective.

In Part Two of this article, we will be focusing in more depth on Thompson’s bestselling autobiography Watch My Back, which incidentally led to the author’s being invited to join the Royal Court Theatre writers’ group.

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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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