Episode 440 - Professor George Dillman
Professor George Dillman
Professor George Dillman is both a martial arts practitioner and instructor at the Dillman Karate International. It specializes in karate and a lot more.
They said Wally Jay and Leo Fong are the real deal. I said, really. He said, yeah. Now, this is from Bruce Lee, if you asked them a question, they don't tell you the answers. They'll get you up on the mat and let you do the answers.
Professor George Dillman - Episode 440
Starting to learn martial arts at a young age is not uncommon and Professor George Dillman is exactly that. Professor Dillman started training in Judo when he was 9 years old at the local YMCA and never stopped since. Professor George Dillman became successful in teaching how to use pressure points and he is also a Black Belt Magazine Hall of Famer. With years of experience, Professor Dillman had a lot of cool stories about his journey to the Martial Arts. Listen to learn more!
Show Notes
Professor George Dillman
In this episode, we mentioned Hohan Sōken, Remy Presas, Wally Jay, Billy Blanks, Benny "The Jet" Urquidez and Bruce LeeYou may find more information about Professor George Dillman's book, Prometheus here.
Show Transcript
You can read the transcript below or download it here.
Hello everyone and welcome! This is whistlekick martial arts radio episode 440 and today, I'm talking with Professor George Dillman. My name is Jeremy Lesniak, your host on this show, the founder at whistlekick and you can see everything that I and the rest of the staff work on in whistlekick.com from the products in the store, which if you use the code PODCAST15, it will get you 15% off to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com where you can find show notes including photos and links and all kinds of other stuff, transcripts. We’ve got a lot going on and you should stay up on it because you are most likely traditional martial artists and that is what whistlekick is about. We’re about traditional martial arts in supporting you and whatever is important to you about your training and your martial arts lifestyle. My guest today has been involved in the martial arts for quite a long time. He’s been on magazine covers, all over the internet and I suspect, quite a few of you know his name but you probably don’t know all the stories he’s going to tell today so let’s listen and hear more. Professor Dillman, welcome to whistlekick martial arts radio.
George Dillman:
I'm glad to be here. This is George Dillman and I hail from Redding, Pennsylvania.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Thanks for being here and you haven't always been in Pennsylvania, have you?George Dillman:
Mostly in the military, I was moved all over. I lived in Washington, DC for a whole bunch of years because I was in the military police and stationed there for trouble that took place and then, I moved up to New Cumberland, well, that’s back in Pennsylvania but yes, I went back to Pennsylvania. I did my basic training and military schooling at Fort Knox, Kentucky and then it was back to Pennsylvania.
Jeremy Lesniak:
What is it that drew you back? I just spent some time in Pennsylvania and there are aspects of it, of course being out in the country it remind me a bit of where I'm from in Northern New England. Certainly, the climate is a little bit different and the geography is a little bit different but the people seem very similar.
George Dillman:
I've been up here quite often. I almost bought a property up in Vermont. It was a really nice 25-acre farm for sale and I overslept and missed buying at one hour.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Do you remember where that was?
George Dillman:
Yeah, White River Junction.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yeah, about 30 minutes from where I am.
George Dillman:
I got to meet Charles Bronson and he had a big farm up there, 750-acres I believe. Ranch, he called it and I kind of went to his house for dinner and we did that and I met him at a little country restaurant called [00:02:59] so we met, got introduced, he invited me out to the ranch the next day and I went and the rest is history but I came up that way a lot. I had a motor home and I camped all over. Vermont, New Hampshire, New England but I loved Vermont. I loved the mountains. I loved the river there. The Big White Junction and all that and boy, I had a good time up there. Many a time, many a time and I still have school connections up there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Right, we were talking a little bit about that about one of your people who has been in the show and who has been a good friend. Let’s rewind time. Let’s go all the way back.
George Dillman:
I will be the baby crying and they wouldn’t five me the bottle.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Not too far, we got to fast-forward a little bit now. Let’s fast-forward to your first introductions to martial arts. How did that happen?
George Dillman:
I was 9. I was about 9, 9 and a half in that range and I lived in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Very famous area of the coal regions and it's a home of the Yuengling Beer, the oldest brewery in the United States and that’s what it's really famous for and coal and everything else but I grew up there and it was a rough town and my stepfather was in the military some 45 years and he started working with me in how to kick people and they called it dirty fighting back then and he said kick them here and they won’t chase you when you run away and he’s right and I was a little kid. I used to go to the movie theater by myself and basically, they started a judo class at the YMCA in Pottsville and I joined it and I was doing Judo for about 2 and a half years and the instructor moved away out to Pittsburgh or somewhere and the class closed and there I was, a little boy with a little gi and didn’t know what to do but I continued on and the same YMCA, I used to go there to work out. After school, I stopped and worked out and go do what I had to do, homework or whatever but they started, they had a boxing club called Friends of Boxing, FOB, and I got talked into going in to watch that and I wind up joining. I wind up liking it and I wound up accepting fights all over Pennsylvania and [00:06:27] Philadelphia and Redding and they would have the fights usually matched all guard armories and actually we got paid to go to them so I started boxing and got more and more into it and wound up with a really decent record. I was pretty strong and my finished record was 27 and 3 losses and I went into the military. I signed up in the military in 1960 and when I got in the military, they wanted somebody to defend their particular barrack in a boxing contest and the sergeant talked to me and said didn’t you box and so I said, I don’t want to fight that guy over there but I wound up going and representing our barracks and won and then, a guy was filling in an application in my office and in the military, at Fort Knox, Kentucky and he said he had karate down as a hobby and I asked him what it was about and I said I did judo and some boxing, what's karate about? He said karate can beat anybody. I said what? He said yeah, you learn to fight anybody. We use our hands and our feet and blah blah blah and I said I'm a boxer and I said I'm pretty good at it with gloves on and I'm a little more dangerous without the gloves and I'm going to bare fist you and he said, if you don’t mind, I was higher ranked than him and he said if you don’t mind, sir, he says stand up and show me what you do. Throw me a pro and a jab and do some and so, he kicked me and I said wow! Where did you learn that and he said up at the local gym there in the military base. Classes Tuesday and Thursday. I think it was a Monday because I said I’ll be there tomorrow night and I was and I never looked back and when I got transferred out of there, I went to New Cumberland army depot in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and I get there and there's an article about a karate guy named Harry G. Smith, came back from the marines and opened a military school and blah blah blah and I called the number and I went and joined Harry and he became my main permanent instructor. He still is my best friend to this day even though people have said we feuded on the internet and there's never been a feud and he wrote to one person a letter so we’ve never feuded. I love George Dillman, and the guy still reaches to take that off the internet but anyway, that’s the way the internet goes and I trained with Harry and he was tough. He was tough. We had to talk to him about doing less of the knuckle pushups and the crazy stuff he was doing because of the marines because he had a hundred people sign up for the class and after about 2 workouts, it was down to 50. We said you got to stop that, he did, he slowed it down to some but still have the hardest workouts around and I continued with his method for years until I went to Officer School and got a commissioned officer sent to DC, Washington, DC, and at that time, I met Daniel K. Pai who was teaching in Virginia. Daniel K. Pai was a martial artist, very good, very good actually. One of the best and I said would you take me as a student? Can I train with you and he said no. I'm not taking new students. I waited a week, called him back, I said did you reach a sitter, taking new students? He said no, I don’t want students. I have a big school. I have a lot of students so I called him one more time and he said are you going to be at Richard Tim’s Karate tournament next weekend? I said yeah. Are you going to compete? I said yes. He said, talk to me before you do. I want to talk to you, meet you and I want to watch you and after that was over, he said we’re going to train. Then I started training with him and he became a really good, loyal friend until the day he passed on and that’s about it. I went to Redding, Pennsylvania. I went to DC for the riots. I was sent to the military police. Actually, I had orders to go to Vietnam. I went to Vietnam. I was in the military for 12 years and I'm a Vietnam veteran it says but I never felt like that because number 1, I was never welcomed home and you went around and you didn’t tell people but that’s over now and I was on orders to go to Vietnam and they cancelled the orders and sent the military police to go to DC because of the riots and the hippies were going to attack the pentagon and I was in the front row of that as an officer giving commands to hold my group in front and we were protecting the pentagon and then, I wound up in race riots. Martin Luther King got shot. I was there. I was there when Martin Luther King made his speech, the 2nd one, not the 1st one. The one at the Lincoln Memorial. I was one of the officers up front and I got to watch him personally, that I have a dream speech and I was in charge of the military police that were lined around the whole lake there, the water and I was in charge of my group and we were protecting him and then, later he got shot, you know that and then, the riots happened back in the streets and that’s what that was and the whole time I was studying with Danny Pai and competing in a lot of tournaments and he would watch me and correct me and eventually, I started winning more. By 1969 through ’72, official karate magazine called me the winningest karate person alive in the United States and I won 327 trophies and I won them in every area of karate. Breaking, there's a big write up at the magazine called George Dillman, the silent champion and when he entered the breaking competition, that was me, he won 100% of the time. I never lost. Weapons, 80% of the time I won and kata, I won 75, 80% of that and fighting, I was about 60% of wins. Fighting was harder more than the kata naturally because back then, tournaments weren’t like they were today. Back then, there were 700 to a thousand blackbelts in a division and you had to fight all day and when you get down to the final 4, you had to then fight off for trophy so it was very, very difficult but I did it. I had a bunch of fighting trophies and I finished my career in ’72 in Miami at the big international meet with Goju-Ryu [00:15:56] but people from all over the world, Germany, France, all over, US, there were 5,000 people there competing and that was my biggest win ever and then, I decided I got to retire on that one because I'm getting a lot of attention and I came home with 7 trophies at that one. I took 1st place in kata, I took 1st in weapons, I took 1st in breaking, I took 1st in best demonstration and I took 2nd in fighting and I only lost a disputed match with Big Bob Foster, or is it Mike Foster? He’s the 7-foot karate guy down in Florida. Really tough, fights like a lightweight but I took 2nd to him. The match was 1 to 1 and we’re both bleeding and you're not supposed to hit the face. [00:16:59] was the head referee out of New York. Matsuyama’s brother, he lectured both of us. He said, I'm supposed to disqualify after blood, he said, but you're both bleeding. I'm going to let the match continue but the next one that hits the next one’s disqualified and we set and Foster got a kick in and won the match and I was 2ndplace but I got another trophy at that event for winning the most trophies so I came home with 7 trophies and they were about ready to carry me out of there on their shoulders and that’s the way it went and I just retired at that which is a good thing because that’s when I travelled to Pittsburgh to train with Hohan Sōken and he told me Hohan Sōken out of Okinawa with 10th degree Black Belt, highest in the world, most educated person I've ever met in the martial arts, he now passed on but his knowledge was unbelievable and he didn’t hold back and he said to me, he's one of the reasons I retired. I got to put it that way. Training with him and I competed at that tournament in his honor and I won everything and even though, I wasn’t going to compete again, I did there because he was there and he saw me. He came over and he said, you do such beautiful kata, that was his words, you're still beautiful form, lots of energy, lots of spirit. What's this move for? I said oh, that’s blocking a kick. That’s blocking this. He said, do you have time tomorrow? I said for what? He said I’ll give you a 4-hour private lesson. I want you to come with me for 4 hours. I want to train you. It hurts me in my heart for you to do form that well and not know why you're doing them and I didn’t say anything but I was thinking, I bet you he didn’t know how many trophies I have but that was funny later with my student. He didn’t care about trophies. He cared about injuring people and that’s how we got into the pressure point and he took me in a room in 1972, he gave me a pressure point chart which I still have, gave me notes on how to attack them, gave me another set of notes on what the results will be and trained me for 4 hours and every move I showed him, he had a reason for it to be real self-defense and he said, there's no block. You don’t block in kata. Why would you block an opponent that’s not there? blocking is done when you have opponent fighting, sparring, Kumite and one step, he’d call it, he said you're blocked but you don’t block when you're by yourself. Blocking develops with people. Develops timing, distance and coordination. By yourself, develops none of that. you could stand there all day long and block until you're blue in the face and somebody’s going to hit you and they're probably going to hit you. they're going to be a little too soon or a little too late with that so-called block. This was all told to me by shock. Needless to say, after 4 hours, I went out of there depressed. Went back to my dojo and said oh geez, I really don’t know anything about the martial arts. Nothing and I kept teaching my class and at that time, because of all my trophy wins, I had the biggest school in the United States and it started to get bigger and get more students because they have out ranks or whatever but I had 400 serious students and was teaching at 3 colleges in Redding, Pennsylvania and had big classes there with headlines in the newspapers that they're learning this, they're learning that at Albright College, [00:22:08] College, at Alvernia College and then, I got asked over to Penn State and teach and then, I went over to Penn State main campus to teach and it just expanded from there and at 1983, went to visit Seiyu Oyata after he moved to the United States. I got to drive out there to Kansas and I went. Anytime somebody, because of my whole reach in training, anytime somebody said the word, fight, I was there. It's that simple and that’s the way my life went. When I moved to Redding, Pennsylvania and opened the dojo that had 400 people, there's a man that has a school up in New York, I think he’s still alive but he said nobody can have a Japanese man, I can't even say his name but I all think we will, but he challenged me to a fight to the death. That’s serious business. One of his greenbelts gave me a note. Come to my class and I will fight you in front of my students. I just want you to know, that if we fight, the match will be to the death. Guess what? I showed up alone. He’s sitting there, kneeling, talking to his students and a couple nodded their head, he’s at the back of the room, they said. He’s ready, I guess, to fight to the death. Their instructor and this is an honest to god, true story, went in the bathroom, climbed out the window and went home. Or went somewhere. The class is sitting there and sitting there and finally, somebody went in the bathroom to see if he was okay and the window was open and his shoes were gone and many of his students sent in to join my school when I opened up and he moved out of Redding. He was embarrassed, shamed and moved up to New York to open up a dojo so that’s the way it went and I got a big dojo there and those students, I created top fighters. Billy Blanks came to train with me before he won the world championships and I’ll be honest, he wouldn’t have won it without my help because he made major mistakes back then. I went up to Buffalo, New York and I wasn’t competing but his instructor and this is a funny sounding name, Ting Fong Wong, Chinese man, thought he was setting me up because I don’t know if he didn’t like me or what but he says to me, will you do a fighting demonstration with Billy Blank? I said I didn’t know Billy Blanks at all and I didn’t know that he won the championship after 7 years in a row until later. He said, well, he’s 7 years a champion and you're going to fight him? I said, yeah. It's a demonstration. It wound up being more than a demonstration and it got pretty rough if you know Billy Blanks and to make a long story short, Billy Blanks and he’ll say it, learned his fighting scissors through me. I've never some it in an actual tournament but I've done it in the dojo and all and we’re fighting and boy, things were getting rough. I leapt up in the air, which I can jump quite high back then, I was young and really in shape, jumped up in the air, threw scissors around, right foot hooked to his chest, left leg went behind his leg, shoved him over backwards and I hit him in the head and he was dizzy and he got up, shook my hand and said, what did you do? He said would you show that to me, Sir? And later on, I taught him how to do it that he actually perfected and became known for. He was doing it all over the world to people so that’s my story and I trained with Seiyu Oyata and he got seriously into pressure points. That’s all he did. [00:27:33] how to break down. I'm going to brag but nobody has better kata breakdown than I and Seiyu Oyata at the time, to seek out of the Old World school and he trained with the man that was one of the last samurai if you read his story and he said to me the same thing Hohan Sōken said football players practice football a week. I said I don’t play football. He said they don’t set around blocking nothing. Even when they do blocking, it's against bags and big machines they're blocking. They don’t block nothing, why would you block in a kata with no opponent? I didn’t tell him I heard that from Hohan Sōken but that’s what he said? Oh yeah, that’s true. Why would you do that stupid stuff? So, I got an education and he started breaking down what a block is for and it's pressure point, manipulation of the nape, manipulation of the attack or it sets up the attack and so, anytime your hand moves, keep moving your hands on your hip. You're going to have your opponent’s wrist at the hip as you're doing something with the other hand to a corresponding pressure point that will take him out and that was the start of my serious, went back and changed my school. At that time, I had a following of 25 dojos and I had a hard time explaining to them that all these years we’ve been training them wrong, that you’ve been training in sport. Now, we’re going to get, and they laugh. Now, I’m always funny and making jokes and they said, if that isn’t a block, what is it? I called all my instructors to meet me in Virginia. Some of them are now down doing their own seminars but they met him and down in Virginia, we had an instructor-only meeting and 25 to 30 showed up and I started telling them what it was, they started with Hohan Sōken and then started into Oyata and said this is not a block, doesn’t this make more sense? And if you do it in your mind as a block, you'll never use it. How many goofy blocks are in there that the people won’t use? Probably I’ll never use it as a block. Well, then why would you practice it as Oyata said? Football team doesn’t practice blocking against the air. They practice football all week. Martial artists, you practice fighting all week. Hand to hand, somebody in your hand. Grab them, hit them, hit them here, hit them there. There's 361 pressure points all over the human body. I told people. They asked me about it, they said have you ever been hit in the solar plexus and lost your air, doubled over? Well, yeah. I can do that at 361 places and I paid attention and got really good at it which Matt Brown will tell you and I'm real good at it and now, I'm not going to brag or as it is, a little bit but I'm going to be 77 years old this year. I'm in good shape, moves well, have good flexibility, the doctor can't believe my flexibility but the physical therapist he said, when I get your leg up here, your arm up here, let me know if it hurts. It doesn’t hurt. He said I'm not going any further so there's that story but when I was 75, a year and a half ago, a man actually came up to me at a local place in Redding, Pennsylvania, well, you're older now. I can beat you up. I said no, I don’t think you can and he was lifting weights, obvious, and I said no, it hasn’t changed. You still can't. Well, but I can. I said look, I said I do pressure points now and I said it's way different. When he walked away, he was steaming, breaking some of that and with my wife and his brother, he comes back up a good half hour later and confronts me against the wall and says, I'm serious, I can beat you up. Well, guess what? I knocked his ass out, set him down and left him to sit there for half an hour in the bar. He had the biggest headache, I can guarantee, I don’t know. The biggest headache in the damn world and his family came and got him and let him out of there and said what happened? That’s all I know and then, they left and I hadn’t seen him since but that’s what happened so I don’t mess around when it comes to that and I'm good with pressure points all over the place. Arms, legs, I've been challenged for serious, 5 times in seminars. It's in my book. I have a book called Prometheus on Amazon. It's my life story. George Dillman’s life story. Almost everything I'm telling you now is in that book and it gets deep and there's things that can be learned in that book. Most of the people that talk about this and this don’t work and that don’t work haven't read my book. Haven't even looked at it. Haven't even watched one of my DVDs. I have 50 DVDs trying to teach people how to do a better martial art and they don’t do it but Prometheus is my life story and there's quotes in there. I applied challenges. I had a man from Australia. I knocked him out one year, I go back to Australia, he opens up his big mouth with 180 people in the room and says, well, yeah, you knocked me out on the neck. Anybody can and I didn’t even start the seminar yet and he said, you knocked me out on the neck and he said I'm a kickboxer, blah blah blah anybody can knock anybody out on the neck and as he was saying that, I was walking towards him. I didn’t like him anyway but he said I did do dare and I said I beg your pardon? And he repeated it. I was right in front of him and I said I can do it all over the place and I spear handed him in both ribs in what we call liver points and he dropped to the ground, just about throwing up. Fell on his hands and knees like a dog and I left him there and I said now, we’re going to start the seminar. Everybody was just yes, sir and that was how that happened but I have another one in New Zealand. This made the magazines over there. People think this was all jokes. This ain’t jokes. The top Thai boxer in Thailand, number 2 out of New Zealand, Thai boxer challenged me in the magazine. He said I'm going to Dillman’s seminar. If he doesn’t knock me out, I'm knocking him out. Well, this too was my biggest seminar yet. In fact, in New Zealand, I had over 800 people at my seminars in New Zealand. It's a little country, 2 little islands but anyway, I'm starting the seminar and he shows up and they said he’s at the door and he refuses to pay. I said, I ain’t worried about that. Let him in. Let the bull in the ring and I said, listen up everybody, you're going to get a show in a minute. Terry Hill was here. That was his name and he challenged me openly in the magazine and I'm here accepting. He comes into the room like a Dumbo, I said Terry, how are you doing? He’s surprised I knocked him out. I didn’t wait for the fight. I think he thought we’re going to get into stances and positions, I knocked him out just left him lying there and I went teaching the seminar and you could hear a pin drop in that room because that ended that one. I went to Arkansas, very similar, I'm not going to get into it all, they're in my book, the book of my life. Pressure points are deep. People go I don’t believe them, well don’t do it. People write me letters even. I don’t believe in what you do. Well, then don’t do it. If I want to do it, even like the presidential races, I don’t like this guy, I like that guy, I don’t like that. Well, good, don’t vote for them. Why do you care who I vote and with pressure points, if you don’t want to do it? Don’t do it. I have hundreds of thousands of people all over the world go to my website, dillman.com, contact any one of those schools. They're in countries all over the world from Germany to Spain to France and ask them is this for real and they say yeah, come to my dojo. I’ll help you with it and they won’t go because they know they’ll be a newbie but I have hundreds of thousands of people who do it. I have probably hundreds, thousands more. They say they're doing it, aren’t really good at it, I guess, I don’t know because I've sold a lot of DVDs and books and that’s what bothers people, I guess, because I made a lot of money doing what I do in this category but I sold, I think, 450,000 books so far and still selling. Amazon.com is pounding them out like you wouldn’t believe because of my latest cover in Black Belt magazine. I have a story on Black Belt magazine right now, October-November issue 2019 saying George Dillman changed the world. Changed the world in the martial art. Whether you like it or not, it says these are major changes and Leo Fong said there's only a handful of people that made major changes in the world and George Dillman is one of them. It's in the back of my Prometheus book, his quote, so have you seen the Black Belt magazine yourself?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I have. It's a nice spread.
George Dillman:
Yeah! Leo Fong said there's 5 pioneers who shaped the 20th century martial arts: Jigorō Kano in Judo, Gichin Funakoshi in Karate, Morihei Ueshiba in Aikido, Bruce Lee and George Dillman. That’s from 91-year old Grandmaster Leo Fong who’s been doing the martial arts forever. That’s quite a statement. Quite a statement. Proud of that statement, I’d say, and I love Leo. Been friends with Leo for almost 50 years and you know how I met Leo?
Jeremy Lesniak:
How?
George Dillman:
Through Bruce Lee.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Tell us about that.
George Dillman:
I was doing the martial art, there were very few schools. Today, they're afraid to take their students to seminars. They're afraid to take them to tournaments. In some ways, I want to see how bad their students are or whatever. They're afraid to go out there, they're afraid to lose students. If I take them to Matt Brown’s seminar and he teaches a lot of good stuff, my student will quite, want to join Matt Brown so he won’t go. A lot of that going on because of the commercialism. Back when I was starting out, let’s get it back to 1959, 1960, 61, there were only a handful of schools in the whole country. Everybody knew who everybody was. Everybody knew Harry Smith out of Pennsylvania. Everybody knew Ed Parker was in California, [00:41:34] was in Arizona, they would go all over the place and you knew who they were and they didn’t care about sharing and comparing and they would recommend and have hey, you're in California, see if you can get in and train with Ed Parker or go up to see Leo Fong or Wally Jay and when I was with Bruce Lee, I like to name drop but who. Has the bigger one than Bruce, but he was a good guy. I really liked Bruce but Bruce Lee told me, he said if you get to California, he said, the main guy to study with and he said I respect him like you wouldn’t believe, is professor Wally Jay and keep in mind, I hadn’t met Wally and Leo Fong and he said Ed Parker’s big and tough but Ed Parker has size going for him, size and weight but he said Wally Jay and Leo Fong are the real deal and I said really, and he said yeah and this is from Bruce Lee. He said, if you ask them a question, they don’t tell you the answer. They get you up on the mat and do the answer. I said oh, so I kept that on my mind and then I had to meet those 2 and then, Bruce died unexpectedly and when he died I was actually heartbroken. Depressed, really. I was down for a while because everybody was talking about him but boy, I was missing a friend and young, real young, woke you up to life and death that he’s gone and Wally Jay was going to teach up in Canada a seminar over the middle of Canada and I said to my students, want to go? And they said we’ll go with you. I had about 9, 12, I forget, we hopped in my motorhome and we shuffled off to Canada to train with Wally Jay. Loved the experience and I said to Wally, can I get you to my dojo to teach? He said yeah! I said how much? He gave me a price. He said I need my airfare. I understand that, you're in California and I said I want you to come to my dojo and meet my people and train and he gave me his business card. I get back home and talk to everybody and they said oh man, that’d be great. I said this is the guy, Bruce Lee was dead at that time, I said this is the guy that Bruce Lee respected and loved. Wally Jay used to come home from work, he worked at the post office, actually, for years and he came home from work and as his story goes, Bruce Lee was sitting in his front doorstep waiting to train and not many people can say that and Wally Jay came and talked to my people and we did seminars and we hooked up and became best of friends and then, I went to meet Remy Presas. Did not get recommended by Bruce Lee, didn’t even know him but I met Remy Presas, a stick Arnis person that’s probably one of the best in the world. He’s dead now but he was a tough boy and Wally Jay, Remy Presas and myself agreed to do seminars together and share and we did 3-days camps all over the world for almost 20 years. 18 years for sure and then, Remy had to go to the hospital and he wound up with a brain tumor and he died and then, Wally and I did some things after that. After 18 years, it was the 3 of us known as the big 3 and you name a country and we’re probably there teaching and the crowd sold out by the hundreds. Houston, Texas, we had 380. Black Belt magazine covered it back then with a 10-page, and they don’t give 10-pages too much, a 10-page feature story on how lucky the people were to be able to come train with the 3 greatest people in the world with one shot and there were so many showed up and then, we had kids that day that’s not with the children. We had a children’s seminar, trained many in camp, Friday night, for kids. Saturday, Sunday, adult but we had 380 adult. We had over 120 children and we had talked to the hotel and they gave us 2 more ballrooms and we divided the people, roughly a 120 in each room and they didn’t have to go from room to room, we went from room to room and they got a full session with each one of us for the weekend and naturally, that was very nutritive and successful and a lot of people are jealous of that stuff. It's just simple. A man that’s very high in the government, he’s a lawyer, he’s the one that wrote the book for me, Prometheus, he said you got them on how you're living. That’s what they're jealous of and that’s it. Do you have any questions on me?
Jeremy Lesniak:
I've got all kinds of questions, sir. I was enjoying story time and anybody that’s listened to the show before knows that that’s how I do it. I just like to let the guests go and we often get into some things that maybe a little different than if I'm driving the conversation but to flip it around and let you drive. Now, you’ve brought up a couple times and certainly anyone who knows who you are and know you are no stranger to this controversy around pressure points and you addressed it and my job here, I don’t, I'm as objective as I can be when I speak with the guest. I take no sides, I take no stance on anything because you know what? I enjoy hearing stories and stories are entertaining whether they're true or not.
George Dillman:
Oh no, mine are true.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Again, I am 100% not passing any judgment. I wanted to talk about the criticism. I wanted to look at it from a different angle because people come at, controversy tends to be this happened or this didn’t happen or this is real or not real, true or not true and what I'm more interested about, because you talked about how some of this started decades ago. How did that, how did knowing that other people were somewhere between skeptical and outright blatantly disagreeing with what you are teaching, how did that shape your future training and the way you taught?
George Dillman:
Not at all. I march forward. Number one, and you got to remember, most of my training was before iPhones and internet. That’s the problem. Nobody cared who did what before they got a laptop or before their students got a laptop and went and looked at one of my DVDs. I just put my first DVD which I recorded 1983, I put it, in fact actually, Matt Brown helped me put it on YouTube and that’s going to stir controversy because it goes back to what Hohan Sōken and Seiyu Oyata said, this ain’t a block but anyway, before the laptop, you either went to a seminar or you just kept doing what you were doing. Problem today is laptops and phones and pass them around right away. Selling books and items is difficult because they get something online and they pass it on to everybody in their organization or whatever and nobody’s buying it anymore so it was a little, what I'm saying, it was a little like your grandpa told you. It was better in the past. Our forms were only priceless when you went to the movies but it's changed and now, the only people, what do they call them? Keyboard warriors. They sit there, none of them had been to a seminar. I even had people, I’ll fight you. I give you $10,000 to fight me. Well, number one, they usually don’t have the $10,000. I’d like to tell the guy, in fact, I have told some of that. When you get to $10,000 let me know and they don’t have it, number one. Number two, they want to fight and I said, where are you from and that’s the end of those emails. They don’t want to say. One goes, actually one time one said well, actually, I'm from Detroit and I said okay, look at my calendar, I'm doing a seminar in Detroit, 2 months. I’ll tell you what, you can be my guest. You can almost hear them blowing wind over the phone. Pardon the expression but it's called fart but they do. Oh, I'm going to be there. Why couldn’t you make it? Oh, you don’t want to hear that. I was there, where were you? Well, my wife had to take the baby shopping and we had to go, yeah okay. I had one up in Idaho, I was trying to think of where it was and a man from Spokane, Washington giving me grief every time I go up. He doesn’t know anything! How do you know? You haven't been to a seminar, you haven't read a book, you haven't read the DVD, where are you coming up with this information and I'm going to be there. I'm going to be in Boise, Idaho, I'm going to be in Nampa, Nampa, Idaho and I said you're close enough. I asked the guy there, how far is that? Couple of hour drive, he said. Well, I'm going to be there. Come on over. I ain’t paying for a seminar, he told that guy and I said tell him it’s free and he actually sent an email, it's an honest to God true story and a man named Kevin [00:54:00] can back it up where he said, George Dillman can’t do it, he said. He walks and chews gum at the same time and man who quit the seminar sent me that email. I sent that man an email, a letter, a letter, a written letter, put it in the post office, and I sent him a stick of gum and I said, this is your payment to come in the seminar. I said, just come to the front desk, sign in and when they want to be paid, hand them a stick of gum and you're in. Well, he had 52 reasons why he couldn’t come there and then, we’ve never heard from him since and a lot of people at my organization get the same grief. Chris Thomas, they all hear about it. Matt Brown, well, he ain’t bothered. They all hear about it and they're out teaching seminars and they go it's funny nobody shows up. They all talk about. That’s all they are is talk and I think it was Wally Jay called them keyboard warriors and Wally Jay was, his common expression was the proof is on the mat. Not verbal, on the mat. Not Matt Brown, I mean, the mat and he said, come on, let’s be there and get on the mat together. Well, they don’t show up. That was all the way back to Wally Jay before computers and that was his biggest statement. The proof is on the mat and as I told you, Bruce Lee, said to me, Wally Jay gets you on the mat. You have a question, you better be ready to get it done on you and I said, oh really and I told you the rest of the story so that’s what it is. A lot of the problem is computers. I've had people give me grief way back because I'm teaching something their instructor don’t know and their instructors have lied to them. Their instructors have told them, he’s teaching higher rank stuff right off the bat. I know that. I was going to teach you that one day and then, we always said yes, when you learn it because they don’t know it and they're afraid to say they don’t know anything and I don’t care how tough you think you are. Everybody’s hear the story especially in boxing and in football. Any team can beat any other team any given day, just depends on the day and who's sick and who’s feeling good and who’s not feeling good and I wake up some days, I feel like I can beat up the world then you go out and you go boy, I hope somebody picks on me. On other days, you have a cold, you're down in the dumps, little energy going, oh I hope nobody picks on me but anyway, it's a joke but that’s what's going on. Computers ruin every damn thing including people’s lives. I go on nature rest day offs with my wife and I will tell her, I used to do it too. I was guilty and we stopped it. I get off Facebook. I'm not on Facebook and it took me 2 or 3 weeks to wean myself off it and I found out I was answering questions to the same guilty people all the time. I said guilty people, here comes my hate list but they're on Facebook and they pass things around and they read some amount of my book and then they put it out to the world and you can't stop it. I go to major restaurants, you’ve seen it, I've seen it, everybody’s looking down at their phone. I said something years ago to my grandson, actually to his mother, we’re out to a big dinner and the kid’s sitting next to me and his phone’s going ding, ding, ding, ding and he’s not looking up, he’s not in the conversation, he’s looking down. I said hey, eat your male and enjoy it and we have the family here so we can talk. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Meantime, he’s looking down, telling everybody what a great time he’s having. You’ve seen it, I'm sure, I think you might be guilty. I was guilty for the longest wire for something similar, always on the damn phone. Last night, we almost got hit. My wife, my boys, we were going into town and a guy came right over the yellow line by several feet and he’s looking down texting and she had to go off the road to the right to keep from getting hit so you have to ride defensive because there's a lot of that going on. You know it, I know it, there's accidents and deaths because of it so this damn phone is a problem and the laptop’s a problem and now, Kindle, they can get right on Kindle and show you. My books are all in Kindle, people are reading them. People take some excerpts and put them on their website as if they're theirs. One or two people out there teaches a seminar using half the stuff that’s in my books so that’s the way life goes. I talked to the editor of Black Belt magazine. By the way, nobody goes to my website, dillman.com, and goes back to my letters of approval and years ago, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, the editorial on Black Belt magazine, the editorial, I put it right on my website. The full page and this is people I don’t know, they said, for once, Dillman lent his art to his talking and he came in Black Belt magazine and knocked everyone out on the staff. Now, they said that and yet, people don’t believe that or they didn’t see it, I don’t know, but they didn’t believe that? The editor just made that up? I went in and knocked out the publisher, the editor, every one of them and they said, the only one that he didn’t knock out was the receptionist because she was 87 or something. She said I don’t want it, I don’t want it, and that’s in there. That’s in that editorial back in 1980 when I was on the cover of their biggest-selling magazine in the world. My red cover of Black Belt magazine of 1980 was the best seller they ever had. You can't buy a copy from them anymore. They sold out of all their copies they kept on file. It's sold out everywhere and when it goes on eBay, it's gone right away so that’s what happened. That’s what happened to sports fans and if you don’t believe it, don’t do it. don’t tell me it don’t work till you’ve been there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Let’s unpack that for a moment, this idea that if you don’t believe it, don’t do it because I think that, as you mentioned, keyboard warriors, there are people out there who get so wrapped around the axle on their own beliefs. Whether it's politics or martial arts or nutrition or anything that there's something in them and the way they look at the world that says, if they can't convince you that you are wrong, somehow they're failing or the world’s crumbling around there or something because it would be easier, wouldn’t it, on everyone if hey, you don’t believe that this works then don’t run into it?
George Dillman:
Here’s what they run into.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Please.
George Dillman:
Over 80% of the world, of the world, believes in acupuncture. 80% of the whole world know it works. It does work. They believe in pressure points, they believe it work, why can't they believe this work and their first excuse is pressure points are too little, you can't hit them. Do you want to bet? Besides, a lot of the moves in kata, I got to touch you or grab you and if you're close enough to hit me, I'm close enough to grab you and I'm going to grab you on the spot that’s going to put you down on your knees. It's that simple and my wife is standing here, Susan Dillman, we’ve been married for almost 15 years but she went to France with me and they called me from France, these are not martial artists. They wanted me to train firemen, the police and they took me to the police headquarters where they train their SWAT team because of the riots and they called me, they said we were told to get you over here to train and I said what are you getting? What can you teach, they said. Well, I can teach how to put everybody down and get them off you and handcuff them within a second or two. Really? I said yeah. What do I have to pay you, I told them and I'm not cheap, by the way and I said, well, I’ll go and they said, what can you do? We’re at the military center, at their training school outside of Paris. Didn’t know anybody, didn’t even speak English. I said get me the biggest, strongest guy, that’s the police. I still laugh about that. The biggest strongest guy that you can have there and bring him out and I'm going to put him down and handcuff him in a second. You could do this. I said I’ll tell you what, let’s start that way and if I don’t do it, you don’t have to pay me, how’s that? Okay, so I go over, now the joke is and this is not a joke, they brought a monster like I have never seen in my life! They brought out a guy who’s 7-ft. tall and his arms look like people’s legs and that’s a true story. My wife’s standing right here to back that story up. She was with me in the room and she said to me, look at the size of him and I leaned over and I jokingly said to her, I hope this works. Remember that, Susie? Now, we’ll see and I hope this works and that was the joke but this is the guy. Somebody translated in French and I said okay, try to grab me. This big guy grabbed me. Boom! I knocked him in the arm, hit his pressure point, numbed his whole arm, threw it behind his back, threw him down the ground, grabs his handcuffs and handcuffed him. I had him on his side and they were just all amazed and I said, we’re not ready to teach the seminar and the guy says to me, well, the one guy in French started mumbling and I don’t speak French but he said blah, blah, blah, blah and the guy translated and he said, we have a problem. I said, what's the problem? He said, the man you handcuffed, you used his handcuffs. I said yeah. He said the key to his handcuffs is back at the barracks. Really? He said yeah, we have to send somebody to try and find his key. Now, he’s lying on the floor handcuffed and explaining to them where his key is and they run to look for his key and the whole time this is going, everybody there is trying to make a fool out of him, joking and you know how it’d go. So, that’s just one story. I just love that story. It was like King Kong, is what he is but pressure points work! In fact, actually, if you study them, they work better if your opponent is bigger and stronger than you. That’s why I liked it. Most of the people teaching women, one guy who is mad at me now because I corrected him on Facebook, what he was teaching women wrong, that won’t work, teaching a women’s seminar, selling some moves on Facebook that were wrong, won’t work. You'll get the woman killed or beat up or raped and I said, if she just moves her hand over to here and does this, it will work better and one of his people came back to him and said oh my god, does that work? He hasn’t talked to me to this day. I think he dropped me as a Facebook friend, don’t communicate and I figured out, well that’s the way it goes. A lot of people teaching things out there that’s wrong. It's that simple. It just simple and I wouldn’t believe that either when I was a national competitor, I would not have believed what I'm telling you know and I would not have believed it was the angle and direction to attack pressure points is hidden with the forms that everybody does in every country. All the forms have their history going back 750 years to Yan Changfeng, who made the first kata or form known to man, that’s in books and if you read on his history, he developed the first form in china, mapping out how to attack the bad spots of acupuncture, the weak spot. That’s history. I used to read that statement at my seminars and the people who came to my seminars believed it but the ones who didn’t come to my seminars don’t believe it. Practically, they didn’t think it can work. Well, it could. Yan Changfeng made it up that it could work and that’s the name of the whole game. If you don’t believe it, don’t do it. If you go to my website, I have hundreds of schools and the schools you see on there have anywhere from 10 to 50 under them. They're just not on my website, it's there on their websites so it's here. It's here to stay. Black Belt magazine said I made major changes in the world and that’s what life’s about. There's a lot of people hitting on me with National Geographic, well, national geographic, I get it, they wanted to prove I did it. I did it. I moved people. People are knocked out without touching, one man almost died. I can give you his damn name. He almost died at that filming and national geographic came in with a negative attitude because they had just filmed some other things but that’s not the point I want to bring out. The point I'm going to bring up, there's one guy saying no, that’s a fraud. Fraud! The man calling it a fraud is out in Chicago and is not me. He got on Chicago television and told them, his name is Tom, his first name but he told them he’s George Dillman or somehow he got lost because he’s going to do the George Dillman theory but they announced him as George Dillman and they said, when he’s done, this guy don’t know what he's doing. He's a fraud. Well, that wasn’t me. That was not me. That was, then I knew his name, he’s a real douchebag. Am I allowed to say douchebag?
Jeremy Lesniak:
You sure are.
George Dillman:
Anyway, that’s the story and on national geographic, Leon Jay did not knock out that little tiny man, remember I told you pressure points worked better if the guy’s bigger and stronger. In Chicago, they brought in some little tiny guy and I didn’t even want to try to knock him out in case it didn’t work. Little person, little pressure point. Bigger person, bigger pressure point. This art works if the person is stronger than you, bigger than you. That’s when you need it. That’s when women need it. Anybody that’s got to tackle a woman is usually going to be bigger and stronger and hitting her and so, that’s when this art is needed. Most arts don’t work if they're stronger than you and that’s one of the first things I used to open seminars with. I used to grab the biggest guy there and grab the littlest guy and say, now, just try to get out of that with what you know and they couldn’t get out of it. I said now, put a finger right here. Press on the radial nerve, watch what happens. Now, touch him here. Oh my! The guy goes down to his knee. Well, then it works! People teaching rubbing beside the nose through the knuckle. I'm going to teach one right now on the air. If you take your middle knuckle and take your right hand and press to the left side and just take your knuckle beside the nose, not on the nose, not under it, just beside, that little indent right there. He won’t go anywhere. Rub under his nose. Everybody knows to rub under the nose, he feels it but it doesn’t hurt. Now, have the guy grab you, take your left hand and just touch or place it with a little pressure on top of his, your left hand on top of his hand that’s grabbing you where the radial nerve is and just push down and now, take your right hand to rub under his nose and he’ll fall on the ground screaming. The harder you rub, the faster he drops. The bigger he is, the faster he drops. Women should know that. I bring that up when I do get to teach it. The college girls learn that. If the man’s going to rape you, he’s probably going to knock you down, he gets his clothes off et cetera, I don’t want to describe it but he’s got a hand on the floor while he takes his right hand or left hand and he tries to get his privates out and while he has his hands on the floor, all she has to do is touch it and touch his damn nose and he’ll fall off her and I demonstrate that. We do that in classes with women all over. Pressure points work. That’s my theory. I'm sticking with it. My mom told me, I’ll leave you with an ending here with my mom. My mom told me when I was going from 1st grade to 2nd grade, we had moved from a place called Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania to Pottsville, Pennsylvania and I was in 1st grade in Schuylkill Haven and I was going to 2nd grade in Pottsville and my mom said you're new, nobody’s going to know you in that class and I want you to stay out of trouble. I don’t want you getting in a fight. They're going to pick on you or they're going to say something and I said okay, Mommy. She said the easiest way, now, this is back when I was in 2nd grade because it applies today. She said number one, if they start talking about religion, do not say a thing. Do not join there. Just stay out of the conversation about religion and you won’t be in a big argument. Politics, she said that back then, if they bring up politics, first of all, they're in 2nd grade. They don’t know who they want for this president or whatever. They’ve only listened to their parents in the breakfast table and that’s their opinion. She told me that. She said do not discuss politics. Do not discuss religion and you won’t be in any fights and she was right. She was right and today, same thing. Don’t discuss religion, don’t discuss politics and you'll stay out of trouble. You need me to mail you a stick of gum. That’s you.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Certainly not, sir.
George Dillman:
You live in Vermont.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I do.
George Dillman:
Oh, I'm jealous except in the winter. In the winter, I'm not jealous.
Jeremy Lesniak:
We have about 9 months of winter. Not quite but it's cold. It gets cold.
George Dillman:
I went to Alaska and I was up in Alaska and the guy said, the first thing he said, he said, you have 4 seasons. I said yeah. He said we have 4 seasons just like you do. I said you do? He said yeah, we have winter, we have June, July and August and June is spring, July is summer and august is fall and they're back at winter and that’s the way it is for real. He said we have 4 seasons. Maybe you get used to it after a while. We have 4 seasons.
Jeremy Lesniak:
The joke I've heard, told that I enjoyed, I don’t know if I've told it on this show but I’ll say it. People ask, what do you do in Vermont in the summer and we will often respond, we usually take that week off from working.
George Dillman:
Oh yeah, oh god. That’s funny. That’s funny! I used to camp at a camp ground, used to canoe at that river and was done from White River Junction and there was a campground down at the river and I used to camp there all the time. Boy, I loved it and I don’t know with Vermont, if White River Junction looks the same or not but when you went into town there's a little country store right there.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Changed a little bit. White River hasn’t changed a ton. Almost in decades.
George Dillman:
It used to have big block of cheese out and sweat coming off of me. You cut what size cheese you want. Oh my god, was that good! That’s where I met Charles Bronson because he was in there because he needs food. Everybody needs food, no matter where you are and the man that owned the place then, he’s probably dead. Named Hoose, was his nickname and he and I became friends because I was camping so many times there and I ran up to Hoose’s to buy whatever I needed for camp. Hotdogs or whatever to cook on the grill, marshmallow under the fire and whatever and Hoose said hey, I want you to meet somebody and it was Charles Bronson. He said Charlie, come here, because they were friends and he introduced me and that’s how I met him. I got to say one thing about the martial arts
Jeremy Lesniak:
Please.
George Dillman:
I've been very, very fortunate, and I don’t want to say I'm lucky because one man that’s not wealthier than me, but wealthy said it seems people say you're lucky because you're living like that and I said my answer is it seems the longer and harder I work, the luckier I seem to get. You got that, right?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Absolutely. I agree.
George Dillman:
That was said by a local man right around here. I'm out in Ohio right now and I'm on the beach of Lake Erie and I have a beautiful, beautiful view of 3 islands. Boats coming and going and I absolutely love it. I've been coming here for 40 years but one thing that martial arts has done for me is that I don’t know, I always have me travel all over the world, 30-some countries. Australia 5 times, New Zealand 5 times, Japan 3 times, China. When I was in China, Matt Brown lived there in China and went coast to coast in China. Went out to see the panda bears in the wild. We went out to see the Terracotta warriors, got the book autographed by the man who found the Terracotta Warriors and I've literally been all over the world, all over Europe and I got to say, and I can say this but people can't duplicate a lot of it but it didn’t cost me any money. I got paid to do it for teaching seminars. They’d bring me to Australia and a lot of times, I didn’t care if I had a profit. I’d spend whatever they were paying me seeing their country. I literally did the entire coast of Australia, top to bottom all the way down to the bottom where penguins come in down the Antarctic. In Finland, I went 180 miles north of the arctic circle and ran dogsleds. There's pictures in my life story that I'm on a dogsled. Nobody’s done that that I know. Some had done it but none that I know and all over the world and I come back usually, with more money than I left with and I don’t say anything because I talk to people and they go, I went to Australia for a vacation and I took my wife and it's lovely but it cost me $5,000 and I don’t tell them oh, I went to Australia and took my wife and I made $5,000.
Jeremy Lesniak:
That’s the way to do it.
George Dillman:
Benny Urquidez is a good friend of mine, friend of The Jet, by the way, you can ask him about pressure points. Benny The Jet has taught pressure points seminars now since he’s been to my seminar and studying my DVD, Benny the Jet. If he says it and you don’t believe it, what is wrong with you? Wally Jay used to tell people this is all for real. You don’t believe him, you don’t believe Leo Fong? Leo Fong will tell you right now, it's not only for real, he does it. I've changed the grandmasters, the way they teach and most of them will own up. There's a few teaching pressure points and they make like oh, I got this from a secret man out of china. In fact, one of my own people did that and I really raised hell to him about it. He went on our china trip and came back and when he was teaching people go where did you learn that? He said in China. I said, no he didn’t but anyway, the part that I love about the martial arts, just like I said, I've been all over the world, I've travelled like you wouldn’t believe. I did the outback in Australia. I rattlesnake hunted all over Wyoming and Colorado and Arizona. I've been to Indian Reservations and had my moccasins on land to show how worn they are. I've been to Indian Reservations to smoke peace pipes with the chief. I've participated in Indian [01:26:11] improving my art and I had an old Indian medicine man, actually, Blackfeet Indian tribe showed me how to do muscle manipulation that’s, I went wow, that’s actually the way it should be in the kata and people don’t realize that. it's all how you position your arm. If you put your arm down by your side like you're standing in attention, I don’t care how you resist, I can pull it forward but if you turn the back of your arm, just a little bit, it's not even 3-quarters, just turn the back of your arm in that same position, he can't move your arm because he’s pulling against the muscle. Your muscle is outside of your arm. Your radial bone is at your arm, there's no muscle there and so many people have their technique, I watched it on the magazines, everything, I go oh my god, these won’t work. They're using the side of their arm that has no muscle there. All you have to do is to pivot your hand just a touch and they're pulling against their strong muscle. Does that make sense?
Jeremy Lesniak:
It does, absolutely.
George Dillman:
Try it. Just get somebody. Put your hands down by your side, it's in your kata. It's in the kata Seisan, for sure, where your hands are down by your side where everybody throws the bone, the big bone aimed at their opponent and then, first I go, what are you doing with that? I'm blocking two people. When you realize two people can kick at you from the side, that block will do it. That’s all.
Jeremy Lesniak:
You mentioned your website. I want to make sure that people will know if they want to find your website, your books, your DVDs where they’ve got all the options. Where would they go?
George Dillman:
Dillman.com, dillman.com. Amazon.com, type in George Dillman. Type in very handsome martial artist, oh, I don’t come up on that, I'm sorry.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I don’t know that anybody’s on that list.
George Dillman:
Matt Brown, Matt Brown.
Jeremy Lesniak:
Maybe if somebody is doing that list. I'm not doing that list because I’ll put myself at the top. That doesn’t feel right. That feels largely subjective.
George Dillman:
Wouldn’t we all?
Jeremy Lesniak:
Yes! Now, hopefully, I think we think highly enough of ourselves.
George Dillman:
I use this as a joke. People might want to use this. While Michael Jackson was getting all of his plastic surgery and I used to say, I had 2 plastic surgeries and that’s enough and they go, have you had plastic surgery? I just go you don’t think people are born this good looking, do you? I just used it the other night by the way and it worked well.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I like that one.
George Dillman:
I just brought it up, I had a clear blue sky. I’d like to get a 3rd plastic surgery, I’ve had 2 and tighten up the skin and whatever and make them fall right in. Have you had plastic surgery? And then I go, well, you don’t think people are born this good-looking, do you? That’s is. I joke around. I have a lot of humor when I teach seminars but it's serious humor. That’s all. We did an hour and a half, is that enough?
Jeremy Lesniak:
We did. That’s more than enough. I really appreciate your time. This has been great, thank you!
George Dillman:
I hope you can use the whole hour and a half.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I plan to.
George Dillman:
I think you got a real good interview.
Jeremy Lesniak:
I think so.
George Dillman:
Yeah, I just done a big interview with a book. They're writing a book about the friends of Muhammad Ali and there's 36 interviews and I'm going to be one of them.
Jeremy Lesniak:
If you knew anything about Professor Dillman prior to this episode, you are probably familiar with some of the controversy around him and what he teaches. As you heard in the episode, I didn’t bring that up. That’s not what we do on this show. We bring people on to speak to them, to hear their stories and that’s exactly what we did. I have the utmost respect for Professor Dillman and the fact that he brought up some of the controversy that he’s involved in and that he spoke so openly about it because I suspect, it needs to be said. My job here is not to judge or to decide what is true or not true, my job is to seek out and speak to martial artists all over the world, all their disciplines and that’s what we did. Thank you, Professor Dillman, for coming on the show and giving us your time so generously. If you want to check out more about this show, you can head to whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. This is episode 440. We provide transcripts and photos and a bunch more for all of our episodes. They're all available for free and we thank you for your support. If you want to help us out, the best way is to head to whistlekick.com, make a purchase. Use the code PODCAST15, that will get you 15% off our protective equipment, uniforms and a whole bunch more. You can follow us on social media, we’re @whistlekick at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. If you want to email me directly, jeremy@whistlekick.com. Until next time, train hard, smile and have a great day!