Lesley Jackson speaks to Ralph Robb, the author of Memoirs of a Karate Fighter and former team member of the Wolverhampton YMCA Karate Club, who dominated the karate scene in Britain in the 1970s and 80s.
Ralph Robb grew up in a martial arts era very different to our own. The 1970s and early 80s was Britain’s golden age in the world of karate, where the small but famous Wolverhampton YMCA club produced national, European and world champions. It was, of course, also the age of Bruce Lee and David Carradine and everyone wanted to be kung fu fighting. But for Ralph, a young black teenager growing up in Wolverhampton in the 1970s (and was also a fan of the kung fu movie), football violence and racial attacks were a common experience. So who could blame him for joining his cousins at the YMCA dojo in order to learn some self defence? However, this determined yet modest man’s story also includes being a member of one of the most successful and tough karate teams this country has produced.
Ralph’s first love was athletics and he was initially reluctant to start karate training with his cousins at the YMCA dojo “because of its tough reputation.” However, “once I started karate I couldn’t get enough of it.” He was soon training with an intensity that would make our eyes water and entering every competition around. Although the men trained in the Wado ryu style of karate, “as a club, we also believed that in order to succeed we couldn’t limit ourselves to competing within one system so we entered as many multi-style competitions as possible.” These Karateka won everything Britain had to offer in the karate world, mostly due to their charismatic sensei Eddie Cox, “without whom there wouldn’t have been a YMCA.” Quite simply, the Wolverhampton YMCA “was a group of guys with the belief that they were amongst the best at what they did.”
Tough Training
Whilst reading his autobiography of this time (Memoirs of a Karate Fighter), one cannot wonder how Ralph and his colleagues kept up the punishing regime of training, competition and working full time. Ralph comments that “personal drive obviously played a small part in this,” but he was also inspired by the people training around him as alongside Eddie Cox, Jerome Atkinson and Ewart Campbell, whom he describes as, “some of the very best. [They] all set a high standard and encouraged even the lowest grades to realise that they could match their achievements if they trained hard enough.” However, Ralph’s voracious drive to train and compete is also matched with his modesty as he also mentions that “fear was also a motivator, fear of being classed as a weak link. After making the first team I soon realised I wasn’t as naturally gifted as some of the others, so in order to maintain that position I had to train hard and set myself personal goals.”
Ralph reflects on the style of karate he practised thirty years ago compared to today’s competition. He describes it as, “a purer form of combat sport,” which included multi style competitions with a much heavier emphasis on contact. There was no protective padding, no mitts and “just an opponent across from you, gi halfway up his shins looking as though he had just killed his parents!” Semi contact sparring was not a phrase used then as “points would only be given if techniques landed with considerable force, especially to the body... it was not uncommon to see knockouts, lots of blood or opponents who couldn’t carry on after receiving a heavy body blow. These were the conditions that dictated how we trained.” He reminisces further about, “fighting in the Red Triangle Open or the SKI British Championship, which was open to all styles back in the 70s and had to be the roughest competition ever to be staged in Britain.” Ralph compares this type of competition to today’s more common style of semi contact competition. “Today the rules are somewhat different, giving rise to a faster more mobile fighter but unfortunately the physical power, aggression, ability to stop an attacker dead in his tracks seems to have been lost.”
Karate still has a lot to offer the mixed martial arts world but the training and fighting would have to return to some of the principles which were around in the 1970s, as I don’t believe many current Karate champions would last very long in a cage fight without a radical reappraisal of their current training.
Although Ralph doesn’t practise karate anymore, he still holds an interest in martial arts through his son, who is a high school wrestler and also participates in a mixed martial arts club studying mostly Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He comments, “Mixed martial arts really interest me and I’m astonished at the pace in which it has grown and continues to grow around the world.” While he remains unimpressed with the “softer, unrealistic Karate non-contact competitions of today,” he believes that “Karate still has a lot to offer the mixed martial arts world but the training and fighting would have to return to some of the principles which were around in the 1970s, as I don’t believe many current Karate champions would last very long in a cage fight without a radical reappraisal of their current training. I know there are karateka who still practise in that uncompromising budo way but have no interest in competition and therein lies the dilemma which faces Karate in the 21st century, for without a competition aspect which truly reflects a realistic form of combat, it will not attract the calibre of fighter it once did.”
World of Violence
Even though Ralph was a relatively shy teenager, he grew up in a world of violence which was more often than not racially motivated. What is interesting in his book is his growing and changing relationship with violence that rears its ugly face in various forms, sometimes through the National Front who were quite active in Wolverhampton in the 1970s. He describes, “Being exposed to violence from an early age which makes it seem the norm and it is all too easy to become flippant about it. It is only when looking back do I recognise the level of violence in the society in which I lived and how it must have affected my outlook on life. As I progressed in karate I found myself questioning violence. While working on nightclub doors, I did see a lot of mindless violence and strangely, the more I was able to fight the less I wanted to. I suppose this could be attributed to maturity as well as Karate.”
Having been in the position where he had to fight for real, Ralph talks about its effectiveness as a fighting system. He describes, “Wado as the system in which we graded but when it came down to actual fighting, the techniques we used were whatever worked.” Though Ralph believes in karate’s effectiveness as a method of self defence he thinks “it is really down to the club a person trains at and the mindset of the individual involved. A lot of Karate is training the mind for combat and an old instructor of mine used to say that every lesson had to have an element of fear for the students; otherwise he or she would never learn to deal with it when faced with danger.” This was reflected in the YMCAs method of training as, “every aspect of fighting would we carried out at full speed. Speed, accuracy and technique was greatly emphasised and power would follow naturally. Because of this, when out on the street, especially facing someone who was untrained, everything seemed to happen at a much slower pace giving me more than enough time to react.”
From Fighting to Writing
Ralph has been a successful writer for several years now, mostly writing crime novels under the name of Sylvester Young, his latest novel being ‘Sleeping Dogs Lie.’ His autobiography, Memoirs of a Karate Fighter, is published under his own name and he told Martial Edge why he decided to write it. “Since the death of my cousin Clinton I had wanted to write something that would be a tribute to him.” Since emigrating to Canada, he has only trained a little, partly due to “so much back biting amongst the people who were running karate.” Since visiting England to promote his new book, ‘Sleeping Dogs Lie’, he managed to catch up with the books main characters, Eddie Cox, Jerome Atkinson and Don Hamilton. He comments that although still very fit, practising and teaching karate on some level and leading successful lives, “I am sad that the instructors who created one of Britain’s most outstanding clubs have no interest in involving themselves with Karate on a national level.”
Nevertheless, Ralph is pleased with the response he has had from ‘Memoirs of a Karate Fighter’ as “the Wolverhampton YMCA had a relatively short but rich history and I doubt if its like will be seen again. It would have been a great pity for it to be forgotten with time.” Let’s hope with this book that it isn’t.
By: Dan Cassidy (Registered IP 87.232.1.91) on 02-03-2008 12:41
I've recently re-read Ralph's excellent book and then his interview with Lesley and wondered is it because Ralph (sadly) no longer practises karate that he can pass comment without any discernable bias. There's a passage in his book Memoirs of a Karate Fighter in which he laments the political back-biting within Wado Ryu at the time and reflects how he thought that karate was supposed to build character. I think in this interview it shows karate succeeded as Ralph Robb imparts his sober and mature views about the art he once practised so well. I also agree with his comment that with the rise in popularity of MMA contests, that karate-ka must start to reappraise where our art is heading and start to ask ourselves how much of our hours of training is effective karate is and how much is self-delusion.
Interviews 
Ralph’s first love was athletics and he was initially reluctant to start 
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By: Dan Cassidy (Registered IP 87.232.1.91) on 02-03-2008 12:41
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