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Reg Hernando

Where karate meets the streets

Instructor Jay Blanton's style of practical martial arts prepares law enforcement officers for street fights.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published June 25, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - A cleft palate kept grand master Jay Blanton from joining the police force back in 1982.

He went through the interviews for the department in Florence, Ala., and took the test, but he said they had no interest in him because he's hard to understand.

"They sent me a letter that said I was a hazard because I couldn't talk on the radio and I couldn't communicate with the public," Blanton recalled. "That made me mad."

So Blanton found a back door into law enforcement: teaching martial arts to cops.

Last week, Hernando Sheriff Richard Nugent stopped by a training session where Blanton, 46, and his 18-year-old son, Robert "Bubba" Blanton, worked out deputy Michael Girdwood.

Blanton's style of karate is called Mang Ho. He invented it as a blend of Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Jujitsu, Kung Fu, Aikido and others. It is designed to teach people how to fight on the streets.

"This is not sport karate," Blanton said. "A lot of schools are head hunters. Close range fighting is below the belt - knees, shins, groin."

Last week, the two instructors drilled Girdwood on how to defend himself if he got knocked to the ground. It involved a lot of kicking and spinning on his back like an overturned turtle.

"When the real world hits, this is the martial arts that will save your life," Girdwood said after his lesson.

Blanton has lived in Alabama, Tennessee and Florida. He said he has trained hundreds of cops in practical martial arts.

Blanton shows them how to fight blindfolded. He tells them to keep their chins tucked to their chests so that they don't get choked from beyond. And if they get turned on their backs, he tells them to start kicking.

"Law enforcement people, they don't really know what to do in a street fight," Blanton said.

His son added: "I always ask cops, 'Would you like to take our class?' They say 'I don't need it, I've got a gun.' "

But Bubba Blanton, who just finished his first year at the University of South Florida, jabs back : "Do you sleep with your gun? What if you can't get it out of the holster? What if the gun jams?"

Nugent agreed.

"Honestly, you're going to pull your Taser before you go hand to hand. But you could get disarmed. It could not work," he said. "What martial arts training really does is build self-confidence in these guys, and that's worth more than anything."

Blanton grew up looking for something to build confidence.

Because of his cleft palate, he was constantly teased.

In school, kids dumped the clothes out of his gym locker, put thumb tacks on his chair, threw basketballs at his head, tripped him in the halls and stole food off his lunch tray.

At 17, a friend suggested that he pick up karate. He has since risen through the ranks of the sport, becoming a grand master.

In July, he is being honored as the Law Enforcement Instructor of the Year, by the U.S. Martial Arts Association.

Blanton wears thick glasses and has close-cut red hair.

He worked in a yarn mill before moving to Hernando when the mill went out of business. He now works at the Wal-Mart distribution center.

On May 17, Blanton was rear-ended in a Brooksville traffic accident. He walks with a cane and a limp.

But even his cane becomes a tool of the trade.

"It's a good weapon. People don't realize it," he said.

To demonstrate, he hooks it around his son's neck and pretends to hit him in the groin with the foot of the cane. Then he curls the cane around his son's leg and sweeps it aside.

But for all his street fighting talk, he has only had to fight twice outside of the gym. Once was at a bowling alley, where a motorcycle gang started taunting him. He said he broke the leader's jaw. The other fight was a road rage incident, when a man challenged him to a fight in the parking lot of a hospital.

"I told my friend to go into the hospital and tell them they're going to have a patient," Blanton said. "The attacker pulled out a lead pipe and said, 'What you going to do, buddy?' I pulled out nunchucks and said, 'I think we're even.' "

Blanton said his would-be attacker ran away.

Researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or (352)-754-6114.

[Last modified June 25, 2006, 04:26:13]