LockeTricks

All the old forms and tournament related clips I have or could find on youtube from 2000 and before (I include 2000 here, because in terms of form competition I consider it as belong more to the 90s than the rest of the 00s). The earliest clip is from 1982, but most are from the mid to late 90s.

All the old forms and tournament related clips I have or could find on youtube from 2000 and before (I include 2000 here, because in terms of form competition I consider it as belong more to the 90s than the rest of the 00s). The earliest clip is from 1982, but most are from the mid to late 90s.

Back in the early 80s, Ernie Reyes Sr founded the West Coast World Martial Arts Association - and began a chain of TKD schools throughout California. To showcase the progressive martial arts training he was developing, the West Coast Action Team was formed. The original team didn't have much to do with tricking, it was mostly based around flashy kicking and being a showcase for Ernie Reyes Jr (who later went on to star in Surf Ninjas, have guest roles as a kid in things like Red Sonja and Ninja Turtles 2, and more recently hosted that MTV Martial Arts reality show, the Final Fu). This team involved people like George Chung and Cynthia Rothrock, who became a big star in Hong Kong action movies (anyone who hasn't heard of her, look up a compilation on youtube). Now where tricking comes into all this has to do with the second incarnation of the West Coast Demo Team which was called "The Next Generation". This team was formed in 1993 and the lineup included people like Arash Dibazar (of IMC temple fame, he taught or at least trained with Jeremy Marinas way back in the day), Utahna Baxter, Matt Garcia, Ferdinand Cadiente, Donnie Stuart, Jason Cosimano, Lee Reyes, Steven Wong, Gerard Lopez, Greg Catton, Angela Garcia, Andy Nguyen and, perhaps most famously, Kim-Do Nguyen and David Douglas. Over the years yet more people were added like Peter Yang, Brian Go, Patrick Gacayan, Caleb Madrid, Richard Albano, R-Jay Albano, Michael Foster, Jackie Ruby, Ayelet Arbel, Sammy Tu and others. Kelly himself was on this team for a time in late 1998 to early 1999. This team, because it formed around the skills of people like Douglas and Kim, did involve tricks in the modern sense, that is.. moves like sideswipes, butterfly twists, flashkicks, and doublelegs. This team and the people on it are one of the absolutely fundamental influences on the sport of tricking: Everything began with these guys developing and pushing their basic talent for kicking and traditional martial art forms and displays. As Kelly put it: "my personal opinion on David and Kim is that they both had such a natural talent for kicking that it was normal for them to just push themselves. West Coast deserves credit for giving those guys a good foundation in basics. But I think those two just had so much raw talent that they could push the limits of physical movement and that is how modern tricking started developing. Those two guys are innovators in my eyes. I remember a few times training with Kim, he would just constantly brainstorm ideas. He would say, "Oh, let's try this." Or, "What if we tried doing this kick followed by this move followed by this trick followed by this?" And on and on. Kim is just like that. He's always trying to push limits and do new things. So, I'm sure that is how they got so good, and I'm pretty sure they influenced everyone else on the team, as well as influencing many people on the tournament circuit." and: "Jimmy Pham might have trained with the West Coast guys, too. Probably not a lot, but I'm sure there was a lot of influence going on there between Jimmy and Next Gen. Even Jon Valera came by and visited during one of our practices once. And Jon Valera would show up to watch at West Coast tournaments, too. Lots of cross-pollination going on I'm sure." So you can see what an influence these guys had on each other, and how the sport was born from these early sessions and these early tournament and display circuits: Between the West Coast guys as individuals, the Demo Team and the early greats of form competition (Carmichael Simon, Jon Valera, Anthony Atkins, Mike Chat, Kim-Do, Jimmy Pham etc, etc), the concept of tricking as a distinct new sport gradually developed. There is another slightly more indirect reason for the West Coast Action team's importance too. In 1998 Billy Bilang made a fansite for the demo team which by 2000 had grown into bilang.com: The first (and only) central website for all things tricking. Every other early site linked to it (Jubai's Martial Art Zone, Logan's site, Yellwboy's site, Chimp's site, Trickbusters and so on, if anyone remembers any of this), and more importantly it had the first widely used tricking forum. After several years (I believe in 2003) Trickstutorials version 1 appeared and gradually took over, but Bilang.com remains the main reason and basis for the entire existence of a central community for this sport (not to mention being a main reason tricking evolved beyond martial arts competition in the first place), and it's all thanks to the West Coast Action Team.