Martial arts are about honor, which makes lying about one’s education, prowess, or accomplishments an unforgivable sin. Real martial artists detest this kind of behavior, and actively condemn it. So what motivates anyone to attempt it? Especially in our Google-able times?
With this in mind, we took a look back at some of the most famous embellishers, frauds, and nutjobs in martial arts history. It didn’t give us many answers, but it at least offered us plenty of stories of no-touch knockouts, mail order black belts, fake Russian boxing matches, and melting babies.
There’s really no easy way to sum up the polarizing exploits of Sin Kwang The’, a Shaolin Grandmaster (?) who has been teaching a highly contested martial art called Shaolin Do in Kentucky since the late-‘60s. He claims to have mastered over 900 forms from over 100 fighting systems and that his martial art has a direct lineage to the Fukien Temple. He has an estranged brother, Hiang The, who is also a Grandmaster and tells a very different story about their history. Some say that his master melted a baby during some sandburn training gone awry.
Sin The’ still has staunch defenders to this day, but the case against him is hard to ignore. According to these posts on Bullshido, The’ has fudged his credentials, his martial art’s lineage, and the number of forms he has mastered. And that melting baby story is just a rumor he heard that he started telling his students because, well, why wouldn’t you pass on shit about a melting baby when you’ve essentially invented a martial art out of various other arts’ techniques?
