Because Martial Arts are, in many countries and cultures, still a niche sport, there isn’t as much awareness surrounding them as there is around, say, football.
If a football coach is a hack who can’t kick a ball to save his life, you’d know straight away. You’d know he’s a con artist and you’d stay away.
But with Martial Arts, there just isn’t as much solid know-how and exposure going around for a layperson to take one look at a self-professed ‘black belt’ and figure out if he’s the real deal.
And over the years, a number of people have tried to exploit this ignorance to try and make a quick buck or two. Inevitably however, if they stick around for too long or buy into their own hype, chances are that they do catch the eye of a legitimate martial artist. And if there’s one thing a true blue martial artist doesn’t like, it’s for the fake ones to tarnish their beloved discipline by propagating fake knowledge.
And then, this happens.
‘No Touch KO’ debunked
This is almost as ridiculous as the previous entry into the list, and is propagated by one of the better known Martial Arts fakes in the US, George Dillman.
Somehow George Dillman got into a photo op with Muhammad Ali and that was pretty much his claim to legitimacy throughout his career. But things would take a truly bizarre turn when Dillman professed that he had mastered the art of the to No Touch KO, meaning that he was able to knock his opponents out cold without even touching them.
Well, this is what happened when a group of scientists went to interview him to try his methods on for size.