Guru Dan Inosanto is well-known and widely-respected authority on Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do approach to Wing Chun and martial arts cross training, as well as in the Filipino Martial Arts and Indonesian and Malaysian Pencak Silat. So you can imagine how powerful an endorsement from him can be.
Check out the video below where Guru Inosanto talks about Kali America and its founder Guru Manuel Taningco, as well as his family Kali “Willow System.”
I first trained with Guru Inosanto in 1996, and can personally attest that he is nothing short of a martial arts legend and an amazing teacher.
For those of you who might not know, Guru Inosanto was teacher to, friend and training partner of Bruce Lee. He is the one who even introduced Bruce Lee to nunchaku. Inosanto explained that he introduced the weapon to Lee, taught him the basics and some exercises to get him started on his weapons training. The Game of Death movie, one of the most recognizable of the Bruce Lee films, showcases the use of the nunchaku by Lee and Inosanto.
It was at a seminar with Guru Inosanto in Cincinnati, later in 1998, that he explained that he was not simply a student of Bruce Lee’s (as someone at the seminar had said), but that the two were training partners, and taught each other different systems each of them had studied.
Guru Inosanto explained that he began training in martial arts at the age of 11, receiving instruction from his uncle who first taught him traditional Okinawan Karate and later also Judo and Jujutsu. He was a student of Ed Parker, from whom he received a shodan rank in American Kenpo. He is one of three people who have been appointed to teach at one of the three Jun Fan Gung Fu Institutes under Bruce Lee (Sifu Li, Jun-Fan); Taky Kimura and James Yimm Lee are the other two people. After Bruce Lee’s death, Inosanto became the principal spokesperson and historian for Jeet Kune Do.
He is featured as the Black Belt Magazine’s 1996 “Man of the Year”. Inosanto holds Instructor or black belt level ranks in several martial arts. He is also a black belt in the Machado family style of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and trained in Shoot wrestling under Yorinaga Nakamura. Currently he is the vice-president of Lameco International, carrying on the Escrima of the late Filipino martial artist Edgar Sulite.
Looking for more Kali training tips or Escrima, Kali, Arnis classes near you? If you are in the Dayton area, and looking for Martial Arts in Kettering, give us a call at 937-254-7035 to schedule a time for you to come in and start trying classes out! Also, don’t forget to add Kali America on Facebook!
Dr. Micah B.D.C. Naziri (Shifu Seng, Hern-Heng) holds multiple black sash and instructor ranks from all over the world, including China and Israel. He has been training in martial arts since 1994 and been a Taoist disciple under Manuel Taningco and Huang, Chien-Liang since 2006. He holds two masters degrees (2012, 2015) and a doctorate (2020), which was the result of nearly a decade of research and studies through his international organization the Hashlamah Project Foundation, carried out in the State of Israel and the Palestinian Territories and abroad.
Read more from author Dr. Micah Naziri at TAMA Martial Arts and follow the Taningco Academy of Martial Arts (TAMA) on Facebook and Instagram!
