9 MARTIAL ARTS ICONS on the BEST AND WORST ADVICE
Is there such a thing as luck, or do we just make good decisions and bad decisions that eventually determine our success — or our failure? The life-changing choices we make sometimes seem like they hinge on the flip of a coin, the roll of the dice … or a piece of well-intentioned advice that goes south.
In this vein, Black Belt contacted nine of the most successful martial artists in the world to pose two questions: What is the best advice you ever received as a martial artist? What is the worst advice? In addition to revealing tidbits from their own journeys to the top, their answers provide guidance for all martial artists.
DENNIS BROWN
The editors of Black Belt called Dennis Brown one of the 25 most influential martial artists of the 20th century. The road to that rank began when he started learning wushu and tai chi from Chinese instructors and continued when he traveled to China in 1982 to train at Shaolin Temple, becoming the first African-American to do so. In 1998 he was the magazine’s Kung Fu Artist of the Year.
BEST ADVICE: WHEN GOD SENDS YOU A MESSAGE, LISTEN.
“I was scheduled to be on American Airlines flight 77 on 9/11,” Brown said. “I was taking 11 of my students to China for training. I woke up in the middle of the night because something told me to reschedule the flight to accommodate a weekend training session. So I took that advice and unknowingly put my fate in my own hands.
“On Friday, the airline called and said, ‘We have an earlier flight. Can you make it?’ I hustled everyone together and made the flight, not knowing that our original flight in
