The Art of Bullshido: George Dillman

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After covering Ashida Kim a while back, I figured it’s time again to revisit the art of Bullshido, this time a world-renowned martial arts master George Dillman. For those who don’t know, the term Bullshido refers to so-called martial artists who fabricate and make stuff up and preach useless, fake techniques that wouldn’t work outside their own little worlds. As mentioned in my Ashida Kim post, one of the reasons traditional martial arts take such a ribbing nowadays is because of Bullshido masters. Throwing out Chi waves and rendering people unconscious with just a touch is the sort of stuff they teach and insist it works. But outside their dojo’s filled with cult-like students who literally believe so much in their masters, they do physically feel the effects, it’s a very different world.
Let’s face it, we would all love to see a Donnie Yen or Jet Li type person walk into some trouble and take everyone out with spinning kicks, and defense techniques so perfect it’s like they have a sixth sense for incoming attacks, just like the movies. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

 

George Dillman

George Dillman started out as a legit martial artist. Taking up Karate in 1961 and winning numerous Karate tournaments, not full contact mind, mainly points fighting, Kata and board breaking competitions. So, in terms of martial arts he is by no means a fraud, many legendary competitive martial artists started out in points fighting such as Chuck Norris, Bill Wallace, and Joe Lewis. George Dillman started rising to fame when he started training with Muhammed Ali. George liked to think he was training Ali.

After his tournament days were done, in 1983, George Dillman met with a Ryukyu Kempo master at a seminar and was enthralled with the pressure point fighting. He trained with the master a mere month before heading home and inventing his own pressure point system and writing numerous books/articles about it. All without any endorsement from Ryukyu Kempo organisation of course. Black belt magazine was drawn to him like moths to a flame and featured him numerous times even naming him in their hall of fame. But don’t forget this was the 80’s. The era of the Ninja was in full swing and martial arts was still full of mysticism and deadly forbidden techniques. It really wasn’t hard to get a lot of people to swallow a load of crap back then.

Pressure point fighting is a form of Dim Mak (Touch of Death) although it doesn’t result in death, the premise being you are sent to the floor reeling in pain or rendered unconscious by simply hitting a certain spot on your body. Once again, it’s all down to Chi and disrupting your flow of Chi to cause pain or immobilise you. Even if it did work, trying to hit someone’s special Chi spot while they are trying to take your head off is probably not the best form of defense or even offense.
Within a few years, Dillman had a whole franchise of books and schools for his pressure point system. Dillman often demonstrates his techniques to a live audience at seminars. He will simply tap a completely compliant student on the cheek and render him completely unconscious. The people he performs on are long-time students of his. Even if the technique was real, what would be the use in doing it on a completely compliant student that just stands there? If he could perform it in a sparring match now that would be something. An 80 lb woman could knock you out if you just stand there and let her hit you with her best shot. Eventually, he moved onto no touch knockouts where he waves his hand at one of his brainwashed students who are then rendered unconscious.

Skeptic and grappling coach to old school UFC champ Dan Severn, Mark Tripp paid Dillman $2000 to come down and show off his technique. So, what did Dillman do? Sensing his bullshit might be discovered Dillman simply sucker punched Tripp out of the blue knocking him to the floor. This was in-between the pair doing demonstrations and helping students. Dillman just cold coked him out of nowhere. Tripp said he wasn’t knocked out and tried to get up to hand Dillman’s arse to him but was held back but Dillman’s students. A Photo later released showing the incident proclaimed the students were trying to revive him after Dillman had performed a pressure point knockout.

Eventually Dillmans crap started to show through. Dillman got too big for his boots and made the classic mistake of believing his own bullshit. He was featured on a documentary on National Geographic’s “Is It Real” I don’t know what he was expecting but this show provides experts to prove or disprove unbelievable stuff, this time the no-touch knock out. Maybe Dillman thought they would be happy just watching one of his students collapse unconscious again but the show wanted the move performed on one of their skeptics.

Dillman himself didn’t perform the technique but one of his highly regarded masters. Obviously, the technique failed. The guy felt nothing. Upon speaking to Dillman about why it didn’t work he could have simply said it doesn’t work on everybody but he started fishing about for excuses such as calling him a total non- believer……. OK, so Mr mugger on the street has got to believe your no-touch technique is going to work for you to defend yourself. He also offered other excuses such as his tongue could be in the wrong place and his toe could have been up. That’s right, one big toe up and one big toe down eliminates his technique.

After all this, Dillman became a laughing stock to the majority of martial artists and no one took him seriously anymore. He still owns many schools and Black belt magazine gives him a shout out every now and then but he’s lost a lot of his mojo which he never should have had in the first place. The no-touch knock out will always be complete rubbish as we are not Marvel comic characters and if Chi does exist, you certainly can’t project it out like a weapon. An episode of Stan Lee’s Superhumans also featured a no touch knock master and once again it didn’t work on the show’s presenter. But this time the master simply said it doesn’t work on everyone which is what Dillman should have said.

There are painful nerve attacks about, I know some myself but as my teacher said, theres like 1-5% of situations you can use them and they would work. There’s a guy in my class that none of these nerves attacked work on as he’s too thickset.

In conclusion, if you want to learn how to fight and defend yourself then, unfortunately, it requires a lot of training in a fighting art such as Kickboxing, Muay Thai or Sanda and lots and lots of sparring which means getting beat up a lot but it’s the absolute best way. I have also linked videos below of various Bullshido no touch masters including Dillman and his excuses for your amusement.