Black Belt Broker East County Martial Arts Expert and Mortgage Consultant May 2006

by Eric Karwowski
Photos by Russell Byrne

I’ve read that modern people normally have multiple careers during the course of a single lifetime. I’m on my third one. I started as a martial arts practitioner and instructor, became a computer professional, and now I’m working as a Brentwood mortgage broker.

People seem most interested in my first career in martial arts. My dad had grown up in the ’40s as part of some kind of Chicago gang. As a result he had come to place high value on a man being able to defend himself from attack.

Martial Arts Beginnings
I was small for my age and one day my dad saw me getting bullied by larger boys. He didn’t want me to learn to fight the way he did, which basically consisted of learning to smack people while trying not to get smacked by them, so he enrolled me in a martial arts program.

As a result, on Saturday mornings, when I really wanted to watch Bugs Bunny, I had to put on my little gee and go to a dojo where I began to learn basic self-defense responses to someone grabbing me or taking a swing at me. This was when I was only five years old.

I studied with a Japanese instructor who held the title of Judo Champion of the World. The guy spoke hardly a word of English. I took to Judo like a duck to water and before long I was much more interested in my training than in watching any cartoons. A new world was opening up to me in which I could exercise great discipline and master my physical body and, by extension, could take control of myself and my passions.

The ability to defend myself wasn’t the main thing in my studies, but it did come in handy. As I said, I was small for my age and in first grade a bully grabbed my backpack. By that time I had been studying martial arts for a couple of years, so I just turned around and threw the punk to the ground almost without thinking about it. That was all the self-defense I ever needed in elementary school. Unless you have some kind of attitude, you never need to defend yourself in school once people know you are able to do so.

When I was seven years old my dad met the great Ernie Reyes, the man who was referred to as “One of the Greatest Martial Arts Masters of the 20th Century” on a TNT cable special. Ernie had a studio in San Jose. When he learned of my abilities, he invited me to study Tae Kwon Do in his dojo. In 1980, when I was ten years old, I became one of the founding members of the famous West Coast Demo Team. There were ten of us and we were the elite in the industry. We performed half-time shows at 49ers and Warriors games. That was in 1980.

My self-defense abilities came in handy again when I was 13. A group of thugs jumped me. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, but then I thought, “I have to take steps.” My first “step” was to throw a twisting karate punch that broke the leader’s nose, which caused the others to wisely back right down. The experience provided me with a real-world lesson on controlling adrenaline rush, ignoring surrounding circumstances, and simply focusing on using techniques I’d been practicing in order to render an assailant incapable of continuing his attack.

I was undefeated at kick boxing back in those days, but the greatest fun was in the ad hoc street fighting events we used to stage. I was Brad Pitt and this was my own Fight Club. There was never any animosity; we would just get together and start whacking on each other to demonstrate our styles and abilities. Nobody ever got hurt too badly, but I did get my teeth moved around a few times. We would do this come rain or come shine. You can’t imagine the testosterone rush when you’re out in the pouring rain with 30 other young guys wailing on each other. Guys would be boasting and saying things like, “I know Judo.” Or “I’m second generation Kung Fu.” Then we would see what he knew that we didn’t.

Ultimate Mayhem
I began teaching martial arts when I was 15, and started my own school when I was 22. My school became the first in the Bay Area to participate in the UFC (Ultimate Fight Championship). We entered a contestant in the UFC VI, “Clash of the Titans,” in 1995. Back in those days the UFC cage fights made a 15-round heavyweight boxing match, with it’s wussified “Queen’s Rules,” look like a Sunday School picnic. Two guys would pummel each other with only three rules: no biting, eye-gouging, or fish hooking. That “fish hooking” rule prohibited a contestant from dragging his opponent to the mat by his lip. You can get an ugly picture in your mind trying to imagine what must have happened to cause that rule to be written. Those bare knuckle fights were conducted with no body protection whatsoever except for an optional cup. (Most fighters take the option.) UFC had no weight class, which meant that contestants had to weigh more than 250 pounds to have any chance of surviving, let alone winning.

I had seen the original UFC and began to consider how to promote fighters and make money off them. A few years later a guy named Paul Varelans came to my school. Paul was an ex-San Jose Spartan linebacker. He stood 6’ 8" tall in his socks and weighed 360 pounds. He was from Fairbanks, Alaska and got the nickname “The Polar Bear.” I trained Paul for six months and then contacted the promoters for UFC VI. He became one of eight contenders selected from 3,000 applicants. He made the cut because I took a picture of him from a perspective near the floor looking up, which really did make him look as big as a polar bear. I told the promoter, “I guarantee Paul will make it to the semi-finals.” My prophecy turned out true because in a fight that lasted only a minute, he knocked out a fighter named Cal Worsham who was two inches taller than Paul. He made it to the semi-finals but was then TKO’d by a fighter nicknamed “The Tank,” who had defeated his previous opponent in 20 seconds.

At the after-party for press and fighters I told the promoter, “I guarantee Paul will make the finals next time.” In UFC VII, “The Brawl in Buffalo,” he defeated his first two opponents, taking a combined total of two minutes and 11 seconds to do so, and then lasted more than 13 minutes in the final match against a Brazilian champion nick named “The King of the Streets.” At one point in that brawl those guys hit the cage so hard they popped the door open, which implied an amazing application of force. I had been conservative in guaranteeing that Paul would make the finals. The guy had a fever of 102° and sure would have won everything if he had been fighting healthy.

Teaching Professionals
We really enjoyed the chaos and mayhem of the UFC, but then the government began moving in trying to make the sport more “fair” so we lost interest. I began to concentrate upon teaching normal-size human beings. My work with the UFC had garnered me a lot of attention by local people who followed the sport.

Besides the students at my dojo, I began teaching guards at Santa Rita Jail, California Highway Patrolmen, and police officers at local precincts. I taught them principles of hand-to-hand combat, especially takedown and control techniques. I also conducted training with Special Forces from Moffitt. These were members of rescue units. I taught them some of the more brutal stuff. The media covered us extensively. People would come from Japan to be trained by me.

I trained a San Jose police officer who then served a search warrant for one of the most wanted men in San Jose. The cop was a light weight and the man who he was trying to serve was a huge brute who ran right through his screen door, tackled the officer, and took him down the porch stairs. The officer used a move I taught him to roll the man over and then slapped the handcuffs on him before the other officers had time to react. It would have been a great segment for Cops! The other officers were amazed.

On a few occasions I had to use my knowledge in a real-world confrontation. I was once in a bar with some friends. Someone passing us knocked over a drink. The bouncer came up to me and said, “You’re going out of here.” I said, “I didn’t do anything,” “You’re going out of here!” he repeated. When the guy tried to grab me, I put him on the floor with a takedown technique. Suddenly a bunch of the staff in that bar tried to pile on me. I put them all down on the floor, one at a time, each in his turn. My little exercise provided a wonderful attitude adjustment for those guys, and the manager said to me, “Okay! Okay! Let’s all be cool! You can stay, if you like.” I went back to the same bar a few weeks later and the manager came to me and said, “I can’t believe how you took care of all those guys. Will you show me how to do what you did?” I spent a few minutes showing the guy a couple of the techniques I had used. Everything was cool!

Things changed after the birth of my son. I shut down the school and went to work to be better able to support my family. Now I’m passing on my love for martial arts to my two boys, ages 6 1/2 and 8. They are making good progress. I’m teaching them just as though they were in my school with Judo mats and gees. I teach them self-defense, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and competition style karate. I’m also teaching my wife, who’s getting pretty good.

Now I’m a loan officer, protecting people’s finances. I’m honest, fair, and give clients a game-plan based upon their actual needs and desires. I don’t just quote rates; I give people service. Some of my clients are attracted by my background. They think the pictures and the medals are cool. Many of them jump to the conclusion that I’m serious about everything I do. And they are right!