Masters Alliance
9th Dan BlackBelt and Olympic Gold Medalist Herb Perez visit with the best and brightest to bring clarity to the future of Martial arts.
Masters Alliance
Master Keith Kelly: Navigating Martial Arts, Mentorship, and Life's Challenges with Perseverance
What if martial arts could do more than just teach self-defense? What if it could shape character, provide mentorship, and guide young men, especially those from single-parent households, through life's toughest challenges? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Master Keith Kelly as he shares his remarkable journey from training under Grandmaster Tayari Cassell and Master Yousef Bilal to competing in prestigious tournaments and finding a calling in teaching. Keith opens up about how martial arts has been a cornerstone in his life, providing stability and direction during difficult times.
Ever wondered what it takes to transition from a career in graphic design to becoming a beloved public school teacher and martial arts instructor? Keith takes us through the highs and lows of this transformation, recounting intense martial arts competitions and significant victories, such as his notable fight against Tony Blanchard in Maryland and a triumphant moment at Madison Square Garden. Discover how these experiences fueled his passion for teaching and inspired his book "Peace Comes to Ajani," which aims to uplift and guide young students facing their own challenges.
From Taekwondo to Eskrima, Keith's journey is nothing short of inspiring. He shares the emotional and physical toll martial arts has taken on him, his research trip to Korea, and the unexpected popularity of his children's books. As Keith prepares for his final world championship, he reflects on his future aspirations, including completing his book series and engaging with local organizations post-retirement. This episode is a heartfelt exploration of a life dedicated to martial arts, teaching, and inspiring the next generation. Don't miss this chance to hear from a true master whose story is as compelling as it is motivational.
Welcome to the Masters Alliance podcast Uncut. I am Herb Perez. Today I have a very special guest from my past. We came up together in martial arts, we trained at the same school, we fought with the same people and we pursued our dreams at the same time. He's an accomplished graphic artist. He took that passion and moved into teaching but not teaching martial arts, only teaching English to inner city children and high schoolers. Today he's going to share his thoughts on his journey but, more importantly, a series of books that he wrote as a result of those experiences. Join me as I sit with my good friend, master Keith Kelly Strap in. As always, this is going to be a great podcast. Welcome to the Masters Alliance Podcast Uncut and I'm Herb Perez. Today we are joined by a good friend of mine, one of my seniors and someone that I trained with throughout the years. He's also the winner of the All-American Taekwondo Championships in Madison Square Garden, along with great notables like Chuck Norris, michael Warren, mark Williams, just to name a few, gerald Robbins. His school and our school had won it, I think, more than anyone else, and I am proud of him that he had won that as well. But that's not what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1:Master Kelly has a long history, not only in Taekwondo but in other martial arts and as an educator, and he's written a book. So today I would like you to welcome Master Keith Kelly. My pleasure. I'm glad that we had this opportunity to spend time. It's been a lot of years. I want to start today with your opportunity to spend time. It's been a lot of years. I want to start today with your early life and some of your martial art journey. You were born and you'd be surprised how many people that started martial arts when we started it were born in military families and on military bases. You were born on an Air Force base. Does this have any impact on your childhood or interest in the martial arts?
Speaker 2:Actually it didn't. It's just a great story to tell. Once I was born in the Air Force Base, my dad actually left the Air Force and came back, but the coincidence of that is that since my father was based in Korea for a number of years, he would come home and yell at me in Korean a lot. So it was ironic that I started Taekwondo, you know.
Speaker 1:That's a great. That is a great story. Can you tell us a little bit more about your early training with Grandmaster? I'm going to say this improperly properly most likely Tayari Cassell.
Speaker 2:Tayari Cassell had a Kung Fu program in my high school. He had a dojang or a koon, I guess you'd call it, in downtown Plainfield but I couldn't afford to go there at the time. But he had a high school program there my junior year and I would go to his classes twice a week and get instruction from him and it was a good time.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, you then moved on to taekwondo specifically, and what was it like? Training under Master Yousef Balal?
Speaker 2:So I switched over to taekwondo because Tiare had moved away by the time. I had enough money to pay for classes so I'd heard about the South Stegos Street Youth Center. It was a tough, tough, tough martial arts school in Plainfield where I lived. So I had a number of my friends who had trained there, so finally they convinced me to come along and it was a tough school. The funny thing is that during that time in my life my father had turned on me and made things difficult. So I looked at Master Bilal as my father and this probably would save me for a lot of bad situations as I got older.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of us, and you'd be surprised at how many people I've spoken with, and including a good friend of mine and one of my seniors, master Joe Corley, and he talks about the impact that martial arts has on young men, especially when they come from either single parent households or when they have an issue with their dad, and how the instructors end up being role models. But I want to move on to your competitive career, which is equally as impressive, and I was around when you were competing. Can you share some highlights or memorable moments from those years?
Speaker 2:We had a lot of wars back then, as you well know, fighting all over Jersey, new York, maryland, sometimes Canada. One memorable competition when I fought Tony Blanchard in the finals, kieran Kim's in Maryland, I think it was 84. It was 90 degrees outside. It was really hot, but I was in really good condition because I've been training for the Olympics. But it was his hometown, so we were in sudden death for 30 minutes and I felt fine, but they wouldn't give me the win, obviously because he was a hometown favorite. So we fought for 30 minutes in sudden death and then they said okay, you guys will fight for two more minutes, then we'll decide the winner. At that point I knew exactly what was going to happen. So I said you know what? I'm just going to beat him up. So I just hit every part of his body as hard as I could for the next two minutes and they gave him the win anyway. But it was fine.
Speaker 1:I thought there was going to be a different end to that story, but that still was a great story because I fought Tony Blanchard in Madison Square Garden and I fought him a number of times and he was a great competitor, also an All-American, and I think he he must have fought all of us, he must have fought you, kevin padilla, mark williams, obviously, me and and anyone else that came through our program, because he fought everywhere, just like we all did. And, uh, he was out of ohio, if I remember correctly, from ij kim's. So just a great, great, great instructor and great, great master instructor and a great martial. So just a great, great, great instructor and great, great master instructor and a great martial artist and a great fighter.
Speaker 1:But you undersell yourself a little bit because I remember traveling with you and I remember the All-American, henry Cho's and that tournament. You know we just mentioned before. There's some great notables, including the first one ever to win it, the amazing Grandmaster Chuck Norris, and you can only imagine his career. What was it like for you to win the All-American and join that illustrious group of great competitors? You know guys that we all look up to.
Speaker 2:It was really fantastic. I fought Billy Patron for the final match in 95. And I beat Billy and it was just an enormous great feeling. I've been in the Garden so many times, we've all been to the Felt Forum so many times fighting in that amazing ring and it was just like finally I've done this, I won this thing. It was great.
Speaker 1:One of the things about the All-American which some of our listeners may not know is the all-american wasn't just a taekwondo tournament.
Speaker 1:It was a karate kung fu, anything you know wushu, mushu, anything that you could do. So when you fight in the garden especially when you're younger a yellow or a green belt you actually fight outside, in the stairways. So you fight on the things that circle the stairways, and the homeless people, and the people just walking by would watch us fighting in what would be the glass windows, and then, as you got higher and longer into it, you'd actually have the ability to fight inside, so you would fight inside the arena and closer to the main stage, and then, finally, if you won your division, of which there were four, those four black belts then fought each other for the grand championship, and that winning, and especially, billy patrone was another great competitor and tried to make it to the olympic games, and actually and I always had a lot of respect for Billy, and I think he's still teaching in Connecticut what inspired you, though, to transition from your graphic design career, which I remember, to education?
Speaker 2:The business was still cutthroat. You'd work your way up to be an art director or something of that ilk, and the company would fold or the partners would leave and split and just make a mess of everything. And then you go to the next business and things weren't much better. And so my career was up and down, up and down, up and down for 12 years. I'm like I can't do this anymore. I've got to do something that's more stable. What else can I do?
Speaker 2:I remember my last semester of college. I ran out of money so I had to do every job I possibly could in order to be able to pay the rest of my tuition. So I was a substitute teacher from 730 in the morning to three o'clock, from 330 to 630, I an after-school YMCA counselor, and from 7 to 9, I was the assistant instructor in the type 1 school. So from 7 in the morning to 9 at night, I was with kids. So I began thinking well, maybe this is the career I should take. No, no, no, I'm an artist, I'm a graphic designer, this is what it's born to be. And then, after 12 years, I said you know what it and the B? And then, after 12 years, I said you know what.
Speaker 1:It's time to go where I really should be. There's a journey that happens when you choose your vocation and your avocation, and certainly for you, it sounds like your first avocation and vocation was graphic design, but then you realized your true passion for teaching and when you're a teacher, it's not easy, but it is less hard, to make a transition, to continue to teach and then realize that, even though your first teaching job sounded a little bit challenging. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience and how it led you to come to write? Peace Comes to Ajani.
Speaker 2:Well, teaching isn't a job, it's a calling. Either you are or you aren't. I actually had a substitute teacher position that put me in a better standing as far as being able to make my first official job as a teacher at PS41. It was a very economically and emotionally devastated neighborhood. It was a school that was just left there. If you're a bad kid in the city, that's where they sent you. If you're a teacher who screwed up in a neighborhood, that's where they sent you.
Speaker 2:So, for a lot of no, it was just a dark place to be. These kids they didn't have a chance, a lot of them. Their home lives were so messed up, and just messed up a bad thing. What I realized, though, is like everybody knows what a bully is, but they don't realize how someone becomes a bully. They're not just born like that. Their environment creates them, and that's why I wrote Peace Comes to a Johnny, because I wanted to write about a kid who had become emotionally disturbed because of circumstances in his life, became a bully and then met another kid who, kind of like, ended up taking him under his wing and his family, like changed his life, and now it's through Taekwondo.
Speaker 1:And I remember and correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't you actually travel to Korea as part of your research or part of a coming home to get material or ideas or inspiration for the book?
Speaker 2:This past summer but I've written actually five books in the series. Each year the boys get older, a year older. So the final book they're seniors, in high school and one of the main characters has to go to Korea, has to go to Busan to settle some business for his master. So this summer I went to Busan in order to do that research, to check out certain places and try to figure things out. But you really can't write about something that you don't know and where you haven't been.
Speaker 1:Well, your children's books have found a surprising audience in Korea. What's it like being a media sensation there?
Speaker 2:That was kind of crazy. Everything is timing. At the time In the second book I touch on the idea of comfort women, the comfort women in Korea, and at the time Korea was fighting with Japan but Japan still refused to admit this ever happened. So my book was very timely. At that point I was on the cover of three Korean newspapers. I was on two Korean news stations that featured me but, like I said, they had their agenda but it was still very interesting. It was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, in addition to being a very accomplished and successful competitor in taekwondo, I know you are a passionate student and, I believe, now teacher in Eskrima. Can you tell us a little bit about your interest in Eskrima and what? Was it a natural progression from Taekwondo or was it a completely different world?
Speaker 2:Well, it was a completely different world. But after I retired from competition, I was teaching, but I still wanted to study more. I wanted to study different martial arts and wanted to learn a weapon. So I I heard about rural don fiesta who was uh, teaching downtown jc at one point, uh, during the screamer, so I decided to search him out. So I finally did and, uh, this is like 2005. I started training with him and the screamer is completely different than Taekwondo. We spar with a single stick, double stick. It's a lot of flowing, a lot of moving. The competition is based on boxing. The idea of boxing it's three one-minute rounds, a 10-point must-score system. Someone's got to get 10, someone's got to get 9. Or a disarm would be a 10-8, like a knockdown. But it's completely, completely different as far as the movement and things like that. But you know, fighting is fighting.
Speaker 1:So you just change your strategies in one sport and just put it towards another. Well, you've had a lot of success in these competitions. What are the biggest differences, though, in competing in taekwondo and a?
Speaker 2:scrimmage Well, a scrimmage. We have more targets to hit. Plus, I have either a single stick competition, which is a 28 inch baton stick, or a double stick competition. I can hit the top of the head, I can hit the arms, I can hit the body, I can encourage the stick so it catches you almost in the kidneys. I can hit you in the hands, so there's more target areas. But still, just like Taekwondo, you have to block, you have to move, you have to strategize, you have to make clear shots.
Speaker 1:So I think, when I read your bio, that you've decided to make this upcoming world championships your last competition, and if so, why?
Speaker 2:Um, just like Taekwondo. I competed for a long time. Then I was done. You know what I'm saying. So even with the screamer I was. I've um, competed with that since really 2006. More more of a local on local or locally. I've competed with that since really 2006,. More locally. But I've competed enough internationally. I've fought in Budapest, I've fought in the Philippines, I've fought in California and Wisconsin, all different places. But it's about time to stop. No done Taekwondo has taken its toll on my body itself. From all my years of fighting, I actually have four. My four bottom discs have completely collapsed. It doesn't affect my eskimo, but it definitely affects my taekwondo. So even with the eskimo there, you know, there's some aches and pains here and there.
Speaker 1:But it's time to stop competing on that level and just continue training and teaching well, what are your plans for the future, both in martial arts and perhaps other areas of your life? What? What is your new passion going to be? What are you going to redirect your energies towards?
Speaker 2:that's a really good question, because I had one more school year before I decided to retire and I have to figure things out from there. I had to finish that sixth book and the sixth book might be so long it might actually become two books. So I'm figuring out things that way. I have enough connections with my school where I might do things with different organizations in town that some of my clubs are connected to. I might become more of a teacher at the Escrima School. I'm still trying to figure out my way.
Speaker 1:Well, you seem to balance teaching, writing and martial arts for decades. How have these different aspects of your life influenced each other?
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I see in my later books that a lot of my teaching experiences and a lot of the children I've dealt with have ended up being partial characters in the books I've written, because they've affected me that way and I've affected them in that way. Martial arts, of course, is just a great, great thing, a great way to live. I've been teaching after school Taekwondo programs since 1989. So I've reached a lot of children and a lot of my children are now adults. One of my boys, he's 38 years old. He started with me in my first taekwondo class when he was like seven and now he brings me his son. So I mean everything just ties together, especially when you live in a city like Jersey City. It's a big city but a small town. Everything eventually just comes back around.
Speaker 1:Wow, listen, what advice would you give to young people who are interested in martial arts or creative pursuits like writing?
Speaker 2:As far as martial arts is concerned, I think it's important that they understand that this is a life thing. It's not just kicking and punching and living. This is a life thing. It's not just kicking, punching, living. It's about finding out who you are as a person, about growing up and becoming strong through the martial arts that you can do whatever you want in life. That's an important thing. As far as being creative and writing, I wish more kids were right. As a high school English teacher just trying to get them to really be concerned about their education, it's a difficult enough task, but when I find kids who want to write, I encourage it. I try to get them into programs. I try to get them to make it their passion as well.
Speaker 1:Well, you've picked in my opinion, you've picked one of the most difficult groups of people to teach, and now those are high schoolers, because at that point, children have either expanded themselves to see the world of possibility or they've restricted and constricted their views to see that they are predestined or not able to see themselves out of the situation they're in.
Speaker 1:And I've lived back East and, as you know, live close to where all the places are that you teach and work, and I think that you probably bring hope to these children and these young adults and get them to see a better tomorrow. I think, Master Kelly, what I'd like you to think about and maybe just answer is when you do this and you said that teaching is a calling, and it seems that you've been a teacher of taekwondo, eskrima and certainly creative things what is the one that brings you the most joy? What is the one that you feel the most fulfilled by most joy? What is the one that you feel the most fulfilled by and, if there is any way to describe that, what would you like to be remembered for as you exit the world of teaching in public school?
Speaker 2:I think I'm most proud of probably is just being a public school teacher for the last 25, 26 years in Jersey City and all the kids I've reached out to, all the kids I see, all the kids who I see now that are adults combined, say hey, thank you. And I don't even know what to thank them for. I know, bring up a situation, remember you did this and that and did that. I may not really remember it because you don't do it for that. You do it because it's what's necessary to be done at that time it for that.
Speaker 1:You do it because it's what's necessary to be done at that time. Well, you mentioned, you know, that you had trained um in olympic style taekwondo and I can remember those times, and then you certainly competed at the highest levels of what other sports that we did? And and point what we would call, point taekwondo, which really, quite frankly, wasn't much different who was, in your estimation, of all those worlds that you've it's taekwondo worlds, not the eskimo worlds who was the toughest competitor that you had to face?
Speaker 2:Mark Williams goes to pay in the butt. I guess some of the Kiwan Kim guys. They're tough fighters but no one else really stands out that I can think of. We handled it pretty much everybody. I like fighting Tony. I fought Tony three times first time. First time they gave it to him. Next two times he didn't make out so well. But I really can't think of anyone else. I scream with my terrible luck, my first world championship. I drew the world champion first round, so that wasn't so good I can't really think of anybody else.
Speaker 1:That's okay. Listen, I want to ask you one last question, um and uh, actually two last questions. Is there anything else you'd like our listeners to know about you, or your journey, or your passions?
Speaker 2:um, never stop dreaming, never stop moving forward, never stop trying to find, you know, the next thing that you're going to do. That's how people grow old and die. You just continue moving forward. Uh, I plan on going back and drawing again and then probably writing another series of books on different levels, but just keep moving forward well, I'd like to ask you one more question and it's kind of a favor.
Speaker 1:So when you finish your next book, I'd like to have you back on so you could discuss that book with us, and I don't want you to ruin the surprise.
Speaker 1:But please send me a link for your book so that I can get them up on the podcast.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to have another series of podcasts for young people which I think you would be perfect for, because we want to bring them an understanding about what's possible in life and different careers and pursuits. And I think yours is an amazing story of someone who started in an artistic career and then decided to take his passion for teaching actually derivative of other things and use it to help educate people in another creative career, and then you've manifested that in yourself through your own creative writing career. So I'm going to ask you to come back and be part of that panel when we start talking to these young people about the world of possibility. You are certainly a martial artist who has taken a passion for self-defense or just the art in general and then decided to use the skills you used and learned in that to find a way and a pathway to make a career and then things that have been life-changing. But on behalf of the Masters Alliance podcast, I want to thank you for spending time with us today, sir.
Speaker 2:I thank you, sir, for having me. I would be honored to come back to be on that panel, sir.
Speaker 1:Well, that was an amazing time for me and just I learned even more about my friend that I didn't know and about his passion for teaching, about sharing his knowledge, and then the reasons he chose that path, and what you'll find is that in most, just like Master Kelly, we choose a path based on our avocation and our love of what we do, and then we find a way to continue that and it may expand into other areas like teaching and he's teaching and publishing books that help children in the inner city, help children in life, just like we were helped by our instructor. Again, I am Herb Perez. This has been a Master Alliance podcast on CUT, and please check out our other podcasts with Olympic champions, olympic influencers but, more importantly, the most experienced and passionate people in the martial arts.