Rumours
To clear up some of these rumours, I’ll just elaborate a bit for those who are interested in how these things might have gotten started.
Bank robbery:
I’ve been acquainted with a number of Faces, and once while I was having a piss in the toilet of the Nelson pub in the Angel one of these guys came up to me and asked me if I’d like to hold the gun. I laughed and declined, and he said, ‘Maybe next time.’ That’s as close as I’ve come to robbing a bank.
Prison:
When I closed the club and moved to Horsham, I didn’t make a big point of where I was going or what I was doing. I ran into somebody on my way to Foyles bookshop in London who was surprised to see me because he’d heard I was inside. Actually I was training horses in Sussex.
Throwing people out the window:
The story about throwing somebody out the window could have come from the time at Earlham Street when I kicked Colin Spanton during kumite. He flew backward and the window broke and fell out and he nearly went out after it; I just managed to grab hold of him. It also could have come from the time (and this is in my autobiography) that some Brazilian champion challenged me, and I said that if I got hold of him I’d throw him out the window, which I’d opened for that purpose. It never came to that, because he left without fighting.
Porno movies:
This one could have come through the fact that I took John Lucy for lessons, and he owned strip clubs and peep shows. Or it could have come from some twinkie in the showers who noticed I had more than he had and got jealous.
Beating students:
As far as Tom O’Shaughnessy’s leg is concerned, let’s not forget he challenged me. He’d even set the camera up, presumably to record himself beating me. The guy was a nutter. On the film even when he was on the ground, he was still trying to crawl after me and get me! That’s why to Tom and me, us psychos, looking at it later it was hilarious. And Tom’s been a good friend and blood brother ever since—in fact, he’s the best friend I’ve got.
With regard to me beating students, it was quite the contrary. I protected my students. Earlham Street was right off Cambridge Circus at the centre of London, and it was an open club. Anybody could walk in and train, and anybody did. If a visitor started to take advantage of novices in the club, I’d step in and sort the fucker out; but a guy like that wasn’t a student, he was a fucking visitor trying to take advantage of guys weaker than himself.
And in reply to those who've asked the question, 'Who has Steve Morris ever fought?' that’s why half the time I don’t even know what guys I fought. Because there were so many of them and I didn’t even know their names. They’d just walk in the door and it would kick off. And it wasn’t like you’re a bouncer on a door and you’re dealing with a drunk. I was dealing with guys who could fight and who wanted to prove it against me, and this was happening if not every day then at least once or twice a week for years. That’s a lot of fights by anybody's standards.
‘Mad Morris’:
This one probably comes from Terry O’Neill, who used to affectionately (if that’s the word) call me ‘Mad Morris.’ Probably it’s something that he picked up from Gary Spiers, who’d seen me in action when I’d take on anybody and everybody just for the hell of it. That doesn’t make me insane, it just means I love to fight. I'm intense. I wouldn’t train eight hours a day six days a week on my own volition if I wasn’t. In Japan when I was there one training session a day would wipe out most Westerners—and it did. I did four of those fuckers a day, every day, all year.
By the way, for those who question how I could have got a shodan in three months: apart from the fact that I was already an experienced fighter and elite athlete, I brought all my usual intensity to my training. Simple mathematics will tell you that if I’m doing 48 hours a week of training, my three months is worth more than a year of most guys’ training schedules. Now you add that up over the five years I did Goju-ryu, and that’s why I got a 5 th Dan Renshi. Not to mention that Yamaguchi didn’t really have a choice. The other 5 th Dans just weren’t my equivalent, with the exception of Takahashi.
I’ve also read that I’m not qualified to criticize karate because I only spent a few years actually practicing it. See above. Also see these remarks by Gavin Mulholland, a respected figure in karate these days who spent some time training with me in Horsham.
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Somebody on a forum said there must have been termites in the board I broke during the Saifa demonstration at Yamaguchi’s Nipori dojo. Yeah? Afterwards, all the Japanese were trying to do it and hurting their feet, then shaking their heads in amazement because I’d cracked two fucking floorboards and I weighed about 10 stone at the time. Somebody even said I’d damaged the cross-beam.
Now, people reading this seem to think it couldn’t possibly be true. But if some Olympic javelin thrower can throw the thing 300 feet and you can only throw it 50, does that make the Olympic guy a liar? Or insane? I’m just good at what I do. And unfortunately, a lot of other martial artists aren’t. So if you measure me against their ineptitude, they don’t look too good. Calling me ‘mad’ is the way they explain away their own inadequacies.
There’s a reality-based self-defense guru who questions my sanity based on the intensity of my training schedule as well as the wisdom of my continuing to train at my age--early 60s. Nobody questions an Olympic athlete if he sticks in eight hours a day; nobody calls that crazy. And I still train intense because I’m not preparing to fight a guy in a Zimmer frame, but somebody who is capable, given half the chance, of kicking the shit out of me, whether in the street or in the gym. Somebody who I'm not going to be able to drop with some smart-ass self-defence move. I train for the worst possible fight scenario/situations with a natural born killer type in mind as my potential opponent. I hope for the best, but I train for the worst. I don't train for the best (i.e., fighting some legless drunk or some guy in a Zimmer frame at the over-60s night) and hope the worst never happens (i.e., having to fight an experienced and well-conditioned fighter).
