Mokuren Dojo Martial Artist Hall of Fame

About a week ago I asked my readers as well as members of Budoseek, E-Budo, and the Convocation Forum for their opinions on the greatest martial artist they'd ever personally met. I intended it as an informal deal, so there was not much effort to specify rules or conditions or eliminate the inevitable bias. As could be expected, a couple of my students said that I was the greatest martial artist ever (At least I've got them trained to get that right). But seriously - I don't really think that I'm all that - certainly not on par with geniuses like Karl Geis or amazing athletes like Randy Couture, but to avoid getting into an endless process of censoring folks' opinions, I left my name in there.

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And when you look at this list I think you'll see that this is part of the charm of it. It is not rife with the same dozen names you hear constantly in conjunction with the martial arts. There are some relatively unknown names here right alongside the names of living legends. I think there's probably a lesson in that. Done this way, there are sure to be names on the list that any given reader has never heard of and who it would be good to do a little research on. I've done simple Google and Wikipedia searches on most of the names that I didn't know and have gotten a few good lessons out of it.

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So, without further ado, I present to you The Mokuren Dojo Martial Artist Hall of Fame.

• Aleksander Karelin
• Bill Pogue
• Billy Hong
• Bryce Lumpkin
• Chip Wright
• Chuck Norris
• Dan Anderson
• Dave Camarillo
• Desmond Jackson
• Don Angier
• John Usher
• Ed Johnson
• Ed Saenz
• Henry Copeland
• Jhoon Rhee
• Jim Thompson
• John Waldrop
• Bruce Gunderson
• Todd Keane
• Karl Geis
• Kuda Shinshi
• Larry Lunn
• Leon Jay
• Masayuki Shimabukuro
• Mike Belote
• Mike DePasquale, Jr.
• Mike Martello
• Mike Miles
• Patrick Parker
• Raffy Pambuan
• Randy Couture
• Takahiko Ishikawa
• Tri Thong Dang
• Vincent Fernando
• William Hayes
• Zenpo Shimabukuro