Combat Kempo

Combat Kempo Australia was created in 1994 under the direction of Steve McHugh the late Sensei Tom Slaven’s first graded black belt and chief instructor of his Sydney, Sussex St, Kempo Karate Do training center.

The Combat Kempo style is now represented by its chief instructor Aaron DeSousa. The original intention of forming our system was to focus on the combat practical and effective training tactics that were originally taught and trained in the late sixties and early seventies in Sensei Tom Slaven’s clubs. The training and techniques of the day were more suitable for street fighting and self-preservation in the rougher areas of the urban jungle than dojo or competition style Karate fighting. With most of the sparring being full contact amongst the graded practitioners, teeth and noses were saved from destruction using ad hoc modified protective equipment, mostly from hockey and cannibalized boxing gear simply because nothing else was available.

Nowadays, with all of our combat techniques under constant review, a large part of the focus of our training is to make sure the fighting tactics are up-to-date as well as keeping the system streamlined to ensure that the most useful and street effective moves are congruent in practice with how they should be used in reality.

Combat Kempo also acknowledges that times will constantly change with new fighting trends regularly emerging.

MMA, BJJ and other forms of Martial Arts are becoming widely practiced and the possibility of encountered these styles of combat during street fighting confrontation cannot be dismissed as beyond the bounds of possibility.

The policy of Combat Kempo is to embrace change and to be familiar with other styles of combat through cross-training. This is something that was not as easily accomplished thirty years ago as instructors were generally much less likely to form friendships or training alliances with other styles that were for the most part viewed as their rivals or even their enemies.

Visiting indigenous arts in their homeland has taken our instructors and students to Thailand, China, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines amongst other places and has given us the opportunity to understand the various cultures behind the art, make new friends, test our skills and to learn more about weapons and other combat systems right from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

In early 2001 we were introduced to Tom Sotis and his AMOK! Brotherhood of Knife Fighters. We quickly ascertained that there were many edged weapon defensive applications that we needed to take on board as well as training the knife fighting combat skills that are an intrinsic part of Tom’s system. In the culture of Australian society, the need for a method of Knife Attack Survival has not previously been high on anyone’s martial arts agenda with probably the exception of those practicing the Filipino Arts that are weapon based, because the incident of knife combat on the streets were extremely low if not unheard of. As the result of a veritable avalanche of violent street confrontations involving edged weapons it seemed a no brainers to introduce a tactical knife fighting system into our training, just to counter the growing trends for knives to be used in what previously used to be weaponless street confrontations.

We are also grateful to Ray Floro and his Floro Fighting System for being a friend of Combat Kempo and for sharing his perspective on knife fighting and knife survival tactics with us.

The tactical weapons information combined with the street savvy fighting techniques and mindset that are an intrinsic element of the Tom Slaven legacy is a very powerful recipe for keeping our martial art relevant by staying on top of the requirements to survive on the streets of our modern cities.