Martial Arts

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

Mike Low, a mixed martial arts matchmaker, remembers when he had trouble finding enough talent for his local fight cards. Not anymore. "Four years ago, I'd have to look for fighters, gym to gym. Now I get 50 emails a day from people pitching their fighters from here. And they're usually pretty good fighters," he said. The Ultimate Fighting Championship has taken hold across the country and the sport's boom has spawned about a dozen second-tier MMA pro circuits in Southern California.

As a "lifelong practitioner of the martial arts," Steven Seagal says he is trained to remain calm in the face of adversity and danger. "When the world is speeding by for others, I see things for what they are," the aging action hero intones in an episode of his new A&E show, "Steven Seagal: Lawman," which premieres tonight. "A cock of the head, a foot planted forward or back, a flick of the wrist -- they all tell me something." Yeah, well, as a lifelong practitioner of journalism, I'm also trained to see things for what they are. And for what they're not. And Seagal's new show seems almost as far-fetched as his movies, which include "Under Siege," "Hard to Kill" and "Above the Law."

A Mississippi martial arts teacher tried to throw away ricin-tainted materials and had a manual about the poison on his computer, according to a federal affidavit unsealed Tuesday. James Everett Dutschke, 41, of Tupelo, Miss., was charged Saturday with having and/or making ricin and sending poison-laced letters to President Obama, a U.S. senator and a local judge. Ricin is deadly in small doses, and there is no antidote. It can be inhaled, injected or ingested.  The charges came after one of Dutschke's nemeses, a local Elvis impersonator named Paul Kevin Curtis, had been arrested days earlier.

In 1971 the American public knew little about the martial art known as hapkido. Then came the movie "Billy Jack" and an unforgettable performance by a then-unknown martial arts instructor, Bong Soo Han. Standing nearly nose to nose with one of the movie's villains, Han, a stunt double for Tom Laughlin, the movie's star, delivers a quick kick to the man's jaw, flooring him.

When Quoc Huy Ha explains the karate style he developed, he could be describing his life. " Quyen dao is like a river," the grand master said, using the Vietnamese name for the martial art, rather than the Japanese karate more familiar to Americans. "The river is always running, always moving, even if there is an obstacle," he said through an interpreter.

"Warrior" is too much of a good thing. A family drama set in the ultraviolent world of mixed martial arts, it shows promise but finally hits things so hard, both literally and metaphorically, that it's hard not to feel pummeled yourself by the time it's over. Which is too bad, because as his earlier "Miracle" demonstrated, director/co-writer Gavin O'Connor has a gift for handling old-fashioned emotion-soaked material that has become something of a lost art. But in that film about the U.S. hockey team's stunning gold-medal victory in the 1980 Olympics, O'Connor's melodramatic instincts were constrained by the strictures of the real story he was telling.

Just as in baseball, you can't tell the key martial arts players without a scorecard. The following names and terms are essential if you're to become a martial arts aficionado: BRUCE LEE: He towers over anyone else in martial arts. His "Fists of Fury" (1971) was the first big hit in the genre, and his "Enter the Dragon" (1973) remains the martial arts film to which all others aspire. Lee became the first (and only) Chinese-American film superstar.

I recently saw "The Quest," a martial arts movie directed by, and starring, Jean-Claude Van Damme. The basis of this outlandish story is that the best fighters in the world are summoned by an old, demented master of a Himalayas kingdom to fight a no-holds-barred match. In this savage Olympics, the winner is awarded an immensely valuable solid gold dragon. Van Damme, of course, performs in predictable heroic style.

Mixed martial arts competitions are becoming increasingly popular, spawning an interest in MMA training. Join a live Web chat with MMA coach Mike Van Arsdale Monday, June 20, at noon Pacific time (2 p.m. CT, 3 p.m. ET) and find out the benefits of the sport for all levels of athlete, from recreational to pro. Van Arsdale won the gold medal in World Cup freestyle wrestling and is a former UFC fighter. In 1998 he made his mixed martial arts debut in Brazil, winning three consecutive fights in one night and the title of the International Vale Tudo Championships.

TUPELO, Miss. - FBI agents arrested a Mississippi martial arts instructor early Saturday in the bizarre case of poisoned letters sent to President Obama, a U.S. senator and a local judge. James Everett Dutschke was arrested without incident at his Tupelo home shortly before 1 a.m., FBI spokeswoman Deborah Madden told The Times. Dutschke, a former candidate for the Mississippi Legislature, became the prime suspect in the mailings after charges were dropped Tuesday against Paul Kevin Curtis, a celebrity impersonator from Corinth, Miss.

Some intruder picked the wrong house to menace. That's what happened this week when a gate-crasher in Salt Lake City came face to face with a Mormon bishop - wielding a Samurai sword. Kent Hendrix's teenage son pounded on his bedroom door, telling him somebody was being mugged in front of their house. Hendrix, a fourth-degree black belt and instructor in the Kishindo form of martial arts, grabbed the closest weapon -- a 29-inch high-carbon steel sword -- and went to investigate. As his son called 911, the 47-year-old Hendrix, who is also a Mormon bishop, said he came upon a fight between a woman and a man. He raised his weapon and told the man to get on the ground.

NEW YORK - The first hint of a bruise, blackish and glossy, appears under Reshat Mati's eye as he finishes a jujitsu workout. It seems that he took a knee to the face. Someone offers to get an ice pack, but there isn't time. Reshat hurries off to another gym, a storefront several miles away where the windows steam up from all the boxers generating heat inside. By 9:30 p.m., he has pulled on gloves and headgear to spar with a larger, more experienced opponent who likes to fight from close range with lots of banging elbows.

Forty years ago, the cinematic landscape was undergoing a seismic shift. Young Turk filmmakers such as George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, William Friedkin and Terrence Malick were exploring unique and challenging themes. The black exploitation film was not only thriving but also enjoying crossover appeal. But probably no one in Hollywood was prepared for the martial arts mania that erupted the summer of 1973 when Warner Bros. released the kung fu epic "Enter the Dragon," starring the legendary Bruce Lee, who died at 32 shortly before the U.S opening.

After the coffee. Before getting back into work mode. The Skinny: I watched "The Following" last night and fear it has started to take a bad turn. I don't want to play spoiler but I do hate it when a character does something they never would do in the name of another plot twist. Tuesday's headlines include a recap of the holiday box office and a look at the battle over mixed martial arts TV supremacy. Daily Dose: No, Al Pacino isn't doing voice-over ads for Jeep.

The International Olympic Committee dropped wrestling as a Summer Games sport on Tuesday, meaning that effective with the 2020 Games, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling won't be a part of the festivities after being in every Summer Olympics since 1896. There are a handful of sports under consideration to replace wrestling: karate, wakeboarding, roller sports, baseball/softball, wushu, squash, sport climbing. And wrestling can petition to be let back in, though the odds of that happening are long.

Fox Sports no longer is pulling any punches with Ultimate Fighting Championship, announcing a seven-year deal that brings mixed martial arts fights to the Fox broadcast network and Friday night events to the company's FX cable channel. Fox declined to disclose financial terms, but Sports Business Daily reported the multiyear package was worth as much as $90 million. The deal, announced Thursday, is significant because it elevates the sport of mixed martial arts to the television mainstream.

Buddhist monk Ando remembers the toil of all those years, trying to satisfy the training demands of an aging martial arts master who could never be pleased. Silent and impassive, monk Yang-ik perched in the lotus position on a platform above his young proteges, who leaped from mats, kicking two impossibly high bags one after the other, the best adding aerial somersaults before landing gracefully, like big cats. When they finished, panting and sweating, the master dismissed them.

BERLIN - The 63rd Berlin Film Festival opened Thursday with an elegant bang - of fists, feet and questions. Kicking off the 11 days of cinematic offerings was jury president Wong Kar Wai's epic martial arts drama, “The Grandmaster” - a graceful telling of the history of Ip Man, the mentor of Bruce Lee. First, though, came the morning's presentation of the jury to the international press in a conference full of polite but pointed queries and...

Even if you've never been to New Jersey, names such as Snooki, the Situation and JWoww have become part of our cultural lexicon, thanks to TV's "Jersey Shore," embodying how to rock your summer at the beach with lots of partying. But now that the show has finished filming its final season, 26-year-old JWoww, whose real name is Jenni Farley, is moving on to a cleaner lifestyle to prepare for the next chapter of her life, which includes getting married. A fan of "Jersey Shore" told me you're big into martial arts.