The Ultimate Kick: The Wallace Method of Winning Karate

Bill Wallace was a middleweight with only one useful leg. He competed in full contact karate (just writing this review will make my karate purist friends turn their noses up at me) and won a LOT. The book is useful and the author is remarkable. Some people succeed against absurd odds, because they think a lot and they don't give up. And that sort of success leaves clues, and reading about those people, and the approach they used, is inspiring and useful. That said, I don't like high kicks. I think that generally, for self defense, they expose the groin to attack and they unbalance the kicker. That means that I shouldn't use high kicks. On the other hand, because Wallace had a defective leg, he always faced his opponent left side forward. So he got in twice as many repetitions as his buddies, because he COULDN'T practice his techniques on his right side. He has also said that he only had a few techniques. So he practiced those until he was good at them, and then fought everybody he could find to find out how he could combine his limited skill set to win. And he did win. He put his opponent into an unpleasant decision tree, because Wallace always used the same small set of techniques. And he always fought from the same stance. And he always forced his opponent to guess whether he was going to kick low, high, or middle, or backfist/jab or straight punch. And as Wallace has said, he didn't know which one he'd use, either! This book, of course, won't teach you to fight. It does admirably demonstrate a particular body of choices that may be useful to you as a tournament fighter. It is not going to teach you self defense, because it's not a self defense book. It won't teach you the syllabus of classical karate (for that, get the Best Karate series by Sensei Nakayama). But it's inspiring to see somebody who didn't take himself seriously do well and explain how he did it. When Wallace teaches, he never pretends he was unbeatable, or that he created the world's best system, or that he did anything but try to use what he could to get a good result. But he's a bright guy, and when you see how he used his favorite (they had to be his favorite techniques-they were all he could do!) techniques to build a very effective sparring approach, maybe you can do the same.

This book is not very complicated. It is well illustrated. Wallace was an amazing kicker that won even though all his kicks came from the same side. His explanations will help refine anyone's sparring tactics. I have used several of the things that I learned to great effect. You should consider his other book as well.

Bill "Superfoot" Wallace is a legend in the martial arts community. His book is informative and detailed. Tough stuff to conquer but worth the effort.