Peter Dennis Profile

I started Karate in 1967/68 under the tutelage of Sensei Dickie Wu a 1st Dan Kyokushinkai exponent, this style was a hard strong knock down/pick them up again association brought to this country by Shihan Steve Arneil under the patronage of the legendary Hanshi Masutatsu Oyama, a Korean/Japanese master that was renowned for fighting wild bulls with his bare hands and after defeating them removing their horns with a shuto uchi (knife hand technique).

I trained in Kyokushinkai until I received my 1^st Dan under Shihan Arneil in 1971 at the Chelsea Barracks, London. The same year I won the National Kyokushinkai Championships defeating the former titleholder ‘Big’ Bill Walsh in the final.

It was around this time that I met my mentor and friend to be, David ‘Ticky’ Donovan, he was a 2^nd Dan Wado Ryu exponent and had trained with most of the top instructors and masters from the Wado-Ryu, Kyokushinkai and Shotokan world, after an animated conversation (on my part) he invited me to train at his dojo in Dagenham and so I thought ‘why not’ I would drop in and see what it was like for one session, that 11/2 hour session lasted for a period of 25 years, his teaching was disciplined, innovative and adventurous, using techniques and theory from his extensive experience of other styles.