Martial arts has been a way of life for me since I was a young kid. It created a discipline and respect for everything. Martial arts has just made me a better person. It's a way of life.
On 'Black Lightning' I have a stunt double who's a lot younger than me. The fighting style on the show is heavily martial arts-based, and I know boxing; I don't know martial arts. I also have a really bad knee, and he's been doing martial arts since he was 6 years old, so I'm not thinking, 'No, I can do that! I can make that look cool!'
For the longest time, my older brother told me he was teaching me self-defense, but now that I'm grown up, I realize he was just practicing his martial arts on me.
Miles and I had been looking to do a martial arts show for some time. Our first two movies that we wrote were "Lethal Weapon 4" and "Shanghai Noon" with Jackie Chan. Then we sort of got pulled into the superhero world, but then you look around at what's not on television and there wasn't really a martial arts shows. There are shows that do martial arts to a degree, but there's not a martial arts show.
I've always been into sports and yoga and running. I actually study a martial arts self-defense program called Krav Maga. I can't quite say it's easy, but it's fun for me and I love to do it.
I am so glad people have started making films n martial arts and self-defense, which is actually the need of the hour.
Martial arts is self-growth. It's artistic impression. It's self-defense... it doesn't have any place in politics.
I knew nothing about martial arts. The coach told me I was talented with learning martial arts, and put me in a school. Three years later I got my first championship in China.
Martial arts, for me, is not just some kind of job to gain some money or whatever. No, martial arts, for me, is my lifestyle, my religion, my philosophy... Martial arts are everything for me.
I grew up doing martial arts, and I love martial arts movies and fight scenes. I'm pretty athletic, so I enjoy doing that stuff.
I have dabbled in martial arts all my life, since I was 7, maybe - tae kwon do, capoeira, Muay Thai. It's always been an interest because in martial arts there is a mind/body relationship.
My background in promoting martial arts started in 1985 when we were doing PK Karate, which was on ESPN. Fast forward to when mixed martial arts became legal in California. I made the jump to MMA and never looked back.
I'm also a martial-arts practitioner, so it was an easy transition to go do 'Street Fighter,' which is action-packed and let me showcase my acting and martial-arts capabilities.
My father didn't compete ever in martial arts tournaments because they were not real. They were tag tournaments or touch tournaments, which he thought was bizarre and not really what the martial arts is about.
To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.
There's always someone kicking guns. We wanted ["Badlands"] to be a world without guns and bullets, where martial arts was the form of fighting and defense and attack. Martial arts is king in this world. That was the first thing. We didn't want it to be a period piece either. We felt those are overdone and stuffy. That was what lead us to explore that area of science fiction and future, a world we can create and control.