Karate legend Mike Stone visits Costa Mesa studio
Stone had the students warming up by stretching their legs in sets of 10, only the sets to strengthen their core and quadriceps were seemingly limitless.
'Suffer silently, please,' Stone said. 'I'd like to make a T-shirt with that logo. I love it.'
Stone, now 82, was happy to donate two hours of his time to train the students. He was good friends with the late Bob White, a 10th-degree black belt who died in 2023. He said the two of them enjoyed playing golf and tennis together outside of the studio.
'After Bob passed, I really didn't have a chance to come down here,' Stone said in an interview with the Daily Pilot prior to his teaching session. 'I've been living in the Philippines for 40 years. When I came on this trip, I had a little extra time, so I decided to give [Bob's wife] Barbara a call and ask her. I actually imposed. I said, 'If it's OK, I'd like to come down and do a session for the school.' And she said, 'Yeah, sure, come on down.''
The karate students got to learn from a master who has earned 17 10th degree black belts. Stone, a native of Hawaii, was known as 'The Animal' during a competitive career that saw him win 91 straight black belt matches without a loss.
Stone spoke to the students, a group that included adults and children, for about an hour before doing an hour of training with them. He said his lessons were more about life and less about martial arts.
'What I'm doing is allowing people to see another side of martial arts,' said Stone, who was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame as both Fighter of the Year in 1971 and Instructor of the Year in 1994. 'Although they were told they were going to be taught these values, principles and virtues, nobody's ever really taught it, and we can see the results of it in society as a whole. It's fallen apart.
'Everybody turned toward money and convenience and violence ... There's aspects of our humanity that we have to get reconnected to. And I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about spiritually. That's a different vibration altogether ... We've got to get back to the basics of what it is, and start telling the truth.'
Stone told the students that nowadays, he starts his day at 3:30 a.m.
'What time do you go to sleep,' asked a female student, and he replied that he tries to get to bed by 9 p.m.
Whatever he's doing, it seems to be working.
'He seems like he's 62, at most,' said Kristie Galyon, a student at the Bob White studio who attended Wednesday's event with her husband, Brent and 9-year-old son, Nicholas.
Nicholas is a purple belt, soon to take his blue belt test, and has gotten his parents — both yellow belts — into karate. He said meeting Mike Stone was 'amazing,' and he got a movie print autographed.
'He gave a wonderful, holistic approach to what life and karate is,' Brent Galyon said.
Stone, also known for having a relationship with Priscilla Presley in the early 1970s, defied expectations by earning his black belt in Shorin-ryu karate in just six months while he was in the U.S. Army and stationed in Arkansas about a decade earlier.
'You just have to have trust, faith and belief in yourself to be the very best that you can be,' he told the students Wednesday. 'That has always been my secret.'
Heather Flessing of Orange, a fourth-degree black belt who has been going to the Bob White studio since 2009, enjoyed Stone's message. So did her 18-month-old daughter, apparently.
'She got to listen to Mike Stone for like 20 minutes straight,' Flessing said, laughing. 'She just stared at him.'
The session ended with Stone taking a big group picture with Barbara White and the students. Alia White-Cass, Bob White's daughter and a black belt instructor at the studio, knelt in front with a framed photo of her father.
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Vest plays safety for the Texas Tech football team, so he doesn't have much time for rodeos anymore. But he sure would be glad if Stone got into it. That just might depend, Vest says, on whether Stone gets to ride tonight. Up in the bleachers, Neilly Busch, 6, is squeezing at a dusty scrape on her forearm, trying to make it bleed. 'She's a tough girl,' says her father, Rowlie Busch. Neilly and her older brother, Ridgewalker, rode in the first round of mutton bustin'. (At 9, Ridgewalker is technically too old to ride. This is one of the little secrets of mutton bustin' -- some kids who are too old or too heavy still end up on sheep.) They both got bucked pretty quickly. 'The sheep was like, 'Get off me!' ' Neilly says. 'He was kind of scary, but he was kind of cute.' From his spot in the top row of the risers, Rowlie can look down on the staging area, where the bull riders are getting ready. They're stretching out their hamstrings, wrapping tape tight around their hands, and throwing back cans of energy drink. A couple of them have knelt down in the dust to pray. 'Rodeo's a dying thing,' says Busch, who lives in Santa Fe. 'It's good to come out here and see the real deal. These are real cowboys.' The rodeo queen rides out, the national anthem is sung, and the announcer says he's going to lead a prayer. Everybody stands up, places their hats over their hearts and closes their eyes. When it's over, the announcer calls out the words everybody's been waiting for: 'Are you ready for rodeo on a Friday night?' The crowd responds with a roar. As the night wears on, rain clouds move in. The announcer breathlessly talks his way through the steer wrestling and saddle-bronc riding, and the crowd kicks back with popcorn, Indian tacos and Frito pies. For the uninitiated, the Frito pie is a favorite Southwestern snack of ground beef, chopped onions and loads of red and green and chiles piled on a bed of Fritos corn chips, sometimes served in the bag. Dominick Lopez, 5, is clutching his tummy. 'I've got a stomachache,' he says. 'Those are butterflies,' says cousin Manuel Cavanaugh -- an old hand at mutton bustin' at age 10. His advice for his cousin, who is wearing child-sized silver chaps, and for his friend Maureen Martin, 8, another first-timer: 'Just inhale and exhale.' Manuel, who has ridden the woolly beasts five times, tells the kids that he hung on best when he gripped the sheep's shoulders. But Maureen has a different technique in mind. 'I'm gonna grab it around the waist,' she says. Each kid wears a protective helmet, a vest, long pants and a long-sleeved shirt -- safety measures that were introduced a few years ago after one child who caught a hoof in the stomach had the air knocked out of him. As for the sheep, which weigh about 70 to 100 pounds each, organizers say they have never been harmed. But animal rights groups -- frequent critics of rodeo sports -- have condemned mutton bustin' as animal abuse. They've also called it child abuse. At tonight's rodeo, Maureen and Dominick's names are called and their parents hand them up to the platform next to the bull chutes, which rodeo hands have stuffed with bawling sheep. Neal, the organizer, is going from kid to kid, making sure each has the proper safety gear, when Sawyer Vest taps on her back. 'Excuse me, ma'am. You don't happen to have an extra spot?' he asks. 'Can we get Stone in? Stone Smith?' She looks at him for a long second and then bends down to Stone. 'Are you sure you want to ride?' she asks. The boy shakes his head no and then buries his face in his cousin's knees. 'Yes, he does,' Vest says. 'He does. He's been talking about it all day.' Jamie looks again at Vest, who is nodding his head earnestly and patting Stone on the head. 'OK,' she says. 'Get him ready.' Big drops of monsoon rain are starting to fall, and the wind is picking up from the south. The kids are getting lowered down, one by one, onto the sheep. 'Dominick Lopez!' the announcer cries, and out sprints a sheep carrying Dominick, his chaps flapping. He's so tiny and hangs on so well that the crowd of about 1,000 cheers him as loudly as they might a bull rider approaching his eighth second. When Dominick finally falls, he stands up right away and walks chin-up out of the arena. 'Maureen Martin!' the announcer calls out, and her sheep flies into the middle of the ring. As the sheep circles back, Maureen is still on top, her arms clutched around its belly. Her technique pays off: She stays on 10 seconds, longer than anyone else. Finally, it's Stone's turn. He looks at the sheep he's about to ride with quivering lips. Just before he gets lifted up, the rodeo hand stops him. 'No spurs,' the man shouts. The spurs are stripped from the boots and Stone is plunked onto the sheep. 'This is us right here, big dog!' Sawyer calls out to Stone. 'You got this.' The gate comes up and the sheep streaks out. Almost immediately, Stone rolls off onto the ground. He sits up, lets out a mouthful of dusty spit and starts to cry. Later, he poses for a photograph between his cousin and father, their hands on his shoulders. He's beaming. So are his father and Vest. Like every other mutton buster, he walks away with a belt buckle -- his first. The sheep are herded back to their pens for some feed and some peace. The bull riders fall to defeat or ride to glory. And the kids go home, to grow a little taller, and maybe try again.
