17-07-2025
Karate legend Mike Stone visits Costa Mesa studio
Karate legend Mike Stone seemed to relish the moment Wednesday night, even if few of the dozens of students at Bob White's Kenpo Karate Studio in Costa Mesa could say the same.
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.
