judo champion, Lebell remains active today as a coach for UFC womenвЂ™s champion Ronda Rousey. Gene LeBell вЂ“ Rising to prominence in the early 1950s as U.S. Peter Urban вЂ“ One of the earliest American karate instructors, heвЂ™s best known for breaking away from his Japanese teacher, Gogen Yamaguchi, and creating his own Americanized version of goju karate in the 1960s, thus becoming the first westerner to declare himself the grandmaster of a martial arts style.ДЈ4. Prior to the publication of Black Belt magazine in the 1960s, Tegner provided a large percentage of all the written material available on Asian martial arts in the English language.ДЈ5. Bruce Tegner вЂ“ One of the most prolific writers in the history of martial arts. Munenori Yagyu вЂ“ The 17th century fencing instructor to the Tokugawa shoguns, Yagyu was probably the first Japanese martial arts exponent to write of the connection between martial arts and spirituality, something that has now become a standard facet of the Japanese systems.ДЈ6. Though early female champions like judoka Rusty Glickman and kung fu expert Malia Dacascos were far more accomplished, Blackman was the original face of womenвЂ™s martial arts back in the 1960s.ДЈ7. Honor Blackman вЂ“ Best known as Bond girl Pussy Galore and the original female lead in TVвЂ™s The Avengers, Blackman was among the first female cinematic action heroes and certainly the first one to show women could defend themselves with the aid of martial arts. military effort to incorporate Asian martial arts into regular military training, recruiting leading Japanese judo, karate and aikido experts to tour American bases.ДЈ8. Air Force general who, while in charge of the Strategic Air Command in the early 1950s, instituted what was probably the first widespread U.S. Sokon Matsumura вЂ“ A famed 19th century Okinawan martial arts master sometimes credited with originally coining the term вЂњkarateвЂќ which, at the time, meant вЂњChinese handsвЂќ though the meaning of the written characters for the word was later re-interpreted as вЂњempty hands.вЂќ His shuri-te style laid the basis for many of the modern Okinawan and Japanese karate systems.ДЈ9.

Now, without further ado, I bring you part one of the 40 most important and influential figures in martial arts historyвЂ¦Д¤0. For example, though both Russian sambo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu have their roots in Japanese judo, BJJ figures were considered for inclusion on this list while, ultimately, sambo figures were not, simply because BJJ somehow seems more directly connected with its roots as an Asian martial art while sambo has become a wholly western sport. This is, admittedly, a somewhat arbitrary delineation. Thus, no one whose influence was exclusively confined to western sports like boxing or wrestling is eligible for consideration. A couple of things to note: first, this is not a list of the вЂњbestвЂќ martial artists, rather it is simply a list of who has had the greatest influence over the way martial arts have been perceived and practiced around the world, which means one doesnвЂ™t even necessarily have to be a martial arts practitioner himself to make the list second, itвЂ™s a list having to do with the Asian martial arts, not of all fighting arts and sports. So here I present my own list of the top 40 most important and influential figures in the history of Asian martial arts. When you have too much time on your hands, you do a lot of useless things, like coming up with lists. I trust people still understood what the post was about) (February 12: Major faux pas, forgot to include a title when I originally posted this.

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