"EL COTORRO" INTERVIEW WITH HAROON DARR
- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself. Where you where born and how this place made you who you are today ?
I was born and bred in London, UK.
My family have been involved in gangs, crimes for a long time. Although I never treaded this path.
London has always been a melting pot of various cultures/customs. Everybody generally gets on beautifully.
London also has high crime rate of knife usage. The perpetrators are getting younger and younger.
- What has been your favorite job in life ?
I love helping from a healing perspective. I get great great joy from this.
- What is it that you teach and who is behind it's origins ?
I teach a system of attacking the human anatomy/physiology.
Behind its origins their have been various people. I’ll highlight the most important;
- TSVW (Most interesting influence)
- Bob Supiya (Chinese Arts)
- Nigel February ( Founder of Piper)
- Scott Babb (Founder of Libre Fighting)
- Thomas Holtmann ( BJJ/Ground work for non-sporting applications)
- Why did you decide to teach this to the public ?
I’m very selective whom I teach. I generally don’t teach open classes etc. I generally teach those who need the material for their occupations etc.
– What specifically do you think separates what your specific methodologies from what others are doing out there in the training world?
The methodology that separates me from what I’m doing and other systems is, that I was very fortunate to learn from TSVW. He had direct access to many obsolete teachers. Their criteria was to disable, maim and kill. In unconventional methods.
I was very fortunate to be able to learn this.
- What roll does medical knowledge play in your classroom ?
Medical knowledge is the most important element! I try to cut out all the BS, folklore’s etc. and the techniques are understandable from Western Medical perspective.
Very specific conditioning for those that are in the know.
- What is the best advice you can give someone that wants to learn from you?
Try to attend a seminar and see ‘Pandora’s Box’ open up.
- What is one of the things you think is lacking in todays world when it comes to preparing for violence ?
Folks are taking martial arts, self defence classes from folks whom have never encountered real world violence and it’s from ‘good guys’ perspective. Whereas it needs to be from ‘bad guys’, criminal perspective.
- What do you think about gun and knife restrictions in violent places like the UK ? Do they make sense ?
The laws don’t make sense as the only folks that adhere to them are the law abiding citizens and not the criminals. Hence it further restricts one from defending themselves and their next of kin.
- Can you define. "intent " for us as far as you teach it?
Single minded focus to get a job done. “Not giving a -@ck what the other person will do...”
There’s a difference between intent and intensity. There a cross over point. But they are entirely different substances.
- What auxiliary skill do you think all people looking to prepare themselves need to have ?
I think folks need to have a varied ‘Tool box’ as one tool can’t do ever single job.
The services you provide are brilliant and I’d highly recommend folks to attend the events that you put out .
- Can you share a picture of what you carry with you daily and explain why you do it?
Due to the laws of U.K. I don’t carry a knife, gun.
For me the individual is a weapon and it’s an internal manifestation not external manifestation. Anything in hand is a weapon;)
- Any book recommendations ?
I’d recommend medical books, historical, cultural books. One should have a vast area of reading as it stretches the mind.
- Who is on your top 5 list of people to train with?
Nigel February
Scott Babb
Ed Calderon
Thomas Holtmann
Few groups
Ed's Random questions :
Favorite quote from a movie:
“Free will. It's like butterfly wings: once touched, they never get off the ground. No, I only set the stage. You pull your own strings.”
If you could have any weapon from fiction or reality what would that be?
Light saber
If you could fight anyone, living or dead...who would that be ?
Choki Motubu
https://www.motobu-ryu.org/motobu-kenpo/motobu-choki-sensei/?mobile=1
Final words ?
Lastly when one day when a person has true grasp of Disabling, Maiming or Killing you realise you only ever look at the pyramid from the top down that is “quick kill” first then maim then finally disable....
EDITORS NOTE: I'm working on bringing Haroon Darr state side in the near future. Not to be missed .
