"Where Did It All Go?"

You know, the infamous and often ridiculed lawsuit which "Kaiso" Bret Gordon launched in 2020 against Dr. Dale Dugas has always been a source of much mirth and humor for me, because the lad swears Dugas is me and like "123 other people." No, wait. I'm sorry. That's Dallas Wittgenfeld, friend of Gordon's partner Mr. Hackworth.

No certificates were harmed in the making of this photo.

But there are times when this garbled mess of a lawsuit gets brought up and honestly it makes one sick to their stomach. Gordon in the years since that filing has used this frivolous item in attempts to silence detractors, naysayers and anyone who he feels would DARE to speak up against him. Like this post on the blog of Lordus Sapiens from November 5th, 2020, the two year anniversary from when he and Dugas had their impromptu meeting at the previous location which Gordon taught at during that time.

A statement by a "Tanya H" who made mention that the services she

paid for resulted in her son being "jumped."

The fact of the matter here is that "Tanya" appears to have a legitimate complaint, she is allowed to vent said complaint, and she is allowed to do so publicly. This is fact, not defamatory, nor is it in any kind of way anything more than her interpretation of what the services she felt she should have gotten were not what she ended up with. But who would respond? You guessed it....Kaiso Bret Gordon took to the challenge of bravely threatening a female online.

That's right...Gordon couldn't help himself not one bit. Anytime someone rears their head to say anything remotely against the sheer perfection he sees himself as he takes it as a threat and immediately harkens back to that hilariously and ill-written piece of legal literature he calls a lawsuit and waves it all around like a morning star in battle. Awful tough talk coming to the blog of one of his sworn enemies who he claims is Dale Dugas in his suit, threatens a woman and then tells her his attorney can call her. Funny, I've been exposing Bret quite a bit these last months (and years) and he has my contact information. Why haven't I heard from his attorney? I feel left out. I'd argue I was nice enough in the email. I mean, I thought he and I were friends.

I feel left out! I'd wager being in contact with any

of us who you named in that atrocious work by your

attorney would be problematic in a lawsuit, dear boy.

So it stands to reason Gordon can't take scrutiny of any kind. If he ever has it lumped on him his go-to is to just threaten the subject and say he will sue and then go silent until they go away. But his precious legitimacy has taken some huge hits in the last many months. He tossed Gary Lee under the bus when it was found he had used faulty information to defame a legitimate Judoka almost three years ago using information from said museum curator/amateur historian. I'd share that journalistic endeavor from way back when but unfortunately it was on his USAMA blog which according to sources close to him are saying he claims it was taken down by his own hand.

Even more funny is the fact that recently Cayce Lancaster and I met up and took a road trip together and on that trip we discussed thoroughly the case with Dugas. As it turns out Gordon's attorney filed sanctions against Dugas claiming "spoliation of evidence," a fancy way of saying Dugas removed evidence off of the internet which is what I was under the impression Gordon demanded of him in the initial briefing. A real-headscratcher. 

So...why would he be taking down his USAMA site? If true then that means perhaps Gordon had something to hide? I mean his blog was indeed a treasure trove of information which constantly backfired on him. Such a revered living historian and martial arts teacher like himself should never be afraid of any scrutiny nor should he ever have any issue proving himself or his claims, right?

Well actually that has been a problem all along.

It was a cold January morning when I was informed that another website Gordon had was taken down and this time it wasn't because he was hiding the information on it (though Lord knows he tried so very hard during the Patrick Justice debacle.) No, instead the American Jidokwan and Tang Soo Do Association page he ran was taken down for copyright violations. It seems Gordon was using photos which he didn't own, have a right to use, had no business having, and since they were on his site and the real deal Jidowan guys from Ohio had finally had enough of him and his teacher linking to them. 

And they had it removed this past week. 

They were sick of being linked to someone who can't get his story straight. They were tired of being called and asked about Patrick Justice and some guy named David Hush. They were angry their legacy was stolen out from under them and used to promote people with no link to them. They have demanded proof of Sirbaugh and his ties to Fuzy, Moore or Herrington when their own records (and Sirbaugh's own family's statements) show nothing to prove he was there.

And here I thought that disclaimer would stop such things from happening, but here we are. 

"Where Did It All Go?"

By Gerald Greysmith

The Claims Never Stayed the Same

Before it's untimely demise Gordon's American Jidokwan Site has been a staple of both humor and tragedy in the martial arts community. The actual URL once belonged to a gentleman who taught Jidokwan in New England. That same gentleman informed me that he found out about the Ohio gang and decided to rename his website so as not to infringe upon E.A.Fuzy and his remaining students. An admirable thing, and one worth noting that this was not the case with our dear Kaiso and his friends.

In the years after that they together seized on the chance to run off with that legacy and attempt to use it to make himself and Hatfield at least appear legitimate in the eyes of the Korean martial arts community. A legacy, a lineage, and the fact that many of the former members were not in consistent contact with one another made it easier for them to take full advantage.  

However it was during all of this that Gordon ran a site claiming at one point that William Sirbaugh and someone named Shune Yung Davies worked tirelessly with Fuzy to create the American Jidokwan Association which his teacher, Steven Hatfield allegedly inherited from Sirbaugh upon his death. Pending a man named Patrick Justice stepping down in 2017 (for reasons that have been made more than public since) Gordon assumed the responsibility of running the association that same year. Archives of the page though show that the website was not made official until 2019 and the stories there were vastly different than in their last iteration shortly before they were blasted out of existence due to a copyright strike against Gordon.

Some of the more interesting things he had on his once-revered website include but are not limited to.....

A picture claimed to be William Sirbaugh in Korea in 1972, but was found to have been pilfered from a Moodukkwan historical archive and was actually from 1959. The man wasn't William Sirbaugh and this was confirmed by the very man in the picture.

Here Gordon had convicted sex-offender Patrick Justice in a place of almost reverence, as though he contributed a large degree to the organization. It was found in August of 2020 what crimes the man committed. To be precise to counts of rape of a child, followed by a plea deal which sent him to prison for two years and forced him to register for

the next many years afterwards. 

Justice has an extensive record for many more crimes to include not registering. 

Gordon would eventually post (quite proudly) a letter from the man on his (vanished) USAMA site where Justice told the world how awesome Gordon and Hatfield were.

And of course this is where Gordon readily stepped up to fill the shoes of Patrick Justice. Gordon would later claim Justice  stepped down of his own accord when during a random background check they "forgot" to do earlier proved he was a sex offender and Gordon, by his own admission to my predecessor, he kept Justice on so as not to have a gap in their history. 

See? This was one of many emails between Gordon and the previous Gerald Greysmith where he actively made defenses of Justice.

And the website got more strange as time went on from 2019. Both it and his now-deceased USAMA blog both show him jumping about trying to hide his story's cracks and crumbles as it began to take hit after hit with him at one point basically telling the Ohio Jidokwan members who he struggled to have a link with that he no longer needed their legacy....the legacy he struggled to retain a hold on for so very, very long mind you. My, my that's a lot of words to look through. His words, mind you. 

It was these claims within just his Jidokwan information he made public that raised the alarm for so many others in the martial arts community. Gordon was now bringing himself to the attention of the larger martial arts community and more importantly the students of E.A. Fuzy, Robert Moore and Curtis Herrington.

Enter: Ed Mathna and the REAL Ohio/American Jidokwan

I have had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Mathna quite a bit over the last many months. He has become a very trusted ally in this matter and the hours we have spent on the telephone talking about this situation have led to me learning quite a bit more about Jidokwan and the Korean Martial Arts than I had ever anticipated. Mathna is a well-known and outspoken critic of the claims by Gordon and Hatfield. He has also spoken to several of the members of the original group under these men and to the last have all made plain their disgust at the lies told and the link to people like Patrick Justice and Dave Hush. 

What's more? They can prove their claims to training. Not a one of them remember William Sirbaugh and not a single one can find a record anywhere of the man. Believe me when I say, they have them and have shared many pages with me as a result in the hopes of seeing if he was there. To this day there is nothing to substantiate the claim of Sirbaugh and his alleged link to the Jidokwan legacy of those three men.

I have been given copies of several files and pictures and not a one

shows one image of William Sirbaugh training with these men. 

It was in January of this year when Ed Mathna had finally had enough and together with the support of others in his organization decided to finally file a DCMA takedown notice against Gordon. In an email within the last week Mathna sent me the following information:

The official word came through on January 18th, 2023. Apparently Gordon had pilfered 

pictures of Robert Moore and Curtis Herrington to use on his AJA site and they

didn't belong to him at all. 

If Gordon had any claim to those pictures he would be able to produce something, of that I'm sure. The facts are at every turn with the Jidokwan claims he and his teacher have made in regards to a lineage of the students of Fuzy, Moore and Herrington have been upended every time. And we know he has a habit of using photos that don't have any relevance to he and his groups. He did it with the famous Sirbaugh-in-Korea picture from long ago and for several years stated vehemently it was absolute proof of their connection to Fuzy and others through a man who was conveniently not alive anymore to protest. 

Of course that's also the way they lay claim to the fabled and perverted Hasaka Yutashi as well who, according to the research by my partner HK Hayward shows he met a very "sticky" end. But if Sirbaugh's own family has no recollection of him doing anything but time in prison what were the odds he trained in anything at all? Especially with Jidokwan or Aikijujutsu?

A tour-de-force expose of the man, the legend, the pervert. You

can read all about it here.

And unless Gordon has something to offer on the matter I'd argue that's as good as any explanation for the man's existence as anything he can produce. Along with Shune Yung Davies, for that matter....he seems about as real as Yutashi ever did.

The People They Know

It is a matter of public knowledge that Gordon and Hatfield have actively had a connection to Patrick Justice. I am not going to retread that matter (or Gordon's defense of the man) but I am going to bring up the fact that the majority of the Ohio guys were more than miffed that his teacher, Hatfield, had a connection to one David "The Bear" Hush. 

In a post from 2021 one can see Hatfield and Hush training with

kids at what is apparently Hush's "House of the Bear" martial arts school.

Who is David Hush? Well he seems to be a martial arts school owner. He seems to teach kids. He also seems to have quite a fondness for Twitter and making posts that are about on par with the alleged tastes of Hasaka Yutashi.

 

 

Ah yes, nothing like pictures of genitalia, nude women, porn links, calls

to commit sodomy and of course Karate. I blocked out the actual pictures

because well, it's gross. 

Looking through this menagerie of Tweets that spawn out to various pornographic links and the like. Now granted these Tweets are from 2015 however I want to point out David Hush has not changed them, altered or deleted them. On this Twitter profile which was his they remain to this day. 

And then there's Patrick Justice. What hasn't been said about this situation? Well, maybe the fact that Gordon's teacher Steven Hatfield keeps up with his cousin Patrick and his wife, liking their social media posts and sometimes even loving them despite the fact Justice was convicted via plea deal and direct indictment of rape of a child?

 

I guess sometimes you can overlook things in people. I mean, the statutes were vague. It was drunken sex. She lied about her age. These were some of the defenses/excuses Gordon used.

See? And there was plenty more where that came from.

These are the kinds of people they attracted to their version of the American Jidokwan Association. This was why people like Ed Mathna and his friends stepped up and demanded they remove their claims, the stolen photos and other items which had no link or correlation to the original association. But did Gordon listen? No. He continued onward and claimed to the heavens that he was legitimate because they had a "connection to Korea." I ask again: how did they get that link to Korea? Was it by using this information? Did they use Fuzy, Moore and Herrington as a way to cement themselves in the annals of Jidokwan history? If so perhaps Korea should have a second look at their claims.

The End or the Beginning?

Whichever way Gordon decides to go in this situation he is kind of stuck. If it's true he's claiming he took down those webpages it would be him admitting he is doing what he and his attorney are accusing Dale Dugas of doing. 

If he tells the truth (for a change) and says they were taken down and the reasons as to why well, that's not a good thing either. Honestly I doubt any court of law he takes that into will look kindly on the fact he and his friends have been caught using copyrighted materials to progress their student numbers. If he did that it would be career suicide. And who's to say this information has not already made it into the hands of the very people he's trying to sue? He's already not going to be able to prove Dugas is me or Lordus Sapiens. And his suit is so warped out of proportion that they waited a full two years before they moved on it. Why is that? I think it was because Gordon suddenly realized a lot of the cases I was working on were working themselves back towards him and the lies he has told. 

Well, maybe he can produce that mystery family member who gave them the picture of "Sirbaugh-but-not-Sirbaugh" and everything will magically clear up. 

And then of course as I stated at the outset he is using the lawsuit as a way to come down on anyone who would speak against him. Using not only that but his attorney....the same one who has received a style recognition in his own brand of Krav Maga, serves on their USAMA board of directors, and was the one who wrote that marvelous little piece of fun he calls a lawsuit. As I said Gordon is awful tough sounding online at moms who signed their kids up with him but I have never seen him go to challenge anyone else who may have some substance behind them. Maybe he will get some sack at some point and go face the man who he defamed himself, tell him he's a fake to his face and then he can finally get on the mats and show us some traditional Judo or some traditional Gracie Jiu Jitsu or some traditional and real street defense....

....nah, that's not his style. Gordon isn't going to get on the mats with anyone he thinks can beat him. His ego wouldn't let him. And his now-defunct blogs show that. I guess he will live in infamy as not only a fraud, a meat-shield to his teacher, and a mouth-piece to those around him....but a coward. I suspect even if he did get on the mats with someone he wouldn't have his uniform anyway. 

And as for his Jidokwan claims? I'd say they're all but done but time will tell if it's for good or not. But as it stands this isn't the end of the story now. No, I'd argue at this point there is still a bit more to tell. And if the stories are true the actual photos Gordon has claimed all along are "Hasaka Yutashi" may have an actual name behind them, after all. 

I guess we will just have to find out, won't we?