BOLO YEUNG-The Unofficial Website-INTERVIEW WITH MIKE DAYTON

                                    Interview with Mike Dayton for www.bolo-yeung.com, conducted by Pavel Nyziak

Pavel: Mike, you re a great martial artist. What is your martial arts background?

Mike: There is a saying in America that the fruit doesn t fall far from the tree, referring to offspring displaying traits of their parents.
Well, the same is true of my martial arts background. The biggest influences on my martial arts career were both outrageous and
slightly notorious masters.

I studied and received my 7th Dan in Kyokushin and Masters of Chi under Don Buck, a kind and very powerful disciple of Mas
Oyama, who gave Buck the title  Fierce Tiger.
As a child Don was influenced by an Indian Yogi and experienced the power of hypnotism, known in Japanese as sai ming juitsu.
Sensei had a natural gift for sai ming, which he considered part of Chi-Gong practice. I saw him use this power many times, and I
perhaps was under his spell from our first meeting.

Buck was a tough street fighter and bodybuilder when he joined the US Navy during WWII. While on duty he practiced Judo,
Jujitsu and knife fighting. In 1955 he was contacted by karate legend Mas Oyama and thus began a lifelong friendship. Both men
were extremely aggressive and strong, but more importantly they were highly trained in the mental and physical aspects of the
martial arts.

Masutatsu Oyama mastered the Eighteen Techniques of Chinese Kempo while still in Korea. He traveled to Japan and in 1947 won
the All-Japan Karate Tournament, and then retreated to live in isolation for three years, devoting himself completely to life
according to the principles of Zen. Oyama refined his own doctrine of karate that encompassed the mind and body. In 1951 he
returned to civilization and shared his amazing feats most notably tearing the horns from bulls to the karate world.

Buck, under his tutelage, could crush a coke bottle in his hands. He could hypnotize a student to lay board straight between two
chairs suspended only from their head and feet, while six bricks were smashed through on their pedestal-like mid-section.

I was introduced to Buck when tales of my hand strength begin circulating around the San Francisco Bay Area. Always fascinated
with the martial arts, my own fighting arts experience was only high school wrestling, Buck took me on at first sight, I believe
because of the physique. As Bolo knows few, if any, martial artists in the 1970s were bodybuilders. I believe Buck saw in me a kind
of young image of himself.
I immediately began training at the School of Tiger, sometimes it seemed I lived between Buck s home and the dojo.

Pavel: Tell me how and why you started bodybuilding?

Mike: I was skinny and when I was 14 I got my front tooth knocked out by bullies outside my church in Oakland, CA, where I
grew up. From there it was to the gym, to weights, to the wrestling team and then on to meet my bodybuilding mentor, 1950s
physique legend Jack Delinger. Delinger was not part of the southern California bound Mecca of bodybuilders who would flagrantly
use steroids. He was just a big, really strong guy. I also met Jack LaLanne, and admired his vision for better health through
nutrition and exercise.

I wanted to be the biggest and best bodybuilder, and in 1969 at less than 18 years I became a Mr. America. But the game was
going to change a lot before I captured the title again in 1976 as an adult. At this point the game was in LA and although I spent
some years with Arnold and the rest during the day, steroid abuse and the games that went with being a top bodybuilder were
not on my agenda.

So I stayed in the Bay Area, where my bodybuilding pursuits slowly gave in to my martial arts pursuits, which under Sensei Buck
and Oyama before him became pursuits of feats of extraordinary strength or impossible odds.

Pavel: Your trademarks are breaking handcuffs, bending quarters and surviving a 6-foot drop hanging. Can you please tell us
more about this?

Mike: The handcuffs were all Buck. He was a SF police officer, and he put those cuffs on me and told me I would break them. Then
he got me booked on the Merv Griffin TV Show. I d never broke the cuffs, but there I was on national TV and Buck standing
there telling me I could do it. I pulled, and pulled, and pulled and when I opened my eyes there was Buck staring at me not two
inches from my eyes and the next thing I knew I was thrown back practically to the floor of the near-empty stage as the cuffs
flew apart. No one was more surprised than me!

From that point forward I never doubted what Buck said I could do. I have broken the cuffs on dozens of tries, but not every
time.

All the feats were Buck, the quarters, which were perhaps the toughest, and the hanging, which believe it or not, was perhaps the
easiest.

Pavel: Can you tell us about Chi Mind Control?

Mike: Every thing emanates from the mind. All great martial artists know this, but for others, particularly bodybuilders, there is an
incorrect beliefthat power is only about the body, the job, and the things we acquire. People had forgotten that without the mind
its problem-solving, its resilience and its power there is nothing. Years ago a karate brother and heart surgeon brought me to my
father s bedside at the hospital.

"Your father is brain dead",  he said, "do you want us to disconnect the life support".
I nodded yes to Dr. Dan Andrews, and watched my father s chest collapse for the last time. He had passed when his brain
stopped functioning.

Buck was responsible for showing me the power of the mind. I could see it in how he used hypnosis to move what I called  Buck s
army.  I d watch him choreograph groups of students in katas and demonstrations that were clearly under his complete control.
The power of belief is what allows any young martial artist break their first board or brick. You must  see  through to the
conclusion.

That is where it all starts. My particular study is a combination of realizing the power of the mind, and then harnessing it through
emotional control, meditation of positive thought.