Old Master / Real Life

• Ueshiba Morihei, founder of Aikido, now pictured in the main article. If that throw looks effortless, it's because he was above effort. In Japan he is referred to as O-Sensei, the Great Teacher. He's the Old Master of other Old Masters. It helps that aikido is based on passivity and indirectness, but seriously, that guy was like 90 pounds.
  • One of his students who went on to join this trope was Gozo Shioda, best known for having fun with a doubtful Robert Kennedy's 210lbs bodyguard. Many people have seen the video of an MMA fighter exposing and pummeling a fake Aikido master and self-proclaimed ki manipulator. What most don't know is that same fighter, Tsuyoshi Iwakura, had previously fought Shioda, who was over 70 at the time, back when Iwakura was an amateur boxer in the nineties. The result was Iwakura being thrown and getting his shoulder dislocated. Apparently, real Aikido masters only look fake until they toss someone into the emergency room. (Note, however, that Shioda was also a Judo black belt.)
• According to Shiji, the King of Wu was so impressed by Sun Tzu that he appointed him General after his first audience. Sun Tzu went on to enable several crushing military victories and establish the State of Wu as the dominant power in the region.
• Almost every old martial arts master who has kept in practice with his/her martial art of choice seems to be as strong as and even quicker than their fittest young students. But they don't need to be quicker. They have seen all the tricks anyone could possibly attempt before. They also don't need to be stronger. They know how to use angles to their advantage. By this stage they have refined their sense of timing to the point that regardless of how fast you are, they are still where they need to be before you are. One of the most important things to learn in fighting is how to control the fight. Their experience has taught them their strengths, weaknesses, and how to use them to make their opponent fight to their benefit.
• This trope is actually enforced by several martial arts; once you hit black belt, you can only go up in rank provided you are old enough. For example, in Kobudo, to get to 10th Dan, you have to be 72 years old, minimum. This is because, contrary to the popular perception in the West that a black belt is a "master", a 1st Dan black belt actually only denotes basic expertise in a school's style. To be a master of a martial art involves more than just learning the school's existing techniques and philosophy, but to fully understand and even expand on them. A 10th Dan (or the equivalent; some martial arts only have 5 Dan ranks) denotes the level of mastery that would be impossible without a lifetime of training, and thus many martial arts only confer it either with an age requirement or a requirement for number of years in the previous rank.
• The late, the great, Helio Gracie, one of the founders of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He continued to train hard and utilise the martial art he helped to create until his death at the age of 95.
  • Brazilian Jiujitsu also enforces this trope via its requirement that a practitioner must spend a minimum number of years in each rank before they can qualify for the next. Anyone who attains black belt at the age of 19 (the youngest it's possible to do so) can only reach 9th degree (at which point the belt is red rather than black and the practitioner is addressed as "grandmaster") at age 67 or older. 10th degree has only ever been awarded to Brazilian Jiujitsu co-founders Carlos and Helio Gracie, and their 3 brothers who assisted them in refining the art. For anyone else to become a 10th degree master of Brazilian Jiujitsu would require them to not just match the founders' skill but also revolutionize the martial art on the same level that they did...which is exceedingly unlikely to ever happen.
• Gene LeBell, judo champion and master catch wrestler, is another grandpa you would not want to mess with. At 82, he still trains and teaches judo and MMA.
• Jon Bluming, one of the first foreign Kodokan judokas and the man who brought Kyokushin karate to Europe never quit manhandling martial artists the age of his grandsons before his death.
• A 24-year-old mugger with a knife made the mistake of breaking into 72-year-old Frank Corti's home and threatened him and his wife. Corti, a former boxer, beat the mugger's left eye and mouth purple with two punches.
• A newspaper story concerned three youths who mugged a retired gentleman in his sixties as he left a London Underground station late at night. Unfortunately for them, the job he had recently retired from was thirty years teaching unarmed combat to the SAS. His attackers were arrested in hospital.
• Master Lau Kar Leung. A veteran action star of the Hong Kong Cinema (he is best known for his movies which he made during the 1970s and 1980s for the Shaw Brothers Studio) as well as director and fight choreographer, as well as the grand master and practitioner of Hung Gar style of Kung Fu system (the inspiration for earthbending), which was made famous by Chinese hero Wong Fei-Hung. Yes, that Wong Fei-Hung. Interestingly, Sifu Lau's father, Lau Cham, was a student of Lam Sai Wing, pupil of the legendary Wong Fei Hung. Today, he's in his late 70's and is still active in films choreographing fight scenes, and he is well respected from his colleagues and peers. His last starring role (as of yet) is in the film Drunken Monkey, and as you can see, he's not mellowing with age. (He's almost 70 years old there, for crying out loud!)
• Anko Itosu, one of the founders of modern Karate, took on a much-publicized challenge for a fight between Judo (the Japanese Martial-Art) and Karate (the Okinawan Style) when he was in his late seventies. The Japanese were insulted and the Judo champion spent the first few minutes of the fight mocking the old man. Itosu threw one punch, the other guy hit the ground, and then Itosu helped revive the unconscious Judo champion.
• Lu Zijian, reportedly 117 or 118 years old, said to have lived in three centuries, and master of huolong taiyi tai chi. The man has aged amazingly well and was known to have mopped the floor with opponents in his youth. The man actively started joining all the martial arts contests he could find...at the ripe old age of 86.
• Not quite as old as most of these examples, but Bernard Hopkins continues to dominate in boxing at 46. Remember one thing, most boxers are considered old and faded by the time they get into their mid-thirties, so in boxing years, Hopkins (or rather Master Hopkins, as most boxing fans are beginning to refer to him now) is absolutely ancient and is still handling guys half his age. In fact, in June 2011, Hopkins became the oldest boxer ever to win a major world championship when he defeated Jean Pascal to win the WBC, IBO and The Ring Light Heavyweight belts.
• Ip Chun, son of Ip Man himself. See him kick ass with Wing Chun.
• In the world of film soundtracks and Orchestral Bombing, when all modern scores are dominated by computer and electronic software, John Williams showed why he is still intellectually superior with the 2012 releases of War Horse and The Adventures of Tintin (2011). This composer (yes, the same one that also gave you the unforgettable scores from Superman: The Movie, StarWars and the Indiana Jones films of 30 years ago) is over 80 years old. How did he celebrate his 70th birthday? By conducting the Salt Lake City symphony orchestra performing the theme song he composed for the XIX Winter Olympic Games, at the Opening Ceremony.
• Frank Lee. One of the pioneers of martial arts in Western Canada by introducing White Crane Kung Fu and Muay Thai there. Black Belt magazine once called him the Father of Kickboxing in North America. He's in his 70s and still teaching his own brand of mixed martial arts, which he evolved when he was in a number of street fights and bar brawls as an immigrant. A couple of tough fights and he realized his kung-fu wasn't well-rounded enough to last against experienced fighters who've had a chance to wise up, so he started adding elements from other fighting arts including boxing and Greco-Roman wrestling.
• Pinball has Roger Sharpe, the man who single-handedly destroyed New York City's 34-year-long ban on pinballs and saved the hobby with a Badass Boast, Improbable Aiming Skills, and one damn good Skill Shot. In his seventies, Sharpe is no longer the nation's top-rated player, but remains in the Top 200 worldwide. And pinball badassery is apparently genetic, as his sons are rated in the World's Top Ten.
• Richard Turner is 64-years-old, a self-proclaimed card mechanic, and in 2009 a Sixth Degree Black Belt in the Wa Do Kai system. For the card mechanic skill, he is able to shift a deck of cards around from a randomly shuffled deck by two other people and deal a round of Texas Hold'em poker with one player getting four kings in the final deal. The techniques he used were so good, they fooled Penn and Teller, the aforementioned two people who shuffled the deck, when they were done right in front of them. For added bonus, Richard Turner is completely blind.
• The celebrity steeplejack and steam engineering expert Fred Dibnah was routinely climbing high structures into his fifties, taking on ascents that would have defeated younger and fitter men, and even in his sixties was still climbing his hobby project - a replica of a coal-mine pit-head tower that he was building, practically single-handed.