The presentation part was actually fairly good, with a lot of emphasis on how WT was designed as a functional self defense system and it seemed to hang together pretty sensibly. Most of us attending had some experience of some sort (some had a lot of martial arts training as it turned out), so Ralph just did a few simple attacks on each of us to see how we fared. It was a good thing it was just a show, because no one could stop even simple strikes or grappling moves. Then, Ralph had everyone attack him. No one could lay a hand on him, no matter what we did. When he did let us get a hold of him, all the locks, arm bars and take downs we tried had no effect. He was surprisingly agile and strangely relaxed.

Finally, towards the end, I made the mistake of asking how much power his punches really had. This is not as crazy as it sounds. Many martial arts have very fast attacks that really do not do much other than sting when most people deliver them, and at the time I weighed in at 190 pounds with a lot of muscle, so I thought this was a good test. Ralph then did a quick demo of the “one inch punch” Bruce Lee was famous for. My feet left the ground and I flew about ten feet back into a wall. I have taken a lot of hits in my time, and this was by far the hardest one ever, and I did not breathe normally for a week afterwards. Needless to say, I signed up as a student shortly thereafter.
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For the average student, after six months of training one can expect to develop some solid base of fighting instincts. To master the system is, like any martial art, a long term endeavour.

The problem with any student writing about his or her martial art is that they have an inherent bias towards the art they are in, and the majority of their audience will have their own bias towards their respective arts. Therefore, a commentary on why I think WT is great can be easily dismissed. Personally, I have a lot of confidence in the system, and have seen it tested regularly. It is vastly more functional than everything else I have experienced or seen in the martial arts world. To be blunt, a lot of what I have seen out there in terms of martial arts is not designed for real world self defense, and is very unlikely to work for most people in a real life confrontation. Anyone trying to use these methods will be lucky to avoid serious injury.

To be fair, marketing aside, most martial arts are geared more towards fitness, sports competition, or cultural learning, so it is a bit unfair to measure them by the criteria of functional self defense. A lot of arts produce people in good shape, with good agility, who can act aggressively. Unfortunately, in a real life situation one is likely to be confronted with a bigger, stronger opponent who is highly motivated to do physical damage to you. This opponent may not use any recognizable technique, and is very unlikely to adhere to any sort of rules of fighting. The sad fact is most martial arts spend little or no time trying to give people the tools to handle this situation, yet this is precisely the sort of thing you should be trained for from a self defense standpoint.