Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection

About Jim Wagner

There are few self-defense instructors in the world with such a diverse background like that of Jim Wagner's. There are even fewer who have had such a dramatic impact on the martial arts world. For his achievements Jim Wagner was inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame as Self-Defense instructor of the Year 2006, the "Academy Awards" of the martial arts community, and simultaneously inducted into the Budo International Hall of Fame for Outstand Achievement in the Martial Arts 2006. This was awarded to him for developing his reality-based concepts and training methods. Going back to 2000 he was appointed as an honorary member of the Brazilian Air Force for training their Air Force's counterterrorist team known as GEPA. Today Jim Wagner's own system Reality-Based Personal Protection, made public on January 21, 2003, is one of the fastest growing self-defense systems in the world and lays claim to over 30 DVDs on the market (produced by various publishers), and five books.  

The roots of Wagner's Reality-Based system

At the age of 14 Jim Wagner started learning self-defense from a High School friend, Alfonso Uceda, who had been a student of Bill "Superfoot" Wallace in the Korean martial art of Tae Kwon Do. Today Alfonso is a security supervisor at one of the largest casino/hotels in Las Vegas, and the two have maintained their friendship ever since.

After a year of private lessons Alfonso had taught Jim everything he knew and he advised Jim to expand his horizons by studying different martial arts systems. Jim took his advice and enrolled at the Japan Karate-Do Ryobu-Kai in Anaheim, California. His new instructor, Kiyoshi Yamazaki (the same man that trained actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian) was a strict disciplinarian and traditionalist. In addition to Karate, the weekly regiment also included Judo, Kendo (the way of the sword), and other weapons training (tonfa, sai, staff, and nunchaku). In 2007 Jim Wagner's path would cross with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's when the governor came to the Joint Forces Training Based at Los Alamitos, California to give his leadership during the California wildfires of October. Sergeant Jim Wagner was activated to State Active Duty for the military and was assigned to the Tactical Operations Center for Operation Fall Blaze.

On September 25, 1977 Jim Wagner received his green belt from Kiyoshi Yamazaki. As he was working on his brown belt he saw his first Bruce Lee movie at the dollar theatre, Enter the Dragon (four years after Bruce Lee's death), and immediately wanted to learn kung-fu. When asked Mr. Yamazaki that he also wanted to learn kung-fu Mr. Yamazaki responded in his broken English, "Kung-fu no good." Jim decided then and there to leave the school. 

Jim Wagner hooked up with some Vietnamese immigrants at his High School who taught him Vietnamese kung-fu. He then went to a local Hawaiian kenpo school in Newport Beach until that closed down several months later. The instructor had taken a samurai sword to the school in the middle of the night and completely destroyed the place and became a lumber jack up in Washinton State. One of the black belts, Jeff Huff, who came to the destroyed school at the same moment Jim did, took Jim under his wing as a private student and taught him the very traditional martial art of Po Keck Yin Yang Kung-fu and some ballet dance exercise for balance.

In 1978 Jim Wagner went to a 60 hour martial arts training camp, called the Aspen Academy of Martial Arts, nestled in Aspen, Colorado and took lessons from little known instructor at the time Dan Inosanto - protege of the late Bruce Lee. It was there that Jim learned the basics of Filipino Kali, Jeet Kune Do, and Wing Chun. He also had the opportunity to train with the late Larry Hartsell in JKD grappling techniques. It was that very same year that Dan told Black Belt magazine in an interview that he feared that Filipino martial arts would die out. Of course it didn’t, and he is credited today for reviving it and making Jeet Kune Do popular.

Jim Wagner recalls his time there, “I got to hear the stories about Bruce Lee and the history of the Philippine martial arts because Dan gave me a lift each morning from my hotel room to the training site twenty minutes away.” 

An interesting side note is that while Jim was attending the Aspen Academy of Martial Arts Dan’s first wife approached him as the month long seminar was just winding down and told Jim that her daughter, Diana Lee Inosanto, had a “crush” on him and if would be as so kind to take her to the dinner and dance that the Academy was hosting on the last day since she was too shy to ask herself. Jim was 16 years old at the time and Diana was 14. Of course, Jim complied and escorted her to the event. Today Diana Lee is a fairly well known martial artist in her own right.  

Dan Inosanto found out that Jim lived in California only 45 minutes south of his school and he invited him to train at the Filipino Kali Academy in Torrance. Dan Inosanto award Jim his first training certificate for 40 hours of instructions on August 25, 1978. A month later, from 1978 to spring of 1980, Jim Wagner made every attempt to drive up as often as he could. Usually it was twice a week. As such, Jim Wagner was one of the original Jeet Kune Do / Kali students under Dan Inosanto and Richard Bustillo. Jim remembers, “It was great because sometimes there would only be a few of us training, and we’d get a lot of individual attention.”

Jim not only looked up to Dan as his instructor, but as a mentor in his formidable martial arts yeas. “When I went into the United States Army Dan wrote me a letter, which I have kept to this day. He was always an encourager, and I never once heard a negative thing come out of his mouth.”

In 1980 Jim started teaching close friends and associates privately under the Jeet Kune Do banner before going into the army.

Both Dan Inosanto and Richard Bustillo were way ahead-of-their-time in late 1970s and encouraged all of their students to learn different martial arts and experiment with them. Thus, Jim Wagner also studied the following systems during this period: European fencing, Chinese Kickboxing, and Greco-Roman wrestling. This was two decades before the term "mix martial arts" came into vogue.

Eventually Dan Inosanto and Richard Bustillo parted ways and over the years Jim popped in a few times at the Inosanto Academy located in Marina Del Ray, California. But, by the age of 25 Jim decided to move on in his martial arts studies. By this time Dan Inosanto had become world famous, but Jim always felt fortunate to have learned from this legend in small groups and one-on-one time with him. It wasn't until 2002 when Jim Wagner finally crossed paths with Richard Bustillo again at the California Peace Officers Association's yearly training event called ARPOC in San Diego, California. Richard, a Reserve Police Officer, was teaching a defensive tactics course while Jim was attending a Child Abuse seminar at the same event. Richard gave Jim a complete history lesson on the Jeet Kune Do system and what had become of many past JKD instructors. 

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Joining the military 

On September 9, 1980 Jim Wagner enlisted into the United States Army. He went through "boot camp" (Basic Combat Training) at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and was extremely impressed to the degree of realism that the military trained its people, which would give him a wealth of ideas for the future Jim Wagner Reality-Based Personal Protection system. He recalls, "They were actually training for the real thing: simulated battlefields, replica enemy weapons, live-fire targets that were painted like Russian soldiers, smoke, explosions - the whole nine yards. Even the best martial arts studios that I had trained in before putting on a military uniform had never trained as realistically as this. That is to say, to include props and special effects as part of the training environment."

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After the Army Jim Wagner plunged back into his martial arts studies and hooked up with Ted Lucay Lucay who ran a school in Huntington Beach. Ted was another popular JKD and Filipino Kali instructor at the time who was personally trained by Dan Inosanto and had struck out on his own. After several months of training Jim started teaching Jeet Kune Do and Filipino Kali privately, and dropped in occasionally at Dan’s new school, Inosanto Academy, located in Marine Del Ray (near the Los Angeles International Airport). Just a few years later Ted Lucay Lucay passed away.  

Jim Wagner enrolled in college majoring in graphic arts and learning the French language to pursue a career in advertising. French would prove useful in the future since Jim Wagner now teaches his courses in Paris speaking 100% in French. After his first semester at Orange Coast College Jim started working as a production artist for Val-Pak Direct Marketing Systems and then landed the position as Art Director for Mammoth Publishing followed by CCM Publications. He then went on to work for a couple of advertising firms. These skills in marketing and advertising would prove useful in later years when Jim would begin promoting his new Reality-Based Personal Protection system. These same skills are now passed down to his Reality-Based instructors in training in his Level 3 courses: Advertising and Marketing, Business and Leadership, and Training DVD Production.

Jim also studied Western boxing for several months to work on his arm strikes. 

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1987 an important year for Reality-Based

In early 1987 Jim Wagner began teaching his own “mixed martial arts” that he named Modern Fighting Methods. Desiring to teach privately he started off by advertising in the local newspaper in the City of Orange and netted a few good students from the ad. This advertisement caught the attention of the Orange Police Department who wanted to know exactly what Jim was teaching. After all, the logo for the new system showed a graphic of an M-16 rifle along with a Japanese ninja throwing star contained in a shield and the police were concerned as to the content of the instructions. Jim was openly combining traditional martial arts with the military arts he had learned at Fort Jackson at Basic Combat Training. With only one phone call from a female detective Jim reassured the police department that he was only teaching self-defense and not offensive team tactics. The explanation satisfied the detective, but she sternly warned him that he was not to give private lessons in public parks. Jim had been instructing his new students in Hart Park just off of the 22 Freeway.

One of Jim’s original students, Mike DiGiovanni (who is still good friends with Jim today and his oldest student at 70 years old), learned about Jim’s ejection from the park and invited him to teach a Wednesday night class at Lou Michelson’s converted home garage that he had turned into a Japanese Karate dojo in Huntington Beach. Lou was a professor at the Golden West Community College nearby and had a love for the traditional martial arts and even had a book published. Mike convinced Lou that a little bit of instructions from Jim teaching Filipino Kali and Jeet Kune Do would give the more advanced students some needed variety and to retain student enrolment. Mike masked the name Street Defense when negotiating with Lou knowing that it would not be accepted, and told him that it would be a JKD course which was more palatable since the system was growing popular at the time. Lou agreed and Jim taught each Wednesday night.

That same year Jim Wagner was the president of the Advertising Design Centre in Orange; a small advertising firm handing print media. Three years into Jim’s employment there the owner of the firm was offered the position of publisher for a computer magazine in New Hampshire and therefore tried to sell his business. With no suitable buyers Jim was responsible for liquidating the company’s assets, laying off the employees, and eliminating his own job. This was fine with Jim since he wanted a change of career.

Jim’s devoted Street Defense student, Mike DiGiovanni, was the Maintenance Supervisor for the City of Costa Mesa. Knowing that Jim was looking for a new job he suggested, “There is an opening for custody officer at the city jail. I think you would be perfect for the job with your martial arts and all. I know the sergeant in charge, Sergeant Yezbick. Are you interested?”

Jim Wagner recalls, “I was tired of the advertising business and couldn’t see myself getting back into it. I thought I’d at least take a look at the jail to appease Mike. When I took a tour of the jail it gave me the creeps, but I didn’t have the heart to Mike right then and there and that I didn’t want the job. However, when I went home that night I realized that if I took the position, even if for only a year, that I would be a much better qualified martial arts instructor in the long run. After all, it is the criminals that are the ones that are going to attack my students, and I had to confess, I didn’t know the mind of the criminals. Working in the jail would give me the experience that I needed.”

Jim applied for the position, went through the lengthy process (written exam, oral board interview, background investigation, psychological examination, and medical examination), and then was hired by the Costa Mesa Police Department in December, 1988. It was the perfect gift for an unemployed person.

Placed behind bars

Jim Wagner was hired in December 1988 as a corrections officer for the Costa Mesa Police Department Jail (16 felony and misdemeanor beds, 6 trusty beds, a drunk tank, two solitary confinement cells, and two booking cells). In 1989 Jim Wagner attended the Corrections Officers Academy held at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Upon graduation Officer Wagner’s duties were to book and house prisoners (murderers, rapists, child molesters, drunks… all of them).

Jim Wagner said, “When a prisoner wanted to fight there was no pepper spray, stun guns, or tasers for us in those days; at least not with Sergeant Yezbick. It was pure hand-to-hand combat. Having two years in a custody setting you come to learn the mind of the criminal. I lived nine hours a day with these men. Had that been all I did in my career, just the two years in the Jail, it is more experience that the majority of civilian martial arts instructors out there. I dealt with, on a daily basis, the very ‘enemy’ that most martial artists train to go up against. I didn’t have to wait for that ‘what if’ day. They came to me every single day. If you don’t think jail is a good place to get self-defense experience try spending a couple nights in one in any good size city.”

In 1988 Jim Wagner, still teaching in Lou’s Huntington Beach garage and started laying down the foundation of the future Reality-Based Personal Protection system (not to be officially available to the public until January 21, 2003). Jim introduced paint guns into the training curriculum for realistic robbery and terrorism survival attacks, combat first aid, and he started leaning more and more on realistic scenarios and less and less of patterned drills.

In 1989 Jim boldly approached the SWAT commander at his work, Lieutenant John Fitzpatrick, and offered to provide the 15-man SWAT team with an OPFOR (Opposition Force). Jim was referring to 10 of his top students that he would train to be the “bad guys” for a variety of tactical responses: warrant service, hostage situations, terrorism, and gang warfare. The invitation was accepted and Jim, under the supervision of Sergeant Ron Smith, created a fictitious “terrorist cell” called the Baleric Liberation Army (BLA). This cell was named after the Baleric Community Center in Costa Mesa where Jim Wagner was publicly teaching Jeet Kune Do / Filipino Kali once a week, later to expand to his women’s self-defense program called Women Against Rape (WAR). Jim’s very first video, by the same name, was produced in 1988.

For three months Jim Wagner, also known by his nom de guerre “Abu Mussa,” prepared his BLA “terrorists” for the big training event with the SWAT Team. Digging up as much information as he could find at the time about terrorism (a time in history when personal computers were just starting to become popular and before the Internet was a resource) Jim had simulated bombs made, taught small unit tactics, and dissimulated 1980s case studies. When the training event finally came Jim and his terrorist cell went up against the Costa Mesa Police SWAT Team in an abandoned building slated for demolition. The event began after sunset. Both teams were equally armed with paint guns (a time before air guns and Simunitions).
 
After two hours of Close Quarter Battle the SWAT team eventually prevailed, although Jim had avoided capture by climbing onto a second story ledge and doing a spider drop to the ground below in the courtyard out of sight of the perimeter team.

Highly pleased with the training that Jim provided to the SWAT Team he was invited to set up two more SWAT training events. The second opportunity was a hostage situation involving a fictitious “East Los Angeles Hispanic gang” with the story line of a robbery that went bad, organized by Officer Mike Cohen, and a few months later the second opportunity was a lengthy scenario for the SWAT Negotiation Team organized by Officer Bob Fate with the supervision of Sergeant McErlain.

By year’s end Jim Wagner applied for the position of police recruit which was the first step in becoming a sworn police officer. In the United States law enforcement officers and soldiers swear to protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, thus the term “sworn.” The opposite would be “civilian.” Once again Jim had to take a written test, physical agility test, stand before a three panel oral board, background investigation, psychological examination, and finally a medical examination. "After a while you feel like you are 'doing time' in the jail yourself," Jim said. He wanted a career with a little more adventure, and he just didn't want to deal with criminals in custody, Jim Wagner wanted to deal with them in the streets. 

While working in the jail, and waiting for the police recruit process to run its lengthy course, Jim Wagner obtained a business license and opened up a martial arts school which he named The Academie of Fighting Arts located on Grace Lane in Costa Mesa. The logo was a strong arm contained within a box holding a simitar sword. It was at this time, 1990, that Jim was the first martial arts instructor in the world to paint the interior of his school completely flat black: the floors, the walls, and the ceiling. There were no mirrors on the walls, no racks of ancient weapons, no certificates or flags mounted to the wall, nothing. It was just four walls and some spot lights above. Jim looked at his training hall as a “stage” and not a place to be ascetically pleasing.
Jim also was heavily into props at this time to enhance the scenarios. Break-away furniture, plastic baseball bats, plastic toys in the shape of tools, stage blood for wounds, and even a car was rolled in through the industrial pull-up door from time to time.

This was also the revolutionary time of experimenting with various layers of safety equipment, sound effects, and lighting.

After two years working in the jail Jim, and outside applicant Mitch Johnson, were selected for the two police recruit positions. Jim and Mitch had beat out over a hundred other applicants.

When the demand for Jim Wagner’s services became substantial (defensive tactics, tactics, and firearms training courses) he became a Reserve Police Officer with the same city for several months in 1999. After handing in his Letter of Resignation to Chief Dave Snowden, who later became the Police Chief of Beverly Hills, he terminated his full-time employment order to pursue his new career as a private contractor to police and military units through his training corporation that he, along with three other partners, had established four years prior. Jim’s services were in demand, not only domestically but internationally, and he took advantage of the opportunity.

Concerning this epoque Jim recalls, “I enjoyed attending bus assaults with German cops, I loved fast roping with the Marines, I had a blast doing hull searches under huge ships with the Honolulu SWAT Maritime team, I thought it was cool to eat guacamole and fried meat after training with my Mexican SWAT students, and to eat freshly smoked salmon on the edge of the icy river during lunch with the Quinault Indian police officer up in Washington State. I have had literally hundreds of experiences that made me feel alive, and I was perfectly content with my new occupation. I crammed in several life times into one, that’s for sure. To some it may have seemed impossible to do all of the things I did. However, to me it was simply my life. I have always followed my personal motto, if you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space.”
However, not wanting to fully give up his law enforcement career Jim applied as a Reserve Deputy at the Orange County Sheriff's Department (the fifth largest sheriff's department in the United States), and was sworn in one year later in 2000. After all, as a Costa Mesa Police Officer his department had sent him through the Orange County Sheriff's Training Academy ten years earlier, first the Corrections Officer Academy in 1989 (4 weeks) and then the Police Academy (21 weeks), and Jim was familiar with the Sheriff culture. When his new supervisor, Sergeant Wilfred Moreno, took a look at his file and saw the amount of training and experience Jim had, he, with the authorization of Sheriff Mike Carona, promoted him to the rank of sergeant with full police powers (Level 1 Reserve Designate due to his experience and Intermediate P.O.S.T. certificate) only a few months later and placed him on the newly formed Dignitary Protection Unit (DPU) as a team leader and trainer. During this stint, working out of the Katella Facility in the city of Orange, Jim was a bodyguard for diplomats, celebrities, VIPs, and as a personal bodyguard for the Sheriff himself. This now gave Jim the opportunity to teach defensive tactics and tactics full time, but also kept him "in the game" of law enforcement.