The exploits of the Bulkley Valley’s Shogun Dojo are well-known. For 25 years, “the little dojo that could,” tucked away in a converted church in the wilderness of Northwest B.C., has been producing black belt competitors. So many, in fact, that Hanshi Marwan Abu Khadra had to estimate how many (around 90, he said). Many of those have gone on to be provincial, national and world champions.
Most recently, Shogun students came back from the WKU (World Karate and Kickboxing Union) world championships in Calgary with three gold medals and 15 others.
Up against hundreds of the best fighters in the world, who train in much bigger centres with access to many more competitive opportunities, it was no small feat.
And it’s not what you might expect from a small, remote, rural town, but when you have the “Muhammad Ali of Kickboxing” in your midst, what seems impossible, can quickly become expected.
While a year doesn’t go by without headlines about Shogun Dojo’s winning ways on the provincial, national and international stages, relatively less is known about the man behind it all. That is not unexpected because aside from teaching championship-winning kicks and punches and proper training techniques, one of the primary lessons taught at Shogun is humility.
Up until now, Marwan Abu Khadra has tried to keep the focus on the kids and their accomplishments, but when you get inducted into the European Martial Arts Hall of Fame, that kind of attracts attention.
Marwan received the honour last month in Germany along with his good friend Mihran Aghvinian. An eighth-degree black belt and national (German), European and world champion himself, Marwan was inducted for both his personal record and the contributions he has made to the sport through his dojo.
“They called him the Muhammad Ali of kickboxing because he was untouchable,” wrote Aghvinian in a Facebook post.
“His style was a symphony of combinations and when you tried to hit back, he just disappeared like a ninja. When he became a European and world kickboxing champion, both times he exited the ring without one scratch on him — he would’ve been able to go to a wedding, that’s how untouched he looked.”
Marwan grew up mostly in Germany. His father, Halim Abu Khadra, was Palestinian and studying law at Cambridge when the Second World War started. He fought against the Germans in the Second World War. After the war, based on his English and legal education, Halim was working in Lebanon as a translator and negotiator for the American forces there.
His mother, Renate was a German acrobatic athlete who was in Lebanon for a competition and the two met.
After getting married, Halim continued to work for the Americans first in Lebanon where Marwan’s brother was born, then Beirut where Marwan came along, then Kuwait where his parents added a sister to the family.
But Renate longed for home, so she took the kids and headed back to Hamburg where Halim eventually joined them.
Marwan got interested in martial arts the way many kids of his generation did. In the 1970s, Bruce Lee was a mega-star. His Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines, became a worldwide obsession among teenagers everywhere.
He said it was two accidents that got him actually involved in the discipline, though.
The first was after attending a Bruce Lee movie, he and a friend started fooling around outside the theatre and he punched the friend in his face. That was the end of the friendship, Marwan said.
“I was thinking to myself what an idiot I am; no control,” he explained. “This is in my head, so I was upset.”
The second was a visit, with two other friends, to a martial arts shop to buy some Bruce Lee merchandise. A picture on the wall behind the cash caught his eye. It was a picture of Geert Lemmens, the founder of a style called Kadgamala Marg.
Lemmens and his wife, who was serving the boys, had just opened a martial arts school and she invited them to try karate.
His friends didn’t take to it, but Marwan joined up on his 15th birthday.
“And since then, I was hooked,” he said. “Right from the beginning, that was 1977.”
It took a while for him to get into championship form, though.
“I started competing as an orange belt,” he said. “And from there just progressed. And I lost all my fights at the beginning. I wasn’t really a good fighter, but I was determined.”
Bullying by his teammates just bolstered that determination, he said, noting that it is all about training.
That changed at his first North German championship, which he won. From there, he went on to be a 12-time German national champion and eventually European champion (1988) and World champion (1989). He stopped competing in 1992, but kept his foot in the game coaching the German national team.
Prior to his Hall of Fame induction, Marwan achieved his eighth-degree black belt. Along with that came the new title of Hanshi. He is now the highest-ranking master of the Kadgamala Marg style, second only to Shihan Shihan Geert Lemmens, the head of the style.
When he retired from fighting, he also got married to Petra. However, the couple faced some hardships in Germany. Although trained as a computer hardware and software specialist, Marwan had difficulty finding a job in the 1990s.
They started thinking about getting out of Germany thinking it would be better to raise a family somewhere else. On a trip to B.C. in 1993, they discovered Smithers and from the moment they got off the plane, they were hooked.
“I looked up, this mountain mesmerized me right away,” Marwan said. “And that’s it. After the summer, we went back home… and we looked around and said, ‘No, this is not what we want.’ If we want family, that’s
Smithers.”
In 1996, they made the move. When they got here, Marwan started two businesses, a computer servicing business and the dojo. He also coached at the national level.
Although he was advised there was too much competition with two other martial arts studios in town, he preferred to look at it as a challenge.
“The way I think, it’s always the other way around, I’m the competition,” he said.
He started out small, renting space at Muheim Elementary School for three classes a week. Within the year, there was interest in Terrace, so he started going there once a week and eventually was asked to also start up classes in Houston.
Disenchanted with the computer business, he eventually shut that down and concentrated on the karate school.
A permanent home for the dojo came as a bit of serendipity. The Canadian Reformed Church congregation had outgrown its building on 15th Avenue and Marwan kind of stumbled into a conversation about it that included his friend Jeremy Penninga, a real estate agent with Calderwood.
“They said, ‘Marwan, would you like to buy a church?’,” he recalled. “And I’m like, this depends. And they said, ‘Oh, are you serious?’ I said yeah.”
Penninga showed him the building and he liked what he saw imagining the main hall empty of the pews and covered in mats with heavy bags hanging and workout gear neatly arranged in the altar area.
Marwan took it to CIBC and the Business Development Bank, got the loan, and Shogun Dojo had a home.
At its peak, the club boasted 350 students, but that took a hit with the pandemic. It is currently rebuilding though with approximately 160 students.
Over the past 25 years, Marwan and Petra also had the family they dreamed about raising in Canada.
And the whole family is involved. Petra is a second-degree black belt and an instructor. Their kids, Tareq, Karim and Kyra are all fourth-degree black belts and instructors. They also all have impressive arrays of trophies behind them.
But ultimately that’s not what it’s about, Marwan says.
“As a karateka, or martial artist, there’s some codes, which we really follow,” he said. “If you are a true Karateka, or martial artist… it’s our respect, honour, humility etc. So all these virtues are very important for martial artists. And that’s what we follow.”