THE
wave Highly decorated martial arts instructor Dean Pyles is pursuing his long-held dream of writing and producing a movie.
PERSONALITY
Fight of Fancy Martial arts master explores bullying in film by HANNAH BURKE
A
fter winning his 44th world title in martial arts, Dean Pyles found himself at a crossroads. The grandmaster martial arts instructor, stuntman and fight choreographer could either continue to compete or listen to that little voice in his head pining for uncharted territory. Pyles had been floating the idea of a martial arts movie for quite some time, but it wasn’t until he was trapped in a Virginia snowstorm with his daughter and a student that he finally pitched it and gained enough encouragement to take it seriously. “They told me this was a movie they wanted to see and that it needed to be made immediately,” Pyles recalled. “So when we got back home to Fort Walton Beach, I got on my kayak and prayed about it.” Pyles, who has owned and operated Elite Combat Martial Arts in Fort Walton Beach since 2009, often takes to the water to decompress and meditate. Amid waves and dolphins, he prays. “I asked God to send me in a direction where I could use the skills that I and my instructors are blessed with, and everything seemed to tell me to make this movie,” Pyles said. “There was just one problem: I’ve never written a movie before.” Pyles isn’t the best speller. Growing up, his fists were more accustomed to throwing punches than wrapping around pencils and scribbling words. He is technologically challenged, he said, and doesn’t even own a computer. “So, this may be one of the first-ever scripts completely typed out on a smartphone,” Pyles laughed. But Pyles is persistent, a trait stemming from years of martial arts training, self-discipline and
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dedication. At age 4, Pyles began attending martial arts classes in the basement of a neighbor’s home in Mount Airy, North Carolina. Upon receiving a Billy Jack cowboy hat from his uncle, Pyles found himself wanting to be the titular character who gave bullies their comeuppance by way of the foot and the fist. As a teen, he traveled to Charlotte for training under Grandmaster Joe Lewis, a revered karate world champion and father of American kickboxing. Pyles counts Lewis as one of the men who molded him into the grandmaster he is today. Inside
Elite Combat Martial Arts, you’ll find framed photos of Pyles and Lewis (along with snapshots of Pyles with Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and former actor and mixed martial artist Randy Couture) lining the walls. Pyles said it’s a reflection of where he came from. “I always tell my students to not drown the person who taught you how to swim,” he said. “In America, everyone wants to give themselves all the credit. They use the teachers as a vessel and then try to drown them and outdo them. I tell them photography by MARI DARR~WELCH
