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1st Degree Black Belt Grading - Dan Botten

On Sunday 16th August Dan Botten of Doce Pares Medway took his black belt grading.

Whilst more civilised activities such as barbecues and beach trips were the order of the lovely hot day Dan endured a gruelling non stop three hour examination. Grandmaster Danny Guba and Master Nimesh Desai chaired the grading as Dan sparred his way through double stick, single stick, knife and close quarter empty hands. His grading then continued with single stick, double stick, knife and empty hand sets including striking, locks, disarming and a multitude of advanced abecederio. Near the end of the day Dan performed his forms, eleven forms in total taking him to form 8 with the differing Grandmaster styles.

Dan showed his Tapi Tapi and empty hand padwork. Master Nimesh then selected randomly from other grades prior to the 1st degree black belt testing Dan's knowledge ensuring that he was able to perform the entire curriculum up to and including 1st degree.

Dan attained a 1st class pass with a superb performance. He demonstrated a very high level of knowledge, style, stamina and determination and is to be commended.

It is well deserved that Dan Botten now holds the rank 'Guru'.

With three black belts from other systems already Dan said afterwards "I've never experienced anything like this before"... "Physically I was exhausted but emotionally... Switching from knife to single stick to double stick to empty hand all the time is hard. This means more to me than any other black belt I have."

Well done Dan