RICHARD’S STORY

Richard Haye is a professional martial artist with two schools in Kristiansand, Norway, and approximately 500 students. He was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1970, and his family moved to Norway in 1983.

Richard was inspired by the1984 movie, The Karate Kid, and that year started training in Shorin Ryu Karate.

I was such a slow student that my instructor suggested that I pursue my other hobby…chess!

In spite of that, he attended every class for the next eight years and received his first degree black belt in 1992. 

Having grown up with Bruce Lee’s movies in a time where there was no internet, Bruce Lee’s books and ideas were magical to him.

The JKD philosophy made me want to seek to be the best martial artist I could be.

In parallel with his karate training, he travelled throughout Europe to attend seminars and cross train in other martial arts.

This lead Richard to Kali and the Filipino martial arts. In 1998, he found his first Kali instructor, Jeff Espinous, attended his seminars in Europe, and started one the first Kali Schools in Norway.

Upon meeting Sifu Richard Bustillo, one of Bruce Lee’s original students, and after only a few seminars, Richard became his student from 2003 until his passing in 2017. 

Richard Bustilllo challenged him to learn different fighting arts like Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. 

At the time, Richard did not like rolling around on the ground and felt as though he had been indoctrinated by his Karate instructors that a punch to the face was far superior to any Jiu-Jitsu techniques.

That was until a 16 year old girl, a 2 stripe white belt, showed me how wrong I was. 

She offered to roll with him and even with his multiple black belts in the standing arts and over twenty-five years of training, he had nothing for her.

She gave him an ego check that he was not prepared for. He had a hole in his martial arts and could pretend it didn’t exist or he could do something about it. He decided to take action.

At forty years old, the prospect of starting again was both frightening and exiting. He felt the excitement that he did twenty-five years earlier when he started.

There was no BJJ in Kristiansand at the time, so Richard got a few of his students on board and did a ground version of Fight Club. After a few weeks of inefficient training he did some research and found Roy Dean’s Blue Belt Requirements.

Professor Marcello Yogui was the highest graded instructor in Scandinavia, so after contacting him, he graciously took Richard’s group under his wing. Richard received blue and purple belts by him.

Teaching alone and not having a curriculum was difficult, so I used all Mr. Dean’s teaching videos. Being a Japanese martial artist as well, he spoke a language that I could relate to.

In 2015, Richard first contacted Roy Dean and arranged a first seminar with him in 2016.

Richard’s school hosted Roy up to two times every year for the next couple of years, with both students and himself truly connecting with his style.

In 2018, after much contemplation, Richard and his students reached a consensus that they wanted to represent Roy Dean Academy moving forward. Though this was a difficult decision at the time, it worked out well and Richard has expressed great progress under Professor Dean.

In 2019, at forty-nine years old and nine and a half years after buying Blue Belt Requirements, Richard had the opportunity to test for his brown belt with Roy Dean.

He has noted that this was one of the highlights of his martial arts career. As he has said:

“I started out as a kid with less than average skill, but through curiosity and perseverance, and with the great teachers, I am living my dream of improving myself through martial arts.”

All the grades and titles I have gathered through the years are not meant to impress you, but instead I hope inspire you, so that you can see that it is possible to achieve what you set your mind to, no matter what those around you say.