Thomas Pressimone  was born in the Bronx N.Y. in January 1957.  Around 1969 he was introduced to karate in a friends basement and he was hooked. Over the years he continued to dabble pretty much only learning to kick and punch to enhance his street fighting.  Gang life had taken over his life on the mean streets of the Bronx and life got pretty tough.  Today the scars on his knuckles from the teeth of his adversaries being embedded in his fists are reminders of the experience gained. Not to mention the other scars from stab wounds, baseball bats and broken bottles, as well as being thrown through a plate glass window.  After joining a Tae Kwon Do school in 1980 and training there for 2 years, earning a purple belt, he began to calm down a little but still had a little fight left in him and some trouble.  Eventually he switched to a traditional Shotokan dojo under Sensei Toyotaro Miyazaki and slowly began to change his ways; and his attitude.  Finding a job and leaving the streets preferring to train and research this mysterious art his street experience began to come forth aiding in finding “working technique” within the make believe karate of modern times.  At the same time His head and character started to get on a better path

Much of what he was learning over the years seemed to him not realistic enough for use on the street as self defense.  Not according to his experience. He went home and practiced, finding usable techniques within karate that were watered down in normal training. For the next 35 years that was his goal in training and teaching. To find the true “old karate.” The self defense karate…the deadly karate.  Sport didn’t appeal to him and although he competed here and there because it “was the thing to do” coming up in the ranks he wanted to “really fight.”  His street experience has shaped how his techniques and defenses work, and are trained.  Unfortunately this has at the same time, separated him from his dojo, their affiliates and the people who he trained with.  He no longer has anything in common with the modern karate world, sport or commercialism.  He continues to train alone and advance, believing that modern karate takes on more and more of less and less.  His goals are only to rid himself of excess baggage and become empty.