Escrima scares the feces out of me!
Zauriel said:
I currently study arnis/escrima/kali
I saw an elderly Philipino eviscerate a 200 deck-ape from the USS Oriskany while I was at Subic Bay back in 1975. He was an expert in
escrima. From that point on I give little old Philipino men a lot of courtesy and a wide berth.
The (in)famous American soldier of fortune Paul Balor (a pseudonym) wrote that the only cure for an
escrima artist "...is a face full of bullets." He may have a point.
As far as
ninjutsu goes, the only true practitioner I ever met was Michael Echanis. He was an Oregon native who left the US Army (after a disabling wound) to study matial arts and recover from his disability. He studied
hwarang do and
isshinryu karate, but more to the point he may be responsible for the recreation of
ninjutsu as we know it. Many--including Hon Kim, editor of
Black Belt magazine--say that Echanis remade himself in
ninjutsu and also remade
ninjutsu in his own image.
Echanis was respected enough in the SpecOps community to teach his arts to SeAL's and Special Forces operators, but he went commercial and became a gun-for-hire in Central America, working for Tacho Samoza, the despotic "president" of Nicaragua.
I was introduced to Echanis when he came to the US Embassy at Managua. He was perhaps the most dangerous looking man I ever met, but he was also an insufferable
putz. His personality probably also got him killed--his airplane spontaneously exploded over Lake Nicaragua one day, killing him and two other independant gun slingers in September of 1978.
The point is that Echanis could point a patrol as good or better than any Marine with whom I ever served in combat, myself included. He could also stalk a sentry (or anyone else) like no man alive. He was also a crack shot with pistol and rifle, making him as deadly as he looked.
If there are any more like him out there, I've yet to see them, so anyone who wants to study
ninjutsu has got their work cut out for them.