Master B's Web log

ROLLIE An Old Palooka Who Can Teach You A Thing Or Two Published May 03. 2009 By Kenton Robinson Day Staff Writer   New London At 79, HE'S GOT A BAD RIGHT HIP, A BUM LEFT shoulder, and broken fingers on each hand have healed to point in a different direction. "I had five nose operations," he says. "See this here?" He flattens his nose on his face. "I got no bone." Still, on any given weekday afternoon, Rollie Pier, dressed in gray sweats, a white towel flung over his shoulder, can be found in the Bank Street gym of Team Strike Zone and Whaling City Boxing, teaching young fighters all that he knows about the sweet science. "Rollie?" says Raymond "Coach Ray" Hodges Jr., who works with kids at the gym. "He's forgotten more than most people ever know: Life, boxing, you name it, man, the guy's a walking dictionary." "I'm active in the gym," Pier says. "If I di...

Many people know my story.  Bullied and beat up as a teen turned me to martial arts.  Often times over the years I have been invited to many classrooms to talk about our martial arts program. I always brought my “story” about being bullied and beat up and how that experience motivated me to learn martial arts and then help others avoid this terrible experience if at all possible.   The trauma I suffered from being beaten up still lingers in my soul and the anguish comes right back when I tell the story of being beaten up. Then one day my life changed again when the news flashed the absolutely horrible story of the Columbine shooting in Colorado.   It hit me right in the heart.   Not only for the victims that were shot, their friends and families,   but to the young men that had been harassed for years and thought they had no outlet for their frustration, except for getting some guns and shooting up a school. I made a decision.   I wa...