Jiu-Jitsu

There are some recruiting posters that say "Navy Special Forces" but this is not what they call themselves. I spent 4 1/2 years working with spec ops and spec war and have heard them tell people this many times.

If Bryant Harrell is doing a good job at teaching stranger danger, more power to him, but if he continues to claim to have been "Navy Special Forces", or to have participated in the Pan Am games, then he is basing his advertisement on lies. I have checked with experts on Navy Special Operations training, and they assure me that he did not attend Bud/s, which is required for anyone in Navy Special Warfare. He also lied about the Pan Am games. There are some other claims he had on numerous websites at one time that are improbable.

If Harrell wants to teach martial arts or stranger danger, that is fine. If he is lying about his experience to draw in business, it should come out.

I no longer live in Statesville, and do not have time to meet someone face to face, especially someone that might hold a grudge for having his false claims revealed.

I would love to see a clarification of his military service and some of his other claims.

can you contact me at darkknight2009200@yahoo.com I am interested in knowing where he is currently.

He taught kids here at a local school that was owned by a fellow student i knew when i was learning Kung Fu. He was a good teacher and I agree about some things you said but he is trained in martial arts, how much i can not answer this and several Masters and Sifu's all said he knows his Hapkido and Kung Fu very well. So there is some ligit means of training to him.

But please contact me as i am seeking to speak to him for several reasons. Thanks and every one please make sure to call schools and research the teach that you will train with so it is not a waste of money.

Thank You

Sifu Wilson

Smitty wrote:

I don't know about Instructor Flynn. I would look out for some of the ones that lie about their experience to make themselves sound tougher. Bryant Harrell claims to have won a Pan Am silver medal in 1988, but the Pan Am games were in 1987, then 1991 and he is not on the list as a medal winner at any level in 1987. He also claims to have been "US Navy Special Forces", but based on my experience (6 years active duty Navy, stationed on a base where Seals frequently came for specialty training) nobody in the Navy calls themselves "Special Forces". There are some recruiter posters that use that term, but Navy either uses "Special Warfare" or "Special Operations Forces". I verified with a group that specializes in false claims that he never attended Bud/S. Typically, the only forces that call themselves "Special Forces" are the Army Special Forces or Green Barets.
As a Navy Veteran, who has known Spec War and Spec Ops people, it offends me that he makes such claims. What especially steams me is that he uses deception to further a career of teaching children. My daughter was in one of his "Stranger Danger" classes and was scared to death of him. She was 4 or 5 and it was done through the Church.

I noticed that I did not connect some thoughts as well as I could have and some things may seem a little disjointed in my posts.

First of all, my bio. I was stationed in Key West, Fl with the Navy Hydrofoils from 1988 to 1993 as the primay station of my 6 year enlistment. I was in the advanced electronics field and was at times on the security alert team and firefighting team. Key West was the home to several Special Operations groups, including Navy EOD and Coast Guard Drug Interdiction forces. It was also home to several schools for Special Warfare training. I have met a large number of Seals and other Special Operations personel, including some EOD who played on my 8 Ball (pool) league. After being honorably discharged in 1993, I stayed civilian until going into the reserves in 2002 and staying until 2005.

Several years ago, in a converstation with my now ex-wife, I found out my daughter attended a class taught by Bryant Harrell, and that my ex's impression is that it was not a very well handled class and that my daughter did not like the instructor. I did a web search of the instructor and found his bio on his own website, for Iron Eagle Martial Arts as well as some other sites. The claims he made were hard to believe and some I knew from experience were unlikely or untrue.

The first claim that appeared wrong was that he was a member of "Navy Special Forces". If you do a search on google for "What are Navy Special Forces" you will get results for Navy Special Warfare (Seals) and Navy Special Operations (EOD, etc). Here is a fairly descriptive website of Navy Spec War/Spec Op. http://ftp.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/socom/sof-r... I didn't see once where they used Navy Special Forces as a term. At the time of this claim, a group called Authentiseal was still doing verification of people claiming to be Seals. I e-mailed them the link to Bryant Harrell's site and asked if it seemed legit or if he was a seal. They confirmed that he had never been a Seal.

The next claim that seemed odd was his claim to be Navy Executive Protection. I was unable to even find any reference that the Navy ever provided this service for anyone. While they will task MP and Security different guard details, long term assignments as "executive protection" would typically be assigned to Marines.

The third claim that I was leary of was his claim to have been a medal winner in the All Navy Judo team. I could not find anything on this online so I e-mailed the coordinator for the All Navy teams. He did not specifically say that this was untrue, but did say that he had no record of an All Navy Judo team that fit within the time period of Bryant's claims.

The fourth claim that did not make sense was his claim that he was a silver medalist in the 1988 pan am games. As I stated earlier, the Pan Am games were in 1987 and 1991. Here are the medal awards for Judo for 1987 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo_at_the_1987...

and 1991 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo_at_the_1987...

There are two possibilities. The first is that I am wrong. I would love to have Bryant give some more specific info on his military service and the other claims that I read on his site. While specific operations may be classified, basic duty assigments, even to elite forces are not. If he named his unit, it might clear up a lot. The second is that I am right. If that is true, all he has to do is admit that he embellished certain claims and I would never mention his name again.

I took his claims, and my honest belief that they were false as a personal insult to the service I dedicated 9 years of my life to. That is the reason I have been a little strong my accusations.

There was a cut and paste problem. This is the link for 1991 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judo_at_the_1991...

Looking for people to join. I'm in the Statesville NC area and i train with three of the four masters at combined martial arts and we do judo, traditional karate, wing chun and mma and yoga and kickboxing aerobics... all at an affordable price I have more info on my myspace... just look for Mickey... or Michele Henderson and message me

I have seen many interest and we would really like to have more people work with us... my main area right now is judo and my instructor is great his name is Randy Ellsworth. Class is being held in his warehouse... Like I said contact me on myspace for more info

Bryant Harrell is the greatest martial artist and man that i know of..... to pu it bluntly he has great skill..... you (Smitty) need to stick to your job and mind your own business. that is my two cents. im currently training under him now and i wouldn't train with anyone else. do not publicly dis someone you know nothing about it is low for a man. especially if you are just a person trying to post bs about someone else

Harrel subject,

When he posted lies on the internet, and used false advertising to teach a class my daughter was in, it became my business. Here is a copy of one of two sites that he had up that started this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040413131720/iro...

The verifyable lie in this is "Winning a silver medal in the Pan/Am Games, qualifying for the 1988 Olympics." Earlier I posted a link to the results of the 1987 Pan/Am games for Judo." In later sites, which have been taken down and I can't get to an archive of he was more specific on some of these claims. I can tell you that the "Black Dragon Society" is is Koku Ryu Ki not Koho Ryu Ki and that it is a Japanese Paramilitary/political group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dragon_Soc...
Koho Ryu Ki would be the "Back Dragon Society". Maybe this is a little benign.

He claimed to be a "Special Forces" member, but this I verified with Authentiseal when I first started looking into his claims that he never attended BUD/S, so he is not Navy Special Warfare.

He claims to have set a world record, but I am not sure who is the maintainer of this record (breaking 100 boards with 1 finger). I can't find a record of it.

Where's the BS? What did I post that was wrong or a lie? If you want to train with him, that's your choice. I have no clue if he is any good as a teacher or a martial artist. I would not train with him. My issue is with false claims he made to promote his school.

Well you said in your one of your comments that people have been corrected many times for calling it Special forces... I believe that to be a general term and used instead of the official name. The record was broken by him in the Statesville mall. Those are two of your claims that I have to do no research on to inform you on my opinion. I agree it was your business when your daughter was involved... no you don't know about his teaching or about his actual experience. Your sources may possible not be able to access certain information as far as that is concerned. Also please consider the dates of the websites and the last time they were updated. they are five years old... I consider that unreliable so you should really have evaluated the website before you went based off its information. Yes, it is a bio but information is always changing, and again you admit you don't know how he teaches so don't comment until you've seen it in or have been involved in it. Only people with a first hand experience should comment on it.
Thank you for replying I was happy to give my reasons on my first comments on the subject

Also again as many people have said this is low to post about someone you know nothing about and cant talk to face to face. Ruining someone's reputation is wrong if you are trying to get out the truth then do it on a level where there is some dignity behind it.
Steps you should have taken

1: Ask him about his claims and present your information disclaiming them

You posted blindly on a public site about a man you have no knowledge of other than a old website, and you bashed his business, his means of providing for his family.

After the first step you would have his proof, if he even bothered to show you, and these conversations would never happen.

It makes me very angry with you... trying to be a brown noser but having no concrete evidence is just trying to start something. and miss spelling are common and you don't know who created that website. someone possibly did that for him and googled it or something like that and came up with the wrong spelling

I would never do that and as far as i remember haven't done that in my short life. To be perfectly honest I am confident to call you a coward who has nothing better to do then try and start a problem. I'm surprised anyone took notice of you... except the majority also said that your post were very wrongly posted.

Please reply to these last two post if you can.

Yes, "Special Forces" is not a general term used by those who are a part of the Navy Spec War community, only the civilian world. I did verify that he was not part of Special Warfare, the Seals, which by his wearing of a Seal T-Shirt in a photo posted on an old Children's Museum site and his claims of "Special Forces" on his own site would imply. The fact that Authetiseal said he had not attended BUD/S is all the proof needed to show this as a lie.
His claims were made online, so my response was online. Here is another 1987 Pan Am result list. See if it has him in it? http://www.judoinside.com/uk/... Information changes, but history doesn't. I am not making statements about his current activity, I am questioning claims about his past, posted on a website. It was 5 years ago, when I sent an e-mail to his site asking about his claims, which was not responded to. At that time, he had submitted this exact information to at least 4 other martial arts sites. After that, this site shut down and a new one, www.ironeaglemaa.com was restarted with the same information. Unfortunately, it did not get captured by the archive.
World records are maintained by organizations. THere are strict requirements to confirm the record. This is an example of a claim that should be easily verifyable, but doesn't seem to show up anywhere. An unverified and undocumented world record is not a world record. If this was verified and documented, then by whom?
Bryant Harrell is one of the lowest of the low, not for his martial arts, but for his dishonoring the military with his claims. I have adressed specific claims that were definitely untrue or overstated. I have pointed out a few that were unlikely. Another poster has stated they have seen a similar pattern of false claims.
I have no interest in a direct confrontation for several reasons, one being that I don't live in Statesville any more and another being tha. don't have any interest in a physical conflict.
It would be very simple for him to get me to say I was mistaken. If he posted specific duty assignments (claims that everything is "top secret" is a sure sign of a pretender), NEC, etc, BUD/S class numbers (these are never secret and easily verifyable. You have to attend BUD/s to be part of Special Warfare) to prove his military claims. Specifics on where and when he won "Pan Am" games and "All Navy" medals.
Also, brown nose means someone that does things in order to get close to someone, not to discredit claims. Trying to call me names or be offensive actually hurts your argument. Especially if you don't use them correctly.
While my response has been online, it has been anything but "blind". I have contacted multiple resources to verify claims. I even sent him an e-mail from the link from one of his sites and did not get a response. It was shortly after I began my inquiries that the sites were dropped. I don't know if it is related or not.
When you commission someone to put up a site about yourself, you proof it. That site was up for at least 2 years and a new site was put up later that had the same info. The same info was distributed to other martial arts sites to link to his school. While typos are possible, we aren't talking typing "Black" as "Back". Even if he was trying to re-translate it to Japanese, this group is a criminal organization not the "World Respected" martial arts group he claims.
Here's what I am looking for. I am confident that I am right, I have done considerable backwork to verify any solid claims I have made, the rest are opinions based on a lifetime of experience. All Harrell has to do is to admit, here, that he might have overstated some claims and that he will not continue these false claims and I will never post another word about him.

Also my last words on the subject are, You wouldn't have encountered him because you believe he would attack you for your own claims, well that reason is well decided. Even though you wouldn't have been hurt in any way you would have been proven wrong. You would have. I'm a 15 year old standing up for someone I love and view as a father figure I have his first hand accounts he was a seal for 4 years and teaches very well his students will keep coming to him and new ones will be taught by him no matter what a man who calls someone who served our country "low." I was using the term wrongly but it was better than calling you a fat man in front of a computer using google for a man's life.

I'm sorry to hurt your feelings, and to attack someone you care about. If you look at Harrell's statements, he skirted the claim that he was a Seal. That is one of the two claims that I have been able to verify as false.

As I mentioned earlier, I was able to get a verification that he never graduated BUD/s, so there is no way he was ever a Seal. My source was, at the time, the best around. They had access to the Navy BUD/s class lists and unless he attended under another name was not on those lists.

Many people have served their country with honor. They do not have to embellish their accomplishments.

Smitty, you are freaking awesome, nothing makes me more sick than bullshido. You would fit right in on Bullshido.net , a site that verifies martial arts claims.
That's all - Good work, thanks for fighting the good fight against MA liars everywhere.

Yea rapper boy! You think we are not armed? judo, boxing and a 38 !!!