Tony Wolf began training in Tae Kwon Do in 1978, receiving the black belt rank in 1983 and then studying a wide range of martial arts and combat sports including capoeira, Filipino stick and knife fighting, kickboxing and freestyle wrestling. Since the late 1980s, Tony has been fascinated by the process of researching and reviving the “forgotten” martial arts of European history. After studying Renaissance-era longsword and dagger fencing and unarmed combat, he developed a special interest in the “antagonistics” practiced during the Victorian and Edwardian periods.
This interest led to his editing the Journal of Manly Arts, an online academic journal dedicated to the history of 19th century fighting styles. Thereafter he became deeply involved in the re-creation of Bartitsu, the “martial art of Sherlock Holmes” that was also the first system in the world to combine Asian and European self defense methods.
Tony’s publications on antagonistics include:
The Bartitsu Compendium, Volume One (History and the Canonical Syllabus) and Volume Two (Antagonistics)
Edith Garrud, the Suffragette Who Knew Jujitsu
Enhanced re-prints of Andrew Chase Cunningham’s The Cane as a Weapon, Baron Charles de Berenger’s Defensive Gymnastics and Captain Frederick Whittacker’s The Sword Prince
The biographical anthology, Master of Men: The Life’s Work of William Muldoon, Champion and Trainer of Champions
The upcoming original work, Ancient Swordplay: the Revival of Elizabethan Fencing in Victorian London.
In 2009 he co-produced and co-directed the feature documentary Bartitsu – the Lost Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes.
Tony has taught at the WMAW (Racine, Wisconsin) and ISMAC (Detroit, Michigan) Western martial arts conferences, the Paddy Crean International Art of the Sword workshops (Banff, Canada and Toowoomba, Australia), CombatCon (Las Vegas, Nevada), the 2011 Bartitsu School of Arms and Physical Culture (London, England) and the Scuola Brancaleoni historical martial arts and stage combat school (Piobbico, Italy), as well as numerous private seminars throughout North America and Europe.
He is currently teaching regular Bartitsu courses via the Forteza Fitness, Physical Culture and Martial Arts studio in Ravenswood, Chicago.
The Wolf System in martial arts training
The seminar was awesome. I suspect that many won’t realize just how much they absorbed in only two days. The progression from stick fighting, to punching and unbalancing and grappling was a great time had by all. Tony let things progress from strict practice of techniques to exercises that developed into improvisational free form allowing the students to explore possibilities. The class was brilliant. – Jeff Richardson, Portland, Oregon
Tony’s way of teaching made the workshop a very physical, yet extremely joyful experience for all participants. – Stefan Dieke, Wuppertal, Germany
The purpose of Tony’s work isn’t necessarily to teach XYZ martial art, but rather to teach the physical structures and mechanical principles that underlie efficient and powerful movement – the laws that govern all martial arts. It may be used to augment any martial system and will serve to help the practitioner step outside the box and look at that system in a different way.
Tony drove home the idea of using “technique” to give you a vocabulary, but improvisational drilling with different levels of cooperation/competition to build physical competence, confidence and the ability to perform intuitively under pressure. As our community can often be far too technique obsessive I think that’s a great lesson for all of us, and Tony’s methodology is an excellent resource for anyone in the arts. I’d highly recommend working with Tony. – Greg Mele, Chicago, Illinois