Sensei Ali visited, in the company of his wife, the Doral and Miami S.K.K.A. facilities, trained individually with me at the Doral dojo and at the Okinawa Martial Arts Academy (O.M.A.A.), Miami, with Sensei Rafael’s students. Also, he and his wife took in some of the sites of Miami-Dade county during his brief visit.

You wonder, how do we meet other martial artists from such far away destinations as the Middle East? Well, in this case, it was pure luck and curiosity. During a business trip to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), this past March 2007, I had the good fortune to walk in to one of the various dojo of the O.K.K.C., during an evening stroll, after dinner at my hotel. My visit was fortuitous, as it began the relationship between our two martial arts schools; another testament to the universality of martial arts. Traveling nearly twenty hours to reach the Florida peninsula from the UAE, it is a great honor to receive Sensei Ali and to train with him, exchange points of view and further cement our schools’ relationship.