Bill Underwood
Bill Underwood, born in Liverpool, created the combat system Combato, trained Army Rangers during the Second World War, and later introduced its civilian version, Defendo.
Quick Facts
CanadaBiography
Bill Underwood was born in Liverpool, England, and is the founder of the combat systems Combato and Defendo. Records of his birth disagree: the same source at one point gives his years of life as 1896–1986, elsewhere the birth year 1907. He died on February 8, 1986, in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada, according to the same source at the age of 90.
As a boy he was inspired by the Japanese wrestlers Yukio Tani and Taro Miyake, whom he watched perform in Liverpool theaters. According to another source, he created the Combato system in 1910, at the age of fifteen. From 1914 he served with the Grenadier Guards of the Royal Montreal Regiment and later transferred as a pilot to the Royal Flying Corps.
During the Second World War he trained American Army Rangers and FBI agents in unarmed combat. On August 15, 1945, in New York, his daughter Pat named the new civilian and police version of the system Defendo. He published the books Combato: For Soldier and Civilian (1943), Combato: Self-Defense for Women (1944), Defendo – Police System of Self-Defense (1950), and Defendo, Occidental System of Self-Protection (1969).
His short film Don't Mess with Bill was nominated for an Academy Award at the 53rd Academy Awards (1981); he himself appeared four times on The Johnny Carson Show.
Associated Martial Arts
Organisations
- DefendoFounder · 1945