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McWilson got a kick out of his martial arts time
YOUNGSTOWN
Marvin McWilson was a standout athlete at South High before gaining All-City Series football and basketball honors during his senior year at Woodrow Wilson, but his post-high school years as a taekwondo world champion stamped his legacy.
“I didn’t have to learn how to fight, I had to learn how to avoid fights,” the now-67-year-old McWilson said of one of his reasons for adopting the Korean martial arts form to utilize as a young adult on the South Side.
“I had few fights, but I got into martial arts because of the discipline,” said McWilson, who won a world title in 1976. “It was easy to fight when you’re worried about somebody hitting you first, but, when you know how to take care of yourself, you can walk away from it.”
McWilson and 10 others will be honored tonight when the 20th annual Ebony Lifeline All-Sports Hall of Fame banquet is held at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Social Hall.
The other inductees are DeAndrey Abron (boxing), Priscilla Abron (softball/bowling), Shareef Ali (track), Jalada Asalam (community service), Dr. Dorothy Bowers-Collins (basketball), John Bullock (bowling/football), William Dallas (basketball/softball), James Grubbs (bowling), Robert Morales (community service) and Randy Richardson (boxing) are the inductees-to-be.
McWilson won his world championship in the black-belt heavyweight division at Madison Square Garden after a runnerup finish in 1975.
“It’s empty-handed self-defense,” McWilson said in describing taekwondo, which he learned after joining the local Master Chung studio for lessons.
“He was the top guy in the discipline,” he said of the instruction under Chung, who was a bodyguard to the emporer of Korea in the 1970s and 80s. “He had a school here at the corner of Market and Avondale.”
McWilson attended Hillman Junior High, then went to South High. After his sophomore and junior years at South, for racial reasons, he was asked to pick another city public school, so he transferred to Wilson and graduated in 1968. “That’s when they didn’t combine ninth-grade with high school.”
After making All-City in football as a wide receiver, McWilson was picked to the All-City basketball squad for the 1967-68 season.
“It was the City Series’ first all-black, first-team in basketball,” McWilson said of the selections that also included North High’s Ron “Bunky” McElroy, South’s Julius Livas and East High’s Danny Smith and Mervin Teague.
“If I would have stayed at South, we would have probably won the state title in basketball,” he boasted.
After serving six months in the Marines, McWilson received an honorable discharge due to medical problems.
He wasn’t truly inspired to learn taekwondo until after seeing the Bruce Lee movie “Enter the Dragon.”
“I went with a friend and was extremely impressed with Lee. From that point on, I was off and running. My friend said that only Koreans and Chinese could do it, but they put their pants on the same way as us. I signed up and gave myself 10 years to be the best and that’s what I did.”
His world title was won in the same ring in which Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali by unanimous decision five years earlier in 1971.
“It was the best of the best,” McWilson said of the world championships at MSG.
Starting in the morning, he fought 22 two-minute rounds against different individuals during an elimination format.
“If I would have lost any one of those two-minute rounds, I’d have had to train again and hope I’d get invited the next year,” said McWilson, who qualified through local, district and state competition over the years. His title shot was the culmination of all the training.
“It didn’t matter who I fought,” McWilson said of his mission in 1976 when he was 26 years old. “I just had one goal in mind and that was to be the last one standing.”
His title bout that day was No. 23 and took place in the center ring close to 11 p.m. His runnerup finish in 1975 was to New York’s Mike Warner, a three-time defending champion.
Had taekwondo been an official Olympic sport at that time, McWilson may have been an American representative in the heavyweight class.
“I fought guys taller and much heavier than me,” McWilson said of his 190-pound weight then, “but I was really quick because I did my training. Because I practiced the right way, you see an opening and the body reacts. It’s second nature.”
McWilson owes his 4-foot-high world title trophy to an unremitting outlook.
“When you get tired, you’ve got to keep going because somebody on the other side of the world is training too.”
Cleverly, McWilson visualized the two-minute bouts in seconds.
“Breaking it down into 120 seconds instead of two minutes allowed me to relax. It allows you to see things differently and gives you more time. After a minute, the other guy felt pressed, but I was OK because I’ve got 60 seconds left. That’s what I was thinking.”
McWilson was on the cover of Black Belt Magazine and Tae Kwon Do Magazine, but declined hall of fame invitations until this year.
“I never really wanted it. I just wanted living the quiet lifestyle. I was never one of those guys who kept [memorabilia] laying around. At 67, I might as well give in and let them say something about me one more time.”
McWilson’s three sons, Matthew, Donovan and Marcus, graduated from Cardinal Mooney, where they contributed to the school’s success. Donovan and Marcus were on Mooney’s state champion football team in 2011 and Matthew ran on a state-champion 4-x-100 relay. Currently, Donovan is a wide receiver at YSU and Marcus is a strong safety at Kentucky.
Was the $1,200 annual cost of the taekwondo lessons worth it?
“Definitely,” McWilson said, “because it was a life-changing experience. I didn’t need to learn how to fight — I knew that, but I got into self-defense to learn control and discipline.”
Nowadays, he said, people are over-principled.
“Back then, if you fought, nine times out of 10, after you talked out your differences, you’d be friends the next day. Now if you fight, the guy might shoot you the next day.”