About KiT
To truly understand the history of KiT, I am forced to start with another story. A story some of you may know, and some of you may be embarrassed to know…
It all started back in high school (let’s just call it the late 90′s so you have a point of reference) in Mr. Williams class. I was walking in like any normal day and heading to the front to sit with my friends. I look down on this guys desk to see him drawing some sort of Predator-esque guy. I stop for a moment and comment, “hey that’s pretty cool… looks kinda like the Predator”. The guy argues with me that it does not look the Predator, but as we go back and forth in the debate he finally concedes with the caveat nothing was original anymore — there is always some inspiration for art. That’s cool, whatever, I move along. Later on, this guy informs me the Predator was actually played by Jean Claude Van Damme. No offense to JCVD, but there was no amount of movie magic to make him look that big. So we debated a bit again, finally I learned a tactic I would use for years to come – give in with a “that is possible I suppose” even though I knew I was right. Just a little note for the youngins reading this — back then the Internet was a scary thing for schools to have and a lot of people simply didn’t see the reasoning behind having it. Now, of course, it’s easy to know Kevin Peter Hall was the Predator, but a little more searching will unveil a bit of truth. From IMDB.com: “In Jesse Ventura’s book, he mentions Van Damme as having played Predator (1987) monster until he was fired and replaced by Kevin Peter Hall.” Up until the writing of this page, I never thought to check into it so I guess I owe someone an apology 
What does that story mean? Well if you had told me back then I would still be good friends with that guy who argued with me so much those two days, I would probably laugh in your face. This guy? You may know him as James or KDX, but I always knew him as Shaggy. Shaggy is responsible for introducing me to many things — Starcraft, Anime, and yes, Tekken. There was a moment when I was on lock down the last year and a half of high school where hanging out with Shaggy was forbidden (girls are the devil, never forget that). If I had given into that, I wouldn’t have any of the same friends / acquaintances I have now. I would never have met Beely. I possibly would have never worked at Dell (no Philippines trip? NOOOOOOOOOOOO) and would have never gotten into Tekken. The domino effect goes on and on. Everyone take a moment and pay your respects to the original Godfather of Tennessee Tekken.
I started playing Tekken with Shaggy and Beely. At the time it was all on the arcade and the name of the game was Tekken Tag. I remember watching them be tag partners on the arcade machine and seeing the disgust on the other guy’s face. Sure they couldn’t get juicy tag combos all the time, but I wanted to be part of this. I wanted to break down the other guy and ‘take’ their quarters. Unfortunately for me, it took a good minute to even get decent. To this day, I credit and blame Shaggy for teaching me Tekken the way he did. “Just play cheap at first, then you’ll figure out how to play for real later”. Anyone who has ever played me in Tekken Tag may beg to differ with the back end of that statement. Our little trio travelled a lot early on to play Tekken Tag, mostly to Atlanta. I went with them to Anime Weekend Atlanta and played Tag (true story they used to have Tekken Tag in the game room). I met Memphis Mike and the OG ATL crew (JOP, Truth, Mon, etc). I even played Tekken Tag on console before most people in the US with those OG ATL people.
Shaggy was so into Tekken and always felt he was the best. It was hard for me not to be really good, so when we went to ATL and he got beasted it gave me a little smile. I always hoped a good serving of humble pie would change his attitude. The truth is, we are all who we thought we were. None of us like to lose. We all think we are better than the other guy. Shaggy finally decides to throw a tournament and hopes to get a good turn out from out of town. We have it at the GoUSA in Murfreesboro and the only out of towners are some kid from Knoxville (deviljun), his friend Bobby, and Bobby’s girlfriend. Shaggy ends up getting second to deviljun, but this tournament would serve as the launching pad for KiT… no really KiT1 in Knoxville. Later in the Tekken4 days when we excommunicated Knoxville, deviljun would try to say KiT was his name and we would have to stop using it or pay him for it. There is truth to that as he did come up with the name Kumite in Tennessee. However, he does not own the name and really no one does. It is up to all Tennessee players to carry on that name — both new and old school. Someday I hope to see unity among the three major divisions (East / Middle / West), but until then I’ll enjoy taking my jabs at the other area’s weaknesses
