Cobra Chai

“Tiger Schulmann’s martial-arts empire is vast. He has fifty-four schools across the Northeast, where his senseis turn ninety-eight-pound weaklings into warriors for a few thousand dollars a pop. The franchise grosses more than $35 million a year, and Schulmann himself has made a fortune. At sixty-two, he’s still got that intimidating aura, flinty stare—and the eight-pack too … But behind the pressed white uniforms and kids’ birthday parties, Tiger Schulmann’s Karate was once a Wild West of broken bones and bruised egos, fortunes made and reputations squandered, where many of the hits were below the black belt. Schulmann invited the wrath of prosecutors and police, aggrieved former senseis, and keyboard ninjas who called him a ‘scumbag’ and ‘scam artist.'” David Gauvey Herbert waxes on about a karate empire in Esquire: Bad Dojo: Tiger Schulmann Didn’t Get to Be America’s No. 1 Karate Kingpin Without Busting a Few Faces. “The origin story is legend, told to prospective students, printed in karate magazines, plastered on the wall of the franchise’s New Jersey headquarters: One day in 1972, Schulmann’s older brother Ben crawled home from the bus stop after anti-Semitic bullies broke his leg.”