Iron Dragon Martial Arts Academy

Iron Dragon Martial Arts Academy was founded in 2005. It is derived from The Iron Dragon Martial Arts Federation, founded by Jaba Winthrop in 1969. Jaba a native of Jamaica, believed that every martial art had its strengths and weaknesses, no martial art was perfect. He opted to fuse together various arts to create one multi-martial art combat system. Unlike Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do or the Mixed Martial Arts of today, Jaba thought it was important to learn individual systems to completion, then extract what worked best, based on experience. This allowed him to design a multi-martial arts system that could suit anyone's needs.

Jaba also believed that martial arts was much more than kicking and punching unlike what so many believe today. Martial arts or Martial Science as he called it was a full understanding of combat, including but not limited to Guerrilla Warfare.
His system was extremely different in numerous ways, from gaining entry to the ranking system. A test that was extremely challenging physically and mentally was given in order to gain entry. Its ranking system was different in that the rank criteria and titles were exclusive to the system. Titles like Teacher, Instructor, Master were replaced by Warrior, Chief and Warlord. Even the name and the symbol was to have a significant meaning-Iron: one of the worlds hardest and strongest metals. It can be melted to forge any weapon. Dragon: a mythical creature of strength and vast knowledge. In the early 80's one of Jaba's top students Cecil Brooks achieved the rank of Junior Overlord-which is the second-highest rank, equivalent to a high Master rank. In 1987 Cecil Brooks was appointed to be the successor of the Iron Dragon Federation and given the rank of Overlord (Grand Master). At the age of 15, George Santos began his training with Cecil Brooks. Two years later he gained entry into the Federation and became Cecil Brooks's closed-door student allowing him to train with the now Overlord on a one on one basis.