Living Legends | Interview with Cecil Burch [2025]

In our previous entry we spoke with veteran, mother, competitive shooter and author Julie Golob. Today we have the opportunity to chat with Cecil Burch of Immediate Action Combatives.

Truly, I was born into it. My father was an avid hunter, and one of my first memories that I can recall clearly is being with him dove hunting when I was 5 years old. So shooting basically came as part of mother’s milk. I did competitive skeet shooting in an adult league when I was 12, and got my first coyote when I was 14. My year revolved around the opening day for dove, quail, and deer.

I took my first defensive firearms course in 1985 at the age of 21 with Chuck Taylor learning combat shotguns and submachine guns. And my college graduation present from my parents was taking the 250 class at Gunsite in 1987.

As for martial arts, I started that in 1980 because I was bullied as a kid. I was born with severe asthma, and in the days before rescue inhalers and good medicines, doctors allowed you to be excused from a lot of physical activity. Add to the fact that I was a bookworm, I now had a giant target on my back that attracted bullies. One time at a public park, on a school outing, as everyone was going back to the buses, I was cut off by 6 kids and beaten up. So when I was able to get myself to the local martial art school (American Karate Studios on 32nd St and Greenway in Phoenix) I joined and never looked back.

Since that day, I have not stopped training and have gone through more systems and arts than I can write out. Multiple Filipino and Indonesian martial arts, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and many modern eclectic “street fighting” methods, along with a lot of instructor certifications in many of them.

For the past 25 years, my focus has been on the combat sports like Boxing, Muay Thai, Savate, Judo, Sambo, and especially Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

I have done a lot of competition, including National Match rifle (shooting my Tanker Garand!), GSSF, USPSA, 2 Gun and 3 gun, and Steel Challenge matches on the shooting side. On the MA side I have fought in boxing matches, and a number of judo competitions, but my main focus has always been BJJ tournaments. I am a former American National and Pan-Am champion.

I was always serious since the reason I got into martial arts was to deal with bullying. I refused to let another human being have the ability to hurt me without paying for it, and that extended to my thoughts about guns. I was a hunter, and I enjoyed the sheer fun of shooting, but the number one role for it in my life was for self-preservation.

I have been blessed to have a number of mentors. In the martial arts, my BJJ instructor, Megaton Dias has been incredibly influential. He is one of the most legendary competitors in jiu jitsu history, and his commitment to training is second to none. Chris Haueter, one of the first American black belts was very helpful early in my journey, particularly when I was a blue belt trying to figure out how to get to the next level. More recently, I have been able to learn much from Ryron and Rener Gracie, especially when it comes to doing BJJ for the long haul.

In the shooting world, Tom Givens has certainly been a mentor with long years of helping me to bring all my decades of teaching experience into a pure gun centric environment. I have also been incredibly fortunate to have close friends like Larry Lindenman, Craig Douglas, Chris Fry, Chuck Haggard, Darryl Bolke, Guy Schnitzler, and on and on, who have amazing resumes in their own right, and have given much of their time to helping me get better in all things.

Oh man. So many after 46 years of training. I have met and trained with so many true greats, like Helio Gracie, Lou Thesz (a legendary pro wrestling champion of the 50’s and 60’s who was a legit catch-as-catch-can wrestler), Rickson Gracie, Royler Gracie, Dan Inosanto, Judo Gene Lebell, my boxing coach and someone who was an amazingly great human begin Paavo Kentonnen, and on and on.

Things like having Massad Ayoob write in a book that I am one of the finest H2H coaches on the planet, John Farnham watching me teach at TacCon and say afterwards that my stuff was “wonderful”, being consulted on by real world, Been There, Done That people because they value my input, being asked to actively collaborate with other amazing instructors doing incredible things.

Teaching at Gunsite. What an incredible honor to be asked and allowed to teach at the Pat Rogers Memorial Revolver Round Up, and to do so on the grounds where greats like Pat, Jeff Cooper, Louis Awerbuck, and others taught is mind blowing to me.

Probably my fondest memories of everything is when students tell me later that I helped them in some way. I have had plenty of them who have used my teaching in violent situations, and that is cool, but the ones I love the most are the ones where I have helped them in life. Having someone tell me that before train with me they could never travel anywhere where they could not carry a gun and their life and marriage suffered for it, but now they can go to Europe and other places and truly enjoy life, or the parent who writes that her child is now much more interactive and vocal in school when before they were shy and had no friends. Having that kind of impact really hits me in my soul.

They absolutely are different things, with their own unique challenges and benefits. Teaching a seminar is different from teaching a Conference block, and that is different from teaching a regular group class, and that is different from teaching private or semi-private lessons.

On a regular weekly basis, I am able to really get into the weeds on tiny details, and it is much easier to address each student’s individual needs and issues. I can see how each student progresses over the weeks and months, and can pivot when I need to. In a roadshow seminar course, I only have them for 2-3 days, and then I may never see them again. They may never take another training class at all! So I have to be diligent in giving them the fundamental concepts and principles, the core structures, and the best training methodology that is usable for them afterwards. With a student I see multiple times a week, I don’t have to cram so much information into them in one outing. It can be done in more easily digestible chunks.

Another aspect that I am fortunate to be able to experience is that I see more students, from more widely disparate backgrounds, on a constant basis than instructors who only see patrons on weekends. I literally interact with students every single day of my life, with the occasional exception of a few Sundays. That constant interaction gives me a pretty good sense of how to communicate and teach people where they need, rather than some canned program that I follow mindlessly. I started teaching in 1987, and at this point, I have well over 10,000 individual people that I have taught face to face. That is a gigantic wellspring of knowledge and experience.

Because what Craig and Willam and the rest of the Collective always sought was what was functional, and it was irrelevant where that came from. As soon as any of us on an individual level talked and exchanged ideas, we realized we were all looking at things in a similar way, and we all brought our own type of real world experience. While I or Chris Fry did not have a military or LE background, that had zero impact on us having our in-depth immersion into real world violence and fighting.

In many ways, that private citizen knowledge gave Chris and myself insight into things the others in the Collective might not know or have faced themselves. It also gave us the ability to directly address what a large part of our audience needed, since so many of them were private citizens themselves.

Understand that there are a few “columns” to choose from. There is unattached striking, attached striking, standing grappling, and ground grappling. Then all of them need to be worked together, as well as integrating weapons into the H2H base. All have a place, and it is a good idea to have a working capability in all of them. But that does not mean you have to spend as much time on all of them. Unattached striking is the easiest to work, and does not take a long time to get functional in, and does not require a huge expenditure in time to maintain. Attached striking is really all about the attached part (i.e. grappling) so it does not really have to be trained on its own. Grappling, both standing and ground, are the hardest to learn and take the most work because they have the most potential for things to go wrong in the chaos of the moment, so there should be a little more effort here.

However, the great thing is that a little, especially in grappling, goes a long way. Very few bad guys have even a slight grasp of grappling – outside of them maybe watching UFC – so six months of work in a BJJ academy, or a well thought out short course seminar like Craig Douglas’ ECQC, or my IAC 2 ½ day course will give some functionally useful skills that may trump someone bigger and stronger but who has no grappling skills themselves.

And the nice thing about a weekend seminar is that it will give you a great grasp on what you should be working on next to further your capability.

As well, one of the great things about the popularity of Jiu-Jitsu is that there are so many academies around the country that it is easy to dip your toe into the waters without having to make some incredible commitment in time. I have a few articles on my blog to help someone find a good academy, as well as more thoughts on how to start someone’s empty hand journey.

I have never been super athletic. I was the kid picked last for dodgeball in high school PE. So everything I achieved I earned through hard work. I am the perfect example that ANYONE can become more capable, and more dangerous to bad guys if you just get on the path and keep your nose to the grindstone. For some people – the natural athlete – the results will come far more quickly and easily, but even those of us like myself who are the antithesis to the natural athlete will absolutely get better if we just keep working. Don’t expect immediate results, but keep plugging away, and somewhere down the line you will realize what you have achieved and you will deserve a big pat on the back for it.

Just start on the path, and don’t stop. Try to do something positive with your training and goal every day, even if it is just for one or two minutes. And most importantly, if you fail one day because life got in the way, don’t beat yourself up. Just realize you still have tomorrow to get back on the path.

My website IACombatives.com has the best links and articles, and my YouTube channel – Immediate Action Combatives – has a ton of free, non-monetized videos that are focused on the little steps and achievable goals that anyone can make happen.

Wrapping Up Living Legends Interview with Cecil Burch

No matter your skill level, there’s something for everyone to learn from Cecil. Thank you again for taking the time to answer some questions!

Check out our other entries into our Living Legends series of interviews!

Interview with Tom Givens

Interview with Rob Haught

Interview with Bruce Cartwright

Interview with Julie Golob

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