Kung Fu Kendra on Old Man on the Mat: From Attack to Wing Chun Master and Life Mission

An Introduction That Set the Tone

Host Tony Jones of the Old Man on the Mat podcast didn't hold back when he introduced Kung Fu Kendra — Kendra Mahon — to his audience. "She's been around. She's done some major things. She's been on some of the bigger shows out there. I am fired up about this." His introduction was thorough and accurate: founder of the Global Kung Fu Alliance, author of Push Your Way Through, chief editor of Wing Chun Magazine, and a direct lineage connection tracing back through Ip Man to the deepest roots of Wing Chun history. Jones, who told Kendra his own love of kung fu was sparked by watching old kung fu movies as a kid, described her appearance as something that "blew my mind."

What followed was one of the most personal and revealing interviews Kendra has given — one she noted she had only recently begun sharing publicly. It begins, as many of the most important stories do, with a moment of adversity that changed everything.

The Attack That Became a Gift

"I started my martial arts journey because I was attacked over 20 years ago," Kendra told Tony Jones. "I was very young, and at that time it occurred to me that I needed to venture into a self-defense path. I needed to make sure that didn't happen again." Jones responded with the question many people would ask: after something like that, did she go into a mental box — did she shut down, become fearful, avoid the world? Or did she come out fighting?

Her answer was immediate and defining: "I decided I'm not going to live my life in fear. I'm the type of person that if I meet adversity, I tackle it head on." She enrolled in a kung fu school. That single act of defiance against fear — the choice to walk toward what frightened her rather than away from it — became, in her own words, the event that defined her whole life's mission. "It turned into ultimately a path of self-mastery — and the ability to teach kung fu 20-plus years later. The whole thing actually turned out to be a fantastic gift."

Why Wing Chun — and Not Something Else

Jones asked what specifically drew her to Wing Chun over boxing, grappling, or other martial arts. Kendra's answer was honest: she didn't specifically seek out Wing Chun. She sought out a kung fu school — and the art found her. "I found a Wing Chun kung fu school of all the arts — such a niche kung fu, which was actually the perfect kung fu for me to learn because it teaches real life skills. It's not a competitive martial art. It teaches you as a small person how to use the economy of motion to get control of any situation."

She found what she needed: a practical, intelligent system built specifically for the scenario she had lived through — a smaller person attacked by a larger one, in close range, with no rules and no referee. Wing Chun is engineered for exactly that situation. Every technique, every principle, every training method points toward one outcome: survive and escape with minimum harm, using the least possible force, in the shortest possible time.

Twenty Years to Master Level

From that first class, Kendra never stopped. Year after year she progressed through the Ip Man lineage curriculum under her sifu Brian Lewadny — who trained under the legendary William Cheung, a direct student of Ip Man and longtime training partner of Bruce Lee. This lineage gives Kendra's training an authenticity and depth that traces back to the grandmaster who standardised Wing Chun in the modern era. After more than 20 years of authentic, in-person traditional training, she achieved master level — the purple sash, the highest rank in the system.

Jones, who has trained in self-defense and worked with women to develop their protective skills, expressed genuine admiration for Kendra's path. He asked whether, after all that training, she feels genuinely safer moving through the world. Her answer was clear: "Absolutely. And not just physically safer — it's shaped how I handle stress and everyday life." Wing Chun does not just build fighting skills. It builds a quality of awareness, presence, and internal stability that changes everything.

Building a Global Mission from One Student's Journey

Today Kendra's personal journey has become a global mission. The Global Kung Fu Alliance — which she founded and which now has over 250,000 members across the world — is her vehicle for sharing what Wing Chun has given her. Her online programs, her book, her magazine, her free resources, her scholarship — all of it is in service of the same intention that drove her into that first kung fu school 20-plus years ago: to not live in fear, and to help others do the same.

As she told Jones: "They say you fall down seven times but get up eight. It's just the way life is — and it's a very good principle to follow." Everything she has built is at KungFuKendra.com.

Begin your own journey in the Ip Man lineage with Kung Fu Kendra's complete online Wing Chun course — the world's first fully accredited online Wing Chun curriculum, available to students anywhere in the world.

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