Biography
Robert Paturel is a French Savate boxer and RAID veteran, born in 1952 in Rueil-Malmaison. He won the French Boxing championship six times in France, and became a European champion in 1984.
Nicknamed "Gorille" (Gorilla), he is famous in France and often appears in newslets and movies teaching martial arts techniques. Robert Paturel began his professional career as a pastrychef and then as a nightclubdoorman.
He became a policeman in the French Police Nationale in 1976. He was detached to the Instruction Company in 1980, as an expert in self-defense. He imported the tonfa to France - a Japanese baton - and codified its use in the official program of the French Tonfa-Safety Training (Formation française de tonfa-sécurité, FFTS); with this method being now taught in police academies.
He joined the élite RAID (Research, Assistance, Intervention, Dissuasion) in 1988, the police's specialintervention unit, where he served for 20 years as an operative, operational instructor and then neg