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Eli Montaigue, Erle's son, and now Head of the WTBA

Eli Montaigue is the head of the World Taiji Boxing Association, and was named as the successor to the Erle Montaigue system of Fa-jing Chuan by Erle before his death in 2011.

Eli has been studying the internal arts most of his life. Having been home schooled by his wonderful parents Erle and Sandy, he was surrounded by the arts from a birth, in fact his mum was practicing Taiji while she was pregnant with Eli.

So, growing up mainly on big properties in Australia, Taiji and Bagua was more or less a normal part of life., Eli was 14 years old when he started in Taiji, he had of course dabbled from a much younger age, learning things here and there through out his early years, but it was age 14 when he got serious and started training everyday with Erle.

Erle starting teaching him, and his brother and sister, every morning at around 7am, the Old Yang Style, normally just one move a day, as Erle was teaching his own children, he wanted them to learn every move perfectly, so they learnt the form very slowly and detailed, it took about 4 years to get to the end of the Taiji form, with all the rest in between of course, the Pauchui form, small San-Sau, Qigong, Push Hands, Sticky Hands, Bagua, and all the combat related training etc.

After a few years once Erle felt Eli had a good grounding, he stopped the formal morning classes, has Eli was training a lot on his own now, and asking his father all the time for lessons. 

Therefore Erle taught Eli from then on at any time of day, as he always had practically 24 hour access to him. Always doing lots of Push Hands etc, anywhere, at home or in the street.

When Eli was about 17 and big enough, he became Erle's main training partner, and assistant teacher, travelling with Erle to all his workshops around the world, training and also learning how to teach. 

Eli started up his own classes when he was 18 years old, and from those few classes, he started doing workshops internationally as Erle's main representative. 

Eli trained with Erle nearly every day from age 14 till 24.

Their last training session was only about an hour before Erle passed away.

Eli now runs the WTBA with his wife Fran, he runs weeklong training retreats in Malta, Australia, and the USA, where people come to stay for intensive training from all over the world. He also run's multiple workshops all over Europe and the rest of the world,  he also taught the system to an undercover special forces division of the French Navy. 

Eli has been teaching this system for 21 years now, (2025)

Erle handed all of this down to Eli in his lifetime, and named Eli as his successor in 2009.

What rank did Erle give to Eli? 
Erle never gave his children formal certificates with a rank, they we his children and he taught them the old fashioned way, grades and ranks are a modern way of things. 
He knew that people would know without needed a printed certificate that Eli was of the highest rank.

What Erle did say regarding Eli's rank in 2009
"My son Eli, however, has been with me now for 19 years and during that time his actual training time goes into literally hundreds of hours! Which is why I have handed the running of the WTBA over to him as he is the only one who has received almost everything I know to a degree where I know I can trust him to teach the real Montaigue system."

Then in 2010 when Eli was heading to Canada to teach, Erle said.

"Be confident my sonny, you know as much as me now in what we teach" 

Therefore, it is agreed that Erle put Eli at the top rank of Master. 
This was achieved in around the same amount of time as when Erle got his Masters Degree in 1985. 

Eli’s main focus in his training is to become the best teacher he can be, spending hours working on new ways of breaking down the principles of movement to make them easier to understand. As well as perfecting his own skills so students can pick up on the correct movement.