Four areas have an inordinate share of hooples, characters, hype and nonsense: Espionage, the Occult, New Age, and the Martial Arts. Claims of special powers and deep secrets head the list of hype topics. Sometimes they combine. There have been screwy martial artists who claimed connections with clandestine operations, and occultists who allude to arcane wisdom of the most mysterious kind. Part of the problem is that these are pretty much subjective. There is no authority to vouch for their validity, and no shared standards.
Shadowy things attract paranoid schizophrenics and other unstable personalities.
Back in Chicago in the 1960s., one such phenomenon took center stage on the martial arts scene. His name was John Keehan. He was an Irish kid, born in 1939. Keehan liked boxing. While in the military, he was introduced to hand-to-hand combat. He liked that even more. Afterward, he sought instruction from Robert Trias, the man who opened the first Karate school in the continental US. Keehan loved it.
Keehan was rushed through the grades. Back then, there were not enough instructors to meet the demand. Some of the more promising students were rushed so as to provide Karate where none had existed. Keehan gave Trias a presence in Chicago.
John Keehan started training students in Chicago. He took all comers, regardless of race or ethnicity. Keehan also represented Trias’ organization, the US Karate Association. The young man began organizing tournaments. Karate had come to Chicago and it all looked good.
Keehan started getting into trouble. On one occasion, he and a friend were arrested taping blasting caps to the window of a rival dojo. He bought a lion club and paraded it around Chicago, walking the animal on a leash. Keehan worked as a hairdresser in a beauty salon. He told friends it was a great place to pick up women. He eventually opened his own salon and a chain of adult bookstores.
One of Keehan’s stunts was to have a truck drive around with a live bull on the back. Keehan claimed that the bull would be killed with one blow by one of his students at the tournament. This did not happen. Keehan claimed the police stopped it, but it was likely never going to happen, anyway.
The red-haired Irishman dyed his hair black, trimmed his beard in a distinctive way and started wearing a silk cape. He claimed to be descended from Spanish royalty. Keehan changed his name to Juan Raphael Dante. “Count Dante ”
Those of us of a certain age may remember Keehan’s ads in pulp magazines and comics. He billed himself as “The Deadliest Man alive” and offered a course on “The World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets.” For about five dollars, a person would get a booklet and a membership card in ’s Black Dragon Fighting Society.
Keehan became more erratic and more dangerous. He was quick to hit someone who dared disagree with him. Two men who laughed at the Spanish crest on his car door invoked his ire. He beat them badly. Keehan even hit his own lawyer once.
Keehan saw any dojo not connected to him as a threat. In one infamous incident, he led several of his friends on a raid of another school. The brawl ended with one of his friends being killed. On another occasion, Keehan was somehow connected to an armored car heist. He was questioned, but not charged.
Black Belt magazine refused to cover Keehan’s tournaments. He had lost credibility in the wider martial arts community.
Count Dante attempted to sponsor one last tournament in Massachusetts in 1975, but it was a complete flop.
Keehan was having medical problems. In 1975, he died of bleeding stomach ulcers. The man was 36 years old. His Black Dragon Fighting Society and everything else was left to a friend named Aguar.
Count Dante’s legacy did not end there. Two other questionable martial artists, Ashida Kim and Frank Dux, were linked to the Black Dragon Fighting Society. Kim - real name Radford Davis - is considered a fraud by many martial artists. Frank Dux has been discredited many times. Aguar’s website extols Kim, Dux and Count Dante as heroes of the martial arts.
The shame of it is that Keehan was a personable, energetic and creative promoter of the martial arts in Chicago. Robert Trias blamed the troubles on Keehan being too you to handle the authority he wielded. Maybe. And it might just as well be that Keehan had hidden demons of his own. The transition from effective promoter to one-man circus is a sad tale, indeed.
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Ashida Kim is a prolific writer on “Ninja.” He also claims to be a member of Keehan’s Black Dragon Fighting Society. Apparently, that got him into conflict with Aguar. Somehow they came to an agreement, because Aguar’s site has a link to Kim’s reprint of Dante’s materials. Perhaps it is because Kim gets things into print and Aguar has a piece of the action. Kim / Davis is a decent martial artist in his own right. He has given seminars that were well-received. So it makes one wonder why he would make all sorts of spurious claims for himself as to being a Ninja, among other things.
Two of Kim’s books had been published by Paladin Press. Somehow, they made an overseas paperback deal for two of the books and left him out of the deal. In retaliation, Kim began offering digital copies of Secrets of the Ninja free online. One of his other books, Ninja Hands of Death, uses techniques and a “Dance of Death”copied from Count Dante’s mail-order book. World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets.
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