Mail Order Fighting Secrets

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Well you just watched that Bruce Lee movie. Yeah, yeah, I watched Game of Death, the the last quote unquote Bruce Lee movie that um they just used all of the footage that he filmed right before he died and then replaced all the rest of the footage with a stand-in, a guy who kind of looks like Bruce Lee wearing really dark glasses. It's a game of death. It is sometimes you win. And when you win, you die . It was a depressing movie. Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with Henry Zabrowski, the man who I think Do you have the discipline? Huh? Do you have the knowledge? Yeah. Hoi! Ha! Hui! Yes! I have watched at least four Kirosa wa films in the last month. So honestly, I know a lot of people have pushed back on me by saying. There's no karate in those movies. No, but there's swordsmanship. None whatsoever. There's swordsmanship. Sure. And also But there are also swordsmanship in like Game of Thrones. No, there's the core man-on-man, respectful battle. One-on-one . Alright, code of the samurai. But the samurai has is no kung fu, right? No. No. You're right. Nothing to do with kung fu. But what's nice is that for a long time, because obviously some people have said that I did some sort of I do I played many characters over the years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I say talent. Yes. No. And I feel that now more than I've ever been , I'm almost Asian. Sure. I feel very Asian right now. Why? Because of Kirosawa. And he's given me permission. No, he hasn't. Well, and then I watched Evan Gellion. He's been dead for a very long time. I watched Evangelion and I feel like a little Japanese boy. Sure. You want to feel Asian? Watch Kundun. Oh, yeah, watch the last Samurai. I'm as Asian as Tom Cruise. And we have the man who does not confuse consuming culture with being a part of it, that's Ed Larson. I know nothing. And the reason why Henry is so channeling my eat instead of my cheese. More of like your chew. And the reason why Henry is going so hard on appropriation today is that we are starting a series, a nice quick two-part series on a man who I mean appropriated Asian culture just in such a beautiful way and in such an incredibly violent way, it's Count Dante, the deadliest man alive. I have never seen another show necessarily cover this material. The first time I read this as we were going through all the research, I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. Yeah. This man is one of the funniest me, like personas we've ever even covered on this show. If you called him funny to his face, he would fucking try to rip your tits off. Do fingers try he would rip your tits off. He would k he would beat you uh half to death uh for looking at him sideways that was sorta his hallmark. Unless I was helping bring the neighborhood together. Sure he did a lot of that same time, man. This man he was like he was definitely trying to integrate the martial arts. Trying to, yeah. Well, in April of 1970, a martial arts instructor in Chicago calling himself Count Juan Rafael Dante stormed the dojo of a rival school with six of his students. And by the end of the melee , one man was dead from a gaping neck wound. I thought Count Dante was the guy we interviewed who sucked on ladies' backs and called himself a vampire. Father Sebastian. This is his nephew. But while this incident was a one-off, it still came to be known as the Dojo War. There doesn't need to be more than one battle for there to be a war. Sometimes you just eat one big one . As far as who Count Dante was, most people knew him from the ads he placed in various Marvel and DC comic books throughout the late nineteen sixties. In these ads, Count Dante billed himself as the deadliest man alive, whose fighting secrets could be yours only if you join his black dragon fighting society. Here's an example of Dante's advertising pattern. Yes, this is the deadliest and most terrifying fighting art known to man and without equal. It's maiming, mutilating, disfiguring, paralyzing, and crippling techniques are known by only a few people in the world. Instructing you step by step through each move, and this manual is none other than Count Dante, the deadliest man who ever lived, the Crown Prince of death. You can't advertise I'm gonna teach you how to mutilate and paralyze people. He did though. He did dozens upon dozens of times across both major comic book publishers and like count Dante was I mean he was a mainstay in nineteen late nineteen sixties comic books. It's the legality of that. I mean dubious there's a lot of people that just by looking at me assume I can't paralyze you. I definitely can. Get closer. It's not false advertising. Idiot here! Identity I mean really all you have to do is at the end to just print for entertainment purposes only at some point. And i it removes all culpability . Well, in reality, Count Ju Rafael Dante was born John Kean, the half Irish son of a wealthy gynecologist from Chicago. Count Dante. Don't call him a pussy. No, I'm just elbow deep in it. But what one does not realize is that the vagina is actually the strongest muscle on the body. Vagina's strong - here, open by Pepsi. Count Dante had used his family's wealth to travel to various Asian countries dozens of times throughout the 1960 s, where he learned martial arts techniques from dozens of teachers teaching dozens of disciplines. Now, it is tempting to call Count Dante an outright fraud, but by all accounts, the man did actually know what he was doing from at the very least a technical standpoint when it came to martial arts. But I loved I showed Eddie the video of his one of his instructional sessions. And I have to say that it really refutes everything you just said . It's so funny. Well, because like I believe he sort of he does know what he's doing, but let's just say he cuts to the chase. And instead of like doing all the normal kind of like, oh we're going Yes, yeah. And that's the difference is that what when you're watching him, you're expecting to see Bruce Lee. You're expecting to see somebody who looks beautiful doing it. Yeah, it looks very graceful and and it looks like there's a lot of discipline behind it. He looks like a grocery store butcher. Yeah, yeah. Remember the game Final Fight? Yeah. You know, where you just like go through the streets and it was kind of like streets of rage, somebody like Yeah, yeah, he looks like the the big guy with the overalls who is also the mayor, by the way. Oh well, Count Dante could watch and almost immediately copy almost any fighting technique. And people who trained with him said that Count Dante was powerful enough to break a man's arm by slapping him on the shoulder. He's a big dude. He was like six foot, went about between like one e hundightyred and two hundred . But while Count Dante was a talented martial artist, he was also, to put it lightly, eccentric, as is any Irishman from Chicago who legally changes his name to Count Juan Rafael Dante. One time I went on vacation and I got a tan and it stuck . So they who said that he could s break someone's arm by slapping their shoulders? One of his students, uh there was a lot the all the people that uh were spoken to about Comte Dante, the guys who who studied under him or fought against him, they're like, No, he could fight. He was very dangerous. He was a highly, highly dangerous man. He was a stupid. Yeah, I don't know. Like Dane, but he's not g I don't believe that. I think that everyone it to me it's like a cult. Sure. And they're all like following the cult. Like he could break someone's arm. Well, actually he doesn't. Well he helps. It's his fault the person dies. Yes. Well, let's not give it away just yet. Partly, Dante was eccentric because being eccentric was good bait for the ruffians of 1960 Chicago. Dante was in an innately violent person, so he dressed flamboyantly specifically to attract trouble. McHenry. Yeah. And the jeers and insults thrown his way gave him a reliable excuse to beat men half to death in the middle of the street on a regular basis. That is true. Let me tell you something I know about you. My father stuck a tool in your mother's pussy. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it? I mean he would just walk around dressed like an idiot and wait for someone to go, hey, nice shirt, and then he just he would his I said his eyes would bulge out his eyes would bulge out of his head and he'd be on the other person in a second and he could beat damn near anyone half to death. But it just it's so hard for me to believe that's true. It's because it's the element of surprise, Eddie. Yeah. Well I mean people who also didn't like him would say the same thing. It wasn't just guys who followed him. It was guys who also were like, no, he was fucking awful. But yeah, he could fight. Okay. But I mean, I don't know how uh technically skilled he was at all times as far as like looking like it. It's just he was able to take those moves and apply them in such a way, and apply them in like the most violent way possible, in the most effective way possible. But on the other hand, Don Count Dante was also a champion of racial integration throughout the 1960s civil rights era, and he partly dedicated his dojos to teaching justice and community, even if every other lesson he gave was incredibly violent. His reputation for ending a street fight in seconds naturally attracted a lot of kids who wanted to know how to do the same. And while teaching defensive and allegedly deadly martial arts to young men is a dubious proposition, Count Dante's classes were integrated at a time when most things in America weren't. But before we hold up Dante as a pillar of the community, he was also a fucking criminal. Oh yeah. Even complex . Even setting aside his brief career as a coke smuggler in the early 1970s, Dante also participated in, or even possibly masterminded, the Perlator Vault Heist of 1974 with a mobster named Luigi DeFonso. He's fake. That's a cartoon character. Luigi DeFonso was a real guy. They called him the Sicilian Gatsby . Hey yes, yes, enjoy my party. Hope you do enjoy don't worry, there's plenty of marinara for everyone. Just just giving I have you had this finger ghoul. Ah very good, yes, yes, very good. The take from this heist was four point th ree million dollars. It was one of the largest heights heists in American history. This, however, was just before Count Dante died while projectile vomiting blood from a stomach ulcer at the age of thirty six. Live fast. Die fun . Now Dante's involvement in this heist now Dante's involvement in this heist is questionable because as we'll see over the course of this series, the count was a pathological liar, a master of his own mythology. But at the same time, Dante did lead a somewhat incredible life. But that life was usually made incredible by Count Dante's continual need to create the conditions for chaos and mayhem in service of building said mythology. This seems to be a lovely antique story you have. Would be a shame if there was antiques are straight! As far as sources, we use the deadliest man alive, Count Dante, The Mob, and the War for American Martial Arts by Benji Feldheim, and a piece from WBEZ Chicago called How the Deadliest Man Alive Stokes Chicago's Infamous Doja Wars. That one's by Joe DeCult . And both of them tell a story that is very stupid, but also at the same time fucking incredible. Like this is it's such an American tale. Just a guy saying, I want that, I'm gonna do that, and I can make it mine. Yeah, and I'm gonna lie at all costs to get it. Yeah. Yeah. And so let's tell the story of Count One Rafael Dante, aka Jan Timothy Kean. But for the sake of clarity, we will be referring to our main character as Count Dante throughout this series. He's really Count Dante. He is, yeah. Well, he did legally change it to Count Dante. Hey, I'm sure Prince's real name isn't Prince. We call him that. Yeah, that is true. Well, Count Dante was born on February 2nd, 1939, to a couple named Dorothy and Jack Ke en. While Jack was Irish, Dorothy was Spanish by birth. And allegedly, Dorothy and Jack fled the fascists in Spain just before the Spanish Civil War began in 1936. This is where the Juan Rafael in Count Juan Rafael Dante came from his Spanish Spanish heritage. The southwest side of Chicago, after allegedly fleeing the fascists. Here, Jack Kean earned a good living working both as a popular OBGYN and the director of a local state bank. Jack Kean's son, the future Count Dante, there fore grew up wealthy, and he was never embarrassed about using his parents' money to buy and do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. That's important to note that without that wealth, Count Dante would have never become a Gam Dante. Oh, he's like Taylor Swift. Sure. Yeah, same reach. Mm-hmm. Yeah, same re same reach, same cultural impact. You know, he just really got out there, you know. They called him the Dantes. Whoa, yes, the Dante. Now when Cantante was in the third grade, and I don't know why, but I love that sense when Cantante was in the third grade. He claimed that he was hanging around his house when a couple of young street tufts attacked him. How'd you get my living room? His neighbor, a kid named Tommy Gregory, jumped in to even up the fight, and after the two kids joined forces and defended themselves, they became instant, lifelong best friends. Back to back, brother, on brother . Count Dante, however, used this conflict as a motivator. This was allegedly one of only two fights that Dante lost over the course of his entire life, and he vowed that after that day he would never lose a fight again. Yeah, the only other fight he lost was against that ulcer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Three fights then. Ah yes. I wonder as T the IRS would have been another one. We didn't really get there yet. Let's just say there's no martial art when it comes to deductibles . Let's also say that this was uh a time in America when a man could just run away from his problems. He could just leave. I jump into the tree Thurdoxes in trees. Well, after this dark third grade day, the most important thing in the Count's mind to cultivate was the ability to physically defend himself, and as it went, he was able to devote his life to this cause because of the way his bizarre mind worked. See, Count Dante was somewhat of an idiot savant. He was one of those guys who can learn and remember almost anything, but because he's also kind of stupid, he used that knowledge to do the dumbest shit possible at every opportunity . For example, at a young age, Dante became obsessed with people who faked their own death, so he learned techniques to control his own breathing so he could appear dead. I'd like you to see if you could guess if I'm alive or not. I'm gonna stop breathing until I get a huge ulcer. Mother tell me, am I dead or am I alive? I am dead. Likewise when, it was discovered that the count had a fantastic natural singing voice, he began training as an opera singer, supposedly while still a pre pubescent child. I could have been a castradi, but I loved my girlfriends too much. But owing to Dante's experience with his local bullies, the things he devoted himself to the most were the physical arts, like weightlifting, wrestling, boxing, and of course, any and all martial arts avail able. As his best friend Tommy Gregory put it, Count Dante wasn't happy until he'd completely conquered a new hobby. Everything had to be louder, faster, stronger, and more intense. So for the Count, the only gear he had was full out. You should hear me on the CB rad io. What's your handle? Count, Dante ! The count Dante entered puberty in the mid-1950s, and since martial arts was not the most popular thing in Chicago just yet when it came to self-defense, Dante learned boxing at a place called Johnny Coulon's boxing gym. Now the thing is to remember that karate , alright? First thing you do, you get some obviously you go on bow a lot to bow to do the bow But the thing I remember is you punch with your feet. What if I wanna punch with my hands? That makes you I mean you're not Japanese enough. This boxing gym was racially integrated in the mid fifties when segregation was still very much the law of the land across most of America. So Count Dante grew up with people who emphasized diversity, people who continu ally talk about the nonsensical nature of racism and segregation. As far as who taught Count Dante how to box, it was seemingly Johnny Coulin himself. Coulin was born in eighteen eighty nine and he'd boxed as the world bantamweight champion between nineteen ten and nineteen fourteen when boxing matches would go on for dozens of rounds. Oh yeah. put boxing on hold to fight in World War One. I fight I fought a whole country. I went a day and the first thing I did was I took the Kaiser. Oh I put him in the bull an returned to Chicago to open his gym in 1923. And over the decades, Coulomb trained the best. Jack Dempsey, Joe Lewis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali , even Ernest Hemingway came to Coulin's gym for training. Wow. By the time Count Dante began training with Coulomb, Coulomb was a Chicago legend who could still jump out of the ring over the top rope despite the fact that he was pushing 80 years old. They said he'd land on his feet without a have like it softly like, a cat. Like a cat. I honestly I could see that that's kinda fun. Like it just God he must be remember Martin Shore from Arrested Development? Sure. Like that's all I really can think of. Dragon. Yeah. He just jumps over the thing. I feel like so many of these guys just claim that they train these people. Well, Muhammad Ali was Chicago. Yeah. And so it made sense that he would train Muhammad Ali. But he had pictures on the wall. Like Johnny Cool. Like even though count Dante is in the middle of this as kind of a fabulous, the people that he trained with and the people that he actually met and knew were some of the most the foremost fighting experts of the 20th, the mid-20th century. Yeah, they all can't be Mike Tyson. Yeah. And they also all don't have to be idiots. Yeah, yeah. Now, from what it seems like, Count Dante began building his fanciful self-image at a young age. Well the one Raphael and his alias came from his mother's Spanish heritage, the Dante seems to have come from his high school years. Dante's alma mater, Mount Carmel High, was located at sixty four ten South Dante Avenue. Oh, I thought you were gonna say the like, you know, the famous poem. Like the famous ancient poet Dante. No, it's the it's a nah that's the street where my high school was at. That's it, yeah, but very good. Very, very good. The Dante, however, could have been a tribute to the city that the Count obviously loved. He was a lifelong Chicagoan. Dante and his best friend Tommy would wander the neighborhoods of Chicago, smoking cigars while riding the L to jazz clubs, where Dante and Tommy will be the only white kids. I just can imagine these two teenage shitheads on the L chomping on huge cigars. Yeah. Honestly, you know, it's kind of fun though. They're going to jazz clubs. Yeah, yeah. They said they once saw uh Fats Domino play. And they said it was incredible. I mean, uh, that'd be incredible. Yeah. I would love to see Fats Domino play back then. Oh my gosh. These guys are doing great so far. So far, yeah. Yeah. If you believe any of it. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, well, I mean Tommy, Tommy Gregory is seen as a uh he is seen as a reliable source. Okay , he's he he was Count Dante's best friend. Uh but as we'll see, like he kind of comes in and out of Dante's life. Uh and the writer of the book at the very least, like trusted him, like checked enough of his sort of checked enough on uh Tommy Gregory's claims, like, ah yeah, he's probably telling the truth most of the time. Cause like I said, like Count Dante is a liar, but he also lived a weird fucking life. And was very well documented. Like he lived his life in public too. So man, that video you sent me of him like pretending to rip out that guy's eyes and like it was like hilarious. It was just like it was like him going at the guy's eyes and the guy going, Oh, oh and they do it again like thirty times in a row. But the other time he's like but then there's the other one where he locks the guy's head in a th in a in his with his legs that just is kidney punching him and he's punching him in the kidneys and punching him in the kidneys. And I was like, That's his student.. Ye Yeahah. No, we're gonna get into how much Count Dante beat the shit out of his own students and how much his students beat the shit out of each other. Yeah. But it was during his high school years of mischief that Dante would, according to him, garner his second and last fighting loss of his entire life. And that loss came, of course, because the other guy fought dirty. See, in high school, Count Dante got into a fight with quote, a couple of Sicilians, who broke Oh, you know, 'cause of that, you know how much money's in a house boat. No first thing about probably gonna steal like some you know rigging like a motor. It's a house for boats. It's not a stupid person calling a house four boats. Well Dante took off his shirt when he discovered the burglary and got into a boxing post. Come on, hell, you ready for the pugiless of burglars just immediately kicked Dante in the balls. What the fuck ? That's not the fucking man . I'm not allowed! Both burglars ran away while the count was writhing on the ground, clutching his groin in pain. A good karate man could have blocked it. Yeah, he could have. He wasn't there yet. No, he was not there yet. He's only working on boxing. That's it. There's no kicking in boxing. This is the late, this is like 1957. So he doesn't even know that feet exists. He's the only on this level . He's on like this is like a type of boxing too where two men show up, they get ready to punch each other, they go back and forth, it's like hip, hip, hip, hip. It's like as soon as he got kicked in the bolts, honestly, I think in his own mind, he was like, That's incredible. What an amazing move . This is a paid ad for Shopify. Ah business . It can be intimidating to begin, but once you start, oh the business is good . Sometimes. Sometimes business can be righteously b ad, but it doesn't always have to be. It can feel overwhelming. Every day is filled with crucial decisions. 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Sign up for your one pound per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.co.uk. co.uk Dante graduated high school in nineteen fifty-eight, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, and it seems like this is the point when Dante really started constructing his own myth. Dante claimed that in the one year he was in the Marine Reserves, he was stationed in Japan, Vietnam, and Korea. Everywhere there's rice. He supposedly discovered martial arts for real while in those countries. He claimed that he studied at least six different martial arts, under twenty different instructors. They couldn't be I killed each one with my bare hand . But he never stayed with one school for long because he said that staying with one school hindered his learning. Or he just got kicked out all the time. Could be. Could they cannot handle my identity? Hey. John, get out of here. Why don't you just leave? Please leave. I would normally take my stand here and I would show you that my kung fu is stronger than yours. But I will leave because my bus is here . During his travels in the Orient, Count Dante also claimed quite mysteriously, never gave any other details, that he entered a death match in Thail One of the craziest things I ever saw was that man who came out and turned into complete electricity. There was an Asian man who shot electricity. And then there was an Indian man with the super long arms. But I tied them all together. And I made them zap each other. This of course almost certainly did not happen. What? Yeah. Well plenty of guys have died fighting in matches in Thailand because of how brutal their martial arts can be. Like I don't even know like is it pronounced like Muay Thai? Muay Muay Muay Thai. Muay Thai. Yeah. No, it's fucking brutal. Dudes died all the time. But matches in which guys start knowing that one of them is gonna be beaten to death, they don't actually exist outside of Kung fu movies. No, I don't think so. No. Like the fucking blood sport, you know, putting the you know in the the glass and nails and all that. That doesn't happen. I feel like if you killed somebody, they would disqualify you. Yeah, no. They'd be like Crown Paul outside of fucking game of death or Enter the Dragon. Outside of Enter the Dragon, it's not it's not it doesn't happen. Wait a second. Aren't we doing this very thing on the lighthouse lawn for the 250 th birthday party. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's um someone might die. Honestly, that would be kind of a blast. It really would be. They would love it, unfortunately. I'd like it. Now the Tide Deat matches aren't the only fishy component of Count Dante's time in the military. See, Dante was always a little vague about his time in the armed forces, and author Binchie Feldheim, through a foyer request, discovered why. Yes, it is because they're ancient Asian secrets. Well, while one record has Dante being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve just in here of service, most honorably. Another record shows him being dishonorably discharged. Most dishonorably. But he got dishonorably discharged from the Army a year after he was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve. Apparently, Dante joined the Army after the reserves, but according to his military disciplinary record, Count Dante was busted by the MPs for weed possession and going AWOL for the month of February during the winter of 1960. That's because it's Black History's Month. Additionally, Count Dante had also crashed a couple of cars, destroyed property, shot at his friend's car. Rumors and years And somehow injured himself by bashing his own head with the butt of a pistol. But a gun insulted me. He was just trying to prove that he could break the gun with his head. Look in here. Hey, look. Hey, look, hey! Look what I'm doing. Hey, hey, look at me. Hey mom. Hey mom. I remember one time at a party in high school there was this tough guy who said he could break a bottle over his own head. And then we're like, don't do it. He's like, I can do it. We're like, don't do it. And then he just started doing it but then he couldn't do it so he just like kept like hitting him over and over again yeah yeah everybody went to a party where there was a guy who tried that I remember when our buddy Tim thought he could fight the parking lot. Then he just punched the ground till he broke his hand. Yeah, good old times. Yeah, there's plenty of guys who also think they can you know beat the sidewalk . I once punched a Mercedes Benz in its mouth. According to Count Dante's best friend Tommy, Dante he just wasn't vibing with the army. So he was doing anything and everything to get a discharge, dishonorable or not. But considering Count Dante's behavior throughout his entire adult life, his blow up in the army could have merely been the first of many periods in which the Count lost all control and caused a lot of mayhem. He's very good at mayhem. Why could you see him just being like God damn out here in the jungle's one of the most intense fears I've ever experienced? And they were like , we're in southern Florida. You know, we're training in North Carolina. It's 1960. There's no conflicts going on at that point. There's a lot of like tension from the Cold War, but you know, there's no Korea and Vietnam hadn't started yet. I fight my corrupt whiteness. I I don't want to jump ahead too much, but I am legitimately curious. Did he ever like have a wife or anything like that or like a a girlfriend? Yeah, he had a couple of girlfriends. We'll get in part two, we shall explore the myth of the dragon lady. But since Count Dante came from a wealthy family. He didn't have to worry about money in his twenties. Like a lot of wealthy weirdos before him, Count Dante was able to dedicate himself to whatever he pleased after he was dishonorably discharged. So Dante applied himself to the accumulation of martial arts techniques. Like fucking Batman. Yeah, yeah, it kinda sort of like Batman, huh? Yeah. Yeah, it's like Batman, but if uh Batman's parents were alive and Batman just wanted attention. You honestly . What a great way to be Batman though. Yeah, it is. Pretty sure that's the joker. I'm top man . But it is important to note that Dante was paying little attention if. Almost anything he saw. It was almost like the I know kung fu scene from The Matrix. But without the discipline that usually accompanies the accumulation of these techniques, Count Dante was like the proverbial chimp with the machine gun. In other words, Dante was in possession of powerful techniques, but didn't have the wherewithal to know how dangerous those techniques could truly be, especially when he quickly started teaching these techniques to other people simply to gain attention. I'd love that like the whole purpose of martial arts is the philosophy. In the discipline. It's all about self-transformation. It's all about being, you know, like it's about your qi, it's about all of these like truly like interesting things. Yes, self-defense, but it's about peace. It's well it's yeah, it's about keeping peace by being able to, if you need to, enforce peace. Yeah. You know, and then this guy, it's just so funny. It's just being like, fuck peace. Peace is gay. I think his first thought is being like I want to punch through an old man's head. And it's like you know what though? That's a new American brand of karate. Hey, in so many ways, Count Dante really is the like kind of beginning of this mixed martial arts bullshit that we see now, where the whole point is to just beat a man as badly as you can, as quickly as you can. I miss the old UC the coarseness of a the the coarsening of America. Sure. I miss the old UFC fighting when it really you remember when the OG days and it was like sp no, it was like specifically one style of fighting versus another style of fighting. Yeah. It was specifically like a boxer with me . That was the old days. Now everybody's mixed martial arts, but that was like not a thing originally. I missed that. I missed when it was being like Ken Jeet couldn't do beat the Aikido Master. Like that all that shit. Well, that was a holdover from the old days of martial arts tournaments. Is that usually that's what they would do, is they would have, you know, your karate guy against the karate guy and so on and so forth, and they would stick to those disciplines. But Count Dante came in just like, let's just put them all together and use them to beat someone uh into a pulp as fast as possible. Sometimes you just gotta grab a guy by the testicles and yank on him a bunch while you're sticking your finger up his nostril. It does work. Now Count Dante's ignorance of danger was on full display whenever he would flippantly talk about how many people he had allegedly killed in his youth. He later said in an interview with Black Belt Magazine, which Black Belt Magazine plays a big role in this story. Uh he said that he had supposedly, and this is a big supposedly, killed at least twenty-five men during his time in the armed forces. When we're at no wars at all. Listen to me. You might think I hadn't killed 25 people, but you didn't see me at my open mic. But Dante, he was always vague as to how , where, and why he killed those men. He always left it up to the other person to decide if Dante had killed those 25 men for the army or in various Thai death matches. I once left a box of dynamite in the sun . And it killed an entire hospital. By the way, Count Dante was fond of waxing philosophical about killing, which implies that he probably never actually killed anyone. He was quoted as saying there is always a surge in not being killed yourself and being a survivor. But I do not get any type of sexual, spiritual, physical, or psychological thrill out of killing somebody. I believe in the human spirit and the individual soul. But according to according to Count Dante, some of those kills were earned in Cuba, where Dante claimed he had fought as a guerrilla warrior in the Cuban Revolution alongside Fidel Castro's brother Raul. Aye, Raul and I. Buenos Amigos. CC. So he's a communist. No, I fight in the the maniquas . She was vague as to why he decided to fight with or why he said he decided to fight with the guerrilla fighters in uh in the Cuban Revolution. We were betrayed by the Jankees. We were betrayed by them. We were trade betrayed by the rough riders. And that's why I went out into Las Maniquas . Chased the Jankees out into the jungles. And I received the many gracious besitos of the Mamachulas. Yum yum Mama Chulas, yum, yum, gimme some . Ah, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba. Land of the Maduro. It sounds like utter bullshit. Yes. But his best friend Tommy does remember Dante making trips to Cuba during the late nineteen fifties. Even though the revolution was like nineteen fifty nine, but he was, you know, in and out. Guess what they were getting? Cigars . Well, this is before the embargo. Yeah, so yeah, you can buy Cuban cigars in Chicago. You don't gotta go all the way to Cuba for those. I actually made this is an honest mistake. Honest mistake. I thought that the cigars were illegal. He probably just took a nap for a week and then told everyone he was in Cuba. And I was quite bueno at Nap acito. Continued bouncing around the world with his parents' money to study under a series of senseis, where he learned even more complex techniques. This is awesome. Yeah. And the reason why Dante never stayed with one sensei for long was because Dante actually felt that most martial arts instructors they weren't very good. Yeah. Yeah, he claimed that to have the ability to pick up on new techniques much faster on his own. All he had to do is watch and he would learn. Absolutely. I had the same thing with improv teachers. They always just ended up weeping. They almost had me weeping and quitting the industry where I was done with him because my techniques were far too masterful . I'm following the fear, but the fear is that he's gonna fucking talk forever. Yes Yes While Dante was gallivanting around Asia, his best friend, Tommy Gregory, moved on with his life. He took a construction job in Phoenix. I guess I'll never see I'll never see old Dante again. Took that job in Phoenix in 1960. But one day, Tommy got a call from Count Dante, who asked, Tommy, are there any karate schools in Phoenix? Tommy said, Yeah, there's one. So Dante packed his bags and headed for Arizona. Surprisingly, the guy who ran the one karate school in Phoenix, this is sort of a serendipitous moment, I was Robert Trias, who is actually credited as the man who brought karate to America. Trias opened America's first karate school And soon after published the first American book about karate. It was very dramatically titled The Hand Is My Sword, a Karate Handbook. That's fucking awesome, dude. And for some reason, I just when you say brought karate to America, I just see a box just going like a bunch of cats in there. These are definitely guys who are gonna get pissed off of you for saying karate. If you don't say karate. Karate. Karits. I love karates. Is that right? Is that right? Is it correct? Honestly, just from your pronunciation of the word, you have the just the correct IQ to be my student. That's cor wonderful. Here's the first let me show you the first move I learned accidentally. Okay. Single ball kick! My eyes! My ice count Dante was actually very fond of going for the eyes. He claimed to have taken the eyes of many men. I have taken eyes. Do not fuddle with me. Robert Triosp was a legit dude. He'd been a boxer in the Navy during World War II. And while he was stationed in the Solomon Islands on the Pacific Front, he became friends with a Chinese missionary who knew karate. This missionary would continually ask Trios to train with him, but Trios kept declining because the missionary was a far smaller man, and Trios was convinced that he would hurt him. But finally Trios agreed to spar, and after calling all his friends over to watch, Trios got the absolute living shit kicked out of him by the Chinese karate missionary. I like karate now. And so Robert Trios spent the rest of his time on the Solomon Islands training to learn karate himself. And when he returned to the United States in the mid nineteen forties, he brought karate with him. Can I put this karate in the above holder here? Can I put this up in the neighborhood? Anything you need, sir. Can you hang out by karate in the closet? Sir, before we check your bag, uh are do you carrying any karate in here? Uh no, actually no, not at all. Uh this isn't karate. Sir I'm sorry, we can we can't allow karate in the cargo home. Oh well, let's see what my karate has to say about it. No, for all account, Dante's bluster and lies, he was actually pretty fantastic at martial arts, or at the very least good enough to be able to win pretty much any fight. So when he arrived at Robert Trias's karate dojo, Trias recognized him as a prodigy and he trained Dante himself. After a month, Dante had his green belt, and Dante thereafter helped Trios expand his school, the US Karate Alliance, or the USKA. It is finally good to meet a sensei. I can respect. Yeah, name's Bab. Bab Trias. What is it from? South Korea . Well, according to Count Dante's own pamphlets, the world's deadliest fighting secrets, he achieved the black belt rank by the age of twenty-three. It was a world record. Then over the next few years, Dante claimed to have earned additional black belts in judo, jite, and akido. I got the black belt in Bagwazang . Baguazang. Bagwazang. What's Baguazang? I looked up a bunch of different names of other martial arts and that's my favorite one. Bagwazang. What is that, do you know? Punching and kicking. Well, those last two, by the way, were supposedly learned from the creator of Hikido himself, Morahe Oeshiba. Ueshiba had actually trained elite soldiers in deadly martial arts for Japan during wartime, but his soul had become troubled after teaching so many men how to kill with hands, hands that are meant to caress a woman or eat a peach on a spring day under the cherry blossoms of Hokkaido. I love karate bits. I do feel yeah it's my favorite Would you rather use your hands for a lover or to kill a man? Sometimes I do wish I could go back to just using my hands to embrace, but unfortunately they must hold the sword. So Uish iva developed Akido as a way to teach men in the ways of love and harmony through the regulation of their key. Ki, that's a vital force, believed to be a part of all living entities. It's sort of like the I'd also put it in the same world as like organ energy or like that style or prana they talk about in yoga. Dante, however, paid no attention to all that key noise. Keys just half of uh what you use on a piano . And he simply added Ak ido techniques to his increasing mixed martial arts style, a style that was dedicated solely to beating the ever loving sh it out of other human beings. I first of all will say thank you so much for teaching love because the one thing I love most is causing a man pain. Seems like his style was just confusion. Yeah. Yeah. Well, because like what you saw in that video is his teaching style. So when he was teaching it, his idea was like, oh, we're cutting through the pomp and circumstance. We're cutting through all this fucking dumb extra shit. We're cutting through it. We're getting straight to the ass kicking because we're in Chicago in the fucking America. Yeah, it's Chicago in the nineteen sixties. It's fucking rough out there. I'm gonna teach kids how to beat the shit out of people. Yeah. Now by 1962, Count Dante had returned to Chicago to open his own dojo. He was just 23 years old when he did this. Interestingly, though, Count Dante's dojo was located above a legendary nightclub called M r. Kelly's, which had a policy of pairing a music act with a comedy act nearly every night. So while Count Dante was training Chicago's most violent kids on how to be more violent upstairs, comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Joan Rivers, like fucking everybody. It's fucking Flip Wilson, Jackie Gleason. They're sharing the bill with like Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Herbie Hancock. Yeah. The fucking floor below. They're down right of fucking blues in Chicago. Yeah, and they're down there just wasting their time singing songs about things in the sky when we're up here doing the real work, beating the fuck out of 14-year-olds. This whole time being like, fuck that noise. Come up here, learn how to fight. Yeah. I mean, the thing that blows my mind is that in 1963, Barbara Streisand made her debut performance at Mr. Kelly's, like the debut of Barbara Streisand to the entire fucking world, and all while Barbara Streisand's like swing singing downstairs. Count Dante's upstairs beating the shit out of his students. Won't Florida ! Hi hello. What's your name? Babs. Nice to meet you. I'm Count Dante. I am the Sensei here at this dojo. And I bet you. Can't punch me in the stomach as hard as you can Do it, bad You know my father's a kind of college You can take a look at that thing you got there . Man, I don't know how they did it. Remember that we had that one studio that was uh in Greenpoint uh below the karate studio. Yeah and it was wow it was a fucking nightmare. We could never record when the karate studio had classes gone. I just feel like a live blues band is way louder than it. Yes. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, Herbie can't Hancock downstairs in 1962. That's gonna be loud. God, how lame do you have to be? You skip Herbie Hancock. You walk past Herbie Hancock. I have to fight a teenager. Eventually, Count Dante's dojo came to be known as the Imperial Academy of Fighting Arts. Now in addition to technical skill, Count Dante was also a master at branding, and for his dojo's logo, he chose a giant black dragon. Dante also applied black to himself, dyeing his auburn red hair black, most likely to match the black dragon logo, for Dante was himself the black dragon. How did you know? I find redheads way more terrifying, personally. Sure. Like a redhead karate master's way scarier than a guy all his hair dyed and shit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, likewise, Dante's students would come to be known as the Black Dragon Fighting Society. And while he primarily taught older and working class students, there were certainly teenagers and criminals, mostly drug dealers, in the mix as well. Count Dante, however, did not train his fighters in the traditional way, where philosophy comes first and the whole thing is more it's like a good way to get exercise and learn discipline. There's a lot of reason why people do martial arts. But the Count did not subscribe to controlled cumite , in which a martial artist pulls back his full strength and abilities while sparring to focus on control and speed. Fuck someone up as bad as possible, as fast as possible by using their full strength and abilities at all times. If you were a part of the Black Dragon Fighting Society, you were constantly training for street fights and brawls , which meant that Count Dante's students always associated martial arts with violence and mayhem . Instead of using mats, Count Dante's students would grapple on concrete floors. Makes you strong. Yeah. They just fucking slam each other. Like judo . Into the fucking just into the fucking cock. I mean, eventually they did get mats, but in the early days it's like we do not need mats. Mats are for weaklings. Someone's like, some kid broke his neck and like your family's gonna sue you. Yes, we will get one extreme action mat . While part of his classes would consist of karate and judo drills to learn the techniques, most of the time would be spent actually fighting, as opposed to most martial arts schools where the training is no contact. In fact, it was Dante's belief that fighters needed to hurt each other during training. Sometimes Dante would have his students practice self-defense scenarios in which the opponent would be given a knife or even a fucking gun, and the mock assailant would actually try to hurt the other student, often with great success . Usually the guy with the fucking doing the karate. Not much of a match for the guy with the knife. What I love is your first class. You go in. It's Tuesday, 9 o'clock. You've been working all day. Everything's fine. You're like, oh, I can't wait to do this. He's like, all right, now we hand out the guns. Be like, I dare you to shoot me in the head. I dare you to shoot me in the head. See one of his students getting stabbed and them dragging him down the stairs and Aretha Franklin just being like, that's stupid ass white boy. I'm sick of this shit . You know what those guys need for each other? Some kind of respect. Way to God . They better think the piano to simulate nighttime attacks, Count Dante kept a dim red light bulb in his dojo. Got to. And would sometimes recreate attacks where the defender was outnumbered six to one, and the defender would of course get the shit beat out of him in the process. This overall method, which Count Dante called the Dante System, would of course be his eventual undoing. It's not a system. Yeah, who would think that teaching a bunch of fucking assholes from Chicago, like here's how you beat the shit out of someone as fast as possible. Who would think that teaching them the world is a violent place and to use violence first always is gonna fucking lead to something bad? I just love anything called a system. Oh yeah, the Dante System. I would just like no books. Turn off the lights and beat the shit out of each other. Don't worry, it's all planned. Every bit of this is absolutely this oh, this is organized. Ow! I just stepped Ah I stepped on a draidle. Oh my god, yeah, we do this. We do a Hanukkah. We do a whole Hanukkah trial . As far as fucking someone up fast went, Count Dante's go-to technique for winning a fight was the throat grab. This is of course very basic. Dante would grip the throat of the opponent and use the power of his body to twist and pull until the other guy gave up. The key is you want to get the guy using these two fingers. Buy their Adam's apple. Yeah, and uh really like like a fucking alligator. It's a super effective technique to f technique to fucking choke away. People have been choking people at fights for a long time. But are they making noises while they do it? Ha! I grab you. I grab you. I grab you. Yeah. Count down to taste techniques. Let's say it didn't always win him friends in the martial arts world. That's not what I'm here for. And he said that he developed a painful bleeding stomach ulcer from dealing with quote all the politics in the martial ar ts world. Can't even believe I just had to go and fight a whole campaign. They were voting. The whole city was voting to make katanas illegal. I fought them. That's why I vote no on prop thirty-six. So much pressure. But it would take about a decade for Count Dante to burn all his bridges in the martial arts world. See, in July of 1963, Dante was still close with his American karate sensei, Robert Trias, and the two of them actually put together the first national karate tournament ever held in America. This was a legit event held in Chicago's Hyde Park, and its attendees included Bob Wall, that's the guy who smashed the bottles in Enter the Dragon. Oh, cool. Is that crazy? And Bruce Lee himself showed up. They met Bruce Lee and Count Dottie might have met each other? Unfortunately, there are no stories like specifically of the two of them like interacting. Probably treated him like that and he was like too scared to actually get into a fight he would lose. Well if I was him, I would just sit there and just go, Bruce Lee's my best friend. Looks like Bruce Lee is my best friend. This is one of the funnest days of my life. I mean the American martial arts scene was pretty fucking small at this point. And since he was since Count Dante was like the co-founder of this karate tournament, I'm sure there were interactions between him and Bruce Lee at some point, but most honorable. Hello, he's doing the full bow, you know, and he's just like a Bruce Lee used with sunglasses on, just going, shut up. Yeah, get out of here. You're not water. Yeah. But regardless of whether or not he bothered Bruce Lee that day, Count Dante certainly established himself as a character during this first karate tournament. As a demonstration, Count Dante tried breaking a brick with his bare hand, which is a cliche today, but back in the 60s, pretty fucking incredible. Most people in America hadn't seen anything like that. But Dante broke his hand on the first swing. Sentiment ! Oh my god! Oh god! Brick did hit back! Okay. Yeah. Brick remained intact. A little bit of that was just a bit of a side quest there. Oh missing my chi. Undeterred, Dante insisted on trying again. And using that same broken hand, Dante did indeed succeed in breaking the brick. Brooking his trick? Yeah, you fucker. You fucking idiots. That would be me. Yeah. I fucking did it. I don't fucking care who you are. Look at me. Look at me Cobra, why? No, Dante never needed to worry about money in his youth. Remember, he's still in his early twenties at this point, twenty-four, twenty-five. He still took jobs working as a bouncer in the bars of Chicago Southside. From what it seems like though, Dante only took these jobs so he'd have an excuse to get into fights. Yeah, he did. Dante would show up to a bouncing gig wearing a beret and a pink shirt, which attracted the attention of various drunken shitheads who just couldn't help themselves. I like this shirt. Dante would make a big show of taking out these guys in seconds. He attracted a lot of attention to himself And what you do is you show up sober and you fight these guys who are extremely drunk in front of everybody, and then you're gonna win. Yeah, you have a black belt in karate and you easily meet a bunch of drunk men. It's actually that's kind of fun. I can see why he thought this was fun. Yeah. No but he was also incredibly violent. Yeah. So he always he was constantly looking for ways to get that violence out. And of course that as we'll get into in the second episode, it that ended in some pretty bad shit, time and time again, as it often does. It's kind of funny though, for a while he was really trying to find almost job sanctioned violence. He went to the military, he'd do these other things. He's literally being like in a way, unlike other serial killers and other people that we've covered, criminals we covered , he is sort of acknowledging his violence. Like I know that that's ridiculous, but it's like he legitimately is just doing it. And he was trying to be like, well, I don't want to do it illegally. Yeah. I want to kill people legally But as the master of Aikido will tell you, violence begets only more violence. It sounds like the leader of a keto is an asshole. But to be fair, once a student made it to count Dante's dojo, there would be other instruction besides just fighting techniques, although everything did feed back into aggression. During meditation sessions, Dante would have his students sit in front of a mirror and envision themselves as a tiger or some other wild animal, but mostly tigers. So first sit, I would like for all of you to first now feel your weight in the chair. Excellent. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Now you're gonna release yourself from the top of your head all the way down to the tips of your toe. Good. Okay. You're a tiger. You go through, you're in the brush. I've I've You're in the brush. Feel like a platyprus. No, you're a tiger. You're a tiger, you're in the brush. You're filled with milk. You're a lady tiger. Oh. Yep. Filled with a tiger because that's the most aggressive of types of tiger. Oh I'm a lady tiger. First feed your cups. Very good. Now let us go on the hunt. Alright, wake up. Everybody wake up. It's time. It's time I lost track of time. Alright, it's over. Meditation is over. Over your regrets, Well Dante would have his students create battle faces with crazy eyes and exaggerated scowls. That's awesome. In an attempt to become wild animals themselves. No, it we all had to be different trees. Dante claimed that martial arts were invented to protect farmers from wild animals. That is complete and utter bullshit. Like we don't know exactly how martial arts started, but it wasn't fucking to fight tigers. Do you have any idea what it's how hard it is to spend your morning sidekicking a raccoon? Yes, the wildlife of downtown Chicago. But regardless, Dante said that if one needed to defend himself from a wild animal, then a student must become a wild animal himself. Embrace the lessons of Bagu azan . Tomorrow's lesson, the zoo. The next lesson. The petting zoo . See the little stingray. See how it morphs you . I just beat the shit out of this you cucumber. Very good Mike . Very good. Excellent. I stopped the llama to death. Very good. Did you take it down? Live from Northway . Count Dante was getting a lot of attention around Chicago and in the growing national martial arts scene by the mid-1960s, and that attention was rapidly being converted into a confidence that b red eccentricity and flamboyance. These affectations, however, often became dangerous because Count Dante was, after all, the world's deadliest man. In nineteen sixty four, for example, Count Dante brought a lion cub from a zoo in southern Illinois, who I suppose had one too many cubs to take care of that year. Claiming that it meant golden one. But Ray the Lion was a fucking lion. Yeah, in Illinois. Yes, and it acted like a lion for the entire time Dante owned her. Just cause you get it as a cub doesn't mean it's not gonna be a lion. We understand each other. We have the same hair. Especially because you know he was just like fighting it all the time. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It was used. Yeah. Well, best friend Tommy Gregory remembered that even as a baby, Aurelia the Lion could tear anyone to shreds if they weren't careful. Dante actually had to get someone to help him hold down all four of the lion's legs to feed the lion milk from a baby bottle. God damn it, you're gonna take your milk and you're gonna like it. Alright, please put it in my shirt. Put it in my shirt. Gut it out here, yes. I am your mother . But before long, Aurelia was big enough to take on walks, so Count Dante began leading his lion through the streets of Chicago using nothing more than a collar and a leash. He's very much on his way to becoming to gaining like legendary local character status in Chicago. You have to have a specialized pet. Yeah. To get to be like a legendary local character. It always is like, you know, Salvador Dali had the lobster, Anton LeVay, he had his own lion. It's like a whole thing. I remember Tyson moved to Boca when I was a kid and he had a bunch of tigers and there eventually the HOA was like, so uh Mr. Tyson I just don't think you understand the kind of pressure the kind of turbulations turbulations I experienced Can't have pigeons down here. They're too hot. Too hot. Do you want my babies to die for you? Because if you kill my babies, I'm gonna have to kill you. No one too. I'm gonna eat you I'm gonna eat you, uterus. Well thank you so much, Mr. Tyson. It's been a wonderful meeting. Well because this was a fucking lion, Aurelia kept tearing up Count Dante's apartment. Can't leave a lion home alone. So hard in a studio. Yeah. So Dante started keeping the lion at his dojo, much to the chagrin of Count Dante's long-suffering landlord. You should ask my other landlord. You're my second landlord. Okay? Remember that. You're my second landlord. My first landlord's over there. And I've already burnt that bridge. Okay? Mine is here. It's already in here. There's nothing you can do about it. I burn through all of my favors in the first month with that landlord landlord . Well, according to former students, the lion actually became a part of the training. When Aurelia was about a year and a half old, she would wander into the practice area to sweep the feet out from under students using her massive paw. And according to one student, they learned the art of foot sweeps from the lion's surprise attacks. Like imagine that. You're like, not only you go into this class to get the shit beat out of you every week, but then a fucking lion shows up the first class you literally he gave out guns. Right. Like you're at that first class, he gave out guns, you somehow survived. The second class, you're like, okay, well maybe it's a new s it's a new lesson group. I think it's gonna be cool. And then there's a fucking lion in the room, and you're like, I got to stop. I'm I'm gonna learn how to play the violin. Just fucking scratch it at your Achilles tendons. The key is to kick it right in the vagina. That's my father taught me. It really can't be said enough. The sixties were fucking insane. Yeah. Like the sixties were in the seventies were out of hand. Out of pocket. We were really experimenting with society. There is a lot of rules that shouldn't have had to have been made because of guys like Count Dante. You can't have a tiger in your donation. Yeah, check another one. It's super specific, but yeah, it seems it needs to be written down. Yeah. Yeah. Rules that wouldn't make sense fifteen years earlier. Fifteen years earlier, what the dojo? But then in the fucking 60,s it' likes, I know what a dojo is, I know what a lion is, I know, and I know you can't have a lion in a dojo. But after about a year of owning Aurelia the Lion, the static from Count Dante's landlord got to be too much to handle. So Count Dante sold her to a businessman from Quincy, Illinois. I think she'll do much better mid-state. You know, Illinois built for lions. Yeah. But after just a few days of ownership, the businessman called Count Dante at his dojo and told him to come get this goddamn thing because the lion had bit him and he's bleeding all over the goddamn place and swept the lake Yeah well Phone off . That's exactly what he did. Just did a little kind of listen to the guy yell for a little bit. Mm-hmm. Yep. And then just hung it up. Well, there we go. Let's forget that ever happened . I'm done with lies. And now it's time for the ultimate Dante system technique. Forget everything. Never remember . As soon as something gets too hard, abandon it. Abandon it. That is a that is one that's the one. Rule number one, take this. gun Rule number one, if it's hard, don't do it. Number two, go for the eyeballs. Number three. Watch up the lion. Number four. Here's the gun. Did you try going for its eyes? Now karate continued to grow in popularity throughout the 1960s, and while Dante had been the focal point of the Black Dragon Fighting Society during the first American karate tournament, his students got all the attention when they held a second tournament a year later. But Dante's black dragons were not getting attention for their skill. Instead, the so called Dante system had simply made them chaotic and incredibly violent, much to the chagrin of karate master Robert Drias. Just him sitting, you know, like with that proud like arms crossed, like, yes, my students are very strong, aren't they? And they're just like fucking throwing dirt in people's faces , kicking people on the garden I think someone just bowing at him and just punch him punch him in the ball . Skip. Lesson number one. Skip the bow Right at him. Just attack him. Just attack him. Why is he waiting for you to attack him? Go and attack him there. Well, he's sitting on the chair. Waiting for the start thing to start. You know, they think the belt shows rank, but it's actually to choke people. See everybody else who entered this tournament was under the assumption this is a no contact tournament. Yeah. Like we're not gonna be but like it's you know, I think it's uh sort of like touches. Yeah, you know, like you score. You score by like by getting through the person's defenses. Not so with Count Dante's guys. They win it. All they knew how to do was beat the shit out of somebody. They didn't know they had never done any of the no contact shit. So Count Dante and his students were using techniques, their fucking teeth are flying across mats that are covered in blood. I'm just looking at pure success. This means the Dante system is working. So did they win or were they like disqualified? It just sort of devolved into chaos. The whole thing erupted into this huge fight between a group of black Muslims and a group of m Marines. They just got into a fucking brawl and the brawl got big. It's like a fucking bar fight scene out of a movie. It's spilled out into the street. There's a bunch of guys fucking punching each other. I gotta say, I know a lot of people are disappointed, but this is how I've always hoped every karate tournament would end. I mean, what's more American than stealing something and ruining it with violence? Yeah, yeah. A violent practice and making it more violent. It's just peaceful and all the shit. I just thought he was like that's a praying. That's for mantises But this wasn't karate was supposed to be about. And there were indeed other martial arts instructors in Chicago who saw how dangerous Count Dante's methods actually were. A Vietnam vet and martial arts instructor named Gregory Jacko, who is interestingly also the father of Rappe Lupe Fiasco. Very cool. He was quoted as saying that sooner or later someone was gonna die because of Count Dante's craziness. And he was a hundred percent right. As it went, Count Dante was continuing to be flippant about matters of life and death. In an interview with CBS, Dante was asked if someone could be seriously injured doing karate. Dante escalated the question immediately, saying that you could very easily kill someone using karate if you knew how and where to hit them? But because I'll give you one better. I'll kill you right now. My karate involves this brick in your face. Tell me, who is your least favorite? The cameraman or the sound guy? I would gladly eliminate him . But because of statements like this, and because of his students' behavior at the 1964 National Karate Tournament, Count Dante was expelled from Robert Trias' U.S. Karate Alliance in a split that was, to say the least, acrimon ious. See, Dante told Black Belt Magazine that the split came because he was promoting his black students to the black belt rank, which Dante claimed was, quote, tacitly forbidden by Robert Trius's USKA. Just basically said , I left because Robert is a racist. But according to Robert Trias, he was just getting annoyed by Count Dante's continual and escalating lies about his own past. Lies that Dante was beginning to extend to Trias himself without Trias' consent. Without Trias' permission, Dante had printed a brochure promoting that 1964 karate tournament, which claimed that Trias had once fought a bear. They're gonna love this. They're gonna love this. Trios had never fought a bear. He'd never claimed that he had fought a bear. Hey, you fought that really hairy guy last week. That's why I put it down. I saw him. He may as well have been a bear. If he didn't look like a bear he should have shaved you fought the bear and I believe in you, Sate . Well Triot also greatly disagreed with Count Dante's belief that fighters needed to actually hurt each other during training. But the last straw, of course, was the fact that Count Dante's students had turned Triass's 1964 no contact tournament into a blood-covered brawl. You people just don't get me. That's what this is. It's just different vibes. Now regardless of the real reason behind Count Dante's removal from the USKA, he immediately countered by forming his own karate organization called the World Karate Federation. Several of Dante's students joined, but it was particularly the students who enjoyed the full contact sparring, i.e., beating the shit out of each other on a regular basis, who followed Dante most fervently into this new karate world. We will take over the Great O'Chago land area one deep dish restaurant at a time. Before we are over, every hot dog in America will have ketchup on it. But Count Dante, to be totally fair, he continually put his money where his mouth was when it came to racial integration. He trained black students who had been refused training everywhere else in town. And students did see Dante arguing with his landlord because the landlord was threatening to kick Dante out for training black students and also the lions. But it's the black students he's really going on about. That was what he said. He said the first thing about the black students. Yes, he did say something additional about the giant jungle cat. So he was using racism to commit many crimes. Possibly. Well, he also genuinely believe. I actually see here that what we see here is a genuine, like dumb man's version of being open. In his mind, he really does. I really believe in his heart of arts he was giving these guys he thought and believed he was giving people skills that they would need and he genuinely believed that the world of martial arts was kind of racist because it kinda was, right? It literally was. But I think that he also viewed it as a sales technique. I think it was more often than not, you're gonna come to me too, because I'm telling you other people that reject you, I'm gonna take you. Yeah, I think he was just preying on people who uh had nowhere else to turn to. You know, uh to push back on that, that one of his uh black students has been trying for years to make a documentary about him, focusing solely on like the racial uh integration work that he did. There's a lot of people that are right about one thing accidentally. Yeah. There's a lot of people. You know, Jim Jones. Jim Jones integrated yeah, in Jim Jones integrated like Indiana. Like he did all of these. Indianapolis. Yeah. No, he was responsible. See Sim Jones was seriously responsible for integrating Indiana. Or Indianapolis. Black people did he kill in the end? Quite a few. Quite a few. Hundreds. Hundreds upon hundreds. Majority out of the uh 900 some odd who died, most of them were black. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So they trusted him. Cancel each other out could say in the end. It's one of those things. You just write you are in this one instance or manipulator in my mind. But that's fine. But social justice aside, Count Dante's continual focus on violence eventually turned into full attempted mayhem by the summer of nineteen sixty five, when Dante and a student tried blowing up the windows of a rival dojo, unassumingly called the Chicago Judo and Karate Center. It's not strong enough a name. There's not even a dragon in the name. How would you know that it's Asian. As Asian as I. No dragons, no tigers, no cobras. This place must go. Where's the Asian? I don't even see a place here for General Sal . So one night, Dante and this student, who's just some fucking guy named Doug, they taped a detonating cap and a length of wire to the rival karate center's front door with the intent of blowing out the windows because the rival dojo owed Count Dante money. Doug, you are my number one. We're going, Doug. Deep into the war tonight. You and me, Doug. We're going out there and we're going to bring these race traitors to the ground. And only I can trust you, Doug. Dante claimed that they couldn't light the fuse because he and Doug were simply just too drunk. They'd they'd gotten real wasted before going out and trying to blow up these windows. That's the Chicago item. Yes. It was accidental there was a white socks game. Count Dante later told the Chicago Tribune that they tried three or four times to light the explosive, but the fuse kept falling off, and they only gave up because the cops spotted him. Let's put guys. just like they're trying to get it. Light of few strength. Light of your strength. Fucking not I mean to Doug, I trusted you. Yes. Doug, I thought you could pull this. Doug, you were supposed to be the D D for the explosions . I uh I own this place. I just forgot my keys. Oh whoa, Doug! You fucking Doug, you're a traitor. I love ya. Yeah, I honestly thought it I could light a fuse just by snapping real hard. But I can't. But Dante and Doug, they weren't so drunk that they couldn't get into a high speed car chase running from the cops, uh which of course resulted in their eventual arrest. This, of course, was only after Doug had thrown thirteen blasting caps out of the car window during the pursuit. Let's just say, officers, can we please just do this whole thing with the mulligan? It's like the one time the Now the cops gave chase because they were actually on the lookout for bombers. 'Cause been a series of similar intimidation bombings happening in that same area of Chicago in the mid 1960s. That's probably why they weren't trying to kill him, because they were trying to figure out if they were responsible for all these other crimes. The FBI talked to Count Dante to see if he had anything to do with these other bombings. According to the FBI report, Dante told the FBI that he and Doug had some blasting caps in their possession. Yes, but they were going to throw them into Lake Michigan, if only to avoid the exact scenario in which they now found themselves. I somehow found myself with all of these blasting caps, yes. And the blasting caps themselves told me to use them And I feel in because of the sacred teachings of Bhagwa Sang. I know that most inanimate jobs ex objects do have a soul and a yearning for activity. And so we thought we would excite the blasting caps. Please don't arrest me. I cannot go to jail with other black people. I cannot go in there, I will kill. But because he was excessively intoxicated that night, he and Doug decided at the last minute to quote blow off some steam by shattering the windows of their rival dojo instead of throwing the blasting caps into Lake Michigan. Oh so this is after they were arrested they went back and broke the windows? No, no, no, no, no. He he was he told the I know it's very con it's very confusing. It's so stupid. He told the F BI, he's like, no, no, I had some blasting caps, but see, there was all these bombings going on, so we thought throw them in Lake Michigan. No kids are gonna find them there. So we're gonna throw them in Lake Michigan. But then you know, we had a few beers and then we started to do. it We figured, fuck it.'s Let go blow let's go blow up the dojo windows. Gotta funny to do and then I said Doug . This is all Doug's idea, by the way. But I said Doug, that's the most amazing thing we could possibly do and we will fight those race traders. Most honorably Damn Doug, where's that little girl patty you like stuff? Like to see her around But while the FBI did let Dante and Doug go, they did note in their report, in all caps, mind you, that Count Dante should be considered dangerous because he was qu,ote, reportedly subject to a violent and anti-social behavior pattern and has suicidal tendencies. Do you mind if I take this slip of paper and hang on up on my dojo? This is actually excellent advertising for the violence and antisocial behavior pattern is perfect for the Dante system. It's actually one of the main tenets of the Dante system. I would kill myself but unfortunately I am too strong to do so. It is when the immovable object meets the unstoppable for ce. Now after Count Dante got the law off his back, he supposedly studied with a Chinese master named James Lee, who allegedly taught the Count the fabled touch of death, a technique known as dem oc, which, according to some, is what really killed Bruce Lee. And I think that's true. I think it's true . They said that no, he did not die from a bad reaction to a medication. Instead he was touched with the touch of death with the demok and his heart exploded. Is it like one of those like five fingers touches where you go, yeah, cool. No, yeah, that's the Did this kill you? Maybe we'll see. Yeah, because Bruce Lee supposedly died from a delayed reaction to a dim muck. It doesn't make any sense though. It does not. While the concept of dem mock does have roots in the legit practice of acupuncture, there's no evidence that the touch of death actually exists. Why would the acupuncture have a touch of death? Like literally. Like it's like I never understood why do ships in sci-fi movies have a self-detonate fucking thing. They shouldn't. That doesn't make sense. Hey, sometimes they need to have the self-destruct button because what if the plot? If a villain takes over the ship, he cannot be allowed to have such a sh powerful ship such as say the USS Enterprise. There must be a self-destruct made so he does not have access to all of the weapon systems on said ship. So Captain Kirk taught you about suicide? Well my favorite captain is Captain Cisco, if you if if I will have you know. Yeah, Captain Cisco. Yeah, it's the thong song guide. Yeah, that's my favorite start. Fuck off. I thought Captain Sisko was one of those that brought all the fucking calamari to Apple people. Benjamin Sisko! He was the captain of Deep Space Nine . Touch of Death . But around the time that the dick Count Dante supposedly learned the touch of death, the one touch that can make a man's heart stop by hitting him in just the right spot in just the right way. Flick him in the balls. Yeah. After that, Count Dante fully embraced his local character image in every way possible. This in nineteen sixty sixty seven is when Count Dante becomes Count Dante. The former Jan Keyan legally changed his name to Count Juan Rafael Dante, which he claimed was his rightful title by the by as a descendant of Spanish royalty. Yes, I'm from part of the conquistadors. You can tell by my red roots. Yes. My bright, bright crimson pupic hair. The freckles that kept me away, right? Super Spanish, right? God I love pulpo. I curse my Irish heritage. I curse it! I curse it. Dante also permed his jet black dyed hair into a massive afro in a Chicago beauty salon that he owned himself. Yeah, he's a true entrepreneur. And he started sculpting his facial hair into elaborate , sharp devil points and curves using a hair dissolving powder. With twenty four carat gold, all well wearing dancer's leotards. Can you see my balls ? Basically, Count Dante saw what Satanist Anton LeVay was doing in San Francisco around the same time and said I'm just gonna do that, but with karate. He literally just stole his whole fucking shtick. He stole the lion everything. Oh yeah, he stole the whole fucking shtick because which is funny because it's like it was mostly just because like it's good for advertising. Yeah. I mean, well, technically, Count Dante got the lion before Anton Levee got his lion. He did . Yeah who copied who. But yeah he he saw but it was mostly the it was the aesthetic like because it's just you know Anton Levee looked evil. He looked like a comic book villain. Uh, and it was also the attitude, the sort of like not really anti-hero thing, but the idea of being a real-life keel, a villain. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's an act of showmanship. Like he saw how much attention uh Anton LeVay was Yeah. And it's also like this shift to the Count Dante persona, it's basically, I mean, it is just Dante's ins atiable need for attention writ large. Yeah. In keeping with his imitation of Anton LeVay, Count Dante also purchased several occult and adult bookstores around Chicago, which he added to the dojo, the beauty parlor, and the jewelry store that he already owned. He bought a lot of shit with his dad's pussy money. He did. Yeah, he had a gift shop too. I think it's around this time though that his dad is like, I'm not giving you any more money. Daddy, I wish you could understand how powerfully Asian I really am while being Spanish. I'm just I'm gonna keep calling you John. My name is Count Interestingly though, Count Dante also opened a mail order business that sold hardware and other home items. According to Tommy Gregory, Dante was Amazon before Amazon. And Dante actually made a lot of money with just this mail order business. But ever the eccentric, Count Dante's workforce for his mail order business was made up of nuns recruited from a local church. It's just so fucking good. Yeah. It's so fucking good. Because nuns were the only people that Dante would trust to handle money for him. Yeah, because they don't fucking get they don't get paid. Yeah, you don't have to pay them all thing. That's the other thing. So fucking good. Well, she's helping the children, so I suppose they can help yes. I love you, sister Mary Frances. But I am married to martial arts. Oh, you are celibate? Well, change all that. The nuns weren't just shipping hardware for Dante's Amazon before Amazon. By nineteen sixty eight, Count Dante had discovered the power of merch. There we go. So he began selling t-shirts, sweatpants, warm-up jackets, and even nunchucks through the mail, all of it promoting the Black Dragon Fighting Society. That's awesome! Most famously, Count Dante also sold three mail order pamphlets, also shipped out by his nuns under the title World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets. It's just the nuns fucking just shipping this world's deadliest fighting secrets app ear Dante advertised these pamphlets in comic books like Batman, Spider-Man, Howard the Duck was a really big one for him. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, well cause There's a lot of crossover. There's a lot of cross there's a this the type of kid who reads who read Howard the Duck in the late sixties is gonna love Count Dante. Oh yeah. Really gonna love him. And also the advertising space in Howard the Duck was far cheaper uh than Batman and Spider-Man. No way . Howard the Duck It's a classic, but yeah, it's cheaper. But these ads, of course, were keeping in tradition with other strong men who preyed on bullied comic book nerds. Most famous, of course was Charles Atlas, whose hero of the beach muscle-building ads were a reliable source of ad revenue for both Marvel and DC for many years. A girl and the girl says, He's the nuisance of the beach. And so the guy orders Charles Atlas's muscle building uh booklet. He becomes super muscly and he beats up the bully and he becomes the hero of the beach. Ah! It's awesome. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Grand Morrison turned the whole thing into a great character named Flex Montalo. Very cool. Now, and Count Dante's absolutely incredible red and black full-page ads. They're just pop art master pieces. And they featured Count Dante himself. Dante looks like fucking Dracula with an Afro. It's so too funny. And not Blacula. He's white Dracula. He's white Dracula. He's got a cape. I do him. You know what? I'd go as call him white blacula . He is absolutely he's just God, he's just such a funny fucking looking guy. Never thought of that concept. White blackcula. It's funny . Well in, these ads, Dante would make incredible promises. He claimed that if you ordered his pamphlets that cost only twenty-five cents, one could learn the fabled touch of death. One ad said, quote, an expert at Dim Mok could easily kill many judo, karate, kung fu, Akiro, and Gung Fu experts at one time, with only one fingertip pressure using his murderous poison hand weapons. Poison hand weapons, all caps, by the way. Poison hand weapons. One touch. And when you ask, like, how was he able to advertise this? It's because it didn't work. Yeah, it's still it was stupid. It was all dumb. No one took it seriously because they didn't, because it was it was fake. But that was the mail order shit. What Count Dante was doing in Chicago, training all those kids in the most violent ways possible , that was about to result in the incredibly violent death of one man. That, of course, came as a result of the so-called dojo war. And the dojo war is how we will return next week for the conclusion to our series , in addition to Count Dante's career as a Coke dealer and possible bank robber. Oh, finally some real businesses. Oh yeah . This guy, you know , what a ridiculous character. And I'm very excited to come back next week for some violence. Once you hear about this dojo war, oh my it's just so f it's just as funny as everything else. It's so stupid. It's so fucking stupid. Yeah, it's all so ridiculous. It's just life is not a kung fu movie. It never works out like that. And it's almost a shame in that way. It really is. Because they really tried to live it. Yeah, because in kung fu movies you don't have a guy go like you punch me too hard in the stomach you punch me too on the stomach owl ow you hurt my goddamn ow that hurts everyone just sounds like the fucking the the grape lady in that old uh video That's what most fights sound like. Well what do you think the entire Ming Dynasty sounded like? And go to Patreon.com slash last podcast to the left to give us money to listen to our show ad free. You can also see Last Stream and the Left Live every Tuesday, 5 p.m. PST. Yeah, and watch Sun Netflix. Yeah. Yeah. Watch the video on Netflix, we're good on there. And then we got new YouTube channels. Go check it out. HGX2 is on LPN TV our second season of Hoopa GoooGoo The Game Show. It is on LPN TV. Go fucking check it out. That's right. We got the third episode comes out today. So make sure you go and check it out. Fucking binge it. It's probably one of my favorite things I ever worked on. It's so much fun. It's very cool. Everyone's in it. Everyone in the theater. Marcus is gonna show up. We got Henry all over it. It's fucking amazing. It's really fucking great. And go to get go to all our other YouTube channels. Go to at LP on the left for all of your social media need