In Chicago 1969, there emerged the American rendition of the Kokuryukai (Black Dragon Society), it was founded by John Keehan (aka Count Rafael Dante) who was co-founder and mid-west director of the United States Karate Association (USKA) until 1962.They called it the Black Dragon Fighting Society (BDFS).

John Keehan allegedly resigned from the USKA organization in 1964 with the USKA patronizing “whites only” facilities in conducting its tournaments as well as refusal to promote minorities other than Asians to rank of Black Belt. He told Black Belt Magazine that in 1964 “the USKA didn’t have any Negroes in the organization, except for mine, and Trias didn’t like it one bit. . . . It’s the truth. Of course, now he has no qualms about it, but at the time, that’s the way it was.” Trias, in a 1975 article, dismissed this as “nonsense.”

John Keehan (aka Count Dante)

Keehan formed with Douglas Dwyer The World Karate Federation but this lasted only a short period. Allegedly, wanting to challenge traditional boundaries Keehan parted ways with Doug Dwyer to establish the Black Dragon Fighting Society; its running dragon symbol is copied from a Chinese restaurant menu displaying the Chinese Zodiac.

In 1990, a new and unrelated World Karate Federation was formed.

Keehan formed with Douglas Dwyer The World Karate Federation but this lasted only a short period. Allegedly, wanting to challenge traditional boundaries Keehan parted ways with Doug Dwyer to establish the Black Dragon Fighting Society; its running dragon symbol is copied from a Chinese restaurant menu displaying the Chinese Zodiac.

In 1990, a new and unrelated World Karate Federation was formed.

“In 1969 when John Keehan broke away from Dwyer and officially formed the Black Dragon Fighting Society, he chose as his symbol a running dragon looking back on itself to honor his “Bloodsport” Kumite fighting roots and his Black Dragon instructors, (e.g. Ka-Ju-Ken-Bo Master, Dr. Robert Rapue and Senzo Tanaka). Tanaka was going by a different name when not in the company of Japanese businessman and Japanese Black Dragon Society member, Major Takahashi, who had a black wife. Keehan’s relationship with them and his black students inspired him to not give the martial arts world of that day any respect for the way it divided people because of their skin color, like preventing Victor Moore from competing for a title. When the opportunity presented itself Moore, an original (BDFS) bested the likes of Bruce Lee, Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace, Chuck Norris, Mike Stone and alike. If not for original Black Dragons taking over a ‘whites only’ hotel and outnumbered 20 to 1 and risking going to jail, Vic never would have his chance to fight and become the first Black World Karate Champion. In the same spirit as capture the flag the BDFS promoted the Chinese Triad Green Dragon Schools dragon symbol as our own, that resulted in a dojo war and the death of my Sensei, Jim Kosevic.” – Dr. Lawrance Day

Dr. Lawrence Day & Michael FelKoff

In Chicago, allegedly under the auspices of former Black Dragon Society members, like Takahashi, John Keehan, who had participated in Kokuryukai style full contact Kumite returned from Asia to promote the first open to the public full-contact Kumite Bloodsport style mixed martial arts tournament held at the University of Chicago, on July 28, 1963. Many other such tournaments were hosted by him during the 1960s, pairing practitioners of different styles against one another in these bare-knuckle full contact events.

Keehan’s early tournaments attracted a host of martial-arts luminaries—like Ed Parker, Jhoon Rhee, and a pre-Enter the Dragon Bruce Lee—as well as new students. James Jones, a 66-year-old retiree now living in Hazel Crest, signed on at Keehan’s Rush Street school the day after he attended the U. of C. event. He studied with Keehan for three years and remembers him as an ideal instructor. “John was a person who focused on basics and fundamentals,” he says. “He had excellent form and techniques.” He also says that Keehan was one of the few men who could side kick or punch a brick in half, though at one event it took three strikes and Keehan wound up breaking five bones in his hand. Still, he showed up at the dojo the next day, his hand in a cast.

But Keehan also had an arrogant streak. “John was the type of person who enjoyed attention and being in the limelight,” Jones says. “‘If you’re talking about me, then you know about me.’ I thought that was a weakness: ‘What can I do for myself instead of the art?’” Arthur D. Rapkin, a Milwaukee-area acupuncturist who studied under Keehan from 1965 to 1971, recalls Keehan’s “chronic” arguing with other karate schools. His ideas for tournaments were the biggest problem. Unlike most other teachers, Keehan advocated Bloodsport like kumite mixed martial art full-contact matches—no safety equipment, no pulled punches.

Jones, who trained under both men, believes that there probably was a de facto ban on minorities in the early days of the USKA but that the battle between Trias and Keehan likely had as much to do with control as with race.

Trias later said that Keehan “was given too much power too young and too fast,” and in his mid-20s the future Count Dante did seem to start drifting off course. On July 22, 1965, Keehan and Doug Dwyer, a longtime friend and fellow instructor, were arrested after a drunken attempt to blow out a window at Gene Wyka’s school with a dynamite cap. After they were apprehended, Dwyer was charged with four traffic violations; Keehan was charged with attempted arson, possession of explosives, and resisting arrest. He got two years’ probation.

Around the same time Keehan bought a lion cub—a legal, if uncommon, practice before the 1969 Illinois Dangerous Animals Act—which he kept at his dojo on Ashland and walked around town like a dog. (He later sold it to the Lions Club of Quincy, Illinois.) In the summer of 1967 he promoted an audacious exhibition in which, as part of a tournament at Medinah Temple, a bull would be killed with a single blow. Keehan purchased a bull from the stockyards and drove it around town on the back of a flatbed truck festooned with signs announcing the event. He wouldn’t perform the deed himself: he’d picked Arthur Rapkin, then a 19-year-old student, for the task.<.p>

Bull killing was the signature stunt of karate legend Mas Oyama, and Rapkin initially seemed game: in a Tribune article about the event (headlined “Karate Expert Thwarted as Bull Hitter”), he’s quoted as saying that if the police prevented him from attacking the bull in the building, he would “kill it in the truck on State Street, if necessary.” But after the seats were filled Keehan announced that the event had been shut down by the Chicago SPCA. In hindsight, Rapkin says, he believes Keehan and his associates never seriously considered staging the event. “They were probably just howling at this little Jewish kid from Milwaukee they were going to put up against this bull,” he says.

In San Francisco, Bob Calhoun leads a band called Count Dante & the Black Dragon Fighting Society. Originally knowing little about Keehan outside of the comic-book ads, he invented an outsize stage persona that’s part punk, part karate-ka, part motivational speaker, and wears leopard-print kimonos onstage. “What was funny was how much my portrayal turned out to be like the real Keehan in the first place,” he says.

THE DEADLIEST MAN ALIVE

Like a professional wrestler living a role by which to build fan base, John Keehan changed his name to Count Dante, which he got from organizing bare knuckle MMA fights under Dante Street bridge. As part of the persona, he explained this occurred as a result of his parents fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War. They changed their names and obscured their noble heritage in order to effectively hide in America. All the while, Keehan knowing the surname Dante is in fact of Italian origin. Keehan having taken the name (Count) Dantès from the protagonist of Dumas’ 1844 The Count of Monte Cristo, as Keehan saw his role as avenging the wrongs being committed against him and minorities at the height of the civil rights movement – a point to add to mock the whites only hotel tournaments he would show up selling black belts for $15. Being faced by martial mystics he declared himself a voodoo priest, by which to promote himself.

Keehan is said to have mocked the traditional martial arts lock out of minorities by promoting his alter ego Count Dante via comic book ads as the Deadliest Man Alive. One had only to mail order for his instructional booklet World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets (in which he outlined the “Dance of Death”) and they also received a free Black Dragon Fighting Society membership card because all are welcome to study and feel they had a right to belong. These comic book ads account for much of Count Dante’s lasting notoriety in pop culture.

In May 1975, at age 34 Keehan passed away, unexpectedly. According to urban legend the death touch Tibetan Iron Palm strike was allegedly administered to John Keehan. Killed over his flamboyant transgressions and associations regarding Black Dragon ties to the Chicago and Japanese, mafia. Nonetheless, as legend goes with his death the invitation to fight went to another protégé of Senzo Tanaka, Frank Dux, the basis of the 1988 classic film based on true events in the life of (BDFS original member) Frank Dux – Bloodsport.

This is Grandmaster Victor Moore sparring, but also in the photo you can see a tall looking young man with a pinkish shirt on which stands like Frank Dux and is tall like he would have been even at that time standing next to a shorter kid along the wall, however Grandmaster Dux does not confirm nor denies the identity of the person in the photograph, but the timeline of the photograph does fit the time of him being around Grandmaster Moore and other members of the original Black Dragon Fighting Society.