The Dance of Death – Dim Mak and Count Dante

Yes, this is the DEADLIEST and most TERRIFYING fighting art known to man—and WITHOUT EQUAL. Its MAIMING, MUTILATING, DISFIGURING, PARALYZING and CRIPPLING techniques are known by only a few people in the world. An expert at DIM MAK could easily kill many Judo, Karate, Kung Fu, Aikido, and Gung Fu experts at one time with only finger-tip pressure using his murderous POISON HAND WEAPONS. Instructing you step by step thru each move in this manual is none other than COUNT DANTE—“THE DEADLIEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED.” (THE CROWN PRINCE OF DEATH.)…..

Any fans of the American comics on the 1970s must remember the lurid adverts for Count Dante? The deadly master of martial arts whose touch could kill and main! But who was the Count and what is his legacy to martial arts in general and street defence in particular?Many older martial artists will be aware of the late John Keehan, a.k.a Count Juan Raphael Dante, who was possibly the most colorful character of the late-’60s/early ’70s US martial arts scene. His goatee-bearded and devillish good looks gave him a place in international pop-culture through those “Deadliest Man Alive!” comic book advertisements.

How much of these comic books claims are true is a subject for another time but Keehan’s gift to “pragmatic” or street based martal arts came about because he grew disillusioned with conventional karate focus on tradition over what he felt to be “effectiveness” and began to focus on his own style that he would promote as street defence. He trained with former champion boxer Johnny Coulon and was a close friend of heavyweight boxing champ Jack Johnson.

After high school Dante/Keehan joined the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and later transferred to the U.S. Army. During this period, from 1958 through 1961 he was stationed on the West Coast and trained with Shaolin kung fu master Wong Tim-yuen and Kenpon Karate great, Ed Parker, one of the earliest pioneers of American karate. He also trained with James Yimm Lee, the author of a self-published series titled “Modern Kung-Fu Karate: Iron, Poison Hand Training.”

Dante also claimed to have met Bruce Lee during this time and it would have been fascinating to have learnt what Lee who was also concerned with effective fighting, would have made of the braggadocio inclined pseudo-noble.He developed a system that is now known as the Dan-te system, “Dance of Death” or sometimes Theoretically, by learning all of the steps of Keehan’s “Dance of Death” you could be an effective fighting master. Like so much of the man, it’s difficult to tell if this is true, I have witnessed the so called dance of death and its difficult to say just how street effective this dance would be.

How much of anything claimed by Dante is true is always open to discussion. It is known that in July 22, 1965, Dante was charged with attempted arson when he and an accomplice, Douglas Dwyer (The Second Deadliest Man Alive), were arrested while taping dynamite caps to a rival Chicago dojo. Both claimed to be under the influence of alcohol at the time but Dante explained this was the result of a disagreement with the dojo’s owner over payment for a tournament that Dante had arranged there.

In the 70s Dante seems to have fuelled a series of disagreements with other karate schools over who was best these culminated in the Dojo War incident of April 24, 1970 where Dante and his students went to the dojo of the Green Dragon Society’s l. According to the papers of the time, they claimed to be police officers on arrival and attacked the dojo’s students. The battle lasting only a minute or two resulted in the death of Dante’s friends and fellow sensei, Jim Koncevic. Count Dante was planning a comeback to his preferred career of tournament promoting when he died in his sleep of internal hemorrhaging caused by a bleeding ulcer, on May 25, 1975.

I don’t want to spent too much time on the life and times of Dante, For more information about Dante, check out is wiki entry here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Dante A Google search on Dante will give you all the information and a surprisingly still current interest in the man and his style even to present day and its his style that I want to talk about now.

While information about the man is easily found on the internet, information about the style is less easy to come by, but I recall an article in Black Belt magazine in the middle 1970s, although not read by me until the early 1980s when I first started karate that spoke about the way Dante trained his student and I think Street Defender readers will find it interesting and note the commonality with modern day thinking enshrined in arts such as Krav Maga and Kajukenbo.

Its fairly clear that despite his priviliged upbringing, Dante was no stranger to the ins and outs of street combat and his modified Karate has a lot in common with the applied karate of Gary Spiers or the techniques of Dr. Dennis Hanover of Krav Maga fame.

One interesting and concise definition of Dante’s style came from Fighting Arts International who pointed out it was basically all the moves that had been based by America’s World Karate Organisation, strikes to the face, eyes and throat, kicks to the knees and groin.Dante emphasised multiple strikes, to those soft targets, the aim being to get your opponent down and then finish him with a series of kicks, interesting when I viewed Youtube video of the karate that enshrines his techniques I noted a Gary Spiers style knee drop in the latter part of the defence. Although in the main, legs were for transportation only.

Dante also understood that the chances were that a fight would happen not when the student was nicely warmed up and dressed in comfy white dogi but more likely when in a bar or restaurant, with glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He taught students to fight in those situation and actively for some sessions encourage students to spar after serveral drinks to get the feel of “drunken Dante.”

At the time I recall myself and most others regarding him as some kind of heretic but in the 21st Century his style comes across as solid effective infighting. If I can find more about the “most deadly man in history” I will post it here.