Episode 662: Count Dante Part I - The Deadliest Man Alive

Summary

Last Podcast On The Left

Episode 662: Count Dante Part I — The Deadliest Man Alive

Release Date: May 1, 2026
Hosts: Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, Ed Larson

---

Overview

In this raucous and irreverent episode, the team kicks off a two-part exploration of one of the strangest, most flamboyant, and most chaotic figures in American martial arts history: Count Dante, self-proclaimed “Deadliest Man Alive.” The hosts dissect the bizarre life and wild mythmaking of Count Dante (born John Keon), a Chicagoan who blended real fighting chops, blatant cultural appropriation, nonstop violence, and outlandish self-promotion into a legend that veered between the hilarious, the dangerous, and the criminal.

The episode serves as both an origin story and a character study of Count Dante, taking listeners through his privileged upbringing, martial arts exploits, flamboyant persona, and his growing infamy in the 1960s martial arts scene, all leading up to the infamous "Dojo Wars." The hosts revel in the absurdity, question the legacy, and draw connections to true crime, comic books, and American eccentricity.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Context: Introductions and Martial Arts Banter (01:32–04:07)

• The hosts warm up with jokes about martial arts noises and pop-culture depictions of fighting, setting the tone of affectionate mockery that persists throughout.
• Marcus Parks jokes about feeling “almost Asian” after watching Kurosawa and Evangelion ([03:19]), and Henry riffs:

  "Watch Kundun... Watch Last Samurai. I'm as Asian as Tom Cruise.” (03:45, Henry Zebrowski)

• They set up the theme of cultural appropriation, connecting it to Count Dante’s penchant for adopting Asian identity trappings.

Who Was Count Dante? Introduction to the Man & Myth (04:07–09:38)

• Ed introduces the legend: “We are starting a nice, quick two-part series on a man who appropriated Asian culture just in such a beautiful way and in such an incredibly violent way. It's Count Dante, the deadliest man alive.” (04:07)
• First mention of the 1970 “Dojo War” and Dante’s comic-book ads, positioning him as both dangerous and ridiculous—the “crown prince of death.”
• Marcus describes the comic ads:

  “This is the deadliest and most terrifying fighting art known to man... maiming, mutilating, disfiguring, paralyzing, and crippling techniques are known by only a few people in the world." (06:13)

• The tone is set: this is about myth vs. reality, violence and spectacle.

Early Life: Wealth and Identity (07:14–16:58)

• John Keon (Count Dante) grew up wealthy, the son of a Spanish mother and an Irish OB/GYN banker father in Chicago.

  “Without that wealth, Count Dante would have never become a GAM Dante.” (15:53, Marcus Parks)

• As a child, he’s a “savant” with an obsession for self-defense and faking his own death.
• Famous Quote:

  “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." (17:14, Ed Larson)

• Stories from his youth are borderline apocryphal—alleged fights with street toughs and Sicilian burglars, all fueling the young Dante’s resolve never to lose again.
• The “Dante” name likely comes from his high school’s location, not Italian literature ([22:05]).

Martial Arts Beginnings: Training & Tall Tales (19:09–30:55)

• Dante’s early martial arts education comes from a respected, integrated boxing gym in segregated Chicago. He meets coaches who trained legends like Muhammad Ali.
• Drafted into the Marine Corps Reserve, Dante claims to have bounced around Asia, learning six martial arts from 20 teachers, and even killing in death matches—a story the hosts gleefully debunk:

  “Matches in which guys start knowing that one of them is going to be beaten to death, they don't actually exist outside of kung fu movies.” (28:58, Ed Larson)

• The real military record: possibly honorably (and/or dishonorably) discharged after a year. He later gets busted for going AWOL and weed, shoots at a friend's car, and accidentally smashes his own head with a pistol (30:26–31:14).

Building the Dante Myth: Eccentricity & Violence in Civil Rights–Era Chicago (33:04–43:02)

• Free of financial worries, Dante eschews martial arts philosophy; he learns techniques but ignores their ethos, becoming the “chimp with a machine gun” ([33:23]).
• He boasts of killing "at least 25 men" in vague, conflicting accounts—whether in the army, in Cuba with Castro’s brother (highly dubious), or in fictionalized death matches.
• Despite his violence and myth-making, Count Dante becomes a rare force for integration, teaching Black students at a time of deep American segregation.
  • Quote: “His classes were integrated at a time when most things in America weren't.” (11:26, Ed Larson)
• The hosts compare him to Jim Jones: people can be right (accidentally) about one thing.

The “Dante System”: Chaos, Violence, and a Lion in the Dojo (45:05–64:54)

• Dante opens his own Imperial Academy of Fighting Arts above a legendary Chicago nightclub (Mr. Kelly's), training mostly working-class and criminal youth.
  • No focus on philosophy or self-control: “The only gear he had was full out.” ([18:54], Marcus Parks)
• Training: Concrete floors as mats, practicing with real knives and even guns; his students turn “martial arts” into raw street violence.
  • “Count Dante students always associated martial arts with violence and mayhem.” (49:30, Ed Larson)
• Hires a lion cub named “Aurelia” as a training assistant. Students had to “learn the art of foot sweeps from the lion, surprise attack.” (64:15)
• Memorable moment:

  “Imagine that you're like, not only you going to this class to get the beat out of you every week, but then a lion shows up...” (64:38, Marcus Parks)

Martial Arts Scene Fallout: Tournaments & Fights (46:41–68:33)

• Dante helps organize America’s first national karate tournament (with sensei Robert Trias); Bruce Lee attends.
• In an on-brand moment, Dante tries to break a brick in front of the crowd, fails, breaks his hand, then succeeds using the broken hand ([54:59–55:21]).
• His students, drilled for “full contact,” turn no-contact tournaments into bloodbaths, earning Dante the ire of the martial arts establishment.
• Expelled from the Karate Alliance after he lies (claiming, for example, that Trias fought a bear), Dante forms his own violent federations.

Escalation: Infamy and Actual Criminality (74:58–80:25)

• Dante’s integration work is genuine, but he’s a “master manipulator.”
• Becoming a true comic-book villain, he embraces an Anton LaVey–inspired persona: black-tinted hair, cape, walking stick, and beauty salons and occult bookstores bought with inherited money.
• Begins a mail-order empire, selling self-defense pamphlets (“World’s Deadliest Fighting Secrets”), warm-ups, and nunchucks—with an army of nuns as his mailing staff (85:12–86:21).

The Outlandish & Comic Book Legacy (87:05–89:02)

• Dante’s comic ads (especially in Howard the Duck) used hyperbolic claims to prey on bullied readers, continuing a long tradition of “Charles Atlas”–style American myth-making.
• His escalation to criminal acts: With a student named Doug, Dante drunkenly attempts to bomb a rival dojo's windows, only to fail and be chased by police ([75:10–77:07]). The FBI labels him “dangerous, subject to a violent and antisocial behavior pattern and has suicidal tendencies.” (79:41)
• He claims to have learned the “touch of death”—the “Dim Mak” technique allegedly used to kill Bruce Lee (which the hosts gleefully debunk).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Cultural Appropriation & Martial Arts Fantasy:

  "I have watched at least four Kurosawa films in the last month... honestly, I know a lot of people have pushed back on me by saying there's no karate in those movies."
  (02:37, Marcus Parks)

• On the Count’s Fighting Style:

  “He looks like a grocery store butcher... like in Final Fight or Streets of Rage. That’s what his fighting style looks like.”
  (08:54, Henry Zebrowski)

• On “The Dante System”:

  “The Dante system, which has like no book, turn off the lights and beat the shit out of each other.”
  (51:51, Marcus Parks)

• On the Lion as Training Partner:

  “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.”
  (62:32, Ed Larson)

• On Flamboyant Persona and Influence:

  “Count Dante also permed his jet black dyed hair into a massive Afro in a Chicago beauty salon he owned. And he started sculpting his facial hair into elaborate sharp devil points and curves using a hair dissolving powder.” (83:01, Ed Larson)

• On his Advertising & Mythmaking:

  “Dante looks like Dracula with an afro and not Blackula. He’s white Dracula.”
  (88:21, Ed Larson)

• On Violent Training:

  “Count Dante taught his students how to fuck someone up as bad as possible as fast as possible by using their full strength and abilities at all times.”
  (49:45, Ed Larson)

• On the Legend’s American Stupidity:

  “This is... such an American tale. Just a guy saying, I want that. I'm gonna do that, and I can make it mine.”
  (14:30, Marcus Parks)

---

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• Count Dante’s Comic Book Ads: 06:13–06:41
• Childhood and Family Background: 07:34–16:00
• Martial Arts Training & Early Fights: 19:09–22:15
• Military & “Death Matches" Exaggeration: 27:00–30:32
• Opening the Dojo above Mr. Kelly's night club: 45:41–46:41
• Lion as a Dojo Mascot/Training Tool: 61:44–64:38
• Expulsion from Karate Alliance (and bear-fighting lie): 71:14–71:49
• Attempted Bombing of Rival Dojo: 75:18–77:07
• Advertising Legacy & “Touch of Death”: 86:22–89:02

---

Tone & Style

The hosts’ signature irreverent, roasting, and highly improvisational comedy style runs throughout the episode. They swing between admiration and ridicule, celebrating Count Dante’s over-the-top absurdity while also recognizing the real harm he perpetuated. Playful banter (“Can you see my balls?”), pop culture references, and live character impressions keep the story energetic and rough around the edges, echoing both the chaos of their subject and the show’s fan-favorite style.

---

Conclusion & Next Episode Tease

The episode wraps up as Dante, already infamous and increasingly out of control, heads into his final era as a self-mythologizing, criminal martial arts icon. The stage is set for Part II, which promises to cover the “Dojo War,” his criminal enterprises, and the inevitable violent denouement.

“Life is not a kung fu movie. It never works out like that... and it's almost a shame in that way. Because they really tried to live it.” (90:05–90:16, Marcus Parks & Ed Larson)

---

For New Listeners

If you haven’t listened, this episode is a wild, often hilarious, occasionally jaw-dropping crash course in the life of America’s most notorious martial arts huckster. It’s packed with martial arts history, true crime, comic book culture, and high-octane storytelling—delivered with Last Podcast’s trademark edgy humor and love of absurd Americana.

---

Transcript

[Marcus Parks]

America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Plus our five year price guarantee.

[Marcus Parks]

And now T Mobile is available in US Cellular stores. Best mobile network based on analysis by Oogle of speed test intelligence data 2H 2025. Bigger network. The combination of T Mobile's and US cellular network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details.

[Ed Larson]

Hi diva, it's Rachel and Jordan. Yeah, hi. Quick question. Why are you not spending your Venmo balance? Yeah, we're concerned you can like buy stuff with it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Ugh.

[Marcus Parks]

You love buying stuff and earn cash

[Ed Larson]

back on eligible purchases.

[Marcus Parks]

Mm.

[Ed Larson]

You love purchasing eligible things. So the money your friend sent you yesterday, that's today's ramen or rideshare or eye patches. The skincare kind, not the pyro kind. Spend with Venmo, then you can earn cash back with Venmo stash. Venmo stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. That's $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me Terms, Idaho. Verification required to use a Venmo balance. There's no place to escape to. This is the last darkness on the left.

[Marcus Parks]

That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Sweep the leg. Sweep the leg.

[Ed Larson]

Non, non, non.

[Marcus Parks]

Swipe noises. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, it's going to be so many. No, I mean this is going to be a lot of fun noises.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. What is like for me, like a good karate noise is a quick

[Ed Larson]

depending. I mean, depending on. On where you are. Cuz some might like the.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a little showy for me.

[Ed Larson]

I like. I like the high pitched ones. I like the ones that hit your ear like a bullet.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you just watched that Bruce Lee movie.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah, I watched Game of Death, the. The last quote un Bruce Lee movie that 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a game of death.

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes you win and when you win, you die.

[Ed Larson]

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? Do you have the knowledge?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Yes. I have watched at least four Kurosawa films in the last month. So honestly, I know a lot of people have pushed back on me by

[Henry Zebrowski]

saying there's no karate in those movies.

[Marcus Parks]

No, but there's swordsmanship.

[Ed Larson]

None whatsoever.

[Marcus Parks]

There's swordsmanship, sure. And also.

[Ed Larson]

But they're also swordsmanship in, like, Game of Thrones.

[Marcus Parks]

No, there's the core. Man on man, respectful battle, one on one. All right. Code of the samurai.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But the samurai has. Is no kung Fu, right?

[Marcus Parks]

No, no, you're right. Nothing to do with kung Fu. What's nice is that for a long time, because obviously some people have said that I did some sort of. I played many characters over the years.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I say talent.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. And I feel that now more than I've ever been. I'm almost Asian.

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

I feel very Asian right now.

[Ed Larson]

Why?

[Marcus Parks]

Because of Kurosawa and he's given me permission.

[Henry Zebrowski]

No, he hasn't.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, and then I watch Evangelion.

[Ed Larson]

He's been dead for a very long time.

[Marcus Parks]

I watch Evangelion and I feel like a little Japanese boy. Sure, you want to feel Asian?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Watch Kundun. Oh, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Watch the Last Samurai. I'm as Asian as Tom Cruise.

[Ed Larson]

And we have the man who does not confuse consuming culture with being a part of it. That's Ed Larson.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I know nothing.

[Ed Larson]

And the reason why Henry is so

[Henry Zebrowski]

channeling my eat instead of my chi.

[Marcus Parks]

Ooh, more like your chew.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

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. I laughed and I laughed.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

This man is one of the funniest to me, like, Personas we've ever even covered on this show.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you called him funny to his face, he would fucking try to strike.

[Ed Larson]

He would rip your tits off. He would. He would beat you half to death for looking at him sideways. That was sort of his hallmark.

[Marcus Parks]

Unless I was helping bring the neighborhood together.

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

This man, he was like, he was definitely trying to integrate the martial arts.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I thought Count Dante was the guy we interviewed who sucked on ladies backs and Called himself a vampire.

[Ed Larson]

Father Sebastian.

[Marcus Parks]

And this is his nephew.

[Ed Larson]

But while this incident was a one off, it still came to be known as the Dojo war.

[Marcus Parks]

There doesn't need to be more than one battle for there to be a war. Sometimes you just need one big one.

[Ed Larson]

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 1960s. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

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 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm gonna teach you how to mutilate and paralyze people.

[Marcus Parks]

He did, though.

[Ed Larson]

He did dozens upon dozens of times across both major comic book publishers like Count Dante was. I mean, he was a mainstay in 19, late 1960s comic books.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The legality of that.

[Ed Larson]

No, I mean, dubious.

[Marcus Parks]

There's a lot of people, just by looking at me, assume I can't paralyze you. I definitely can. Getting closer. It's not false advertising, and it's your street.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, really, all you have to do is at the end, just print for entertainment purposes only at some point, and it removes all culpability. Well, in reality, Count Juan Raphael Dante was born John Keon, the half Irish son of a wealthy gynecologist from Chicago. Count Dante.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Don't call him a pussy.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I'm just elbow deep in it.

[Ed Larson]

But what one does not realize is that the vagina is actually the strongest muscle on the body.

[Marcus Parks]

Vagina straight here. Open my Pepsi.

[Ed Larson]

Count Dante had used his family's wealth to travel to various Asian countries dozens of times throughout the 1960s, 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.

[Marcus Parks]

But I love that. Showed Eddie the video of his. One of his instructional sessions, and I

[Henry Zebrowski]

have to say that it really refutes everything you just said.

[Marcus Parks]

So funny. 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 back and forth, he just smashes your head on the ground.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. And that's what you. 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It.

[Ed Larson]

It looks very graceful, and it looks like there's a lot of discipline behind it.

[Marcus Parks]

He looks like a grocery store butcher. Yeah, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Remember the game, Final fight?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, where you just, like, go through the streets. It was kind of like streets of rage somewhere. Like, that's what his fighting style looks like to me.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. He looks like the big guy with the overalls who is also the mayor, by the way.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh.

[Ed Larson]

Count Dante could watch and almost immediately copy almost any. 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 6 foot. Went about between, like, 180 and 200. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

One time I went on vacation, I got a tan, and it stuck.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So they. Who said that he could break someone's arm by slapping their shoulder?

[Ed Larson]

One of his. One of his students.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There was a lot.

[Ed Larson]

But all the people that were spoken to about comp. Dante, the guys who studied under him or fought against him, they're like, no, he could fight. He was very dangerous. He's a highly, highly dangerous man.

[Marcus Parks]

He was stupid.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't know. Like. But he's not.

[Marcus Parks]

I don't believe that.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I think that everyone.

[Marcus Parks]

It. To me, it's like a cult.

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And they're all like, following the cult. He could break someone's arm.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, he does end up killing somebody.

[Ed Larson]

Well, actually, he doesn't.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, he helps.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's his fault the person dies. Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Well, let's not give it away just yet. Partly Dante was eccentric because being eccentric was good bait for the ruffians of 1960s Chicago. Dante was an innately violent person, so he dressed flamboyantly, specifically to attract trouble, like Henry. 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. Basis. That is true.

[Marcus Parks]

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?

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Stop it.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

But it just. It's so hard for me to believe that's true.

[Marcus Parks]

It's because it's the element of surprise, Eddie.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay.

[Ed Larson]

But, I mean, I don't know how technically skilled he was at all times as far as, like, looking like. 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, 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah. Even complex.

[Ed Larson]

Even setting aside his brief career as a coke smuggler in the early 1970s, Dante also participated in, or even possibly masterminded the Pearlator vault heist of 1974 with a mobster named Luigi DeFonzo.

[Marcus Parks]

He's fake. That's a cartoon character.

[Ed Larson]

No, Luigi DeFonzo was a real guy. They called him the Million Gatsby.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes. Enjoy my party.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hope you do.

[Marcus Parks]

Enjoy. Don't worry, there's plenty of marinara for everyone. This figure. Go. Very good. Yes, yes. Very good.

[Ed Larson]

The taking this heist was $4.3 million. 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 30.

[Marcus Parks]

Live fast, die fun.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

This seems to be a lovely antique store you have. Would be a shame if there was antiques or strike.

[Ed Larson]

As far as sources, we used 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 Stoked Chicago's Infamous Dojo Wars. That one's by Joe decolt. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And I'm gonna lie at all costs to get it.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. So let's tell the story of Count One Raphael Dante, AKA John Timothy Keon. But for the sake of clarity, we will be referring to our main character as Count Dante throughout this series.

[Marcus Parks]

He's really Count Dante?

[Ed Larson]

He is. Yeah. Well, he did legally change it to Count Dante.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Hey, I'm sure Prince's real name isn't Prince. We call him that.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that is true. Well, Count Dante was born on February 2, 1939, to a couple named Dorothy and Jack Keon. 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 One Raphael in Count One Raphael Dante came from. That came from his Spanish Hispanic heritage.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, we're quite Spanish in Chicago

[Ed Larson]

now. The Kean settled in the Beverly neighborhood of the southwest side of Chicago after allegedly fleeing the fascists. Here. Jack Kean earned a good living working both as a popular OB GYN and the director of a local state bank. Jack Keon's son, the future Count Dante, therefore 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, he's like Taylor Swift.

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Same reach.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, same. Same reach. Same cultural impact.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, he just really got out there.

[Ed Larson]

You know, they called them the Dantes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Whoa.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

Now, when Count Dante Was in the third grade. And I don't know why, but I love that. Since when Gantante was in the third grade, he claimed that he was hanging around his house when a couple of young street toughs attacked him.

[Marcus Parks]

How'd you get in my living room?

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Back to back, brother on brother.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the only other fight he lost was against that ulcer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Three fights then.

[Marcus Parks]

Ah, yes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I wonder. His test. The IRS would have been another one.

[Marcus Parks]

We didn't really get there yet. Let's just say there's no martial art when it comes to deductibles.

[Ed Larson]

Let's also say that this was a. A time in America when a man could just run away from his problems. You could just leave.

[Marcus Parks]

I jump into the tree.

[Ed Larson]

There are no taxes and 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 all, 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.

[Marcus Parks]

You see, if you could guess if I'm alive or not, I'm gonna stop

[Henry Zebrowski]

breathing until I get a huge ulcer.

[Ed Larson]

Mother, tell me, am I dead or am I alive? I am dead.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm dead.

[Ed Larson]

Likewise, when it was discovered the Count had a fantastic natural singing voice, he began training as an opera singer, supposedly while still a prepubescent child.

[Marcus Parks]

I could have been a castrati, but I loved my girlfriends too much.

[Ed Larson]

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 available. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

You should hear me on the CB radio.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What's your handle?

[Marcus Parks]

Count Dante. It's easy to find

[Ed Larson]

account. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Now, the thing is to remember that karate, all right, you're going over there, the first thing you throw, you get some. Obviously, you go on bow a lot to bow, to do the bow. Bow. But the thing I remember is you punch with the feet. They did it, though.

[Ed Larson]

I always want to suck a cigarette.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What if I want to punch with my hands?

[Marcus Parks]

That makes you. I mean, you're not Japanese enough.

[Ed Larson]

This boxing gym was racially integrated in the mid-50s, 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 continually talked about the nonsensical nature of racism and segregation. As far as who taught Count Dante how to box, it was seemingly Johnny Coulon himself. Coulon was born in 1889, and he'd boxed as the world bantamweight champion between 1910 and 1914. When boxing matches would go on for dozens of rounds, Kulan put boxing on hold to fight in World War I. I fight.

[Marcus Parks]

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.

[Ed Larson]

Kulan returned to Chicago to open his gym in 1923. Over the decades, Kulan trained the best. Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali, even Ernest Hemingway came to Kulon'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. His feet without. Like, it's softly. Like a cat.

[Marcus Parks]

Like a cat. Honestly, I could see that. That's kind of fun. Like, it just. God, he must be. Remember Martin Shore from Arrested Development?

[Ed Larson]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, that's all I really can think of. Yeah, he just jumps over the thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I feel like so many of these guys just claim that they train these people, because I. How many people claim that they trained Muhammad Ali?

[Ed Larson]

Well, Muhammad Ali was Chicago.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You know, and so it made sense that he would train Muhammad Ali. But he had pictures on the. Like, Johnny 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. They all can't be Mike Tyson.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And they also all don't have to be idiots.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Now, from what it seems like, Count Dante began building his fanciful self image at a young age. While the Juan Raphael in his alias came from his mother's Spanish heritage, the Dante seems to have come from his high school school years. Dante's alma mater, Mount Carmel High, was located at 6410 South Dante Avenue.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, I thought you were going to say the like, you know, the famous poem, like the famous ancient poet Dante.

[Ed Larson]

No, it's not. As the street where my high school was at.

[Marcus Parks]

Very good. Very, very good.

[Ed Larson]

The Dante, however, could have been a tribute to the city that the Count obviously loved. He was a lifelong Chicago. 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 would be the only white kids. I just can imagine these two teenage on the L chomping on huge cigars.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, honestly, you know, it's kind of fun though. They're going to jazz clubs.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. They said they once saw Fats Domino play and they said it was incredible.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean that'd be incredible.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I would love to see Fats

[Henry Zebrowski]

Domino play back at that.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh my God, these guys are doing great so far.

[Ed Larson]

So far I am, yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

If you believe it, Any of it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. But I mean, well, I mean Tommy, Tommy Gregory is seen as a, he is seen as a reliable source. Like he, he, he was Count Dante's best friend. But as we'll see, like he kind of comes in and out of Dante's life and the writer of the book, at the very least, like trusted him. Like checked enough of his sort, checked enough on Tommy Gregory's claims, like, ah, yeah, he's probably telling the truth most of the time because like I said, like Count Dante is a liar, but he also lived a weird fucking life.

[Marcus Parks]

And it was very well documented. Like he lived his life in public too.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Man, that video you sent me of him like pretending to rip out that guy's eyes and like, it was like hilarious because it was just like, it was like him going at the guy's eyes and the guy going, oh, they do it again like 30 times in a row.

[Marcus Parks]

But the other time when he's like. But then there's the other one where he locks the guy's head in the. In a. 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 stupid.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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 30. See, in high school, Count Dante got into a fight with, quote, a couple of Sicilians who broke into his father's boathouse.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, you know, because of that. You know how much money's in a house boat? Yeah, that's the first thing in my house. Boathouse. Oh, the boathouse.

[Ed Larson]

Like, probably gonna steal, like, some, you know, rigging, like a motor.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's a house for boats. It's not a stupid person calling,

[Marcus Parks]

that's my boat house. That's my boat house.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Dante took off his shirt when he discovered the burglary and got into a boxing post.

[Marcus Parks]

Come on here. You ready for the pugilistic arts?

[Ed Larson]

Burglars just immediately kicked Dante in the balls.

[Marcus Parks]

What the fuck? That's not the fucking manual. Not allow.

[Ed Larson]

Both burglars ran away while the Count was writhing on the ground, clutching his groin in pain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

A good karate man could have blocked it.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he could have.

[Marcus Parks]

He wasn't there yet.

[Ed Larson]

No, he was not there yet.

[Marcus Parks]

He's only working on boxing.

[Ed Larson]

That's it.

[Marcus Parks]

There's no kicking in boxing.

[Ed Larson]

This is the late. This is like 1957. So he doesn't even know that feet exist.

[Marcus Parks]

He's only on this level. He's unlike. 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, and it's like, as soon as he got kicked in the ball, honestly, I think in his own mind, he was like, that's incredible. What an amazing move. And, Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no.

[Marcus Parks]

We help people customize and save on

[Ed Larson]

car insurance with Liberty Mutual.

[Marcus Parks]

Mutual Together.

[Ed Larson]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league. Anyways. Get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Ed Larson]

Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Ad Voice]

Out on the road, it's nice to have a partner who can help you make the most of your journey. A partner like the Love's Rewards app. With Love's Rewards along for the ride, you can earn points and get great deals like a free coffee or fountain drink. Just buy any 4 any sign and get the 5th one free. How refreshing is that? Download the app today and let the points roll in mile after mile. Love's Rewards Save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. See website for details.

[Ed Larson]

Why have I asked my H Vac guy I found on angie.com to change my grandpa's trachea tube? Because I was so amazed by how quickly he replaced our air ducts, I knew I could trust him to change Pop while I was on vacation.

[Marcus Parks]

Make it quick, young man. Aw. See?

[Ed Larson]

Pop up trusts you. I think we should call a doctor.

[Marcus Parks]

Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home [e-mail] now.

[Ed Larson]

When Count Dante graduated high school in 1958, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve. And it seems like this is the point when Dante really started constructing his own. Dante claimed that in the one year he was in the Marine reserves, he was stationed in Japan, Vietnam and Korea.

[Marcus Parks]

Everywhere there's rice.

[Ed Larson]

He supposedly discovered martial arts for real while in those countries. He claimed that he studied at least six different martial arts under 20 different instructors.

[Marcus Parks]

They couldn't handle me. I killed each one with my bare hands.

[Ed Larson]

But he never stayed with one school for long because he said that staying with one school hindered his learning.

[Marcus Parks]

Do not limit me. I am endless.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Or he just got kicked out the time.

[Marcus Parks]

It could be. Could they? Could I handle my identity?

[Ed Larson]

Hey, John.

[Marcus Parks]

Get out of here.

[Ed Larson]

Why don't you just leave? Please leave. Please.

[Marcus Parks]

Normally take my stand here and I will show you that my Kung fu is stronger than yours. But I will leave because my bus is here.

[Ed Larson]

During his travels in the Orient, Count Dante also claimed, quite mysteriously, never gave any other details that he entered a death match in Thailand and actually killed a man. And this murder, he says, allowed him to enter a fighting tournament in Bangkok, where he miraculously fought his way through to win the heavyweight championship title.

[Marcus Parks]

One of the craziest things I ever saw was that man who came out and turned into complete electricity. And then there was that Indian man with the super long arms. But I tied him all together and I made him zap each other.

[Ed Larson]

This, of course, almost certainly did not happen.

[Marcus Parks]

What?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. While plenty of guys have died fighting in matches in Thailand because of how brutal their martial arts can be. Like, I don't even. Like, is it pronounced like Muay Thai? Moi, Thai? Yeah. No, it's fucking brutal. Dudes died all the time. But matches in which guys start knowing that one of them is going to be beaten to death, they don't actually exist outside of kung fu movies.

[Marcus Parks]

No, I don't think so. No.

[Ed Larson]

Like the blood sport, you know, put in the. You know, in the glass and nails and all that. That doesn't happen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I feel like if you killed somebody, they would disqualify you.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, they'd be like, outside of Game of Death is. Or Enter the Dragon. Enter the Dragon. It's not. It's not. It doesn't happen.

[Marcus Parks]

Wait, say, aren't we doing this very thing on the White House Lawn for the 250th birthday party?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, no. Yeah. It's. Someone might die.

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, that would be kind of a blast.

[Ed Larson]

It really would be.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They would love it.

[Marcus Parks]

Unfortunately, I'd like it now.

[Ed Larson]

The Tide death 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 Benji Feldheim, through a FOIA request, discovered why.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, it's because they're ancient Asian secrets.

[Ed Larson]

While one record has Dante being honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve, just a year of service, most honorably, another record shows him being dishonorably discharged. But he got dishonorably discharged from the Army a year after he was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps Reserve. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

It's because it's Black History's month that I was out helping my dojo integrate.

[Ed Larson]

Additionally, Count Dante had also crashed a couple of cars, destroyed property, shot at his friend's car.

[Marcus Parks]

Rumors.

[Ed Larson]

And somehow injured himself by bat, bashing his own head with the butt of a pistol.

[Marcus Parks]

The gun insulted me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He's just trying to prove that he could break the gun with his head.

[Marcus Parks]

Look at here. Hey, look. Hey, look. Look what I do. Hey. Hey, look at me. Hey, Mom. Hey, Mom.

[Henry Zebrowski]

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 could 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.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody went to a party where there was a guy who tried that at least once.

[Marcus Parks]

Hi there. When our buddy Tim thought he could fight the parking lot, then he just punched the ground till he broke his hand.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, good old times.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, there's plenty of guys who also think they can, you know, beat the sidewalk.

[Marcus Parks]

I once punched a Mercedes Benz in its mouth.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

What could you see? Him just being like, God damn out here in the jungle is one of the most intense fears I've ever experienced. And they're all like, we're in southern Florida, you know, like, we're training in North Carolina.

[Ed Larson]

It's 1960. Like, there's no conflicts going on.

[Marcus Parks]

We're not fighting anymore.

[Ed Larson]

It's like, there's a lot of, like, tension from the cold war, but, you know, there's no Korea. And Vietnam hadn't started yet.

[Marcus Parks]

I fight my corrupt whiteness.

[Henry Zebrowski]

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 girlfriend?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, he had a couple of girlfriends. We'll get. In part two, we shall explore the myth of the dragon lady.

[Marcus Parks]

Her vagina was scaled.

[Ed Larson]

Since count Dante came from a wealthy family, he didn't have to worry about money. In his 20s, 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Like Batman.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. Kind of sort of like Batman. Yeah, yeah. It's like Batman. But if Batman's parents were alive and Batman just wanted attention, honestly, what a

[Marcus Parks]

great way to be Batman, though.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Pretty sure that's the joker.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm con man.

[Ed Larson]

But it is important to note that Dante was paying little attention to any of the philosophy that accompanied all of these martial arts techniques that he was accumulating. See, Dante was, as I said, somewhat of an idiot savant. He could quickly learn and copy almost anything he saw. It was almost like the Aino 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 a 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.

[Marcus Parks]

I 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 chi. It's about all of these, like, truly, like, interesting things.

[Ed Larson]

Yes.

[Marcus Parks]

Self defense, but it's about peace. It's. Well, yeah, it's about keeping peace by being able to. If you need to enforce peace.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

You know, and then this guy, it's just so funny. He's just been like, fuck peace. First thought, it's 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.

[Ed Larson]

In so many ways, Count Dante really is like kind of the beginning of this mixed martial arts bullshit that we see now where the whole point is just beat a man as badly as you can as quickly as you can.

[Marcus Parks]

I miss the old.

[Ed Larson]

The coarseness of the. The coarsening of America.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Sure.

[Marcus Parks]

I miss the old UFC fighting when it really. You remember when the OG days and it was fighting, but it was like. No, it was like, specifically one style of fighting versus another style of fighting. Yeah, 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 G couldn't do beat the Aido master. Like, I love that.

[Ed Larson]

Well, that was a holdover from the. 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 into a pulp as fast as possible.

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes you just got to grab a guy by the testicles and yank on him a bunch while you're sticking your finger up his nostril. It does work.

[Ed Larson]

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. He said that he had supposedly, and this is a big supposedly, killed at least 25 men during his time in the armed forces.

[Henry Zebrowski]

When we're at no wars at all.

[Marcus Parks]

Listen to me. You might think I hadn't killed 25 people, but you didn't see me at my open mic.

[Ed Larson]

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 killed those 25 men for the army or in various Thai death matches.

[Marcus Parks]

I once left a box of dynamite in the sun and it killed an entire hospital.

[Ed Larson]

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

[Marcus Parks]

always a surge in not being killed yourself and being a survivor. But I do not get any type of search, sexual, spiritual, physical, or psychological thrill out of killing somebody. I believe in the human spirit and the individual soul.

[Ed Larson]

Recording account, 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.

[Marcus Parks]

And I such buenos amigos. Such.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So he's a communist?

[Marcus Parks]

No, I fight in the Maniquas.

[Ed Larson]

She was vague as to why he decided to fight or why he said he decided to fight with the guerrilla fighters in the Cuban revolution.

[Marcus Parks]

We were betrayed by the Jankies. Yeah, they were betrayed by them. We were betrayed by the Rough Riders. And that's why I went out into Las Maniquas, chased the Jankies out into the jungles, and I received the many gracious besitos of the Mama chulas yum yum. Mama chulas yum yum. Give me some. Ah, Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, land of the maduro.

[Ed Larson]

It sounds like utter.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes.

[Ed Larson]

But his best friend Tommy does remember Dante making trips to Cuba during the late 1950s, because even though the revolution was like 1959, but he was, you know, in and out.

[Marcus Parks]

Guess what? They were getting cigars.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, this is before the embargo.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

So, you know, you could buy Cuban cigars in Chicago. You don't got to go all the way to Cuba for those.

[Marcus Parks]

I actually made. This is an honest mistake. Honest mistake. I thought that the cigars were illegal.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He probably just took a nap for a week and then told everyone he was in Cuba.

[Marcus Parks]

It's called a neposito. And I was quite bueno.

[Ed Larson]

At Naposito La, Dante continued bouncing around the world with his parents money to study under a series of senseis where he learned even more complex techniques.

[Marcus Parks]

This is awesome.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. And the reason why Dante never stayed with one sensei for long was. Was because Dante actually felt that most martial arts instructors, they weren't very good.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

He claimed 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Absolutely. I had the same thing with improv teachers. They always just ended up weeping. They almost ended up weeping and quitting the industry when I was done with them because my techniques were far too masterful.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What to do? He won't shut up.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

I'm following the fear, but the fear

[Marcus Parks]

is that he's gonna fucking talk forever. Yes and yes and fuck you.

[Ed Larson]

While Dante was gallivanting around Asia, his best friend, Tommy Gregory moved on with his life. He took a construction job in Phoenix.

[Marcus Parks]

I guess I'll never see. I'll never see old Dante again, you know.

[Ed Larson]

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 Trios, who is actually credited as the man who brought karate to America. Trios opened America's first karate school in 1946, and soon after published the first American book about karate. It was very dramatically titled the Hand Is My Sword. A Karate Handbook.

[Marcus Parks]

That's awesome, dude. And for some reason, I just. When you say brought karate to America, I just see a box just going like, Is there a bunch of cats? Like, no. It's the secret out of karate.

[Ed Larson]

These are definitely guys who are going to get pissed off at you for saying karate. You don't say karate.

[Marcus Parks]

Karate.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I love karate.

[Ed Larson]

Is that right? Is that right? Is it correct?

[Marcus Parks]

Honestly, just from your pronunciation of the word, you have the just the correct IQ to be my student.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's corunderful.

[Marcus Parks]

Here's the first. Let me show you the first move I learned accidentally.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Okay.

[Marcus Parks]

Single ball kick. My eyes.

[Ed Larson]

My eyes. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Do not think. Don't even raise that eyebrow. Give me your room to steal your eye.

[Ed Larson]

The Robert Trios 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 him hurt. Hurt him. But finally, Trios agreed to spar. And after calling all his friends over to watch, Trios got the absolute living kicked out of him by the Chinese karate missionary.

[Marcus Parks]

I like karate now.

[Ed Larson]

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-1940s, he brought karate with him.

[Marcus Parks]

Can I put this karate in the above. Above. Holder here. Can I put this up?

[Henry Zebrowski]

Anything you need, sir.

[Marcus Parks]

Did you hang out my karate in the closet?

[Ed Larson]

Sir, before we check your bag, are. Are you carrying any karate in here?

[Marcus Parks]

No. Actually, no, not at all. This isn't karate,

[Ed Larson]

Sir.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I'm sorry.

[Ed Larson]

We. We can't allow karate in the cargo hole.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, well, let's see what my karate has to say about it. No.

[Ed Larson]

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 Trios Karate Dojo, Trios 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.

[Marcus Parks]

It is finally good to meet a sensei I can respect.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Name's Bob. Bob Trias.

[Marcus Parks]

I love your accent.

[Ed Larson]

What is it?

[Marcus Parks]

From South Korea.

[Ed Larson]

According to Count Dante's own pamphlets, the world's Deadliest Fighting Secrets, he achieved the black belt rank by the age of 23. It was a world record. Then over the next few years, Dante claimed to have earned additional black belts in judo, jitei and aikido.

[Marcus Parks]

I got the black belt in baguazang.

[Ed Larson]

Baguazang.

[Marcus Parks]

Baguazang?

[Ed Larson]

What's baguazang?

[Marcus Parks]

I looked up a bunch of different names of other martial arts, and that's my favorite one.

[Henry Zebrowski]

What is that?

[Marcus Parks]

Do you know punching and kicking?

[Ed Larson]

Well, those last two, by the way, were supposedly learned from the creator of aikido himself, Morahei Ueshiba. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Love karate.

[Ed Larson]

Would you rather use your hands for a lover or to kill a man?

[Marcus Parks]

Sometimes I do wish I could go back to just using my hands to embrace. But unfortunately, they must hold the sword.

[Ed Larson]

So Ueshiba developed aikido as a way to teach men in the ways of love and harmony through the regulation of their key. Key. That's a vital force believed to be a part of all living entities. It's sort of like the force, to the best of my understanding.

[Marcus Parks]

I'd also put it in the same world as like orgone energy or like that style of prana they talk about in yoga.

[Ed Larson]

Sure. Dante, however, paid no attention to all that key noise.

[Marcus Parks]

Keys, just half of what you use on a piano.

[Ed Larson]

And he simply added aikido techniques to his increasing mixed martial arts style, a style that was dedicated solely to beating the ever loving out of other human beings.

[Marcus Parks]

I, first of all will say thank you so much for taking teaching love. Because the one thing I love most is causing a man pain.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Seems like his style was just confusion.

[Marcus Parks]

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 dumb extra. We're cutting through it. We're getting straight to the ass kicking because we're in Chicago in the American America.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's Chicago in the 1960s. It's rough out there. I'm going to teach kids how to beat the out of people.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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 Mr. 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, violent upstairs comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers, like everybody's Flip Wilson, Jackie Gleason, they're sharing the bill with, like Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Herbie Hancock.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The floor below Blues in Chicago.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. 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

[Ed Larson]

year olds

[Marcus Parks]

this whole time being like that noise. Come up here, learn how to fight. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, the thing that blows my mind is that in 1963, Barbra Streisand made her debut performance at Mr. Kelly's. Like the debut of Barbra Streisand to the entire world. And all while Barbra Streisand's like, I got swing singing downstairs, Count Dante's upstairs beating the out of his students.

[Marcus Parks]

14 box.

[Ed Larson]

Your name?

[Marcus Parks]

Babs. Nice to meet you. I'm Kante. 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, Babs.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, my father's a kind of college.

[Marcus Parks]

You can take a look at that thing you got there, man.

[Ed Larson]

I don't know how they did it. Remember that we had that one studio that was in Greenpoint below the karate studio, and it was. Wow, it was a nightmare. We could never record when the karate studio had classes going.

[Marcus Parks]

I just feel like a live blues band is way louder than it. Yeah, hopefully, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Herbie Hancock, downstairs, 1962. That's gonna be loud.

[Marcus Parks]

God, how lame do you have to be? You skip Herbie Hancock. You walk past Herbie Hancock, I have

[Henry Zebrowski]

to fight a teenager.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just insane to me now.

[Ed Larson]

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 bas 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.

[Marcus Parks]

How did you know?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I find redheads way more terrifying, personally.

[Ed Larson]

Sure, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Like a redhead karate master is way scarier than a guy old, his hair dyed and shit.

[Ed Larson]

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 kumite, in which a martial artist pulls back his full strength and abilities while sparring to focus on control and speed. Instead, Count Dante taught His students how to someone up as bad as possible as fast as possible by using their full strength and abilities at all times. If you are a part of the Black Dragon fighting society, you were constantly training for street fights and brawls. Which meant that Count Dante students always associated martial arts with violence and mayhem. Instead of using mats, Count Dante students would grapple on concrete floors.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Makes you strong.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And just slam each other like judo into the. Just into the. I mean, eventually they did get maths, but in the early days, it's like, we do not need mats. Mats are for weaklings.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Someone's like, some kid broke his neck and like, your family's gonna sue you.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, we will get one extreme action mat.

[Ed Larson]

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 brain 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 a knife.

[Marcus Parks]

What I love is your first. 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. It's been like, I dare you to shoot me in the head. I dare you to shoot me in the head.

[Henry Zebrowski]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm sick of this. You know what those guys need for each other?

[Ed Larson]

Some kind of.

[Marcus Parks]

Kind of respect. Way to God,

[Henry Zebrowski]

they better think,

[Marcus Parks]

where's a piano?

[Ed Larson]

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 beat out of him in the process. This overall method, which Count Dante called the Dante system, would of course be his eventual undoing. Do it.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not a system.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. Who would think that teaching a bunch of from Chicago, like, here's how you beat the 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 going to lead to something bad.

[Marcus Parks]

I just love anything called a system. Oh yeah, the Dante system, which has like no book, turn off the lights

[Henry Zebrowski]

and beat the out of each other.

[Marcus Parks]

Don't worry. All planned. Every bit of this is absolutely. It is. Oh, this is organized. Ow. I just stepped. I stepped on a dreidel. Yeah, we do this, we do a Hanukkah. We do a whole Hanukkah trial.

[Ed Larson]

As far as 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.

[Marcus Parks]

The key is you want to get the guy who used to using these two fingers buy their Adam's apple.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, really like, like a alligator, you know?

[Marcus Parks]

Super effective technique to technique to choke it. No.

[Henry Zebrowski]

People have been choking people in fights

[Ed Larson]

for a long time, but are they making noises while they do it?

[Marcus Parks]

I grab you. I grab you.

[Ed Larson]

I grab you. Yeah. Count out his techniques. Let's say it didn't always win him friends in the martial arts world.

[Marcus Parks]

That's not what I'm here for.

[Ed Larson]

And he said that he developed a painful, bleeding stomach ultimately from dealing with, quote, all the politics in the martial arts world.

[Marcus Parks]

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.

[Ed Larson]

That's why I vote no on Prop 36.

[Marcus Parks]

So much pressure.

[Ed Larson]

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 Tries. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Is that crazy?

[Ed Larson]

And Bruce Lee himself showed up.

[Marcus Parks]

They met. I mean, Bruce Lee and Count Doy might have met each other.

[Ed Larson]

Unfortunately, there are no stories like specifically the two of them, like interacting.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Bruce Lee probably thought he idiot treated him like that. And he was like too scared to actually get into a fight he would lose.

[Marcus Parks]

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.

[Ed Larson]

I mean, the American martial arts scene was pretty 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.

[Marcus Parks]

But most honorable. Hello. He's doing the full bow, you know, and he's just like Bruce Lee's with sunglasses on, just going, shut up.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, get out of here.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, you're not water.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Son of a son. Oh my God.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Brick did hit back.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Brick remained intact.

[Marcus Parks]

A little bit of that was just a bit of a side quest there, honestly. My chi.

[Ed Larson]

Undeterred, Dante insisted on trying again. And using that same broken hand, Dante did indeed succeed in breaking the brick.

[Marcus Parks]

Broken. Hit.

[Ed Larson]

Strike.

[Marcus Parks]

You fuckers. You fucking idiots. That would be me. I did it. I don't care who you are. Look at me. Look at me.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Cobra. Why?

[Marcus Parks]

Jesus Christ.

[Ed Larson]

Now, while Dante never needed to worry about money in his youth, remember he's still in his early 20s at this point. 24, 25, 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 get into fights.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he did.

[Ed Larson]

Dante would show up to a bouncing gig wearing a beret and a pink shirt, which attracted the attention of various drunken who just couldn't help themselves.

[Marcus Parks]

I like this shirt.

[Ed Larson]

Dante would make a big show of taking out these guys in seconds. He attracted a lot of attention to himself every time, which I'm sure earned him plenty of students who wanted to know how Dante was able to take down anybody instantly.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And what you do is you show up sober and you fight these guys who are extremely drunk in front of everybody and then going to win.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you have a black belt in karate and you easily beat a bunch of drunk men. It's actually that's kind of fun. I can see why he thought this was fun.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. No, but he was also incredibly violent. 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, that ended in some pretty bad time and time again, as it often does.

[Marcus Parks]

It's kind of funny though, for a while he was really trying to find almost job. Sanctioned violence. He went to the military. Military. He 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.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

I want to kill people legally.

[Ed Larson]

But as the master of Aikido will tell you, violence begets only more violence.

[Marcus Parks]

It sounds like the leader of Aikido is an.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

So first, Sid, I would like for all of you to first now feel your weight in the chair. Excellent. Deep breaths. Deep breaths now. And you're going to release yourself from the top of your head all the way down to the deep tips of your toe. Good. Okay, you're a tiger. You go through. You're in the brush.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I, I.

[Marcus Parks]

You're in the brush.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Feel like a platypus?

[Marcus Parks]

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. Tiger. Because that's the most aggressive types of tiger. Hello, I'm a lady tiger. First feed your cups. Very good. Now let us go on the hunt. Everybody wake up. It's time. I lost track of time. All right, it's over. Meditation's over. Hope you're aggressive enough.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Theater class.

[Ed Larson]

No, it is.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Rawr.

[Marcus Parks]

We all had to be different trees.

[Ed Larson]

Dante claimed that martial arts were invented to protect farmers from wild animals. As complete and utter bullshit. We don't know. Like, we don't know exactly how martial arts started, but it wasn't fucking to fight tigers.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you have any idea what it's. How hard it is to spend your morning sidekicking a raccoon?

[Ed Larson]

Yes, the wildlife of downtown Chicago. Regardless, Dante said that if one needed to defend himself from a wild animal, then a student must become a wild anim himself.

[Marcus Parks]

Embrace the lessons of Baza.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Tomorrow's lesson, the zoo.

[Marcus Parks]

The next lesson, the Petting zoo. See the little stingray? See how it morphs you?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I just beat the out of this sea cucumber.

[Marcus Parks]

Very good, Mike. Very good. Excellent.

[Ed Larson]

I stomped the llama to death.

[Marcus Parks]

Very good. Did you take time? And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date? Oh, no. We help people customize and save on

[Marcus Parks]

car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married.

[Ed Larson]

Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league. Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Ed Larson]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Ad Voice]

Out on the road, it's nice to have a partner who can help you make the most your journey. A partner like the Love's Rewards app. With Love's Rewards along for the ride, you save 10 cents on every gallon of gas every time you fill up at Loves and up to 25 cents on every gallon of auto diesel. That's why it's the best fuel discount program on the road. Download the app today, then watch those savings add up mile after mile. Love's Rewards save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. Not available in all states.

[Ed Larson]

Why have we asked our contractor we found on Angie.com to be our kid's legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids. We only met a month ago.

[Marcus Parks]

Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home [e-mail].

[Ed Larson]

Dante was getting a lot of attention around Chicago and in the growing national martial arts scene by the midnight 1960s, and that attention was rapidly being converted into a confidence that bred eccentricity and flamboyance. These affectations, however, often became dangerous because Count Dante was, after all, the world's deadliest man. In 1964, for example, Count Dante bought a lion cub from a zoo in southern Illinois, who, I suppose, had one too many cubs to take care of that year. Dante named the lion cub Aurelia, claiming that it meant golden one. But really, the lion was a fucking lion.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, In Illinois.

[Ed Larson]

Yes. And it acted like a lion for the entire time Dante owned her. Just because you get it as a cub doesn't mean it's not going to be a lion.

[Marcus Parks]

We understand each other. We have the same hair.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Especially because, you know, he was just, like, fighting it all the time.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, of course. Yeah, he was used. Yeah. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

God damn it. You're gonna take your milk and you're gonna like it, all right? Just put it in my shirt. Put it in my shirt. Cut it out here. Yes, I am your mother.

[Ed Larson]

But before long, Aurelia was big enough to take. 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

In Chicago, you have to have a specialized pet.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. To get to be like a legendary local character, it always is.

[Marcus Parks]

Like, you know, Salvador Dali had the lobster. Anton lavey, he had his own lion. It's like a whole thing.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I remember Tyson moved to Boca when I was a kid and he had a bunch of tigers and eventually the HOA was like, so.

[Marcus Parks]

Mr. Tyson, I just don't think you understand the kind of press, the kind of turbulations I experience.

[Ed Larson]

Can't have pigeons down here.

[Marcus Parks]

They're too hot. Too hot. Too hot. Florida, do you want my babies to die for you? Because if you kill my babies, I'm going to have to kill you. No, I'm going to eat you. I'm going to eat. Eat your uterus. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Tyson. It's been a wonderful meeting.

[Ed Larson]

Well, because this was a lion, Aurelia kept tearing up Count Dante's apartment. Can't leave a lion home alone so

[Marcus Parks]

hard in a studio.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. So Dante started keeping the lion at his dojo, much to the chagrin of Count Dante's long suffering landlord.

[Marcus Parks]

You should ask my other landlord. You're my second landlord. Okay. Just remember that you're my second landlord. My first landlord's over there. Another. And I've already burnt that bridge. Okay. Lion is here. It's already in here. There's nothing you can do about it.

[Ed Larson]

I burned through all of my favors in the first month with that landlord.

[Marcus Parks]

Landlord.

[Ed Larson]

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, surprise attack. Like, imagine that you're like, not only you going to this class to get the beat out of you every week, but then a lion shows up the first class.

[Marcus Parks]

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. It's a new lesson group. I think it's going to be cool. And then there's a lion in the room. And you're like, I got to stop. I'm. I'm going to learn how to play the violin. Just switch.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Just scratching at your Achilles tendons.

[Marcus Parks]

The key is to kick it right in the vagina. That's. My father taught me.

[Ed Larson]

It really can't be said enough. The 60s were insane. Like, the 60s were in the 70s were out of hand, out of pocket.

[Marcus Parks]

For two decades, we were really experimenting with society.

[Henry Zebrowski]

There is a lot of rules that shouldn't have had to been made because of guys like Count Dante. You can't have a tiger in your dojo.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

It's like another one. We're like. It's super specific, but, yeah, it seems it needs to be written down. Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Rules that wouldn't make sense 15 years earlier. 15 years earlier, what? The dojo. But then in the fucking 60s. Like, 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. Well, 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.

[Marcus Parks]

I think she'll do much better, miss. You know, Illinois is built for lions. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

And swept the leg.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Well, phone off. That's exactly what he did.

[Ed Larson]

Just kind of listen to the guy

[Marcus Parks]

yell for a little bit. Yep.

[Ed Larson]

And then just hung it up.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, there we go. Let's forget that ever happened.

[Ed Larson]

I'm done with life.

[Marcus Parks]

And now it's time for the ultimate Dante system technique. Forget everything.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Never remember, as soon as something gets too hard, abandon it, abandon it.

[Marcus Parks]

That is. That is one. That's rule number one. Dante system. Rule number one, if it's hard, don't do it. Two, go for the eyeballs. Number three, watch out for the lion. Four. Here's a.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did you try going for its eyes?

[Ed Larson]

Karate continued to grow in popularity throughout the 1960s. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just him sitting, you know, like with that proud, like arms crossed, like. Yes, my students are very strong. They're just like throwing dirt in people's faces. Kicking people who cooked all the kids.

[Ed Larson]

He cooked all my teeth.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, yes. Most honorable.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Someone just bowing at him and just

[Marcus Parks]

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? Waiting for you to attack him. Go and attack him there while he's sitting on the chair. Wait for the start thing to start.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You know, they think the belt shows rank, but it's actually to choke people.

[Ed Larson]

Everybody else who entered this tournament was under the assumption this is a no contact tournament. Yeah, like we're not going to be like, it's, you know, I think it's sort of like touches.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

You know, like you score, you score

[Marcus Parks]

by like by getting through the person's defenses.

[Ed Larson]

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, they didn't know they had never done any of the no contact. So Count Dante and his students were using techniques. Their teeth are flying across mats that are covered in blood.

[Marcus Parks]

I'm just looking at pure success. All of this means the Dante system is working.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So did they win or were they like disqualified?

[Ed Larson]

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 Marines. They just got into a brawl and the brawl got big. It's like a fucking bar fight scene out of a movie. It spilled out into the street. There's a bunch of guys punching each other.

[Marcus Parks]

I gotta say, I know a lot of people are disappointed, but this is how I've always hoped every karate tournament would end.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I mean, what's more American than stealing something and ruining it with violence?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah, just like a violent practice and making it more violent. Martial arts is still violent. It's just peaceful and awesome. I just love. He's like, that's a praying, that's ferment.

[Ed Larson]

This wasn't what 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 rape Lupe Fiasco.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Very cool.

[Ed Larson]

He was quoted as saying that sooner or later someone was to going, going to die because of Count Dante's craziness. And he was 100% 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.

[Marcus Parks]

But because I'll give you one better. Yeah, I'll kill you right now.

[Henry Zebrowski]

My karate involves this brick in your face.

[Ed Larson]

Tell me, who is your least favorite favorite, the cameraman or the sound guy?

[Marcus Parks]

I would gladly eliminate him.

[Ed Larson]

But because of statements like this and because of his students behavior at the 1964 National Karate Tournament, Count Dante was expelled from Robert Trius's u. S Karate alliance in a split that was, to say the least, acrimonious. See, Dante told Black Belt magazine the split came because he was promoting his black students to the black belt rank which Dante claimed was quote, talent tacitly forbidden by Robert Trias's uska Just basically said I left because Robert is a racist. But according to Robert Trios, 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 Trios himself. Without Trios consent, without Trios permission, Dante had printed a brochure promoting that 1964 karate tournament which claimed that Trios had once fought a bear.

[Henry Zebrowski]

They're gonna love this.

[Marcus Parks]

They're gonn.

[Ed Larson]

Trios had never fought a bear. He'd never claimed that he had fought a bear.

[Marcus Parks]

Hey, you fought that really hairy guy last week. That's why I put it down. I saw him. He might as well have been a bear. If he didn't want to look like a bear, he should have shaved. All right, you fought the bear and I believe in you.

[Ed Larson]

Well, Trias 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 trios 1964 no contact tournament in into a blood covered brawl.

[Marcus Parks]

You people just don't get me. That's what this is. It's just different vibes now.

[Ed Larson]

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 join, but it was particularly the students who enjoyed the full contact sparring, I. E. Beating the out of each other on a regular basis, who followed Dante most fervently into this new karate world.

[Marcus Parks]

We will take over the greater Chicagoland area one deep dish restaurant at a time.

[Ed Larson]

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 lion.

[Marcus Parks]

But it's the black students he's really going on about. Yeah, that was what he said. He said the first thing about the black students. Yes, he did say something in additional about the giant jungle cat.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So he was using racism to commit many crimes.

[Ed Larson]

Possibly.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, you also genuinely believe. I actually see here. We see here is a. A genuine, like dumb man's version of being open in his mind. He really does. I really believe in his heart of hearts 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Because it kind of was. Right?

[Marcus Parks]

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 going to come to me too, because I'm telling you, other people that reject you, I'm going to take you.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah. I think it was just preying on people who had nowhere else to turn

[Ed Larson]

to, you know, to push back on that. That one of his black students has been trying for years to make a documentary about him focusing solely on like the racial integration work that he did.

[Marcus Parks]

There's a lot of people that are right about one thing accidentally. Yeah, there. There's a lot of people. You know, Jim Jones. Yeah. And Jim Jones integrated like Indiana, like he did all of these.

[Ed Larson]

Indianapolis. Yeah. No, he was responsible. See, Jim Jones was seriously responsible for integrating Indiana or Indianapolis.

[Marcus Parks]

Black people.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Did he kill in the end?

[Ed Larson]

Quite a few. Quite a few. Hundreds. Hundreds upon hundreds. Majority out of the 900, some odd who died. Most of them were black. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

So because they trusted him.

[Ed Larson]

Cancel each other out? Could say.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

In the end.

[Marcus Parks]

You just write. You are in this one instance, a

[Henry Zebrowski]

master manipulator in my mind.

[Marcus Parks]

But that's fine.

[Ed Larson]

Sure. But social justice aside, Count Dante's continual focus on violence eventually turned into full attempted mayhem by the summer of 1965, when Dante and a student tried blowing up the windows of a rival dojo unassumingly called the Chicago Judo and Karate Center.

[Marcus Parks]

It's not strong enough. A name.

[Ed Larson]

There's not even a dragon in the name.

[Marcus Parks]

How would you know that? It's Asian. As Asian as.

[Ed Larson]

No dragons, no tigers, no cobras. This place must go.

[Marcus Parks]

Where's the Asian? I don't even see a place here for general sound.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

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.

[Ed Larson]

Dante claimed that they couldn't light the fuse because he and Doug were simply just too drunk. They'd gotten real wasted before going out and trying to blow up these windows.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's the Chicago in them.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes, it was accidental. There was a White Sox game.

[Ed Larson]

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 them.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's put guys. Yeah, like they're just like trying to get it.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Light a fuse.

[Ed Larson]

Strike.

[Marcus Parks]

Light a fuse.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Strike.

[Marcus Parks]

Ah, fucking non invented dog. I trusted you, dog. I thought you could pull this, dog. You were supposed to, supposed to be the DD for the explosions.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I, I own this place. I just forgot my keys.

[Marcus Parks]

You're a trader. I love you.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, I honestly thought I could light a fuse just by snapping real hard.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. I can't do.

[Ed Larson]

But Dante and Doug, they weren't so drunk that they couldn't get into a high speed car chase running from the cops. Which of course resulted in their eventual arrest. This of course was only after Doug had thrown 13 blasting caps out of the car window during the pursuit.

[Marcus Parks]

Let's just say. Officers, can we please just do this whole thing with the mulligan?

[Henry Zebrowski]

One time the Chicago cops didn't kill somebody.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Now the cops gave chase because they were actually on the lookout for Bombers because there had 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 them, because they were trying to figure out if they were responsible for all these other kills 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.

[Marcus Parks]

I somehow found myself with all of these blasting caps. Yes. And the blasting caps themselves told me to use them. And I feel because of the sacred teachings of Bagua Sang, I know that most inanimate jobs 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.

[Ed Larson]

Because he was excessively intoxicated that night, he and Doug decided to, 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh, so this is after they were arrested, they went back and broke the windows.

[Ed Larson]

No, no, no, no. He was. He told. I know, it's very good. It's very confusing. It's so stupid. He told the FBI, 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 going to find them there. So we're going to throw them in Lake Michigan. But then, you know, we had a few beers is.

[Marcus Parks]

And then we start figing it. Let's go blow.

[Ed Larson]

Let's go blow up the dojo windows.

[Marcus Parks]

God, I'm 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 traitors most honorably. Damn, Doug. Where's that little girl? Petty? You like? Like to see her around.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Good.

[Marcus Parks]

Play a little boy.

[Ed Larson]

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, quote, reportedly subject to a violent and antisocial behavior pattern and has suicidal tendencies.

[Marcus Parks]

Do you mind if I take this slip of paper and hang on up in my dojo? This actually excellent advertising for the violets.

[Ed Larson]

An antisocial behavior pattern is perfect for the Dante system.

[Marcus Parks]

It's actually one of the main tenants of the Dante system.

[Henry Zebrowski]

I would kill myself, but unfortunately I am too strong to do so.

[Ed Larson]

It is when the immovable object meets the unstoppable force. 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 demok, which according to some is what really killed Bruce Lee.

[Marcus Parks]

And I think that's true. I think it's true.

[Ed Larson]

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 democ. And his heart exploded.

[Marcus Parks]

One of those like five fingers touches where you go

[Henry Zebrowski]

kill Bill.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Cool.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. That's the.

[Marcus Parks]

Just kill you.

[Ed Larson]

Maybe. We'll see.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Get up and take 10 steps.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

Cuz.

[Ed Larson]

Cuz did the. Bruce Lee supposedly died from a delayed reaction to a democ.

[Marcus Parks]

It doesn't make any sense though.

[Ed Larson]

It does not.

[Marcus Parks]

But.

[Ed Larson]

Well, while the concept of democ does have roots in the legit practice of acupuncture, there's no evidence that the touch of death actually exists.

[Marcus Parks]

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 think they shouldn't? That doesn't make sense.

[Ed Larson]

Hey, sometimes they need to have the self destruct button. Because what if plot. If a. If. If a villain takes over the ship. He cannot be allowed to have such a 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So Captain Kirk taught you about suicide?

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he keeps coming to me tonight. I got to keep scuffing coming in going. Marcus, I have got to tell you. Do it.

[Ed Larson]

My favorite captain is Captain Cisco. If you. If. If I will have you know.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, Captain Cisco.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, it's the thong song guy. Yeah, that's my favorite start up.

[Marcus Parks]

I thought Captain Cisco was one of those that brought all the calamari to Applebee. Benjamin, sister.

[Ed Larson]

He was the captain of Deep Space nine.

[Marcus Parks]

Touch of death.

[Ed Larson]

But around the time that the 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.

[Marcus Parks]

You flick him on the balls.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, that was in 1967. After that count Dante fully embraced his local character. Image in every way possible. This 196067 is when Count D. Dante becomes Count Dante. The former giant kean 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.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. I'm a part of the Conquistadors.

[Henry Zebrowski]

You can tell by my red roots.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. My bright, bright crimson pubic hair.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's the freckles that kept me away. Right.

[Marcus Parks]

Super special. God, I love pull poo. I curse my Irish heritage. I curse it. I curse it.

[Ed Larson]

Dante also permed his jet black dyed hair into a massive Afro in a Chicago beauty salon that he owned himself.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, he's a true entrepreneur.

[Ed Larson]

And he started sculpting his facial hair into elaborate sharp devil points and curves using a hair dissolving powder. Finally, Count Dante donned a Dracula style cape and wandered Chicago with a walking stick embossed with 24 karat gold, all while wearing dancers leotards.

[Marcus Parks]

Can you see my balls?

[Ed Larson]

Basically, Count Dante saw what Satanist Anton lavey was doing in San Francisco around the same time and said, I'm just gonna do that. But with karate.

[Marcus Parks]

He literally just stole his whole fucking shtick. 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.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah. I mean, well, technically, Count Dante got the lion before Anton Levey got his lion.

[Marcus Parks]

Who copied who?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, who copied it? But yeah, he. He saw it, but it was mostly the. It was the esthetic, like, because it's just, you know, Anton lavey looked evil. He looked like a comic book villain. And it was also the attitude, the sort of like, not really antihero thing, but the idea of being a real life heel. A villain.

[Marcus Parks]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

It's an act of showmanship. Like, he saw how much it. Attention Anton Lavay was getting. It's like, oh, I can do that same thing. I'll just add martial arts to it. And I can be that guy. I can be a comic book villain, because he is. Yeah. And it's also like the shift to the Count Dante Persona. It's basically. I mean, it is just Dante's insatiable need for attention writ large.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

In keeping with his imitation of Anton Lave, Count Dante also purchased several occult and adult bookstores around Chicago, which he added to the dojo, the beauty parlor and the jewelry. Jewelry store that he already owned.

[Henry Zebrowski]

He bought a lot of. With his dad's money.

[Marcus Parks]

He did, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

You don't understand my mission, Daddy. I wish you could understand how powerfully Asian I really am while being Spanish.

[Ed Larson]

I'm just. I'm gonna keep calling you John.

[Marcus Parks]

My name is One.

[Ed Larson]

Interestingly though, Count Dante also opened a mail order business that sold hardware and other home item 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.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just so good.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, because nuns were the only people that Dante would trust to handle money for him.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, because they don't get, they don't get paid. Yeah, you don't have to pay them.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The other thing.

[Marcus Parks]

So good.

[Ed Larson]

Well, she's helping the children, so I suppose you can help.

[Marcus Parks]

Yes. I love you, Sister Mary Frances, but I am married to martial arts. Oh, you are celibate. Well, change all that.

[Ed Larson]

Now. The nuns weren't just shipping hardware for Dante's Amazon before Amazon. By 1968, Count Dante had discovered the power of merch. 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.

[Marcus Parks]

That's awesome.

[Ed Larson]

Most famously, Count Dante also sold three mail order pamphlets, also shipped out by his nuns under the title World's Deadliest Fighting Secrets.

[Marcus Parks]

It's just a nuts fuck it. Just stripping this world's deadliest fighting secrets out. He's coming in like, whatever helps. Yes, John is certainly God's child, isn't he?

[Ed Larson]

So funny, Dante advertising these pamphlets in comic books like Batman, Spider Man, Howard the Duck was a really big one for him.

[Marcus Parks]

That makes a lot of sense.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, well, because a lot of crossover, there's a lot of. There's a. This the type of kid who reads, who read Howard the Duck in the late 60s is gonna love Count Dante.

[Ad Voice]

Oh yeah.

[Ed Larson]

Really gonna love him. And also, the advertising space in Howard the Duck was far cheaper than Batman and Spider Man.

[Marcus Parks]

No way.

[Ed Larson]

It's a classic. But yeah, it's cheaper. But these ads, of course, were keeping in tradition with other strongmen 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. You guys know this Charles, those old Charles Atlas ads, right?

[Henry Zebrowski]

I don't I don't think I do.

[Ed Larson]

It's a. It, it shows like a ser. Like a series of panels where you know, a bully comes and kicks dirt on a guy who's out on a date with a girl. And the girl says he's the N of the beach. And so the guy orders Charles Atlas's muscle building booklet. He becomes super muscly and he beats up the bully and he becomes the hero of the beach.

[Marcus Parks]

It's awesome.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, yeah. Grant Morrison turned the whole thing into a great character named Flex Mantello. Very cool now. And Count Dante's absolutely incredible red and black full page ads. They're just pop art masterpieces. And they featured Count Dante. Dante himself. Dante looks like Dracula with an afro and not Blackula. He's white Dracula.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Yeah, he's got a cape. I do remember.

[Marcus Parks]

You know what I'd go is call him White Blacula. He is absolutely. He's just. God, he's just such a funny looking guy.

[Ed Larson]

Never thought of that concept. White Blacula, that's him. Well, in these ads Dante would make incredible promises. He claimed that if you over ordered his pamphlets that cost only 25 cents, one could learn the fabled touch of death. One ad said quote, un expert at

[Marcus Parks]

dim mach could easily kill many judo, karate, kung fu, aikido and gung fu experts at one time with only one fingertip pressure using his murderous poison hand weapons.

[Ed Larson]

Poison hand weapons. All caps by the way.

[Marcus Parks]

Poison head weapons.

[Ed Larson]

One touch. And the when you ask like how was he able to advertise this? Because it didn't work. Yeah, it was stupid. It was all dumb. No one took it seriously because they didn't have to 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. 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.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Oh finally some real businesses.

[Marcus Parks]

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 God. It's just so. It's just as funny as everything else.

[Ed Larson]

It's so stupid. It's so stupid. Yeah, it's all so ridiculous. It's just. Life is not a Kung fu movie. It never works out like that.

[Marcus Parks]

And it's almost a shame in that way.

[Ed Larson]

It really is.

[Marcus Parks]

Because they really tried to live it.

[Ed Larson]

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.

[Marcus Parks]

Ow, you hurt my finger. Ow. Ow. You hurt. Hurt my goddamn out.

[Ed Larson]

Everyone just sounds like the, the, the grape lady in that old video. That's what most fights sound like.

[Marcus Parks]

Well, what do you think the entire Ming dynasty sounded like? And go to patreon.com last pockets and left to give us money to listen to our show ad free. You can also see Last Stream on the Left live every Tuesday, 5pm PST. Yeah.

[Ed Larson]

And watch it on Netflix.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, we're good on there. And then we got new YouTube channels. Go check it out. HGX2 is on LPN2TV. Our second season of Hoopa Goo Goo the game show. It is on LPN tv. Go check it out.

[Henry Zebrowski]

That's right. We got the third episode comes out today. So make sure you go and check it out. Binge it. It's probably one of my favorite things ever worked on. It's so much fun.

[Ed Larson]

It's very cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Everyone's in it, everyone in the theater. Marcus is going to show up. We got Henry all over it. It's amazing.

[Marcus Parks]

It's really great. And go to get go to all our other YouTube channels. Go to @LP on the left for all of your social media needs and go to last podcast on the left.com to buy tickets to see us live.

[Ed Larson]

Oh, and thanks to everyone who made us the fifth most streamed podcast of all time on Spotify.

[Marcus Parks]

Yay.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, those rank those rankings just came out today after 20 years of Spotify.

[Marcus Parks]

We were.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, we were number the number five. So thank you everyone who who made that happen.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Fraking wild.

[Marcus Parks]

We continue to do it. That's right, we continue. And we will not stop until the sun explodes.

[Henry Zebrowski]

We got shows coming up. May 29, Pittsburgh. July 27, Grand Rapids, Michigan. July 17, Tulsa, Oklahoma and July 18, Oklahoma City. I got a bunch of shows. Check it out on eddytunes.com to find out where you can see me live. And also with our new YouTube channels, the brighter side. Follow subscribe to the Brighter side LPN on YouTube. That's YouTube.com hebrighterside LPN and subscribe because you can now watch us.

[Marcus Parks]

It's so cool.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Go watch it.

[Marcus Parks]

We're moving on up. We're getting all the the video going. We're working hard here over at The Laugh Factory. We want you to see our new stuff. Please go check us out on YouTube.

[Ed Larson]

Go look at all of us, because we've been working very hard.

[Marcus Parks]

And we have Bloodbath 77, their second

[Ed Larson]

series of our VTM playthrough that is

[Marcus Parks]

going to be coming out also very soon. So take it. We're shoot. We're shooting it momentarily.

[Ed Larson]

Indeed.

[Marcus Parks]

All right. Hell. Sweet Satan.

[Ed Larson]

Yeah, Hell.

[Henry Zebrowski]

The LA Natural History History Museum for showing me the orca exhibit.

[Marcus Parks]

It's really nice.

[Henry Zebrowski]

It's really nice. I had a really great time. They. They invited me for their grand opening. I felt like an actual celebrity.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah. Great. That's fantastic. Great.

[Henry Zebrowski]

So go learn about orcas, you idiots.

[Marcus Parks]

Yeah, you pieces of. You.

[Henry Zebrowski]

Think they'll like that?

[Ed Larson]

Yeah.

[Marcus Parks]

There you go.

[Ed Larson]

Actually, they'll probably put it as a pull quote.

[Ad Voice]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ed Larson]

When they start advertising the orca. Go see, you idiots. Ed Larson last podcast and podcast right

[Ad Voice]

out on the road. It helps to have a partner like the Love's Rewards app. Download Love's Rewards today to get sweet discounts and earn points on food, fuel, drinks and more. Every time you scan Love's Rewards, Save and earn at every turn. Terms apply. See website for details.

[Ed Larson]

Why have we asked our contractor we found on Angie.com to be our kid's legal guardian? Because he took such good care when redoing our basement that we knew we could trust him to care for our kids. We only met a month ago.

[Marcus Parks]

Angie, the one you trust. Define the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects at Angie Combination.