"'Count Dante.' That and 'Kwai Chang Caine' are names that people writing histories of the American martial arts fad of the Sixties and Seventies will put into their first chapters. The fact that true budomen considered both names anathema to their art and science will probably be lost, and that in itself may say something. Dante, at least, was real. But the extent of his reality is a matter of debate." This was how Massad Ayoob wrote of Count Danté in the final story of a three-issue look at Danté (put together before his May 1975 death from a bleeding ulcer) in Black Belt in 1976.The face of Count Danté stood out from all the other comic book ads for learn-at-home instruction booklets for martial arts I saw in the pages of countless in the Seventies and Count Danté and his Black Dragon Fighting Society both seemed so incredulous.
"Nobody pays attention to him anymore in the Midwest. I wish you wouldn't do the story. He's getting enough publicity in his comic book ads, and that's where he belongs, as far as I'm concerned … if you do a story on him, your magazine can put a black feather in it's cap," said AlGene Caraulia in the February 1976 issue of Black Belt.
Photo by Ed Ikuta; Black Belt Feb. 1976
When he wasn't giving the Dim Mak to his enemies, Danté was styling hair for Playboy bunnies and ran the House of Danté salon in Chicago. While trying to get publicity for a planned chain of salons the National Informer ran a story on him in 1968 "The World's Deadliest Fighter Is A … Hairdresser!"
1970 ad in Popular Science
The Bulletin (Bend, Oregon) April 24, 1970Newspaper account of the 1970 Chicago dojo war incident.
Webb has a lot of information about Count Danté as well as the filmmaker's three-year court battle with the son of Danté's hand-picked successor which was finally settled — in Webb's favor — earlier this year.
Recommended reading:
Kung Fu Cinema The Deadliest Man Alive: Searching for Count Dante
Black Belt July 1969, January 1976, February 1976 and March 1976
MMA Fight Coach The Deadliest Man Alive” — The Truth Behind the Legend of Count Dante
Chicago Reader The Life and Death of the Deadliest Man Alive
Time Out Chicago Dante's Inferno
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