The UFC’s creepy uncle, action star Steven Seagal reappeared last week when he taught contender Daniel Cormier some deadly tricks that were going to guarantee his victory over Light Heavyweight champion Jon Jones. He also showed up, wearing his best PJs and John Travolta toupee, as part of Cormier’s entourage at UFC 182 on Saturday night.
Seagal’s continued insistence on pretending that he’s a super serious and totally legit martial arts expert, especially when it’s almost painfully clear that no one takes him seriously, left us with many questions:
How does a human being manage to look so much like Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force? What does Seagal get out of this bizarre pantomime? What do the fighters get out of it? And what inspires someone who, by all appearances, seems to genuinely care about martial arts wind up engaging in behavior that makes such a mockery of the discipline?
Martial arts are about honor, which makes lying about one’s education, prowess, or accomplishments an unforgivable sin. Real martial artists detest this kind of behavior, and actively condemn it. So what motivates anyone to attempt it? Especially in our Google-able times?
With this in mind, we took a look back at some of the most famous embellishers, frauds, and nutjobs in martial arts history. It didn’t give us many answers, but it at least offered us plenty of stories of no-touch knockouts, mail order black belts, fake Russian boxing matches, and melting babies.
Sin The’
There’s really no easy way to sum up the polarizing exploits of Sin Kwang The’, a Shaolin Grandmaster (?) who has been teaching a highly contested martial art called Shaolin Do in Kentucky since the late-‘60s. He claims to have mastered over 900 forms from over 100 fighting systems and that his martial art has a direct lineage to the Fukien Temple. He has an estranged brother, Hiang The, who is also a Grandmaster and tells a very different story about their history. Some say that his master melted a baby during some sandburn training gone awry.
Sin The’ still has staunch defenders to this day, but the case against him is hard to ignore. According to these posts on Bullshido, The’ has fudged his credentials, his martial art’s lineage, and the number of forms he has mastered. And that melting baby story is just a rumor he heard that he started telling his students because, well, why wouldn’t you pass on shit about a melting baby when you’ve essentially invented a martial art out of various other arts’ techniques?
Count Dante
John Timothy Keehan was a well-to-do young man who boxed as a teen, learned jujitsu techniques in the army, and earned his black belt in karate as an adult. Apparently none of these real life accomplishments were enough for Keehan, though, so he changed his name to Dount Jerjer Raphael Dante, invented a noble lineage for his family, and made up his own martial arts system called Dan-te, and founded the Black Dragon Fighting Society. He advertised Dan-te (“… the DEADLIEST and most TERRIFYING fighting art known to man”) and himself (“THE DEADLIEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED”) in comic books. In reality, the deadliest thing he ever did was instigate a fight with a rival dojo that lead to the murder of one of his students.
Ashida Kim
Ashida Kim, ninja author and YouTube personality, has a completely untraceable history in martial arts. There is no record of where he trained, or who trained him. But he did tell The Believer that he first trained with Count Dante in 1968 and became involved with Dante’s Black Dragon Fighting Society, which potentially makes him a second generation martial arts fraud. Ashida Kim also offers mail order black belts.
Frank Dux
Frank Dux rose to fame as the real-life inspiration (and choreographer) for the Jean-Claude Van Damme classic Bloodsport, but a Los Angeles Times story published in 1988 revealed that the film wasn’t exactly based on a true story. Dux never made it to Southeast Asia while in the military, and the closest that he came to being injured in the line of duty was falling off a truck that he happened to be painting at the time. The Ministry of Sports in the Bahamas, where the tournament immortalized in Bloodsport allegedly took place, has no record of any such competition. And at least one of his many martial arts trophies was purchased by him at a trophy shop in California. The owner of the store has the receipt to prove it, but Dux claims it’s a forgery.
Mickey Rourke
Actor Mickey Rourke caused a massive stir this past November when he “beat” 29 year-old Elliot Seymour (who had a 1-9 record) in an exhibition match in Russia because, well, the fight looked like this and Seymour subsequently admitted to taking a dive for some much-needed cash. But his storied past as an amateur boxer was under dispute long before that. Neither the Golden Gloves organization nor his stepfather think he fought much at all.
This case is particularly sad and perplexing, because, if you listen to Rourke’s appearance on Chael Sonen’s podcast, it’s clear that he genuinely loves the sport and cares about its history. So what in the hell is possessing him to make such a farce of it?