LOS ANGELES—Move over, John Kreese, Terry Silver, and Johnny Lawrence—there’s a new sensei in town, and he says his style is so deadly that he almost killed himself with his bare hands. He also has the scar to prove it.
A 42nd-degree Vantablack® belt in the obscure, ancient Japanese art of harakiri karate, greatest grandmaster Franklin Dukes, 52, claims that he once almost offed himself while practicing an ultra deadly karate-chop technique. He says that while performing an empty-hand form in which the outer ridge of the palm is used as a blade for chopping and slashing at the opponent, he accidentally grazed his own midsection. He swears his “belly just opened up as if cut by a real blade, with guts spilling out.” Though training by himself at the time, he says he remained calm, tightened his uniform like a tourniquet around his bleeding abdomen, got in his car, and drove himself to the ER an hour away, listening to Japanese Zen music as a distraction the entire way. He remembers a sharp-witted surgeon telling him he made it just in the nick of time.
One veteran martial arts teacher who was also a former professional fighter says that he is skeptical of Dukes’ claims. The instructor would comment only if he could remain anonymous, saying sardonically that he is not afraid of what Dukes might do to him but instead he is afraid of what Dukes might do to himself. He notes that traditional martial arts sometimes attract people who are a bit detached from reality. “That’s why,” he says, “you get so many martial arts students who think they can beat a seasoned, professional fighter just by poking out their eyeballs or kicking them in the nuts. It ain’t that easy. People get hurt when they try shit like that, and it’s usually the ones who are trying shit like that who get hurt.” He clarifies that traditional martial arts can be used effectively for self-defense and for fighting, including learning to hit areas on the body that could lead to death through, say, the stoppage of the heart. But he is quick to add that he highly doubts Dukes’ knife-hand story. “I just don’t believe it,” he says. “And I’ve been around the martial arts for almost 30 years. Once I even saw a guy knock himself out with his own kick. But for someone to slice their own stomach open with their bare hand—frankly, it’s ridiculous. I bet his scar is from surgery to repair a hernia he got while lifting too many bottles of sake.”
