True Crime Campfire - Hit Me With Ya Best Shot: The Wacky World of Martial Arts Frauds

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

In this week’s episode, we are going to be looking at “Bullshido,” a catch-all term for martial arts practices that are either fake, delusional, or just plain useless. This is the land of no-touch knockouts, touches of death, and mystical masters who can’t manage their own lives. We’ll be asking the question—should you learn self-defense from summon who struggles with basic reality? Spoiler, the answer is no, no you shouldn’t. This is a fun one, y'all. Nobody dies, and everybody is an absolute goober. Sources:Interesting Stuff From Around the World YouTube channel (videos on Ashida Kim, George Dillman and Steven Seagal, plus much more): https://youtube.com/@interestingstufffromaround8014?si=E9-UiKKcTZQ4ng-Jhttps://ashidakim.com/The Dance of the Deadly Hands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xw5wjwVkFc&t=36sNinja “levitation” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl3QF3t58RkNinja curtains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCaZmajZ_g4&t=258sKim catches a bullet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJZjwWwFc4Kim dodges bullets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc1sN7eeyvM&t=78s https://www.dillman.com/George Dillman on tongues and toes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIL5nD2PQ0Y&t=326s George’s chi bullet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYez2RKQn8c&t=748sGeorge mostly resurrects a pet https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w7hgVWbPxG8Seagal’s Lightning Bolt ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IId64OJdCKM Seagal running weird https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwwXE-T4HPI Seagal’s very real Russian aikido demo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmEx8Moy7ro Seagal essential oils https://members.tripod.com/life_scents/oldfiles/seagal.html  Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Pay up front or set up a payment plan. Get your fan code now--tickets go on sale February 7: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRE Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. In this week's episode, we're going to be looking at bullshito, a catch-all term for martial arts practices that are either fake, delusional, or just plain useless. This is the land of no-touch knockouts, touches of death, and mystical masters who can't manage their own lives. We'll be asking the question. Should you learn self-defense from someone who struggles with basic reality? Spoiler, the answer is no. You probably shouldn't. This is Hit Me

With Your Best Shot, the wacky world of martial arts frauds. Ninja movies came to life in 1960s Japan, some of them fairly serious, a lot more of them really silly, and for the most part they weren't seen by the rest of the world. It wasn't until 1980s the Octagon that ninjas made a splash in the U.S. market, with the movie taking in about $19 million, around half of what the likes of Caddyshack and Friday the 13th made in the same year, which is honestly pretty good. It had lots of angry men hitting each other. You got to see a boob for like a tenth of a second, and you learned that the apogee of martial arts skill was a white American dude with a mustache. In this case, Chuck Norris, of course. This was

largely the formula followed by American ninja movies of the 80s, which cleaned up in the exploding home video market. One notable exception was Ninja 3, The Domination, where the spirit of an evil ninja possesses the body of an aerobics instructor who likes to turn on her boyfriend, by pouring V8 juice down her cleavage. I swear to God, I'm not making this up. I've seen it. We will post a clip. It is the weirdest shit I've ever seen in my life.

This lady literally, she's like on top of her boyfriend all sexy, and she literally pours the vegetable juice down her boobs. Like, all seductive. That's so weird. But that was an outlier in all sorts of ways. Thank God. These were mainly movies about high-speed fights between very serious. men in black, and the pretty girls were generally either grateful to be rescued or dead.

Women in Fridges, am I right? These movies can be a lot of fun, but anybody who takes them too seriously, who sees them as some kind of guide to build your life around, is probably either an adolescent boy or a grown-ass man who thinks like one. Which brings us to a fella named Radford William Davis, although he apparently didn't like that name, because first he changed it to Christopher Hunter, then he got little more out there with Dr. Ha Ha Ha Lung before finally settling on the name he's stuck with for decades, Ashita Kim. Do we have to point out that Ashita Kim is as white as Wonderbred? I mean, of course he is. There's not a lot of concrete facts about Kim's life after he was born in Florida

in 1948, because all we have is his self-reporting, and I think you're going to come to agree that our guy is not the most reliable narrator. Like, at all. Most of the story comes from Kim's truly beautiful website, which made me deeply nostalgic for like 2005-era MySpace. Red text on a black background is obviously awesome and don't ever let anybody tell you different. In fact, I suspect Kim built the website himself. He definitely wrote every word on it despite the use of the third person. Kim did this and Kim did that. And don't worry about why a real-life ninja would have a website. No, there's no good explanation for it, but just don't worry about it, okay? So Kim describes himself as an army brat who

moved around a lot growing up and first learned martial arts on various bases. This part is at least plausible. The army was teaching judo at the time, but then the story starts to slide right off the rails. From the website, quote, the legend has always been that Ashita Kim, another name, went to Chicago in 1968 to work with a biker gang who were providing security for the protesters at the Democratic National Convention. And quick side note,

Kim is probably lifting this from news reports on undercover cop Robert Pearson, who infiltrated the protesters, which were telling you about solely so we can share this very sober line of testimony from the subsequent trial. Quote, I was with a fellow known as guerrilla

who headed a motorcycle gang and another fellow by the name of Banana. It's like they got together, you know, and decided. I have my doubts about this, though, because every biker I've ever met would kick your entire ass if you tried to make a call you banana. But back to Ashita Kim's website. And while there, he learned Katadante, dance of the deadly hands, the most savage and terrifying self-defense form known to man in a secret dojo. This is all very, um, Razzal ghoul, isn't it? like very Batman in the mountains.

I mean, sure, this scrawny kid comes up from Florida, so right away, gorilla and banana show him all the secret dojos in the city. Why wouldn't a biker gang know where all the secret dojos are? There's no reason they shouldn't. Stop being weird about it. Kim links to a YouTube video of him demonstrating this deadly technique, and after a warning that this is, quote, not for the squeamish or the weak of heart,

you get to watch him lightly slap around an impassive dude while growling like an upset schnauzer. It's pretty epic. When he walks you through it in slow motion, he explained that in a real fight, he'd be ripping off both ears and testicles. So if you're ever expecting to fight a ninja, you want to make sure to wear earmuffs and a cup.

In 1980, Kim published his first book, Secrets of the Ninja, just a few months after the Octagon hit theaters, which I'm sure was just a coincidence and not a quick cash-in. God, you're so cynical. The book was published by Paladin Press, a publisher connected to Soldier of Fortune magazine that you might have heard of. I mean, you might have heard of listening to our podcast.

The reading preference of dipshits the world over, you know? Yep. Their book, Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors by Rex Farrell. was used as a guide in several murders, and Paladin got sued. This is a rabbit hole we could get lost in, but I did want to point out that Rex Farrell was a suburban mom of two who got all her info from mystery novels and movies. I love that so much.

She submitted an idea for a novel, but Paladin, who, in fairness to them, and I don't like being fair to them, knew their audience and knew how gullible they were, talked her into making it a how-to guide instead. Secrets of the Ninja made big promises. Now you too can become a master of invisibility with the ability to penetrate anywhere unseen and vanish without leaving a trace. That's what she said. The book did, okay, although I am a little skeptical, just a little, about,

Claims claim that it's used as a training manual for covert military units. Yeah. I mean, if you're in a covert military unit, you can drop us a line at true crime campfirepot.com. If you want to verify that for us, that'd be great. A predictable slew of other titles followed. Ninja mind control, ninja death touch, deadly grip of the ninja. You get the idea. After a dispute with Paladin that Kim is clearly still.

fuming about 40 years later, he switched to publishing his own books, which is probably just as well, because even Paladin might have balked at the amorous adventures of Ashita Kim. You are shit and me. I wish I were. We haven't read this one because it costs $40. And we love you guys, but not quite that much. But the blurb tells us that this definitely true story is about Kim's time as an intelligence operative working undercover as a bouncer at a South African brothel.

We haven't read it true, but somebody on Substat got hold of a copy and they posted some pages from this masterpiece. And here's my favorite quote. Most of the time we spent drinking tea and discussing the meaning of life in Andre's office or amusing ourselves and watching sports. On one such occasion, the subject of sex as a weapon had come up. I always fuck my girlfriends in the ass at least once bragged one of those assembled, so they remember who's boss. Wisdom for our times, folks. Great.

The mind of a genius. And on the back of the book jacket, we learn, quote, rumor had it at one time that this property would be the screenplay for a soon-to-be-released motion picture. Those plans did not materialize because of political considerations. Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm sure that's why your ninja porno movie set in a South African brothel failed to get off the ground. Politics.

Kim's other 18-and-up book, X-rated Dragon Lady, doesn't seem to be available anymore. Oh, damn. I know, right? Kim also started selling instructional movies on VHS. In the days before internet videos, there was a thriving market in tapes that you bought not really knowing what was on them. other than what the seller told you. And this was bonus for Asheed of Kim because as hard as it was to take his grandiose claims in print,

once you see him in action, you start to think that maybe, just maybe, this guy wasn't actually a ninja at all. I don't think this is real. Something tells me. Okay, the scene. A bedroom with a couple of sores on a rack beside the bed. You know, like we all.

have. Sure. Beside the swords, a curtain window and standing in front of the curtain, a man dressed in all black. The man, the myth, the legend, Ashita Kim. The art of hiding is an integral part of the ninja skills. The voiceover tells us, take advantage of every possible object, natural and man-made, to conceal yourself from the enemy. Master Kim steps behind the curtain, his legs very clearly sticking out below it. It is this ability to hide oneself completely, like sticking out, that gives rise

to the legend that Ninja can become invisible at will. He was, and I cannot stress this enough, just literally hiding behind the curtain, and not very well at that. If Master Ninja Ashita Kim ever challenges you to

a high stakes game of hide and seek, take him for everything he's got. Okay. But this was more convincing than the time Master Kim levitated on camera where he sat cross-legged on the floor and lifted his legs up, but still firmly on the ground, waving his arms

around like he was trying desperately to keep his balance. His glamorous assistant, a bearded dude all in black, then moved a hula hoop all around him, but very noticeably not under him. And this is a stage magician trick

that's probably like hundreds of years old, and if it's done well, it can create a pretty convincing illusion. But this was not done well. Buried fairly deep on Kim's website is the fact that he has a background as a magician, illusionist, and showman. Not going to lie, stage magician slash secret ninja

sounds like a pretty cute USA network show, but if you find out your putative ninja had a previous-like tricking people for a living, well, you should have a few questions. But even if you're not impressed by Master Kim's abilities to turn invisible and float in the air, you'll gasp with astonishment when you see him dodge bullets. In a grassy, windy field, a man aims a pistol and starts shooting.

Cut to what looks very much like the Florida backyard of a middle-aged man of modest means, where Ashita Kim, in full ninja gear, rolls and bounces around to dodge the bullets. I mean, it looks like fun. I'll grant you that, and it's something a lot of, you know, 10-year-olds with a healthy imagination have probably done, but it's hard to ignore just how slow and clumsy this alleged ninja master is. I guarantee you, if you go outside right now and pretend you're dodging a bullet, you're going to be more convincing than the sheet at Kim. I'm not kidding.

I can only imagine. I'm not kidding. He does a star jump at one point. Like, he just jumps with both legs, like, slightly, slightly open. It's so stupid. And you know we're going to post a ton of videos in. on our social media so you guys can see some examples of this because it's just preposterous. It's so funny.

I can only imagine some 80s teenager coming back from the dojo with like a VHS tape that he thinks is going to teach him how to be a ninja. And then all he gets is this dumbass prancing around in his backyard. Poor kid. First Airwolf gets canceled now this. He does another bullet dodging video inside. And you know somebody's definitely for sure for death. And it's shooting at him because you can hear gunshots or possibly an asthmatic man coughing.

It's not entirely clear. On the last shot, Kim takes things a step further and actually catches the speeding bullet in his bare hands. He holds up the bullet in everything. And if you can think of another explanation of how it got there, I'd like to hear it. Okay? Kim had other videos showing him doing other deeply ninja activities like struggling free from a straight jacket. and making a ball vanish from his hand and then reappear. And again, not well.

You can see him pulling the thing out of his sleeve, okay? Look, if you saw an ad in the back of a comic for instructions on close-up magic and you spent $5.99 plus shipping on it, you wouldn't want to waste those skills either, okay? And speaking of ads in the backs of comic books, remember how Kim learned the lethal Cata Dante dance of the deadly hands in a secret dojo in Chicago? Well, he could have saved himself the trip, because in comic books of the 60s and 70s, you could find ads by Count Dante, the deadliest man alive. All you had to do was mail off for an instructional booklet that would teach you the world's

deadliest fighting secrets, including the deadly dance. And you also got a membership card for the Black Dragon Fighting Society, which as far as we can tell, Ashita Kim remains a proud member of to this day. Count Juan Rafael Dante started out in life as John, John. Timothy Kean, an Irish-American kid from the Chicago suburbs, and it looks like when he changed his name in 1967, he legally made count his first name. One dumbass. Oh, oh, oh.

Dante apparently had some martial arts talent, but his real genius was in self-promotion and fantasy. His Black Dragon Fighting Society could trace its origins back to the fall of Atlantis, he said, and any kid could mail off to learn the deadliest and most terrifying fighting. writing art known to man. Dante was also a used car salesman, ran an adult bookstore, and worked as a hairdresser for Hugh Hefner for a while. But, you know, these were probably just covers for his real work at keeping alive the ancient

Atlantean mysteries. So, is it possible that Ashita Kim's decades-long career as a hawker of various ninja BS is based on nothing more than an instruction manual and a membership card he got from the back of a comic book. Could the legendary ninja master really be a twitchy little nerd? I mean, his website does sell Doctor Who Time Lord certification, an official diploma from the University of Galifrey signed by the doctor and yours for the low, low price of $55 American. It's a steal.

He also sells Mach Bar, Klingong Kung Fu. Foo, the official training manual of the Klingon Imperial Marine Forces. And I'm sure the BBC and Paramount were just delighted to share their valuable properties on a website that also includes gems such as 100 ways to rip the groin. You know, I just wouldn't think there'd be a hundred ways. I can think of maybe like 10. I mean, and that's really stretching my imagination. And it's not like I haven't spent time thinking about it. I mean, who hasn't?

The cover on that book, by the way, has a picture of Kim biting the ear off a rubber mannequin. Kind of seductively, if I'm being honest. It's really disturbing. What that has to do with groin' ripen, I'm not sure. Foreplay. Shockingly, people have been making fun of Ashita Kim for a long time. I know. We're not the first.

Get out. Which he gets real snippy about while simultaneously claiming not to care. Back in the 90s, he started a challenge where he offered to fight anyone to prove he was the real deal, as long as they paid a $25,000 appearance bond to guarantee they'd showed up. Plus, a $10,000 fee to be paid to Master Kim even before negotiations began on date and venue. It's not a scam. You guys, stop saying it's a scam. It's our next Patreon tier, okay?

That's our next Patreon goal. Don't physically fight us. Get us to fight Master Kim. Let's see you to Kim. You'd also have to pay for food and lodging for him in a party of three. And get certification from a local sports authorities absolving Kim of liability in the event the Challenger is killed, crippled, or maimed. So obviously all this is intended to make it nearly impossible to set up such a fight.

And even if you did, there are lots of clauses that would allow Kim to scuttle off with money without lifting a fist. Is there a lot of money to be made in publishing the same ninja book multiple times, along with uncomfortable erotica with yourself as the protagonist? Maybe not. We don't know for sure whether this is Ashita Kim, but we do know he's based in Florida, and his birth name was Radford William Davis, and we know there was a 2020 Chapter 7 bankruptcy for a Radford William Davis, the Florida court system. As it was for a lot of us, 2020 seems to have been a tough year for Asheed Kim. He published a couple of books that veered far away from his nimb.

ninja safe space. First, there's the year of the plague, which sounds like a doozy. The description reads, this history should it survive the apocalypse before us and be readable to some future generation, is meant to chronicle the events leading to the end of the world as we knew it. A terrible place filled with greed, avarice, graft, lust, incompetence, lies, deceit, and fear. That's a lot of thesaurus usage, my friend, that you just said the same word about six times. six times yep what this book paperback 100 pages 2795 actually is i have no idea i haven't gotten around to reading it yet all his books are like a hundred pages or less it's so funny and then there's the last christmas now the the is missing from the book's cover because the cover is

literally just a poster for the 2019 rom-com last christmas i swear to God. Master Kim may need to brush up on his ninja Photoshop skills because he forgot to crop out the credits under the title. So apparently his latest book was written by Emma Thompson and directed by Paul Feig. All Kim did was at a block of text at the bottom that said perhaps the last one many of us will see. So make it a good one. Sounds cheerful, doesn't it? The description

is just a rant about the war on Christmas and complaints about not being able to enjoy the holidays because of coronavirus, which, since the year of the plague, Kim had apparently decided wasn't going to end the world and was actually just a big fraud. Maybe the Christian Ninja anti-vaxxer in your own life would like a copy. Again, paperback 100 pages 2795. A bargain when you think about it. Especially when you think of all the fun that you'll have at the dinner table after you give it to them.

To really make a go of his business model in the modern world, Kim would have to be adept at social media, which has its difficulties. Fully half of the Ashita Kim Unmasked biography on his website is him complaining about YouTube and Facebook. It's just so boomery. It kills me dead. Facebook in particular didn't end well for our boy. Grandmaster Ashita Kim, with more than 40 years of martial arts experience dealing with bullies, was forever banned from Facebook.

As far as we know, is the only person to hold that distinction. So, one, of course he's not. And two, he's on Facebook again already. He links to it from his own freaking website. You don't need to check it out. Okay, just imagine like the boomeriest page you can possibly imagine and you will not be far off. I think Ashita Kim is an odd kind of fraud. He doesn't seem to have benefited much for spending over half his life on this doofery. The created identity and the community that came with it are all he was in it for, apparently. It's kind of sad, but also really funny. Yeah, it's almost like he's just in it for the love of the game. Yeah, I think he's in it for the attention, absolutely.

We'll leave Master Kim with a couple of quotes. First, this one from his website, Ninjitsu is the most inoffensive and non-violent martial art known to man. And from one of his videos, somebody attacks you, you stick your fingers in their eyes, you shake their head back and forth and you rattle their brain, and you throw them on the ground and you stomp on their throat until they quit wiggling. A little bit of cognitive dissonance going on there. So there you go. That's Ashita Kim.

Now, our next messed up martial artist is maybe a tad less pathetic than Kim, but equally ridiculous. George Dilman, the king of the no-touch knockout. George Dillman likes cameras very much. So if you want to see martial arts videos of a portly old dude who looks kind of like Rodney Dangerfield, there's no shortage. Okay, you can go nuts. And as George advanced in years, he discovered that he didn't need all that energetic punching and kicking to knock somebody out. He could do it all with focused chi and the ruthless application of pressure points, which, you know, was convenient for a guy who made a living doing martial arts seminars and selling VHS tapes, but still,

enjoyed the senior buffet at the Golden Corral. Anyway, there are endless videos of Master Dilman lightly slapping his students, or just saying, ning, and moving his hands toward them a little bit, and the students drop like his sack of hammers. So, is this real? I'm going to go out on a limb and say, probably not. And if it was real, then George was risking his students

getting brain injuries just to play to a crowd, which is not great either. George Dillman was born in 1942 in Pennsylvania. According to his autobiography, he, like Ashita Kim, was from a military family and started judo when he was nine years old. When he was 17, he fought with his stepdad and left home. He took up boxing, competing in small-scale bouts, like smaller than Rocky at the start of the movie, and won a record of 25 to 3 over 3.5 years.

This is, according to George, so who knows if it's true, there are no record. but if I had to guess, he probably did box, but not so much and not so well as he claims he did. George eventually got sick of this life, and who can blame him? To stick with Rocky, was you ever punched in the face 500 times a night? Stings after a while, you know. Young George joined the army and was still serving when Washington, D.C. erupted in riots in 1968 following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and President Johnson called in the troops. During the disturbance, George took on 30 rioters by himself and hand-to-hand fighting and put two of them in the hospital.

There's no record of this because it didn't happen. During this time, yeah. During this time, George also remembered a time when hippies attacked the Pentagon. I would love to see that shit, right? Right. According to George, he was holding his rifle and said, I only have nine rounds, but the first nine who want to step forward. Ooh, very cool line, very real, very true, very Bruce Willis, circa 1985. Yippie Kaye, motherfucker.

By that time, George had been studying karate for six years. Between 1969 and 1972, he won 327. he won 327 trophies, according to him. That's around one trophy every three days. So color me skeptical on that one. Also by this time, George was married, which didn't stop him from having an affair with one of his female students. His wife tried to set up a fight with the mistress.

Are you listening? Real Housewives? But it never came together. That is so disappointing. Damn. I know. You should set up a fight. fight with your husband, though. Come on. I know, right? Don't fight her, fight him.

George was at least a moderately competent finder at one point. In 1967, he met Muhammad Ali at a dinner, and a few years later, they ran into each other by chance, and Ali asked George to train with him. This part of George's bio, at least, seems genuine, but of course he has to go too far and claim that the karate Ali learned from him was what gave him the edge in fights. Yes, George. Muhammad Ali needed your help to win fights. Thought him everything he knew. There's not much supporting George's claim to have also trained with Bruce Lee,

other than a couple of pictures of them both looking awkward in blazers. In 1983, George learned Kyusho Jitsu, pressure point fighting, from Japanese martial artist Sayu Oyata. There's been some suggestion that George just attended a few of Oyatah's seminar. and made sure to get plenty of pictures to create the illusion of a master-student relationship. The pressure point bit comes from attacking nerve clusters to cause intense pain, and anyone who's ever hit their funny bone will recognize that there might be something to that, although how useful it would be in a fight is debatable.

I mean, you don't see MMA fighters fiddling around trying to get the right grip on someone's neck or arm. They're just smacking each other in the head instead. Sayyu Oyata, who, unlike George, seems to have been the real deal, just used pressure points as part of an overall style and not the basis of a career. George opened karate schools, held seminars, sometimes in the middle of them all, and sold books and VHS tapes. He doesn't quite have a sheet of Kim's ridiculous chutzpah. I think we forgot to mention that on his website, Kim sincerely declares, I am legend. Oh, my God, the cringe. Actually, Ishida could probably knock you out with cringe alone.

Like, he could knock you out with cringe from about 100 paces. That's his superpower. Instead, George describes himself as one of the USA's best-known and well-established martial arts personalities, which is fair enough, I guess. And apparently some degree of humility is a great sales technique because George has made a lot more money. than a sheet of crim. At one point, he apparently owned over 150 karate schools worldwide.

And he must be selling at least some of his ridiculously overpriced DVDs on his website. Dilman China Tour, a martial arts journey through China hosted by Grandmaster George Dilman, five DVD set. How much do you think somebody would dare charge for what sounds suspiciously like their old

vacation videos? If you guessed anything less than 100 $159.95, you're out of look. $159.99.955 cents. So George is much more successful than Ishida Kim, but is what he's selling any more real? George's twist on pressure point fighting was his infamous no-touch knockout, where he claimed a blast of various mystical and scientific energies could knock somebody on their ass. And I have to say that I, it took me years to realize this, and I'm embarrassed about it. Okay.

But when I was in college, I actually went to an Iquito tournament, like a demo, because I was taking I keto classes at the time. And I saw somebody do this. I saw somebody like lay on the floor and like five guys came running at him. And he just kind of twitched and they went flying, you know, and it looked really cool, like something out of the Matrix or something. and I was like, oh my God, how did you do that? Of course, now I know that was bullshit, honey.

That's how they did. They just threw themselves, for God's sakes. But little 20-year-old me thought it was amazing and totally bought it at the time. That's embarrassing to admit. There are a couple of ways this could work in Georgia's seminars and other demonstrations. One is the stage magician's old standby, a plant in the audience.

In fact, a lot of George's demonstrations. Demonstrations seem to involve a dude with dark frizzy hair and a mustache, but then that was a popular look in the 80s. Tom Selleck, I'm looking at you. The other explanation is that George is essentially acting as a stage hypnotist, where self-selected susceptibility and the influence of an audience can get people to do really weird things. It's strange, but it's not a mystical martial art. And it doesn't always work. In 1994, a UFC trainer, Mark Tripp, said he'd give George $2,000 if George could successfully use his no-touch knockout on him. According to Tripp, George tried and failed and then sucker-punched Tripp to knock him down.

Which seems like bad sportsmanship to me, really. Dillman and his students claim the no-touch trick worked. Now, make up your own mind, but before trusting his word, keep in mind that George Dillman is a man who says stuff like this. There's a video where he has a student. Frizy hair, mustache, hold out his hand. And he says, positive electricity on this side. He's rubbing the guy's palm. And then he touches the back of his hand. There's a negative electricity back here. If it were possible for you to squeeze it together, the person is supposed to die. Convincing stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyway, George and the nerds in his classes have a lot of fun striking magneto poses and pretending to knock each other down with focus blasts of chi. In 2005, the National Geographic Show, Is It Real, brought in a documentary team, along with a skeptical scientist who looked kind of embarrassed as Dilman and his students failed to knock him down with mind bullets. They got one of George's students who had previously been knocked down by the master's chi blasts, and they put him behind a curtain so he couldn't see George. Without any visual power of suggestion, the student simply stood looking puzzling. awaiting the chief force that never came. So, is it real?

Evidently not. George, though, of course, had an explanation for why it didn't work. I don't know if I should say this on film, but if the guy had his tongue in the wrong position of the mouth, that can also nullify it. Yeah, you can nullify it. You can nullify it. You can nullify a lot of things done to you. Yeah, yeah.

You can nullify it if you raise those two big toes. Which, you know, if it's that persnickety, isn't it freaking useless anyway? So understandably, after the TV episode aired, it became a lot harder for anybody to take George Jillman seriously. Obviously, the whole thing was bullshit, but it was also useless bullshit. A fighting style that relies on your opponent's tongue and toes being in just the right place, well, let's just say it has certain flaws. Not that George had owned up to that, of course. He's still out there, peddling his superpowers. Carefully, though. Here's George at an outdoor event.

And I was going to throw Chi with the punch. And naturally, I gave it everything I had to focus the punch. I threw that punch at the spot right here where if you were shot, the bullet could pass through and not hit a major organ. And I'm glad I did because that punch would have killed him. I'm sorry, this goes me every time. It's something else. We're going to show you some of these videos and they're just preposterous.

And, you know, time comes for us all and we're not going to make fun of them for it, but since he's claiming to be a lethal weapon with the power to kill you with his mind, I think it's worth pointing out that George is a short, round, elderly man. He looks like somebody's pop pop. I don't know. Maybe your pop pop can explode a human heart with the power of cheat, but most of them can't. At least until recently, George was still teaching people how to fight. Let us know. Would any of this help you learn? You are to hit back to front, and then you are to punch him front to back. You understand?

It goes main source, splits, splits, and splits. That's why there is a triple warmer point. It is what we call a dangerous point. It can do damage. Got it. Watch me go. And by the way, we got those quotes from the YouTube channel, interesting stuff from around the world,

which looked through more Dilman videos than we would ever want to do. or could do while keeping our sanity. It's a fun channel. The guy goes on deep dives of all kinds of, let's say, eccentric people. And he's got a video on David Ike, too. So if you want to lose your mind, watch that one as well. Yeah. I think early on, George Dillman was a standard issue bullshitter.

The kind of blowhard who dials all his stories up to 11. But as soon as he realized there was money to be made, those exaggerations spiraled out of control. Like, are we really supposed to believe that in the 80s, the two biggest police departments in the country, New York and Chicago, we're using George Dillman techniques to subdue subjects? And these were special toned down techniques because, of course, the full Dillman would have killed too many people. You can't use the full Dillman. You can never use the full Dillman, okay? You got a half Dillman at most. They call it the Dill.

You got to either dill or man, you can't do both. George is happy to cite the martial artist he's known and learned from and most likely exaggerate the depth of the relationship, but I suspect at some point he's also studied some books on stage magic and hypnosis. His real talent is at working a crowd and guiding them into reacting the way he wants. In the Wild West days, the 80s, this meant he could sell a shit ton of videos and build himself up as a big name in martial arts. And although the intense scrutiny of the internet age has exposed him to a lot of ridicule, he's still out there making money. Right. So who gets the last laugh? Might not be us, campers. We want to wrap this up by

briefly talking about the man, the myth, the maniac, Stephen Seagall. Yay. It's possible some people might only know him as a contemporary weirdo, and that others might misremember him as a huge star of the 90s, so here's a quick acting career retrospective. A few middling hits in the early 90s, under siege, by far the most successful. But he faded quickly, and his movies were soon ranking below the likes of a very Brady sequel in That Darn Cat. His 21st century work is almost all straight to video, and he soon became much more famous for being a ridiculous human being. For this story, we're going to take a quick look at the martial art side of his life, both real and imagined. Stephen Segal was born in Lansing, Michigan

in 1952. His family moved to California when Stephen was five and was still, according to his mom, a puny kid. He buffed up with time, though, and started studying Aikido, which is how he met his first wife, Miyako Fujitani, the daughter of an Aikido master. met Stephen in California in the fall of 1974, she said later. He followed me back to Japan in October, and we got married in December 1974. What's the Japanese equivalent of a green card wedding? It might be worth noting that the Vietnam War was still going on at that time, and Stephen wasn't going to get drafted in Japan. Miyako's family owned an Aikido school, and Stephen taught there, although he didn't get a black belt until 1978, and even that. Well, Miyako says the only reason

Stephen was awarded the black belt was because the judge, who was famous for his laziness, fell asleep during Stephen's presentation. The judge just gave him the black belt. You might have gathered that Miyako is not the biggest fan of her ex-husband, and you'll see why in a minute. Despite struggling to get his black belt, during his time in Japan, Stephen Seagal trained CIA agents. They saw my abilities, both with martial arts and with the language. You could say that I became an advisor to several CIA agents in the field, and through my friends in the CIA, I met many powerful people and did special works and favors. He also got into fights with the Yakuza. All this is, of course, 100% definitely for sure true. Also, I've got a bridge I'd like

to sell you. Our boy just wasn't that good at Aikido, and it turns out the CIA already has people that can speak Japanese. Miyako says the fights with the Yves. Yakuza were just Stephen going out to chase off a couple of drunks who were making too much noise. You probably already know this, but Sigal is a pathological liar. He's claimed to have been a student of the founder of Aikido, Moriahi Ushiba, who died in 1969 at the age of 85 when Sigal was still in high school in California. After finding work as a fight coordinator in a couple of movies, Sigal had ambitions of being a movie star.

To help him, Miyako, who was the one making. money, saved everything she could. Then in 1983, he cleaned out their savings account and headed back to California, leaving behind his wife and two young children. Wow, what a champ, right? Their daughter, by the way, was in the 90s Japanese reboot of the Gamera franchise, which I would rank higher than any Seagall movie you cared to name. Back in California, Seagal opened to Hollywood Aikido Dojo, got confused about his divorce to me. and committed a little light bigamy, no big deal, and made it into movies when an agent took one of his classes. There are rumors that this agent had taken a bet that he could make anybody

a movie star and then decided to prove it with this martial arts teacher. Probably not true, but Seagall has the kind of charisma that makes you think it could be. And as far as real-world martial arts achievements go, this is the end of the Stephen Seagall story, a competent martial arts instructor with some talent for seeing what would look good on film. And then he was an action movie star, a job that usually involves some running, which is funny because Stephen Segal can't run. Or rather, he runs like a goofy, like eight-year-old kid with spaghetti arms. I am dead serious.

Watch him sometime. It is hilarious. He runs like a little kid. A Saturday Night Live appearance cemented his growing reputation as one of Hollywood's biggest assholes, which didn't change once people stopped coming to his movies. He's since tried to make money in other ways, for example, through his line of essential oils, like Paraway, the ultimate parasite control system, or trauma life designed to neutralize difficult past experiences. There were also fragrances like Lotus Moon, an exotic,

alluring proprietary blend of essential oils designed to captivate the opposite sex. Look, I don't know what Stephen Segal smells like. Exotic wouldn't surprise. me alluring, I have my doubts. Then there was his energy drink line, Stephen Seagall's lightning bolt, available in Cherry Charge and the more mysterious Asian experience.

Oh God. And the ad for these is just incredible. It starts with the voiceover of an actor doing a really bad impression of Stephen Seagall for his own product, remember. It's 100% natural and it tastes just great. In fact, it's so good. He likes swimming in it. And then we cut to a swimming pool

with cardboard boxes of lightning bolt and a few cans scattered around. There's this young woman in a yellow bikini, either Seagall's girlfriend or possibly just an unlucky actress playing her, and she's in the water pouring out a can of Cherry Charge. Sigal is in a chair by the pool and mumbles, I really wanted to swim in Stephen Seagal's Lightning Bull with you. It's just incredibly awkward and surreal from start to finish. And in my opinion, it's the best movie Stephen Seagall has ever made. Seagal famously became a Russian citizen in 2016. And over there, he does Iketo demonstrations where athletic young men rush at him, and honestly more like they want to hug him than attack

him. And the 60-something Stephen effortlessly sends them flying with a flick of his wrist, all definitely real and not staged. He also got into crypto promotion. And honestly, anyone who got into that based on a recommendation from Steven Seagall deserves whatever they got. And really, he's a preposterous human being and his whole life is a rabbit hole of absurdity and extremely sketchy behavior. If you want to know more, it's not hard to find. Yeah, the interesting stuff from around the world guy did a video on him too. And I laughed so hard.

I thought I was going to throw up. It's so funny. You have to watch Seagull's episode of S&L. It's on YouTube. I laughed my ass off. And not because our guy's a great comic actor. I mean, he is, but like not on purpose. But we'll leave you with a story that is probably not true or at least exaggerated.

Stephen Seagall was not popular on the sets of his movies because he liked to accidentally make contact with stunt people and actors during action scenes, which often meant he. He hit them in the balls. So that's the background. On one of Seagall's early movies, Out for Justice, judo champion Gene LaBelle was a stunt coordinator. Seagal had been boasting that his Ikeedo training meant he simply could not be made unconscious. And he challenged LeBelle to try and choke him out. When Seagal said go, LaBelle immediately choked him out and Stephen Seagal shit himself.

And that, I think, is something we can all be happy. happy about. Yeah, and the best part is that apparently he still gets furious if anybody brings that up. So, yeah, sorry, man. To be honest, you brought it on yourself. All over yourself, I bet. Allegedly. So that was a... Allegedly. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And as always, we want to send a grateful shout out to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so much to Andre, Laura, Megan, Joshua, Rhonda, and Mary. We appreciate y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not yet a patron, you're missing

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