I have been reviewing my assets the past few days. I am looking at supports materials. The film is about so much more than Keehan/Dante. The world of martial arts is vast and varied, the history, when not stilted can become glorious. Ken Knudson gave me some old tournament footage. There is a clip of him at a shiai fighting Joe Lewis. He really holds his own.
Knudson was a student of Jimmy Jones, a first generation student of John Keehan. Jimmy Jones came to student with Keehan and found Ray Cooper(The Chicago Tiger according to Black Belt magazine in the mid-1960s), aka Nganga Tolo-Naa, a firm presence in the school. Tolo-Naa is a long-time friend and associate of Mike Felkoff, who tells me in the film he walked into John’s dojo with his shoes on in order to challenge him on the spot and that John did not do for the bait. Tolo-Naa treatedMike Felkoff wounds the night of the Dojo/Dragon War. Both Tolo-Naa and Felkoff took up the internal arts by the early 1970s. Tolo-Naa was teaching in the South Suburbs of Chicago when I first saw him. His school was legendary. The Dante legacy of hard training has always applied to and been carried on by his students.
It is clips like this that will help round out this tale of the social history of martial arts in America. Within these clips lie other stories that give another effect, another way to look at the man’s life. Writer and scholar ViJay Prashad is This story is too big to be dominated by one region, the beginning or end. It is a wholistic tale of a man, his world, his art and long term effects of activity and behaviors. We have been seeing a lot of that lately He is nothing without his beginnings.
There is footage I will have of
