All the while, rival Chicago dojos remained on a collision course. Exacerbating all of it, Count Dante without his Dragon Lady by his side was unmoored, having one fewer reason to operate within any rules. It was only a matter of time before it all came to a head.
What specifically sparked the infamous, unprecedented confrontation between John’s crew and the Green Dragons that unfolded on April 24, 1970, at the Black Cobra Hall is still debated: It may have been a feud over students, or an attempted extortion. What is known is that John rounded up a group of devotees and, in a bizarre gesture at fair play, called up the Green Dragons to let them know they were coming to the Black Cobra Hall, where the Green Dragons trained. The space was located in a nondescript one-floor storefront. But inside it resembled some kind of medieval lair. On the walls were various weapons: a pair of guandaos, a Chinese pole with long shafts and curving flat blades, a spear, nunchucks, a mace and an ax.
On John’s side was Jim Koncivic, his talented 26-year-old protege now running a dojo of his own, and three of Koncivic’s students. At the door, John presented an Indiana sheriff’s badge — the reason for this remains unclear — and the group burst into the dojo. There, they faced a couple dozen Green Dragon students and allies.
John faced a moment of truth in the small space that was losing light with a dropping sun. If he had any chance to live up to the more noble ideals of karate to improve and empower people’s lives — something Christy had always applauded — this was it. He could pick up the mantle of using karate to bring people together in a society filled with biases and unfair advantages. But he chose the path of deploying karate to tear people apart. He had truly become Count Dante, the villain he had invented.
The door slammed, closing the combatants inside. One fighter with a blade lunged while most of the students bolted for the back exit. Those who remained went into their stances, grabbed weapons off the wall and charged. John landed a debilitating blow to the face of one young karateka(with a mace, or nunchuck, or his fingers as he tried plucking out his eye, depending on who told the story). But there was an especially fierce focus on Jim Koncivic. His body poured blood from slashes and stab wounds. Koncivic’s students, realizing he was in serious danger, kicked open the front door. As Koncivic stumbled outside, clothes soaked in blood, a Green Dragon member hurled a spear, puncturing his throat.
The next morning the Chicago Sun-Times ran the headline “Rival karate clubs fight on N.W. Side; one killed” and the Chicago Tribune’s read “Karate School Feud Flares.” The Green Dragon member struck in the face by John had to be hospitalized to save his right eye. Devotees of John who had found an important part of their identities at the Imperial Academy of Fighting Arts were heartbroken to see where it had all ended up. Koncivic, John’s earnest and well-meaning pupil and lookalike, was dead, a morbid symbol of the better parts of John Keehan that died that night.
