The Cult of Konigun Ninjutsu
Part Three
Constructing a Cult of Personality
By Gerald Greysmith
Every great story has a beginning. That is especially true with cult leaders and megalomaniacs. Each one has a unique telling and in the course of the work myself and my team have conducted on our own over the years one very important aspect remains true. It is never enough to debunk the claims of the fraudulent individuals. It is highly important to tell the tale of their entire lives. In social work this would be related to the practice of what we know as HBSE, or Human Behavior and Social Environment. What this means for us is that we will look at an individual from birth to the point they are at now, even if it means they have passed. Doing so allows us to take stock of their lives, their story and come to a conclusion based on rational evidence which shows why they did the things they did, and why they became who they are....or in some cases, were.
A fraud in the martial arts seeks to cultivate an energy about themselves. An aura of power one might say which allows them to be perceived as so much more than they really are. By making up a large and often times complicated story the frauds find themselves becoming that lie. To live any other way would be counterproductive to the person they claim they are. It becomes such an embedded part of their being that they have often times, as was the case with Bryce Dallas, forget who they were at all.
In doing so all they are left with is the lie.
Above: Frank Dux (left), head of Dux Ryu Ninjutsu from when he attended Grant High School in Van Nuys, CA. Bryce Dallas (right), former head of Konigun Ninjutsu when he attended East Holmes Academy in West, MS.
The Personality Begins
Often times I have found that the key to these extraordinary people who make such outlandish claims to power, daring-do and fabled exploits often have issues which stem from childhood. For example in our previous articles on Konigun Ninjutsu I revealed how Dallas was abused as a child by his very temperamental father. Students who trained with him in the late 1980's and early 1990's prior to his father's untimely (and unsolved) death testify that the few times having met him there was a certain discomfort in the atmosphere between Dallas and his father, Raymond. The senior Dallas passed away in a house fire in 1991 but the effects on his son lingered until the end of his life. Abuse on him, his siblings and ultimately his mother shaped the young man into seeking a truth beyond himself and, ultimately, to seek a method to control his life which would separate him from his overbearing father. Dallas related to me several stories of abuse and one in which while keeping his sister hidden from his father's drunken rampage one night resulted in a beating which nearly killed him. He carried a scar on his forehead for the remainder of his life and I believe this was an emotional trigger for him to see. Imagine reliving that moment everytime you looked at yourself in the mirror. Imagine what lengths one may go to in order to forget those things happened to you.
But things didn't stop there. No, Dallas began concocting a story about himself that would completely separate him from his own terrible life. He began that path in 1984 when he founded Konigun Karate in Grenada, MS. It was here that he would teach for a while until his ego got the better of him and he came face to face with a legitimately trained Karate practitioner by the name of Roger Williams. Williams was a very grounded and practical practitioner who used his own skills to put Dallas out of commission. He would leave town after that and for most this would be a lesson learned to stop what he was doing, seek real training and no longer make it from thin air.
But not Dallas.
No, instead he would hear the story of Frank Dux. Dux has made some audacious claims himself over the years very similar to Dallas. As a matter of fact you could say his own life became the life Dallas himself wanted.
Dux holding his alleged trophy for winning "The Kumite" when he was a mere nineteen years old. He claims to have fought in death matches in Asia. This was later debunked by various researchers and journalists.
As reported in previous articles Dallas claimed that at the age of nine years old he was taken from his home in West, MS and adopted into the family of the man he called Insei Saija. He further claimed that this man was the sole inheritor of Konigun Ryu and made him, after nine years of solid training the new inheritor of the system and bestowed upon him the title of "shidoshi."
The story smacks of a very familiar tone. When reading that of Dux one can see why.
Above, taken from the actual Wikipedia entry about Frank Dux. You can find this at:
At the time of Bloodsport Dux was making a lot of headway into the film industry. Over the years this brought him some measure of fame and to this day he has his die hard fans. However his entire career is built on untruths. Despite the measures of success he seems to enjoy Dux does in turn have issues with maintaining his cover stories. In 1996 he released a book titled "The Secret Man," and I know Dallas had a copy as he bragged to several students over the years of meeting Dux at the 1996 Hollywood Classic and having the chance to meet with him and have him sign his book. I believe here was where Dallas cemented his story about his life around Dux. He found a suitable source to draw from and created the persona of not Bryce Dallas, but "Shidoshi" Bryce Dallas. It was around this time that his methods of control became more concise. One example is how he began to franchise and market himself. He would open schools in small towns where people had no real idea what he was teaching and didn't even know whether to see if it was real or not. He would convince young men and women to train with him and when they did he would promote them very fast through the ranks and make them black sashes, thereby authorizing them to instruct and teach at his schools. He would then sit back and take in the majority of the money the schools made. If they bills weren't paid it didn't matter to him as he had often convinced these students to fund the schools themselves. And if the place had to be shuttered, it wouldn't affect nor be traced back to him.
It is also important to realize at this time that Dallas and Dux both were not as well-known to the world at large. This was the time where the internet was beginning it's birth. Information was shared on specific servers most times amongst practitioners who knew better. But the idea of getting this information out to a mass audience was almost unheard of aside from a movie, documentary or the like. And the movie about Bloodsport was taken as gospel by many for years.
Building his life against these lies, Dallas ultimately was brought down by high school photos which contradicted his stories of being in Japan and living there for years. Dux, also, could be brought to task for this as his own biography claims that at the age of sixteen years old he was in Japan training with his instructor as well. But his own high school year book photos show him with his classmates at that time through his Sophmore, Junior and Senior years. Additionally he joined the Marine Corps Reserves after his high school career ended. But this was where he claimed he was recruited by the CIA and sent on missions which were so top-secret their classification has been denied for decades since.
Hence, the secret man.
The covers of the yearbooks when Frank Dux attended U.S. Grant High School in California.
Frank Dux is pictured here in the second row, second from the right.
Dux, pictured again, top row, first from the left.
Dux is pictured here with his senior class, 1974. He would claim a year later was when he fought in the epic Kumite tournament and defeated the best fighters in the world at that time.
Anyone keeping up with my work has seen me recently complete along with my partner a series of articles titled "Simply Magic," where I detail my encounter with one of Dux's long-time associates, Mr. David Richardson. Richardson is a practitioner of Dux Ryu and founder of his own system of ninjutsu (that's what he calls it) and his association with Dux himself has been under various stages of design it would seem. For a long time he seemed content to remain with Dux Ryu but then made the swap to the Bujinkan, and now has seemingly reconnected with his old mentor. Richardson has proven himself to be a liar in regards to the death of Dallas himself claiming he was killed by another person entirely. However one can see here the proof of Dallas' true death and we are not going to retread that topic.
What I am going to say is Richardson is an example of the caliber of associates Dux and Dallas would aspire to have. Ready to dox someone online, make concealed threats, defame the character and persona of a person and insult their credibility while at the same time maintaining none of their own. Richardson and his antics have been well covered not only by myself but by blogger and writer "Lordus Sapiens" on his own blog as well. He has also given a great deal of information on Richardson and if you want to read it I suggest to do so. We covered our own encounter with him only.
Above: David Richardson's senior pictures from his high school in Los Angeles, CA
In comparison to Richardson during our early years of research on Konigun we were constantly doxed by Dallas' associates Jay Green, Chris Greene, and Jim Haynes. Mr. Cayce Lancaster, the person who runs the blog where we house the majority of our work on the topic was slandered by the entire leadership of the system and made out to be a sexual predator. These behaviors are typical in acolytes to a cult. They will do whatever is necessary to not only protect the lie but also protect the leader at all costs. This is because their entire lives are built around this and cannot afford to let it get away from them. In this process they cease being victims themselves and instead become perpetrators of the same crimes as the leaders and founders of these groups.
Putting the Personality Together
In retrospect Dallas owes a lot of his success to the stories spun by Frank Dux and it cannot be understated the impact that Dux's alleged life story left on him. Dallas was a fan of Dux. This much we know. Late in the Summer of 2019 I had to make a phone call to Dux himself to confirm the relationship Dallas claimed they had to me on the phone as far back as 2010. Dux not only confirmed it but he also defended Dallas. He stated to me that any allegations against Dallas were fictional and could not, under any circumstances, be true. When presented with the facts that not only were they true but also proven he back-pedaled from the argument. Dux is not ignorant, neither was Dallas. Neither one would do anything that could endanger the foundations of what they have spent their lives building.
But the danger of these personalities is prevalent in many more insidious ways. Imagine having the ability to convince students and associates to go out after detractors at a moment's notice. This gives the leaders of these groups almost unlimited power and zero accountability to their actions all rolled into one neat package. It is well-known Dallas took advantage of this and it seems Dux and many of his current associates are doing the same thing if tales are to be believed.
And that, my friends, is where these issues become far greater and worse. As a community I say again as I have said for years. We have to remain vigilant and call for these people to be accountable. Not to us, but to the people they represent. Those students who they trick with their lies are victims. Dallas had hundreds of them. How many more of these frauds have numbers that high? The information is out there and I believe as long as we continue to work as a community these tangled webs can be undone and the truth can and will be revealed once and for all.
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