Frank Dux
Dux served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve from 1975 to 1981, and claims he was sent on covert missions to Southeast Asia and awarded the Medal of Honor.
He detailed his alleged work for the CIA in the book The Secret Man in 1996, and that same year co-wrote the story for the film The Quest alongside Jean-Claude Van Damme.
[2] Dux states that he was introduced to and trained in ninjutsu by Senzo "Tiger" Tanaka,[4] whom he described as a "world-famous" teacher and the descendant of 40 generations of warriors.
[2] Dux wrote articles for the September and October 1980 issues of Black Belt magazine, giving advice on martial arts techniques including knife fighting.
[7] In 1980, Dux was interviewed by John Stewart from Black Belt, stating that he participated in a 1975 martial arts competition in The Bahamas called the Kumite, describing the event as a 60-round single-elimination tournament held in secret every five years.
[8] According to Dux, he was the first person to be given permission to speak publicly about the event, and was the first Westerner to win the tournament, achieving several world records there including the most consecutive knock-outs (56) and the fastest knockout punch (0.12 seconds).
[9][10] In 1993, Dux attended the 2nd annual Draka Martial Arts Trade Show in Los Angeles, where he had a confrontation with kickboxer Zane Frazier.
[12][13][14] Dux states that Frazier sucker punched him while wearing brass knuckles,[13] in contradiction to multiple sources, including mixed martial arts (MMA) referee John McCarthy, who make no mention of this in their accounts of the fight.
In the book, Dux states that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William J. Casey arranged to meet him in a restroom, and recruited him to work on covert missions, including destroying a fuel depot in Nicaragua and a chemical weapons plant in Iraq.
[20] Contrary to his claims, Dux's military records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that he never served overseas, that he has not been given the Medal of Honor or any other award, and that in January 1978 he was referred for psychiatric evaluation after he expressed "flighty and disconnected ideas".
[2] A photograph of Dux in military uniform shows service ribbons being displayed in an incorrect order, and the Medal of Honor he is wearing is the version given to members of the United States Army, rather than the Marine Corps.
Questioned about the photograph in 1988, Dux told John Johnson from the Los Angeles Times he was not able to get the military to explain why he was awarded a medal from the wrong service,[2] though in later years he changed his story to say the uniform was just a Halloween costume.
[2][28] John Johnson reported he could find no evidence of Dux's alleged teacher Senzo "Tiger" Tanaka in history books or from other martial arts experts.
[16] Soldier of Fortune opined there were at least ten logical inconsistencies in the book, such as Dux's "preposterous" claim that Casey personally handled his operations and ensured that no one else in the CIA would know of his existence, yet contradicts this by describing receiving documents and support from other personnel on numerous occasions.
[1] Reviewing the book, Publishers Weekly said, "It's hard to tell whether the author is merely posturing or expressing his fantasy life in a memoir that reads as if patterned on the early paperback Avenger series.
[33] Dux says that the reason he no longer has a sword he was presented with at the Kumite is that he sold it in a failed attempt to buy the freedom of a boat of orphans whom he later rescued from pirates,[2][33] that he stopped a plot to assassinate Steven Seagal,[32] and that discrepancies in his martial arts history are the work of fabrications by his rivals including ninjutsu master Stephen K.
[21] Dariel Figueroa from Uproxx opined that there were several holes in both Dux's claims, as well as those of some of his critics, "leading to a mess of false evidence, lies, and, somewhere in the middle, the truth.
"[21] Hugh Landman from Ranker has stated that while Dux "lies about, or at least greatly exaggerates, many aspects of his career," that does not necessarily mean his story is entirely false, speculating he may have won a Kumite that was significantly different from the one that appears in Bloodsport.
