anged by the KKK, Addicted to Heroin, and Won Titles on LSD: The Buried Scars of Ron “The Black Dragon” Van Clief

Ron “The Black Dragon” Van Clief, the name personally bestowed upon him by the legendary Bruce Lee, was once the unyielding symbol of Black strength in the martial arts world. But behind that glory lay secrets he tried to bury for half a century: racial nightmares, the pain of war, destructive addictions, and family wounds that never healed. Now, everything is resurfacing—raw, real, and painfully human.

To understand how Ron Van Clief survived hell and became a legend, we must go back to the darkness of his beginning. Growing up in 1950s Brooklyn, where poverty and violence were the first lessons of childhood, Ron joined the U.S. Navy at 17, seeking discipline and an escape. It was in the military that he found salvation in martial arts, a way to control fear and turn anger into focus.

After his discharge, Ron quickly became an American martial arts phenomenon, winning five world championships in karate and kung fu, along with 15 All-American titles. In 1966, at an exhibition in Hong Kong, Ron met Bruce Lee. After watching Ron perform a powerful Goju Ryu Kata, Lee stepped forward and declared: “You are the Black Dragon.” That name stayed with him, not just as a nickname but as a prophecy of a legend who would transcend race.

Survival Under the KKK’s Noose and the Ghost of PTSD

Amidst the years of training and dazzling victories, Ron Van Clief carried a dark secret he almost never fully told—a memory that nearly cost him his life as a young Black soldier.

In the 1960s, a 17-year-old Ron Van Clief was undergoing military training in North Carolina, a state still sharply divided by racial lines. One night, on his way back to the barracks, he was stopped by a group of unknown white men. They spoke little, offering only cold stares, racial slurs, and the butt of a rifle crashing into his head. He was beaten unconscious, tied up, thrown into a truck, and dumped on a deserted dirt road. There, they looped a rope around his neck and hanged him from a tree branch—a horrifying ritual practiced by Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extremists.

Ron does not remember exactly what happened next. He only recalls the crack of his neck, the suffocating pressure, and everything fading into darkness. When he awoke, he was in a military hospital. Doctors told him he had been clinically dead for several minutes and couldn’t explain his survival. He spent five months recovering from severe injuries to his neck, spine, and vocal cords, having to relearn how to speak and swallow without pain.

The physical pain, however, was nothing compared to the nightmares. For years, he couldn’t sleep through the night; the cruel laughter of the men who hanged him haunted his dreams. For decades, he kept the story secret. It wasn’t until 2020, in the documentary The Hanged Man, that Ron, nearly 80 years old, finally revealed the full horror, confirming the incident.

He was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Ron later admitted he had contemplated suicide. Only martial arts—which taught him focus, control, and breathing—kept him alive. “If it weren’t for karate, I wouldn’t be here,” he stated. His survival was nothing short of defiance against a system of hate.

The Vietnam Hell, the Helicopter Crash, and Heroin

After surviving the noose, Ron Van Clief stepped into the next hell: the Vietnam War. In mid-1964, he was deployed to Vietnam as an artillery commander.

During an ammunition transport mission, the M60 helicopter carrying him was struck by anti-aircraft fire. The aircraft shook violently, burst into flames, and plunged into the southern forests of Hue. Ron sustained devastating injuries, breaking his ribs, sternum, and spine, and was pierced by fragments of metal.

But that was not his deepest wound. Around the same time, his younger brother, Pete Van Clief, a 22-year-old paratrooper, was killed after stepping on a landmine during a search operation. The shock of losing his brother shattered him. “That was the day I truly died inside,” he would later admit.

To numb the pain and escape the horrors of war, he began using painkillers and gradually turned to heroin. He said, “I wasn’t addicted because I wanted to be; I was addicted because there was no other way to endure.” He called the drugs “the memory eraser.” After the war, he carried two things: the honor of a soldier and the scars of an addict. Yet, he refused to be consumed, kicking the heroin habit by replacing it with meditation, breathing, and intensive martial arts training. He turned the hell of Vietnam into fuel, rebuilding his body piece by piece.

Winning a World Title on LSD and the Gutter Secrets

To the world, Ron Van Clief embodied discipline and absolute control. But the fight against his personal demons included shocking episodes.

In 1969, at the New York Coliseum, Ron stepped into the ring to fight for the World Middleweight Championship. Running through his veins that night was not just adrenaline, but LSD—a powerful hallucinogen. He admitted in his memoir that he had taken a small dose of “acid” before the fight simply to escape the pressure and the echoes of war still ringing in his head. In his hallucination, Ron fought as if in a surreal state, moving with extraordinary speed and dodging strikes instinctively. After three rounds, he knocked out his opponent and was crowned world champion.

The story of the drug-fueled victory was long thought to be a rumor until Ron officially confirmed it. He neither denied nor excused it, simply saying, “I survived. That’s the truth.” His courage to confront his past—speaking about using heroin to cope with Vietnam and taking LSD to escape pressure—shocked the martial arts community, whose image was based on mental purity. Yet, it was this honesty that made him more respected than ever.

Eight Marriages and the Hatred for Fame

If the scars of war were etched onto Ron Van Clief’s body, his family life left wounds no one could see. His father, a World War II veteran, died at 60 from an overdose, a result of the heroin addiction he developed after the war. The loss of his father and his brother Pete, both claimed by the indirect tragedy of war, left him constantly searching for peace.

Perhaps that’s why Ron never found peace in love: eight marriages and five children. Each marriage was another fracture in his soul. He always kept his private life intensely guarded. Only recently did the full truth emerge: eight marriages to women from different cultures, five children spread far apart, and a profound loneliness. He once confessed that fame had made it impossible for him to be an ordinary father: “A legend isn’t allowed to be vulnerable, but being a father requires it.”

Most strikingly, Ron Van Clief harbored a deep resentment toward fame itself. He bluntly stated: “I never wanted to be famous. I made movies just to pay the rent.” The title “The Black Dragon,” which secured his place in history, was also the shadow that denied him peace. To Ron, fame was pressure, a spotlight shining directly on the scars he longed to hide.

In 1994, after losing to Royce Gracie at UFC 4, Ron announced his retirement. He was disillusioned with what he called “commercialized martial arts.” Immediately after leaving the UFC, he vanished from public life, quietly moving to Hawaii to teach martial arts to children and spend time in meditation. When reporters tracked him down, he simply said, “I’ve lived enough for two lifetimes. Now I want silence.”

At 80, Ron still practices yoga and meditates before dawn. He no longer insists on the title “The Black Dragon,” simply saying, “Now I’m just Ron.” Perhaps that is his final victory: the right to be himself, a famous man who resisted fame, who fought to be forgotten. Ron Van Clief is not just a symbol of strength; he is proof that even after falling to the deepest depths, a person can climb back up, step by step, breath by breath, reborn from addiction, pain, and the guilt of the past.