Count Dante (previously at Boing Boing) was the greatest, but he was far from the only one. Dante and others feature in Super Eyepatch Wolf’s compendium of kung-fu crooks, bullshit black-belts and the mysticism-tinged genre of no-touch knock-outs.
I think there’s a good case to be made that much of this is a form of theater. As with debunking western psychics and televangelists and whatnot, there’s the necessary exposure of people using it as a vehicle for fraud or to trap people in a cult — and then there’s skeptics ranting about end-of-the-pier fortune tellers. Or enjoying watching old men get punched in the face for their sins (previously).