Keith Vargo is a writer, researcher, martial arts instructor, and fighter based in Tokyo. He was a columnist and Japan correspondent for Black Belt magazine for nearly 20 years and is the author of Philosophy of Fighting: Morals and Motivations of the Modern Warrior and The Soul or Fight: Martial Arts, Combat Sports and the Search for Warrior Wisdom. He also advised on the translation of Yujiro Watanabe's 1923 boxing manual, A Quick Guide to Boxing and wrote a foreword to the book.
Keith was the first foreigner to earn a shodan (first-degree black belt) from the world-renowned Takada Dojo, where he trained with MMA legend Kazushi Sakuraba and other top fighters from the golden era of Japanese MMA. During his competitive years, Keith fought professionally in MMA, boxing and submission grappling and was an amateur shootboxing and combat wrestling champion. Keith also holds a degree in psychology and a certificate in multi-cultural self-defense from Radford University in Virginia.