The kingdom of Dahomey initiated a ritual and military obsession with Oyo following the humbling defeat of Agaja's forces by the Alaafin's army in 1727. Avenging this embarrassing loss became a fixation for subsequent monarchs of Dahomey, who instituted a series of rigorous ritual and recreational combat systems in order to secure and expand their dominance over neighboring polities. These martial exercises focused on the widespread practice of combat 'dances' that simulated Dahomean fighting methods. The most prominent of these was the 'decapitation dance', during which members of the Dahomean army performed a stylized version of their battlefield head-severing techniques. Demonstrated at the annual month-long Xwetanu festival, the display of these skills later coalesced with the customary beheading of 12 prisoners, dressed in imitation of the Oyo, in a ceremony that celebrated Dahomey's assertion of independence from their former imperial rulers. The ritual importance of these exercises, stimulated by decades of combative and cultural contact with Oyo's army and by the incorporation of religious beliefs related to warfare from neighboring 'Anago' groups, is an underrated component of Dahomey's martial reputation and success in the late precolonial era. This paper also proposes some preliminary research on the role that these combative techniques? as well as the larger matrix of Yoruba-Gbe warfare training and philosophy to which they belonged? played in African-initiated rebellions and revolutions in Haiti, Brazil and other parts of the Americas throughout the 18th and 19th century.