If Tameem went to the design team and said "Hey, make the new Dante look like me" they would indeed laugh their asses off and probably throw him out. No serious game company would do such a thing and get away with it. Why that is so hard for people to believe is beyond me. Of course Tameem never did something like that. To think otherwise is completely ridiculous!
Mortal Kombat did something like it by making the character Mokap, based on the guy who did their motion capturing, and it was definately NOT recieved very well amongst the fans or the gamers overall. At that point, the MK team was deemed to be quite unserious and the MK games were laughed at... that is until they came out with the newest MK game and proved to the world that they are indeed a serious game company. MK being a fighting game with over-the-top gore and bad humour, however, they are more or less excused to make such mistakes, but people still had trouble taking them seriously... and there are still fans who aren't taking them seriously.
Tameem making Dante look like himself would be professional suicide. So why would he even try and do that?
No, if anything, Tameem copied the new Dante's haircut after the concept was done, because he thought it looks cool. That's the most likely explanation. Tameem is even as humble to say "Dante is more handsome than I" and such which proves he isn't a narcissistic a-hole who makes characters appear like himself.
Tameem might have said many bad things in interviews and such, but there is no way he made Dante look like himself. And I repeat, to think otherwise is completely ridiculous. And that is not a question about opinions, but pure reason and sense of logic.