The transcript below is from the video “Bruce Lee’s Big Fight With Karate Grandmaster Joe Lewis – What Really Happened?” by Beerdy – Bruce Lee Central.

Bruce Lee Real Fight Channel (Real Bruce Lee Fight Stories and Jeet Kune Do Training):

What really happened between Bruce Lee and Karate Grandmaster Joe Lewis that ended up ruining their friendship forever?

Bernard “Beerdy” McAlister knows what happened between the two and for the first time ever he’s sharing this info.

Bruce Lee Real Fight Channel (Real Bruce Lee Fight Stories and Jeet Kune Do Training):

Hey everybody. It’s Beerdy here aka Bruce Lee Central. What’s going on guys? I just want to explain what happened between Bruce Lee, Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris, before the filming of Way of the Dragon or Return of the Dragon as it was called in the US. So originally Bruce wanted Joe Lewis to play the character Colt in Way of the Dragon and they agreed actually on the role, but then they had an argument about the fight… the actual fight in the movie and they had a huge disagreement about what? No one ever knows. This was between those two only. So probably something about the fight who wins who dies etc, etc.

Bruce Lee Real Fight Channel (Real Bruce Lee Fight Stories and Jeet Kune Do Training):

So they had a falling out. They couldn’t agree and then because at the time Chuck Norris and Joe Lewis were the two world champions they were the two most recognized world champions in karate and Joe Lewis was actually the better one because he was the father of modern kickboxing. So he was a real true mixed martial artist. While Chuck Norris was just a karate world champion. So Bruce Lee ended up contacting Chuck Norris and asking him if he wanted to play the role of Colt, instead of Joe Lewis, because at this time Joe Lewis had said no he didn’t want to do it. They had a falling out. They had an argument and Chuck Norris said, well okay. Let’s try this. This is… this was Chuck Norris’s first movie ever. He didn’t know how to act really. But as you can see in the movie he doesn’t have any dialogue at all in the Way of the Dragon.

Bruce Lee Real Fight Channel (Real Bruce Lee Fight Stories and Jeet Kune Do Training):

So uh literally he has no dialogue at all so it ended up going to Chuck Norris and it ended up being a real good choice, because the fight between Chuck Norris and Bruce Lee was unscripted. They just went at it. So uh they just like halfway agreed on what they were going to do. You hit me, you kick me, I hit you, you punch me etc etc and they just took it on the fly, and we got the greatest fighting scene ever in a movie. So it ended up being a good choice. Joe Lewis, I bet you he regretted it for a long time because of course this started Chuck Norris’s career. He became worldwide famous after his movie. So yeah Joe Lewis probably regretted it. So that’s the story guys. And here is the interview on how Bruce Lee met Joe Lewis. Enjoy.

Joe Lewis (American Kickboxer, Point Karate Fighter, and Actor):

Later in 1968… early 68 I was doing a nightclub act with myself, Bob Wall… he was the co-star of that film Enter the Dragon and Mike Stone… we were kind of like buddies at that time. As a matter of fact Bob and I were living together. We were business partners. At the end of each nightclub act, Mike Stone and I would do a little demonstration Karate match and then I noticed his style had changed. And he started telling me he was working out with his chinese guy named Bruce Lee and he said uh Bruce Lee wants to work with you. You should go down and start taking lessons with private lessons. So eventually I took his advice and uh Bruce Lee and I got in contact with each other and once a week I would go there and take a [?] with Bruce and spend the whole rest of the week working on what he would show me. And it actually in a great way improved my fighting stuff.

Joe Lewis (American Kickboxer, Point Karate Fighter, and Actor):

Bruce Lee kind of got me back into the full contact stuff because we studied a lot of old boxing films like Willy Pep, a lot of Italians… pound for pound best fighter of all time. Some people told Sugar Ray Robinson is. We’d watch Willy Pep’s footwork. We will watch the explosiveness of some of Jack Dempsey’s fight films. We watch the stationary positioning of the great Joe Lewis when he got on the inside, like in the pocket. We’d watch the distancing and mobility tactics of a of a Muhammad Ali and it kind of got me interested in the full contact, as opposed to the the stationary… kind of you hit me, I hit you back, your turn, my turn type of fighting. So I got tired and I got kind of really disgusted with what they call point fighting and so I decided i’m going to go in and and create a new sport and just call it full contact.