The transcript below is from “Bruce Lee’s Big Fight With Karate Grandmaster Joe Lewis: What Really Happened?” by Beerdy – Bruce Lee Central
Narrator (Beerdy – Bruce Lee Central):
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 a Dragon as it was called in the US. So originally, Bruce wanted Joe Lewis to play the counter 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.
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, et cetera, et cetera. 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.
Narrator (Beerdy – Bruce Lee Central):
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, an argument. Chuck Norris said, “Well, okay. Let’s try this.” 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 Way of the Dragon. So literally he has no dialogue at all. So it ended up going to Chuck Norris. 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 they just like halfway agreed on what we’re going to do. “You hit me. You kick me. I hit you. You punch me,” et cetera, et cetera.
Narrator (Beerdy – Bruce Lee Central):
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 (Actor, American Kickboxer):
In 1968, early 68′, I was doing a nightclub act with myself, Bob Wall. Bob Wall was the co-star of that film Enter the Dragon, and Mike Stone, we were kind of like buddies at the time. 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.
He started telling me he was working out with this Chinese guy named Bruce Lee and he said, “Bruce Lee wants to work with you. You should go down and start taking lessons with him, a private lesson with him.” So eventually I took his advice and Bruce Lee and I got contact with each other and once a week, I would go there and take a private with Bruce and spend the whole rest of the week working on what he would show me.
Joe Lewis (Actor, American Kickboxer):
It actually in a great way improved my fighting stuff. Bruce Lee kind of got me back into the full context of it because we studied a lot of old boxing films like Willie Pep who a lot of Italians feel is this pound for pound, best fight of all times. Some people told who Sugar Ray Robinson is. We’d watch Willie Pep’s footwork. We’d watch the explosiveness of some Jack Dempsey’s fight films.
We’d watch the stationary position of the great Joe Louis when he got on the inside like in the end up pocket. We’d watch the distance and mobility tactics of a Muhammad Ali and it kind of got me interested in the full contact as opposed to the stationary, kind of “You hit me. I hit you back. Your turn. My turn” — type fighting. So I got tired and I got kind of really disgusted with what they call Point Fighting. So I decided that I’m going to go in and create a new sport and just call it Full Contact or something.
