Bruce Lee Wanted to Share Martial Arts to the World
Bob Wall, Martial Arts Master Who Sparred With Bruce Lee, Dies at 82
He taught thousands of senseis how to run a dojo, all the while trading kicks onscreen with Lee and Chuck Norris.
Bob Wall, a martial arts master who with quick business wits and fifty-fifty fleeter fists helped propel disciplines like karate, aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, forth the way making friends and sharing the screen with the likes of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, died on Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. He was 82.
His wife, Lillian Wall, confirmed the death but did non provide a cause.
For the millions of fans devoted to 1970s martial arts movies, Mr. Wall was best known for his role in the 1973 flick "Enter the Dragon," in which, equally the thug O'Hara, he torments a vengeful secret agent named Lee, played past Mr. Lee.
At 6-foot-i, with a full tuft of hair and a scraggly beard, Mr. Wall towered over the wiry, diminutive Mr. Lee, who, in the motion picture, nevertheless overpowers his adversary by kick him to the ground and crushing his chest. Information technology's an indelibly grisly moment and a sharp contrast to the close bond the 2 men shared in existent life.
They met in 1963 at a kung fu sit-in in the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Mr. Wall had withstood the instructor'due south blows without dropping his beer.
"At that point reality hit that I'd blown this guy'southward demo, and so I started walking toward the door," Mr. Wall recalled in a 2011 interview. "I saw this tough-looking guy walking toward me, then I said, 'This guy, I'm gonna clock,' and he walks upwardly close to me and says, 'Hey that was funny. I'm Bruce Lee!'"
They concluded up talking in the parking lot for three hours.
Mr. Lee was however an unknown martial arts instructor in Oakland and, like Mr. Wall, was fatigued to Los Angeles's budding combat-sports scene. Mr. Wall was a student of another instructor, Mr. Norris, an Air Force veteran and martial arts champion.
The three became fast friends, and in 1967 Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris went into business together, running a series of studios in the San Fernando Valley, a part of Los Angeles that ii decades subsequently would provide the setting for "The Karate Kid."
Martial arts was an exclusively male person domain at the fourth dimension, fought without padding and producing more than a few broken noses and cracked teeth. But entrepreneurs similar Mr. Wall saw an opportunity to brand studios more than professional person and family unit friendly. Through manuals and seminars that he took around the country, he taught thousands of aspiring senseis how to run a dojo.
"There were a lot of people who would open a school and start teaching, and information technology would all fall into place or not," Roy Kurban, a taekwondo champion who was inspired by Mr. Wall to open his own studio in Fort Worth, said in a phone interview. "He built a business concern system."
Mr. Lee, meanwhile, had begun his ascension to global distinction. An advent at the 1964 International Karate Championships in Long Beach, where he demonstrated signature moves like the two-finger push-up and the one-inch punch, led to his casting as Kato, the sidekick on the 1960s television set bear witness "The Green Hornet" and later to a series of movie deals.
Paradigm
Martial arts movies were huge in Asia simply nonetheless largely unknown in the United States. Mr. Lee decided to change that, in part by incorporating roles for Black and white actors, including Mr. Wall, who won a office aslope Mr. Norris in the first of Mr. Lee'southward major films to be released in America, "The Way of the Dragon" (1972).
Mr. Wall could accept a hit, which put him in good stead with Mr. Lee, who insisted on doing his ain stunts and refused to pull punches during fight scenes. Mr. Wall recalled that earlier they started filming "Enter the Dragon," Mr. Lee told him, "Bob, I wanna striking y'all, and I wanna hitting you hard."
Even the broken bottles that the graphic symbol O'Hara wields confronting the character Lee were real — which presented a trouble when Mr. Lee, a perfectionist, insisted on shooting that part of the scene ix times, with Mr. Wall repeatedly falling back on shards of glass. At another point Mr. Lee kicked Mr. Wall and so difficult that he flew back into a row of extras, breaking a human being's arm.
"It'due south one affair to become striking that hard one time or twice, but effort information technology 8 times in a row," Mr. Wall said. "Let me tell you, virtually the fourth time, you know what'due south coming, you're going to get popped real hard, and you simply have to say, 'Hey, I'g here to do a job. Make information technology real.'"
That commitment to combat vérité paid off. "Enter the Dragon," made for just $850,000 (about $five.iii million in today's dollars), grossed $350 million worldwide (about $2.two billion today), making it 1 of the near profitable movies of all time. Information technology helped found martial arts as an enduring office of American pop culture.
But Mr. Lee did non get to enjoy the success. He died, at 32, simply earlier the film debuted, of undiagnosed swelling in his brain. Past and so he had begun filming "Game of Death," featuring a celebrated fight scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (The film, in which Mr. Wall also had a office, was released in 1978.) And he was planning even more movies, including at least one with a prominent role for Mr. Wall, who was to play a sidekick to Mr. Lee'southward hero, a C.I.A. agent.
"Hey Bob," Mr. Wall recalled him saying a few weeks before his death, "you lot get to exist a proficient guy in the next 1!"
Robert Alan Wall was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in San Jose, Calif. His begetter, Ray Wall, worked in construction; his mother, Reva (Wingo) Wall, was a nurse.
He was fatigued to martial arts as a young teenager who had suffered beatings at the hands of his abusive, alcoholic father. He wrestled in high school and at what is at present San José State University, where he left without graduating to join the Regular army. After he was discharged, he moved to Los Angeles to begin his martial arts instruction under Mr. Norris.
Mr. Wall held an avant-garde black belt in several disciplines, and he regularly placed first or second at competitions around the country in the late 1960s and early '70s.
After Mr. Lee's decease, he worked as a fight coordinator on several martial arts movies, including "Blackness Belt Jones" (1974), starring one of his protégés, Jim Kelly, one of the offset Black karate champions. He also gave individual lessons to celebrities, including Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.
By the mid-1970s Mr. Norris had decided to go into acting total time, and he and Mr. Wall sold their business in 1975. Mr. Wall turned his attending to real estate, launching a second career every bit a residential and commercial developer.
He didn't leave the world of martial arts, though. In add-on to writing books and educational activity seminars, he had a long-running and very public beefiness with Steven Seagal, another martial arts expert turned activity star.
In a serial of interviews in the mid-1980s, Mr. Seagal, who had taught aikido in Japan, insulted American martial arts, and Mr. Norris in particular. In response, Mr. Wall challenged him to a fight, though they never came to blows, and eventually they worked it out. But Mr. Wall refused to picket any of Mr. Seagal'south movies.
Mr. Wall also remained close friends with Mr. Norris. He took small roles in several of his movies and on the TV serial "Walker, Texas Ranger," which starred Mr. Norris and ran from 1993 to 2001.
It was only the right amount of fame for Mr. Wall.
"I'm famous enough that people who know martial arts or know Bruce Lee films know me," he said. "But I'm not so famous that I can't walk downwardly a street. I tin can go in and out of a eatery. I don't lose my privacy."
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/11/us/bob-wall-dead.html
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