Against All Odds: My Story (11 page)

I
was scheduled to fight again in the Internationals on August 12, 1967. The previous year I had won the middleweight division but lost the Grand Championship. My goal this time was to win it all.

It was probably going to be the toughest competition I had ever faced. I entered the ring for the first match at 8:00 AM and competed until 6:00 PM. I fought eleven matches and won them all, winning the middleweight division. That same evening I had to fight Carlos Bunda, the lightweight black belt champion. If I beat him, I would then fight the winner of the light-heavyweight and heavyweight divisions for the International Grand Championship.

Joe Lewis had won the heavyweight division, so the odds were good that he and I would meet again for the championship. First, I had to defeat Carlos, which I did, and Joe defeated the light heavyweight, setting up our third fight for the Grand Championship in two years!

Unlike the last two fights I'd had with Joe, this one was more of a chess game. Neither of us wanted to make a wrong move. The match went into overtime with neither of us scoring. The one who scored the first point would be the winner and grand champion.

I attacked Joe, but he defended magnificently. I relaxed for a moment as though I had finished my attack. When I saw him relax, too, I shot forward executing a backhand strike to his face. The judges raised their flags signifying the point was scored. I was the International Grand Champion! As I started in Joe's direction to shake hands with him, my students rushed into the ring, picked me up in the air, and carried me around the ring screaming with jubilation. My brother, Wieland, had competed in the heavyweight division, taking third place. Guess who beat him—Joe Lewis.

Meanwhile Joe's face remained sullen, obviously shocked and dejected at the defeat. He didn't even attempt to congratulate me. Joe had a tough time losing, and he didn't lose very often; when he did, it was a shock to his system. Now he had lost to me three times. Joe went on to a stellar career, always ranked among the top contenders in nearly every tournament in which he competed, but any time I saw him, I recognized that he was still looking for a way to beat me.

It had been an incredible year for me as a competitor. I was undefeated throughout 1967, having won more than thirty tournaments and was rated the number one fighter by
Black Belt
magazine. I planned on retiring from competition to concentrate on my schools. I had become business partners with Bob Wall, a karate champion in his own right, and our schools were doing very well as a result of Bob's expertise and my newfound fame as a karate champion.

My plan to retire changed when Ed Parker, the promoter of the Internationals, told me that if I defended my title the next year and won, I would have my name inscribed on a large silver bowl. That may seem like an insignificant achievement to someone unfamiliar with karate competition. But nobody had ever won the Internationals two years in a row, and I just had to have my name on that silver bowl!

Prior to the 1968 Internationals, I wasn't training as hard as I should have been due to the demands of teaching at my martial arts schools. That was a big mistake. Before the 1968 Internationals, I had agreed to fight in Allan Steen's tournament in Dallas, Texas. I made the finals along with Fred Wren, Skipper Mullins, and Joe Lewis. Fred was to be my first opponent. A top competitor, he was an aggressive fighter, so I knew that I had to be prepared to defend myself. I was right; our match turned into a real brawl.

During the early stages I faked a low kick and then snapped it to Fred's head, but he blocked it. While my foot was still in the air, I saw his punch coming straight at my face. I thought,
Oh, no, I hope he pulls it because there's no way I can stop it.
The next thing I knew I was on my back, and my nose was broken. Jim Harrison, one of the line judges, saw the blood gushing from my nose, so he jumped into the ring, grabbed my nose, and pulled it. I heard the bone crunching. Ouch! The pain seared through my head.

Jim knew what he was doing, however. He straightened my nose out, and we went right on fighting! In Dallas at that time, the judges didn't penalize fighters for making contact, so Fred had scored a point.

I realized that if I was going to win this match, I would have to hit Fred a lot harder. I didn't intend to retaliate, however, and hit him in the face. But I knew if I didn't stop him, he would keep coming after me.

When we squared off again, Fred rushed in. I hit him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. He had to suck air. Bending over and gasping for breath is the most embarrassing thing in the world for a karate fighter. That gave me a point. I needed one more to win.

We went at it again. I hit Fred harder a second time in the stomach. He dropped to his knees, and the match was over.

My next fight was with Skipper Mullins, whom I defeated, but not without receiving some painful bruises. Then Joe and I fought for the championship. I had never beaten Joe the same way twice, and he was as wary of me as I was of him. Neither of us was able to score in the early stages of the match.

One of Joe's favorite moves was a side kick, which I usually blocked. I decided that the next time I saw the side kick coming, I would drop to the floor and kick up between his legs making light contact in the groin area. Everything worked perfectly. I didn't want to cause him any injury, so I controlled the kick, ending up just short of light contact, but by doing so, I also missed scoring the point.

We stalked each other again when suddenly Joe closed the distance between us with incredible speed and grabbed the sleeve of my
gi
, ripping it right off my arm. He spun me around with my back to him and punched me in the kidneys, scoring a point and winning the match just as the bell rang.

After the match I congratulated Joe on his win. Until that time he and I had never gotten along well because he couldn't handle losing to me. But after beating me that night, he became much friendlier.

When I returned home from Dallas, I was extremely sore from the bruises I'd suffered in the tournament, and my broken nose had begun to ache mercilessly. I fell into bed exhausted. The next morning I awoke with a bad headache. My son, Eric, who was still a toddler, was so excited to see me, he climbed onto the bed and started jumping up and down. I was lying on my back with my eyes shut, when somehow, Eric lost his balance; he fell and landed on top of me. His head crashed smack against my nose, breaking it again! The pain was excruciating as I had to have my nose reset for the second time in two days.

Later that year I went to Silver Spring, Maryland, to compete in a tournament. As usual the competitors lined up and fought whoever was in line next to them. I stepped in line alongside a young man who had just earned his black belt. I was to be his opponent in his first fight. Knowing that I was one of the top-rated fighters in the country, he became so nervous that he got sick to his stomach and had to dash into the bathroom!

When he returned to the tournament area, I tried to set his mind at ease. Before the fight I went over and put my arm around him. “Don't worry,” I said. “You'll do just fine.”

When we got into the ring, I was feeling sorry for him and mentally planned to ease up on him. The result?

He beat me!

I determined that I would never again make the mistake of being overconfident.

Shortly before the 1968 Internationals, I received a call from Bruce Lee, who told me that he had been signed as a stunt coordinator for a film called
The Wrecking Crew
, starring Dean Martin and Elke Sommer.

“There's a small role in it that I think you'd be good for,” Bruce said. “You'll play Elke's bodyguard, fight Dean Martin, and have one line of dialogue. Are you interested?”

“I sure am!” I replied.

Although I had no clue as to what acting was about, I figured I'd give it a shot. Bruce told me the date that I was to report on the set. It was the day after the Internationals.

When I stepped into the ring at the Internationals, I was in peak condition. I was looking forward to a rematch with Joe Lewis, but he was disqualified for injuring one of his opponents. Instead I was to fight Skipper Mullins, the number three nationally rated fighter from Texas, for the Grand Championship. Although Skipper had the baby-faced look of a freshly scrubbed teenager, he stood about six feet, three inches tall and was a tough competitor. He was also a good friend who trained occasionally at my studio.

I had beaten Skipper five times in previous tournaments, but Skipper was not a fighter to take lightly. Every match we'd ever had was close. He was rated number three for good reason. In the locker room before the match, I told Skipper, “I have my first part in a movie tomorrow. Beat on my body, but try not to hit me in the face. I don't want to go on the set looking like I've been in a brawl.” I probably wouldn't have considered making such a request of another fighter, but because of Skipper's and my friendship, I felt comfortable in asking. I wasn't suggesting that he back off his intensity or throw the fight; I was just asking him to avoid excessive contact to my face.

Skipper smiled. “OK,” he said, “but you'll owe me one.”

The Grand Championship match was to be three minutes in duration. The fighter with the most points at the end would be the winner.

Skipper and I met in the center of the ring and bowed. Skipper was famous for his kicks and rarely used his hands. I knew that one of his favorite opening moves was a forty-five degree, roundhouse kick, which I anticipated. I blocked it, just as I had in previous fights. But, this time, Skipper followed up with a back fist, a technique he had never used on me before. I never saw his fist coming, and it caught me flush on my left eye. I knew I was going to have a real shiner.

Skipper, who was leading by three points with a little over a minute left, kept running out of the ring trying to run the time out. I knew I had to keep him in the ring somehow, so I growled to him, “Skipper, why don't you stay in the ring and fight like a man?” I saw his face flush. He didn't run out of the ring again, and I hit him with a rapid-fire series of kicks and punches that netted me four quick points and the victory.

Later I told him, “I can't believe you'd let me get to you like that. You should have said, ‘We'll talk about it after I'm grand champion.’”

My name was inscribed on the large silver bowl. But I had something besides the bowl to remind me of my victory. The next day I showed up on the film set with a shiner that took a makeup artist an hour to hide!

I was fascinated as I entered the film studio to prepare for my film debut. I had never really been on a film set before, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect. The studio was a large complex, and the room in which we were to be working was a huge cube with extremely high ceilings; enormous bright lights, and wires strewn everywhere. Dozens of people were hustling in every direction like a bunch of worker ants, and I wondered how they possibly made a movie out of all this chaos. Eventually the director took charge, and we got down to work.

Like most people at that time, I was unfamiliar with how films are made. I thought that the moviemakers simply turned the cameras on, and the actors all performed their parts, similar to a high school play. Was I ever wrong! It took hours to work through every scene change. The lights had to be rearranged, the camera angles worked out, and the actors had to be instructed and placed.

My film debut consisted of only one line of dialogue. As Dean Martin entered a nightclub, I was to step in front of him and say, “May I, Mr. Helm?” I was to open the palm of my hand, which meant I wanted him to hand me his gun before he walked into a booth where Elke Sommer and Nigel Greene were sitting. The sequence was to end with a fight between Dean and me.

For the previous two weeks I had gone over and over that one line, saying it into my bathroom mirror, trying to find the perfect way to deliver it. When the cameras started to roll, Dean entered on cue. As he came closer to me, I could feel my throat tightening up and my body getting rigid. My one line came out in a whisper, “May I, Mr. Helm?”

Dean didn't seem to notice my hoarseness and dutifully gave me the pistol. I thought,
There goes my movie career. I couldn't even say one line!
Luckily, the director couldn't have cared less about my line, as long as it led to a fight.

Next we started the fight scene. Dean was to be photographed in the first part of the fight and then to be doubled by Mike Stone, a karate expert. For the opening shot I was supposed to throw a spinning heel kick over Dean's head. I asked him how far he planned to drop so I could calculate how close I could kick over his head. He told me not to worry; he'd drop way down and bend his knees about halfway to the floor.