Chuck Norris’ Top Student Said “You’re Too Old To Beat Me” At The 1976 Karate Championship
What does a man do when his best former student picks up a live microphone in front of 4,000 people, points at his seat, and tells him he is too old to fight anymore. Chuck Norris was at the Long Beach Arena that afternoon to watch his students compete and to present the Grand Championship Trophy at the evening session.
36 years old, two years retired, sitting in row 11 next to his brother Aaron with a folded program in his hand. He was not supposed to fight that day. He had not fought anyone in front of a crowd in nearly 3 years. He had no idea his top student was about to call him out in front of the entire arena. Howard Jackson, 25 years old, number one ranked welterweight in American karate, knocking opponents out in under a minute all afternoon, and still angry about something.
Chuck had told a magazine about him 18 months earlier, when Howard was lying in a hospital bed with his leg in a brace and a torn up knee, reading the words of the man who had taught him to fight. It was a Saturday afternoon in August of 1976, just after 2:00 at Ed Parker’s International Karate Championships in Long Beach.
Chuck was walking toward section C when a voice called out behind him. He turned to see Howard Jackson standing 10 ft away from him in the back corridor. a white ghee top open over a black t-shirt. Ghee pants tied with a black belt, hands wrapped, a towel over his shoulder, 25 years old, 5’8, 140 lbs of conditioned fast twitch muscle.
18 months into his comeback under Joe Lewis, Chuck smiled genuinely. Howard was the best student Chuck ever taught, and Chuck has not laid eyes on him since the Torrance Christmas Seminar in December of 74. Chuck walked across the corridor. He extended his hand. He said, “Howard, how have you been?” Howard took the hand. He smiled back.
He said, “I’m better now that I’ve got a new coach.” He said it lightly, as if it is a joke. Chuck looked at Howard for one extra second. He said, “Joe is a good coach. Then he releases the hand.” Chuck said he is looking forward to watching Howard on the main floor. Without any edge in his voice, then he turned and walked toward section C.
Howard stood in the corridor for a long moment after Chuck had gone. The Norris team has 31 people inside the building today. Chuck has not told a single one of them what was just said in the corridor. He sits down next to his brother and does not tell Aaron either. Aaron asks, “You see Howard back there?” Chuck nods once. He opens the program.
He does not say anything else. The PA announcer reads the welterweight quarterfinals card. Howard Jackson versus Steve Sanders, a respected Kenpo fighter out of Englewood, 15 pounds heavier. Pat Johnson is refereeing. The fight lasts 11 seconds. Howard closes with the lead leg sidekick Joe Lewis has been refining with him for 18 months.
Sanders raises his guard. The kick was the setup. Howard pivots off it into a right cross that lands flush on Sanders’s headgear. The spinning back fist comes around and catches Sanders hard enough that the mouthpiece pops out and lands 6 feet away on the canvas. Pat Johnson calls full point match. Howard turns toward section C.
He finds Chuck in row 11. He raises one hand and points two fingers. The small private pointer a man uses when he is sending a message across a crowded room. He holds it for one second. Then he walks off to his corner. Aaron looks at his brother. Chuck does not move. Aaron says quietly, “What’s going on with him?” Chuck says he’s been thinking about something for a year and a half.
The semifinal is announced. Howard versus a Kyokushian fighter from San Jose named Mike Murakami. The fight goes 34 seconds. Howard wins it three points to none without getting touched. The welterweight final has been pushed back 15 minutes. Howard walks back out onto the floor for the postseminal interview. 18 months earlier, 6 weeks after Howard tore the lateral meniscus in his right knee at the PKA Nationals, Black Belt magazine had run a follow-up piece on the injury.
The piece had quoted Chuck Norris on the record. Chuck had said Howard was a great fighter, and that a knee like that at 24 was a hard knee to come back from. Chuck had meant it kindly. Howard read it in a hospital bed in Torrance with his leg in a brace and he read one sentence in it. A hard knee to come back from his own teacher in print where every promoter in the country could read it and cross his name off a card.
Howard threw the magazine across the hospital room and it hit the wall above the sink and slid down behind the radiator and he left it there when he was discharged 4 days later. He did not speak to Chuck for 14 months. The announcer asks the standard questions. How does Howard feel? How is the knee? What does he think of the bracket? Howard gives the polite generic answers a champion gives when he is conserving energy for the final.
Then the announcer asks the last question on his card. Howard, a lot of people wrote you off after the knee. Who do you most want to prove wrong today? The arena goes a little quieter. The press tables look up. The senior instructors in the bleachers stop talking to each other. Joe Lewis in Howard’s corner lifts his head.
Howard takes the microphone in both hands. He looks up at section C, row 11. He finds Chuck Norris. And 18 months of silence comes out of him at once. You want to know who wrote me off? My own teacher wrote me off. Chuck, you told the whole country my knee was done. You told every promoter from here to New York that Howard Jackson was finished at 24.
You buried me, Chuck, in print with your name on it. Well, here is the knee. Look at it. I just put Steve Sanders on the canvas in 11 seconds on this knee. I beat Murakami in 34 seconds on this knee. The knee you said was done is standing here in front of you holding the welterweight bracket in one hand and a microphone in the other.
So come down here, Chuck. Come down and find out if the knee is done. Come down here and find out if I came back or not. The Long Beach Arena goes still. Chuck closes the program and stands up. 4,000 people watch him stand up. He walks to the end of the row, then down the bleacher steps. He does not hurry. He has been waiting 18 months for this conversation to happen out loud, and he is not going to walk down those steps any faster than the conversation deserves.
Chuck reaches the edge of the floor. He looks at Howard. He says in a voice the front three rows can hear. I’ll fight you. Three rounds point sparring. Pat referees. Howard nods. Howard is grinning. He has been picturing this for a year and a half. Howard takes off the ghee top. He keeps the ghee pants, the black belt, and the hand wraps from the morning warm-up.
He steps onto the mat in the Joe Lewis stance. Lead leg forward. Weight on the back leg. Hands chambered low. Pat Johnson walks to the center of the mat. Two-time Golden Fist Award winner. the most respected referee in American karate. He says in the formal voice he uses for title fights. Three rounds, two minutes each.
First to three points takes the round. Best of three takes the match. Continuous fighting. Light contact above the waist, controlled contact below. Begin. The arena is now completely silent. 4,000 people not breathing. Howard moves first. He opens with the lead leg side kick. Chuck pivots 45 degrees to the outside.
The same pivot he used on Joe Lewis in Dallas. And the kick passes through empty air. Chuck counters with a right round kick to the back of Howard’s planted thigh. The same counter that took Joe Lewis down in 4 seconds in December 67. Howard is not Joe Lewis. Howard has watched film of that night for 18 months in Joe Lewis’s living room in North Carolina.
He knows the counter is coming. His planted leg lifts the moment Chuck’s hip turns. The counter passes through empty air on the other side of the mat. Chuck has just been answered with his own answer. Chuck closes the distance, steps in with a jab cross. Howard slips the jab clean and counters with a fast left hook to the body.
Light contact controlled, but it lands. Pat Johnson calls Point Jackson. One to zero. The arena makes the low murmur it makes when something has just happened that nobody expected. Aaron in row 11 very slowly puts the program down on the seat next to him. Chuck resets and comes forward. Howard fakes the lead leg sidekick.
Chuck reads the fake encounters with a left round kick to Howard’s thigh. Pat Johnson calls point Norris. One to one. The arena exhales. Howard switches lead. The left foot moves forward. The Joe Lewis stance becomes the orthodox stance. He has been drilling the switch for six months and he has not used it in any of the morning fights.
He throws the spinning back fist off the switch. Chuck does not see it coming. There is no headgear. The back fist catches the side of Chuck’s face above the left ear. Light contact controlled, but it lands clean. Pat Johnson calls Point Jackson 2 to one. Section B is on its feet. The Norris students are not cheering. They are standing up to see better.
The black belt photographer in the front row is firing his motor drive. 20 seconds left. Chuck is down a point in a round he has not been down a point in since 1971. The senior instructors will later say that what they remembered most was that his face did not change. He reset. He threw the jab cross again. Howard slipped it again, but this time the jab cross was a faint.
Chuck’s right round kick was already in motion before the slip. The kick caught Howard on the outside of the left thigh. Pat Johnson called Point Norris. Two to two. Howard is grinning again. He knows the round is his to lose. He throws the lead leg sidekick one more time. Chuck pivots the same pivot but slower this time by half a beat.
The kick clips Chuck’s lead shoulder. Light contact. Point Jackson. Three to two. Pat Johnson signals end of round one. Howard takes the round. The arena erupts. Joe Lewis is clapping slowly in Howard’s corner. Howard walks back to his corner with his hands above his head. He turns once and points at row 11 again. Row 11 is now empty because Aaron has stood up and walked down to the edge of the mat to be closer to his brother.
Chuck walks to his side of the mat. He stands at the edge of the canvas with his hands at his sides. He looks at Howard across the canvas. What Chuck is doing in those 60 seconds is finding the fight. He is solving the problem of Howard Jackson in real time. He has 37 years of point fighting in his body and he is going through it one fight at a time looking for the answer to a faster, younger, better prepared version of himself.
He finds it before the bell. Round two opens. Howard leads with the lead leg side kick. Same setup, but Chuck does not pivot to the outside this time. Chuck steps inside the kick. The inside step is the most dangerous answer to the lead leg side kick because it puts the defender inside the kicker’s range with no margin for a mistake.
Chuck has not used it in eight years. Howard has never seen him use it. Howard’s kick goes past Chuck’s right ribs at full extension. Chuck is now 6 in from Howard’s planted body. His right hand lands on Howard’s lead shoulder. A push controlled no strike. The push breaks Howard’s balance for one half second.
The half second is enough for Chuck’s left hand to tap above the left ear. The same spot Howard had landed the spinning back fist on Chuck in round one. Point Norris one to zero. The senior instructors in the front row do not cheer. They are watching the cleanest correction they have watched at Long Beach in a decade. Joe Lewis has stopped clapping. Howard resets.
He throws the switch combination, the jab off the orthodox stance into the spinning back fist. Chuck has now seen the switch. He steps off the line before the switch fires. The back fist comes around through empty air. Chuck’s right round kick is already in motion. The kick lands on the outside of Howard’s left thigh.
The planted leg, the one Joe Lewis has been having Howard switch onto for six months. The contact controlled is enough to make Howard’s left knee shift one inch. Pat Johnson calls Point Norris 2 to zero. Howard is no longer grinning. This is the exchange the senior instructors will talk about for 40 years. Howard, frustrated, comes forward.
He has never come forward against Chuck before. Howard’s whole style is built on being faster and waiting for the opening. Forward pressure is not in his repertoire, and the senior instructors see it the second he commits. Chuck reads it instantly. He gives Howard 4T of ground, backing up, drawing Howard in. As Howard’s lead foot crosses the center line, Chuck stops backing up, plants his back foot, and throws the band-aid dalioagi, the reverse roundhouse, the Tang Sudu signature, the kick Pat Johnson taught the whole Norris team, and that Chuck
Norris has thrown 10,000 times in the garage on Hanover Street in Torrance. The kick comes around in a tight arc and it stops one quarter inch from Howard’s left temple. Pat Johnson does not call point. He does not need to. He lifts one hand between the two men. Howard freezes. The kick is one quarter inch from his temple.
The arena is one quarter inch from a different ending. Howard’s eyes do not move. He stands flatfooted on the canvas and he looks at the foot beside his temple. He understands in the way a fighter understands things when there is no time to deny them that Chuck Norris has just chosen not to end him. Chuck lowers the leg, steps back two paces.
Pat Johnson signals point. Norris three to zero. Round two to Norris. The arena does not erupt this time. It makes the strange low murmur 4,000 people make when they all realized at the same moment that they were wrong about something and they will not say it out loud. Match tied at one round each.
The third round is the shortest. It runs 48 seconds. Howard tries to reset to round one. He opens with the lead leg sidekick. Chuck pivots to the outside, the round one pivot, and Howard has prepared for the inside step from round two. His planted leg lifts in anticipation of the wrong counter. Chuck’s actual counter is the round kick to the back of the now floating planted thigh.
The kick lands before Howard can replant it. Point Norris, one to zero. Howard resets. He has nothing left in his prepared repertoire. He tries the jab cross. Chuck slips both. Chuck does not counter. He waits. Howard, offbalance, throws the spinning back fist out of frustration. Chuck steps inside the rotation. His left hand lands on Howard’s lead shoulder.
The push controlled breaks Howard’s balance. Chuck’s right hand taps the side of Howard’s face above the left ear. The third tap of the match in exactly that spot. Point Norris two to zero. Howard breathing hard now for the first time comes forward again. He has nothing left to throw that Chuck has not already answered.
He throws the lead leg’s side kick one more time. The body returns to what it knows. When the mind has run out, Chuck does not pivot. Chuck does not step inside. Chuck does not throw the round kick to the planted thigh. Chuck catches the kick. He scoops Howard’s extended leg under his left arm. He holds it there. Howard is now standing one-legged on the canvas in front of 4,000 people with his teacher’s left arm wrapped around his right shin.
Chuck does not throw Howard down. Chuck does not sweep the planted leg. He holds the kick. He holds it for three full seconds. 3 seconds at Long Beach in front of 4,000 witnesses is a long time. The arena understands what is happening. Pat Johnson understands. Joe Lewis understands. Howard understands. The hold is not a finish.
The hold is a statement. Then Chuck lowers Howard’s leg gently to the canvas. He steps back. He puts his hands at his sides. Pat Johnson lifts one hand between them. He says, “Point Norris, 3 to one, match Norris. Two rounds to one. The match is over. Three full rounds, nine minutes of fighting.
Six points to Chuck, four to Howard. Howard had won a round against the man he had called too old. And then he lost the next two to the same man, and the last one had ended with his right leg in the man’s left armpit.” The arena does not cheer. The arena is silent. Howard stands at the edge of the canvas. His chest is moving.
His right hand opens and closes once. Joe Lewis in the corner has not stood up. He is sitting on the corner stool with his elbows on his knees and his eyes on the canvas in front of his own feet. The senior instructors watch Howard’s face. Pat Johnson watches Howard’s face. The 4,000 people in the arena watch Howard’s face. Howard has arrived at the fork.
One path explains say the kick catch was a non-standard technique. Say the third round had run hot. The other path admit Howard chose the second path. He stepped forward and bowed the long slow bow that a Tang sudu student gives to his instructor in the dojang. The bow Howard had been taught by Chuck himself in 1971 when he had walked into the Torrance School for the first time at age 20.
The bow held for a full 3 seconds. Then Howard stood up and said loud enough for the room to hear into the live microphone. The announcer was still holding at the edge of the mat. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I’m sorry to my teacher and I’m sorry to my team. He said it three times because the room needed to hear it three times.
Pat Johnson nodded once. Bob Wall picked his clipboard back up. Aaron let out a breath he had been holding since the third exchange of round one. The 4,000 people in the Long Beach Arena did not cheer. They made the low murmur a karate crowd makes when it has just watched something it will remember for 30 years.
Chuck returned the bow. He held it for the same three seconds Howard had held his. Then Chuck straightened, stepped forward, and placed his right hand on Howard’s left shoulder. He said one quiet sentence, only loud enough for Howard and for Pat Johnson, who was standing two feet away. That sentence has been repeated in the senior class at the Chuck Norris Karat Studios for the next 50 years.
Nobody outside that class has ever heard it spoken aloud. Howard’s eyes filled when Chuck said it. That much is on the record. The sentence itself is not. Chuck put his socks back on. He put his loafers back on. He picked the navy polo collar straight and walked off the mat. The crowd parted for him.
Several men reached out as he went by, a hand on the shoulder, a brief touch on the arm. Chuck nodded to each of them and did not slow down. He reached row 11 and sat back down next to Aaron. The welterweight final was about to begin. Howard Jackson lost that final on points to a Keno fighter from Long Beach. He did not protest. He bowed to his opponent and walked off the mat.
Pat Johnson referenced the afternoon once in a 1984 black belt article. He called it the afternoon the Norris team became one team again. Bob Wall told the story to his senior students at his Northridge school for 30 years. He always ended it the same way. he said. Howard met the one man on earth who had already answered every question Howard had not yet thought ask.
Joe Lewis did not speak to Howard for six weeks after Long Beach. When they resumed training, Joe added a new drill to Howard’s program, the inside step against the lead leg sidekick. The drill Chuck had used in round two. Joe Lewis never explained where it had come from. Howard never asked. Three weeks after Long Beach on a Tuesday evening, Howard showed up at the Chuck Norris Karate Studios in his street clothes.
He sat on the bench at the side of the dojang for the entire 2-hour adult class. Chuck noticed him. Chuck did not stop teaching. At the end of class, Chuck walked to the bench. He sat down next to him. They talked for 40 minutes. Nobody who was there has ever repeated what was said. Howard kept training under Joe Lewis.
He kept his full contact career. In 1980, he won the WKA welterweight title. In 1981, he won the Buppy Muay Thai title. He retired with a pro kickboxing record of 23 wins, two losses, one draw with 12 knockouts. He became a more decorated full contact fighter than Chuck Norris ever was. In every interview Howard ever gave between Long Beach and his death in 2006.
When asked who his teachers were, he gave the same three names in the same order. Harold Williams, Chuck Norris, Pat Johnson. He never demoted Chuck. He never promoted Joe Lewis to the third name on the list. Chuck never told the Long Beach story publicly, not in the autobiographies, not on the late night couches, asked about it twice in his career, once by a journalist in 1994, and once by a documentary maker in 2003.
Both times, Chuck smiled and changed the subject. When asked late in his life by a longtime senior student why he had never publicly told the story, he said, “Because Howard was my student.” And a student’s mistake is not his teacher’s anecdote to tell. Howard Jackson died of leukemia on the 7th of March, 2006 at the City of Hope Hospital in Dwarte, California. He was 54 years old.
Chuck Norris was in the room. Chuck did not leave the building for the last 30 hours of Howard’s life. At the funeral, Chuck spoke for 90 seconds. He did not mention Long Beach. He said one sentence the people at the funeral remembered. Howard was my student, my friend, and the best fighter who ever walked into my school.
The world remembers Howard Jackson as the first black fighter to be ranked number one in US karate. The world remembers Chuck Norris as a movie star. The world does not remember the afternoon in Long Beach in August of 1976 when a student called his teacher too old in front of 4,000 witnesses on a live microphone.
And the teacher walked down from row 11 without raising his voice and answered the call across three rounds and nine minutes on the main floor of the Long Beach Arena and lost the first round and won the second and ended the third with his students right leg in his left armpit and a choice to set it down instead of take it.
And that for me is the whole point of telling this story. We’ve turned Chuck Norris into a punchline, the beard, the roundhouse, the infinity jokes, a cartoon. And somewhere underneath all of that is the actual man, the one who on a Saturday afternoon in August of 76 walked down from row 11 in tan slacks and a navy polo and answered the worst public insult of his career without ever raising his voice.
Think about what that took down around 4,000 people watching. His own student grinning across the canvas at him. Most men in that moment get angry or get small or get loud. Chuck got quiet, sat at the edge of his own mat for 60 seconds. Sorted 37 years of fighting in his head and came back out with the answer. Two rounds, six points, no noise.
And the part that gets me every time I tell this story is the kick catch in the third. A lesser man throws Howard down, ends him, takes the photograph. Chuck set the leg down like he was setting down something fragile, returned the bow, whispered one sentence nobody has repeated in 50 years, and walked off the mat, handed Howard back his career, his title shots, his name, the rest of his life, and never once asked to be thanked for any of it.
Thanks for sticking with me to the end. If you enjoyed this, then you’ll love the stories from the behind the scenes of Chuck Norris’s movies. Scan the QR code on the screen to get your copy or visit real stories from the set.com. from the coliseum fight with Bruce Lee, the four days in the West Texas dirt with David Keredine, the squib that nearly took his eye in Manila, the helicopters that went down in the Philippines gathered into one place for the first time.
And remember to hit subscribe. I’ll see you in the next one.
