Bob Wall, Martial Arts Grasp Who Sparred With Bruce Lee, Dies at 82
Bob Wall, a martial arts master who with fast enterprise wits and even fleeter fists propelled disciplines like karate, aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, alongside the way earning pals and sharing the monitor with the likes of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, died on Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. He was 82.
His spouse, Lillian Wall, confirmed the dying but did not provide a lead to.
For the hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts devoted to 1970s martial arts movies, Mr. Wall was most effective identified for his position in the 1973 movie “Enter the Dragon,” in which, as the thug O’Hara, he torments a vengeful undercover agent named Lee, played by Mr. Lee.
At 6 ft 1 inch tall, with a complete tuft of hair and a scraggly beard, Mr. Wall towered over the wiry, diminutive Mr. Lee, who, in the film, nevertheless overpowers his adversary by kicking him to the floor and crushing his chest. It’s an indelibly grisly minute, and a sharp contrast to the close bond the two adult males shared in serious daily life.
They had achieved in 1963, at a kung fu demonstration in Los Angeles’s Chinatown community, where by Mr. Wall had withstood the instructor’s blows with out dropping his beer.
“At that stage reality hit that I’d blown this guy’s demo, so I started off walking toward the doorway,” Mr. Wall recalled in a 2011 job interview. “I saw this difficult-wanting male going for walks towards me, so I claimed, ‘This guy, I’m gonna clock,’ and he walks up close to me and suggests, ‘Hey that was amusing. I’m Bruce Lee!’”
They finished up chatting in the parking large amount for a few several hours.
Mr. Lee was continue to an unidentified martial arts teacher in Oakland who, like Mr. Wall, was drawn to Los Angeles’s budding beat-athletics scene. Mr. Wall was a university student of yet another teacher, Mr. Norris, an Air Drive veteran and martial arts winner.
The three grew to become rapid mates, and in 1967 Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris went into enterprise alongside one another, operating a series of studios in the San Fernando Valley, a component of Los Angeles that two decades afterwards would present the placing for “The Karate Child.”
Martial arts was an solely male area at the time, fought with out padding and creating additional than a number of broken noses and cracked tooth. But business people like Mr. Wall saw an prospect to make studios additional skilled and relatives friendly. By manuals and seminars that he took all over the nation, he taught thousands of aspiring senseis how to run a dojo.
“There were being a lot of people who would open a faculty and get started educating and it would all slide into place or not,” Roy Kurban, a taekwondo winner who was encouraged by Mr. Wall to open his own studio in Fort Really worth, Texas, said in a cell phone job interview. “He crafted a organization technique.”
Mr. Lee, in the meantime, had begun his regular increase to world-wide stardom. An look at the 1964 Global Karate Championships in Prolonged Seaside, where by he demonstrated his signature moves like the two-finger push up and the 1-inch punch, led him to a job as Kato, the sidekick on the 1960s Television present “The Environmentally friendly Hornet,” and later on to a series of film offers.
Martial arts flicks have been massive in Asia but mostly unknown in the United States. Mr. Lee resolved to modify that, in section by incorporating roles for Black and white actors, which include Mr. Wall, who received a section along with Mr. Norris in Mr. Lee’s initial important movie produced in The united states, “The Way of the Dragon” (1972).
Mr. Wall could consider a hit, which put him in excellent stead with Mr. Lee, who insisted on performing his individual stunts and refused to pull punches through struggle scenes. Mr. Wall recalled that ahead of they commenced filming “Enter the Dragon,” Mr. Lee told him, “Bob, I wanna hit you, and I wanna hit you hard.”
Even the damaged bottles that O’Hara wields versus Lee were being actual — which presented a trouble when Mr. Lee, a perfectionist, insisted on capturing that portion of the scene nine moments, with Mr. Wall consistently falling back again on shards of glass. At one more place Mr. Lee kicked him so tricky that he flew back into a row of extras, breaking a man’s arm.
“It’s one issue to get strike that really hard as soon as or two times, but test it 8 instances in a row,” Mr. Wall mentioned. “Let me explain to you, about the fourth time, you know what’s coming, you’re going to get popped serious hard, and you just have to say, ‘Hey, I’m listed here to do a career. Make it true.’”
That motivation to fight vérité compensated off. “Enter the Dragon,” produced for just $850,000 (about $5.3 million in today’s bucks) grossed $350 million globally (about $2.2 billion nowadays), earning it 1 of the most lucrative flicks of all time. It served create martial arts as an indelible section of American pop culture.
But Mr. Lee did not get to get pleasure from the success. He died, at 32, just right before the film debuted, of undiagnosed inflammation in his brain. By then he experienced begun filming “Game of Loss of life,” showcasing an legendary fight scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the movie, in which Mr. Wall also experienced a job, was unveiled in 1978). And he was planning even additional motion pictures, which includes at minimum a single with a prominent function for Mr. Wall, who would enjoy a sidekick to Mr. Lee’s hero, a C.I.A. agent.
“Hey Bob,” Mr. Wall recalled him stating a couple weeks ahead of his dying, “you get to be a very good guy in the upcoming 1!”
Robert Alan Wall was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in San Jose, Calif. His father, Ray Wall, worked in building and his mother, Reva (Wingo) Wall, was a nurse.
He was drawn to martial arts as a younger teen who had experienced beatings at the fingers of his abusive, alcoholic father. He wrestled in significant school and at San Jose Condition University, where he still left devoid of graduating to be a part of the Military. Just after he was discharged, he moved to Los Angeles to start out his martial arts instruction under Mr. Norris.
Mr. Wall held an superior black belt in a number of disciplines, and he on a regular basis put initial or second at competitions about the region in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
After Mr. Lee’s demise, he worked as a struggle coordinator on various martial arts motion pictures, which include “Black Belt Jones” (1974), starring one particular of his protégés, Jim Kelly, just one of the to start with Black karate champions. He also gave non-public classes to celebs interested in martial arts, together with Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.
By the mid-1970s Mr. Norris had resolved to go into acting total time, and he and Mr. Wall marketed their company in 1975. Mr. Wall turned his focus to true estate, launching a next profession as a household and industrial developer.
He did not leave the entire world of martial arts, while. In addition to crafting textbooks and training seminars, he had a long-working and quite community beef with Steven Seagal, a further martial arts skilled turned action star.
In a collection of interviews in the mid-1980s, Mr. Seagal, who experienced taught aikido in Japan, insulted American martial arts, and Mr. Norris in unique. In response, Mr. Wall challenged him to a combat they never came to blows, and at some point they worked it out, but Mr. Wall refused to look at any of Mr. Seagal’s movies.
Mr. Wall also remained shut mates with Mr. Norris. He took tiny roles in several of his videos and on the sequence “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starred Mr. Norris and ran from 1993 to 2001.
It was just the appropriate quantity of fame for Mr. Wall.
“I’m renowned ample that people today who know martial arts or know Bruce Lee movies know me,” he reported. “But I’m not so famous that I just cannot walk down a avenue. I can go in and out of a restaurant. I do not reduce my privacy.”
Bob Wall, a martial arts master who with fast enterprise wits and even fleeter fists propelled disciplines like karate, aikido and Brazilian jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, alongside the way earning pals and sharing the monitor with the likes of Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, died on Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. He was 82.
His spouse, Lillian Wall, confirmed the dying but did not provide a lead to.
For the hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts devoted to 1970s martial arts movies, Mr. Wall was most effective identified for his position in the 1973 movie “Enter the Dragon,” in which, as the thug O’Hara, he torments a vengeful undercover agent named Lee, played by Mr. Lee.
At 6 ft 1 inch tall, with a complete tuft of hair and a scraggly beard, Mr. Wall towered over the wiry, diminutive Mr. Lee, who, in the film, nevertheless overpowers his adversary by kicking him to the floor and crushing his chest. It’s an indelibly grisly minute, and a sharp contrast to the close bond the two adult males shared in serious daily life.
They had achieved in 1963, at a kung fu demonstration in Los Angeles’s Chinatown community, where by Mr. Wall had withstood the instructor’s blows with out dropping his beer.
“At that stage reality hit that I’d blown this guy’s demo, so I started off walking toward the doorway,” Mr. Wall recalled in a 2011 job interview. “I saw this difficult-wanting male going for walks towards me, so I claimed, ‘This guy, I’m gonna clock,’ and he walks up close to me and suggests, ‘Hey that was amusing. I’m Bruce Lee!’”
They finished up chatting in the parking large amount for a few several hours.
Mr. Lee was continue to an unidentified martial arts teacher in Oakland who, like Mr. Wall, was drawn to Los Angeles’s budding beat-athletics scene. Mr. Wall was a university student of yet another teacher, Mr. Norris, an Air Drive veteran and martial arts winner.
The three grew to become rapid mates, and in 1967 Mr. Wall and Mr. Norris went into enterprise alongside one another, operating a series of studios in the San Fernando Valley, a component of Los Angeles that two decades afterwards would present the placing for “The Karate Child.”
Martial arts was an solely male area at the time, fought with out padding and creating additional than a number of broken noses and cracked tooth. But business people like Mr. Wall saw an prospect to make studios additional skilled and relatives friendly. By manuals and seminars that he took all over the nation, he taught thousands of aspiring senseis how to run a dojo.
“There were being a lot of people who would open a faculty and get started educating and it would all slide into place or not,” Roy Kurban, a taekwondo winner who was encouraged by Mr. Wall to open his own studio in Fort Really worth, Texas, said in a cell phone job interview. “He crafted a organization technique.”
Mr. Lee, in the meantime, had begun his regular increase to world-wide stardom. An look at the 1964 Global Karate Championships in Prolonged Seaside, where by he demonstrated his signature moves like the two-finger push up and the 1-inch punch, led him to a job as Kato, the sidekick on the 1960s Television present “The Environmentally friendly Hornet,” and later on to a series of film offers.
Martial arts flicks have been massive in Asia but mostly unknown in the United States. Mr. Lee resolved to modify that, in section by incorporating roles for Black and white actors, which include Mr. Wall, who received a section along with Mr. Norris in Mr. Lee’s initial important movie produced in The united states, “The Way of the Dragon” (1972).
Mr. Wall could consider a hit, which put him in excellent stead with Mr. Lee, who insisted on performing his individual stunts and refused to pull punches through struggle scenes. Mr. Wall recalled that ahead of they commenced filming “Enter the Dragon,” Mr. Lee told him, “Bob, I wanna hit you, and I wanna hit you hard.”
Even the damaged bottles that O’Hara wields versus Lee were being actual — which presented a trouble when Mr. Lee, a perfectionist, insisted on capturing that portion of the scene nine moments, with Mr. Wall consistently falling back again on shards of glass. At one more place Mr. Lee kicked him so tricky that he flew back into a row of extras, breaking a man’s arm.
“It’s one issue to get strike that really hard as soon as or two times, but test it 8 instances in a row,” Mr. Wall mentioned. “Let me explain to you, about the fourth time, you know what’s coming, you’re going to get popped serious hard, and you just have to say, ‘Hey, I’m listed here to do a career. Make it true.’”
That motivation to fight vérité compensated off. “Enter the Dragon,” produced for just $850,000 (about $5.3 million in today’s bucks) grossed $350 million globally (about $2.2 billion nowadays), earning it 1 of the most lucrative flicks of all time. It served create martial arts as an indelible section of American pop culture.
But Mr. Lee did not get to get pleasure from the success. He died, at 32, just right before the film debuted, of undiagnosed inflammation in his brain. By then he experienced begun filming “Game of Loss of life,” showcasing an legendary fight scene with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (the movie, in which Mr. Wall also experienced a job, was unveiled in 1978). And he was planning even additional motion pictures, which includes at minimum a single with a prominent function for Mr. Wall, who would enjoy a sidekick to Mr. Lee’s hero, a C.I.A. agent.
“Hey Bob,” Mr. Wall recalled him stating a couple weeks ahead of his dying, “you get to be a very good guy in the upcoming 1!”
Robert Alan Wall was born on Aug. 22, 1939, in San Jose, Calif. His father, Ray Wall, worked in building and his mother, Reva (Wingo) Wall, was a nurse.
He was drawn to martial arts as a younger teen who had experienced beatings at the fingers of his abusive, alcoholic father. He wrestled in significant school and at San Jose Condition University, where he still left devoid of graduating to be a part of the Military. Just after he was discharged, he moved to Los Angeles to start out his martial arts instruction under Mr. Norris.
Mr. Wall held an superior black belt in a number of disciplines, and he on a regular basis put initial or second at competitions about the region in the late 1960s and early ’70s.
After Mr. Lee’s demise, he worked as a struggle coordinator on various martial arts motion pictures, which include “Black Belt Jones” (1974), starring one particular of his protégés, Jim Kelly, just one of the to start with Black karate champions. He also gave non-public classes to celebs interested in martial arts, together with Steve McQueen and Elvis Presley.
By the mid-1970s Mr. Norris had resolved to go into acting total time, and he and Mr. Wall marketed their company in 1975. Mr. Wall turned his focus to true estate, launching a next profession as a household and industrial developer.
He did not leave the entire world of martial arts, while. In addition to crafting textbooks and training seminars, he had a long-working and quite community beef with Steven Seagal, a further martial arts skilled turned action star.
In a collection of interviews in the mid-1980s, Mr. Seagal, who experienced taught aikido in Japan, insulted American martial arts, and Mr. Norris in unique. In response, Mr. Wall challenged him to a combat they never came to blows, and at some point they worked it out, but Mr. Wall refused to look at any of Mr. Seagal’s movies.
Mr. Wall also remained shut mates with Mr. Norris. He took tiny roles in several of his videos and on the sequence “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which starred Mr. Norris and ran from 1993 to 2001.
It was just the appropriate quantity of fame for Mr. Wall.
“I’m renowned ample that people today who know martial arts or know Bruce Lee movies know me,” he reported. “But I’m not so famous that I just cannot walk down a avenue. I can go in and out of a restaurant. I do not reduce my privacy.”