A Heavyweight Walked Into Joe Lewis's Gym and Said Karate Was Useless — Lewis Didn't Argue

Washington D.C., 1974. A professional boxer with 19 wins and 17 knockouts had been training at a Capitol Hill gym for four months. In that time, he had developed one argument and repeated it to everyone who would listen: karate men couldn't punch. Not really. Not with real force. The rules of competition had built a habit of deceleration into their nervous systems that no amount of intention could remove. He was not entirely wrong. The problem he described was real. What he didn't know was that Joe Lewis had identified the same problem ten years earlier — and had spent the decade since then specifically solving it. When Earl Bateman called Lewis and said there was a man at the gym asking questions, Lewis drove in from across the city. He didn't bring an argument. He brought his hand wraps. What happened when Lewis threw his first combination would be talked about at that gym for the next twenty years. Joe Lewis — first heavyweight full-contact karate champion in American history. The man Bruce Lee called the most dangerous fighter he had ever trained. This is that Wednesday afternoon.