There’s too much politics in GD, so this is something everybody can weigh in on.
Mods, kick it over to CS if you have to.
Norris was an MP in the Air Force and a trained martial artist. Wayne never had any combat training. So, I doubt it.
Norris, hands down. Wayne would be toast.
You’re confusing image with reality, although even the image would probably say Norris would be the winner.
Chuck Norris and Superman once fought each other on a bet. The loser had to start wearing his underwear on the outside of his pants.
Chuck Norris makes Jesus call him “Sir”.
I’m stealing this.
You know, this caused me to think: I can’t make up my mind if I despise real tough guys more than fake ones.
John Wayne used a gun. You don’t bring round house kicks to a gun fight.
Norris did, the gun was afraid to fire.
Norris for sure. Not only was he a trained martial artist, as others have pointed out, but he used to fight in the old school full contact martial arts tournaments, and win fairly regularly. I actually saw some of those when I was a younger martial artist and they were pretty intense.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the Duke, but he wouldn’t have had a chance…not unless Norris brought a foot to a gun fight.
-XT
He didn’t just win fairly regularly - he was a six-time middleweight world champion in full-contact Karate, and retired from that undefeated. He also fought heavyweights like Joe Lewis, and his fight record was something like 65-5.
Norris actually has more credibility as a real martial artist than any of the other major action stars, and that includes people like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Steven Seagal. Many of them padded their real karate resumes to enhance their movie careers, but Norris was the real deal.
Chan doesn’t claim to be a professional martial artist and is really quite humble about his abilities. Bruce Lee certainly told a number of apocryphal tales about his experiences in Hong Kong, but he was insanely quick, and until the last year of his life in prime condition. He might not land a punch as hard as a larger opponent (although there are numerous demonstrations of his fa shin “three inch punch” forcing a larger man backward several feet) but he could land three or four strikes in the time it would take a conventional pugilist to deliver a full bodied straight punch.
My pick: Jimmy Stewart, who enlisted in the Army Air Force prior to the beginning of US involvement WWII, fought to serve in a combat role (he ended up first training B-17 pilots and then flying bombing missions over Germany with the 445th Bombardment Group), receiving the Air Medal with three clusters and two DFCs, retiring as a full colonel, would have been smart enough to let Wayne and Norris duke it out and then would have run away with both of their women.
Stranger
Stewart’s style would be to let the Duke kick Norris’s ass, then take credit for it. He did that once before.
Hell, what about David Niven or Christopher Lee, both of whom were commandos in WW2?
If you postulated a no maiming or broken bones type brawl, Chuck would still kick the Duke’s ass fast. Allow broken bones and the Duke would have a broken knee in a matter of seconds.
Heck, in a “normal” sized tournement space, let the Duke have a holstered pistol and I would put money on Chuck for the win.
Norris was a poor student and is a creationist. He’d be easy to trick into some sort of suicidal mission.
True. I actually went back and changed my sentence to say “many of them enhanced their resumes” because of Chan. I’d also give a pass to Bruce Lee, who was quite a scrapper in his younger days and who other martial artists have described as being very good in a fight. Norris still would have beat him however, simply because of the weight difference. You just can’t get around a 50-60 lb difference in weight when two fighters are skilled.
The three-inch punch is just a matter of fast weight transfer, and lots of martial artists can do that. Where I’d give Lee more credit is that he worked tirelessly to develop skills that actually translated into real fighting, and abandoned the stuff that didn’t. He was a serious martial artists in that he didn’t just develop flashy moves for use on TV, but he thought long and hard about the art itself and trained exceedingly hard, even at aspects that were of no use in the movies.
Steven Seagal is/was a real martial artist and has real skills, but his resume is so padded/fake that it’s hard to separate fantasy from reality with the guy.
Good call! John Wayne played the great iconic American hero, but Jimmy Stewart WAS the great iconic American hero. And he was so humble about it that right up to his death many people didn’t know just what he had accomplished in the military. Flying daylight raids in B-17’s was one of the most dangerous things you could do in the war.
After the war, he continued to serve in the reserves while carrying out his Hollywood movie career, and was eventually promoted to Brigadier General, then was given a retirement promotion to Major General. Not bad for a guy who started as a private, and who had failed the medical for enlistment three times and kept trying until he got in.
Plus the martial art he practices is Aikido. Which skews very heavily towards art.
Norris doesn’t use guns because they kill people too slowly.
There is no such thing as “evolution”. Only animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
I do know John Wayne would kick Jeff Bridges’ ass.