Carnak: “BTW, did David Carradine have any credible martial arts prowess? I remember watching an early Chuck Norris film back in the day and having to suffer the indignities of some goon behind me who insisted Carradine could have cleaned Norris’ clock.”
Chuck was the real-deal in the early days. I doubt David would have stood a chance, but I do remember in the 70s and 80s that there was a lot of on-set rivalry and trash talking going on between Carradine and Norris. Carradine was reputedly quite the hot-tempered brawler back then. It is rumored that during Lone Wolf McQuade that they had a bit of a tiff because David was being too dangerous and reckless during filming to try and show up Chuck, and they had it out behind the scenes with Chuck easily winning.
From a bio at http://www.scms.ca/hbnorr.html
…In 1968, Norris became the Professional World Middleweight Karate Champion. He held the title undefeated until he retired in 1974. He is a black belt in Tang Soo Do and Tae Kwan Do, both Korean fighting arts, and knows all forms of the martial arts. In 1969, he earned the Triple Crown for the highest number of tournament wins, and was named Fighter of the Year by Black Belt magazine. By the time he was 34, Norris had established 32 karate schools and had been a champion for six years. In 1996, he became the first Westerner to be awarded an eighth-degree black belt in Tae Kwan Do. …
Carradine also has done a lot of training in several martial arts styles over the years, and is a quite serious practitioner. The technical advisors during the original Kung Fu series were masters/teachers themselves (David Chow, Kam Yuen) of various kung fu styles and much of the work in the original series was technically very accurate, and David received quite a bit of training and experience from them.
He was never in the same league as Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris though.
