The ant crawling on the ground will scare Bon Jovi into making a noise, waking up the blade of grass. Fight over, blade of grass in the first round, by a knockout.
My housemate just said, “John Wayne was a sissy trying to act like a tough guy; Chuck Norris was a tough guy, trying to be an actor. You tell me who would win.” Win.
John Wayne would have kicked your housemate’s ass.
Finally some sense in this thread.
It’s hard to take John Wayne’s tough guy image seriously when he deferred from enlisting while fellow actors like Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable were like “Yeah, let’s go kick some Nazi ass.” He didn’t even have any medical problems, he just didn’t feel like it. John Wayne wasn’t a hero, he was a shitty actor who occasionally got lucky with the right part (not to mention a shill for the very product that eventually killed him).
You got me there, but I defy you to name a good Norris flick.
John Wayne’s refusal to serve is mystifying, but irrelevant to his toughness. Muhammed Ali refused induction, and would have kicked Noriss’s or Wayne’s ass without doubt. Wayne’s failure to serve is thought to have lead to his adoption of modern conservative views later in life. Norris, by the way, could have re-enlisted and served in Vietnam, though it would have been understandable if he did not after the death of his brother in 1970.
Also, Norris and Wayne appeared together in the Green Berets. Norris had an uncredited role.
Touché.
If it was Air Force, as stated upthread, he was likely an SP (AF version of MP, stands for Special Police…thinks Jerry’s kids special). During my time in the USAF, despite being on a base whose with secure intelligence facilities, we joked about whether or not the SPs guarding the facilities were issued bullets. Another ongoing joke was that these SPs were airman who washed out of cook school.
Another character – Darth Vader. Two words: Force choke.
The talk about Bruce Lee earlier made me remember one of the funniest lines I’ve read on cracked.com:
Well, I have my doubts. Wayne, sure, but Norris, maybe maybe not.
At his peak as the heavyweight champion, Ali was about 6’2", and over 220 lbs. He was extremely fast, very long arms, and was extremely difficult to hit. He demonstrated an ability to absorb monstrous punches. The left hook Joe Frasier hit him with in their first fight would have taken Chuck’s head off. His fist twisted at the end of his jabs, and he would have torn up Norris’s face and swollen his eyes. He knocked out many men much bigger than Chuck Norris. No contest.
I’m not at all convinced that Norris could have beaten Bruce Lee, much less Ali.
Yeah. Norris has chops as a martial artist, no doubt, but – frankly – that may not count for a heckuva lot in a brawl. Ali was strong, fast, and (as noted) considerably larger than the 5’10" Norris. The latter would’ve been battered into the ground.
(As for Norris vs. Lee: recently someone linked to their fight in Way of the Dragon on Reddit with the title “Atheist Beats Evangelical Christian to Death”, which was, I suppose, at least worth a chuckle …)
I don’t believe Chuck Norris ever fought full contact, at least officially. He promoted some full contact events, but all his tournament wins (of which there were many) were the semi- or no-contact variety.
I am open to correction on this.
Regards,
Shodan
Good points, Shodan, since full-contact didn’t come into vogue until five years after Norris’ last win.
Per the OP: if we are talking about the actual men in their physical primes, then of course it’s no contest. The Duke certainly had a marked size advantage – at least eight inches in height and probably fifty pounds in weight – but at the end of the day you’re talking about a karate champion against a college football lineman with some non-competitive boxing experience. Chuck was a fighter who did some acting; Duke was an actor who was unusually capable physically, but never a competitive martial artist.
If we’re talking about who created the more convincing tough-guy characters, however…well, that has to go to the Duke. John Wayne is chronically underrated as an actor, especially by folks who’ve never seen his movies, and occasionally by his own fans. He is perhaps the one actor who could command the full attention of the frame in every shot, with the possible exception of his work in *The Long Voyage Home *where he was admittedly lost in a role he wasn’t ready for. I’ll admit my exposure to Chuck Norris is limited to his movies in the 70s and 80s, but as an actor, he was a good fighter, and the viewer had to be constantly reminded that this less-than-dominant personality had combat skills–it wasn’t constantly evident in his persona the way it was with the Duke’s.
The problem is that these are all true.
I keed, but several boxing pros who worked with Lee Jun Fan were quite convinced that he could have been a major welterweight contender if he’d boxed professionally, and after Gene LeBell was through with him, Lee was quite the grappler, too. I wouldn’t want to stand in with him.
On the Muhammed Ali question, did he know how to kick? And for that matter, would it even occur to him to do so? While his arms might have longer reach than (say) Norris’s, Norris’s legs would almost certainly have more reach than Ali’s arms, and more strength besides.
Above the waist, foot reach is about the same as hand reach. Norris was also much shorter and couldn’t have connected a kick to Ali’s head without leaving himself very vulnerable. Ali had no particular kicking skills, but he survived some heavy kicking to his legs from Antonio Inoki in their idiotic boxer vs. wrestler match. If Norris got close enough to Ali to do any damage with hand or foot, Ali would have knocked him out. But Ali would have knocked out John Wayne too, so I’m not sure how that relates to the Wayne vs. Norris question. I pointed out Ali to show that someone can be tough and dangerous without serving in the military.
The Joe Louis-Billy Conn fight could show what would happen in a Wayne-Norris fight. In that case, Billy Conn, a middleweight posing as a light-heavyweight, outpointed Louis until the 13th round when Joe Louis knocked him out. Billy Conn is a good analog for Chuck Norris, but John Wayne was no Joe Louis. Norris would have won in those circumstances. For the real people anyway. For the characters, Wayne would be the equivalent of Joe Louis, but Norris would be still be a Billy Conn.
ETA: ‘Above the waist’ is a poor description because of the variety of kicks that can be performed. At head height of the kicker, foot and hand reach would be about equivalent.
OK, so you kick the guy in the knees until he falls over and everything is “below the waist”.