RIP Joe Lewis

[MMX]

We lost another great today.

He brought full contact karate/kickboxing into the spotlight in the early 1970's in the USA and was the inspiration for Ken Masters for the Street Fighter video games.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lewis_%28martial_artist%29

[curlbroscience]

Very sad day. RIP Joe Lewis. I did not know how was the inspiration behind Ken from SFII

[powerof0ne]

Wow, I did a couple seminars under him He was a great Man, definitely a pioneer for kickboxing in the USA.
Osu!

[hokuto12]

Osu RIP Joe. Learn something new everyday. I also didn't know that about Ken.

[Deleted]

Very sad to hear. I remember last year when he had to undergo surgery for a brain tumor but apparently was recovering well from it. RIP.

[powerof0ne]

Joe, IMHO, was ahead of time, and not necessarily what I'd call somebody with "pretty technique" but a man of "grit." He's what many of us come to expect in a knockdown karate veteran, even though he wasn't a knockdown karateka, he fought with grit.

The seminars I did under him, were more of "international rules" kickboxing which includes leg kicks/gedan mawashi, head kicks, and boxing.

What drew me to Lewis, wasn't just his history, but that he whole heartedly felt that it wasn't the style, but the Man (or Woman) that made the fight.

To receive a black belt under Lewis, you had to already be at least a brown belt in another style and it was based on going rounds of the type of rules that I just described, and Joe himself would spar you...he didn't hide behind his hype, he was the real deal. Joe had one hell of a "shovel punch" that could drop the best of us, and a hellacious lead hook, and his kicks hit you like a sledge hammer.

For a while, while living in North Carolina (I was stationed there for some years, and Joe would be involved with seminars in VA and surrounding areas) I gave some very serious thought to moving up in rank through Joe and came very close to doing so.... I grew up hearing about Joe, Chuck, Wallace, The Jet, Jackson, Mullen, and more through my Dad during the start of point karate/TKD and the PKA...and later WKA days. My Dad wasn't Joe's biggest fan but he had nothing but respect for Joe's strength..I honestly consider myself to model my style more like Lewis than anybody elses, especially today...maybe just a bit more focused on hiza geri...but I don't consider myself Joe, not by a long shot, Joe was one of a kind.

I'm just an average person who has been involved in martial arts most of my life, Men like Joe are, Men who help an entire set of rules for martial art competition evolve...I just play by the rules that Men like Joe set.

A pioneer of an era has passed.

Osu Joe!