“Chuck Norris was once bitten by a cobra. After ten excruciating minutes, the cobra died.” This joke predates the internet. It was probably written for some other folk hero. But it found its place only with the name of Chuck Norris. Martial artist, actor, screen icon and pop culture hero – Chuck Norris accomplished a lot in his eight decades of life. But the one who left an unusual mark on his legacy was that of an internet superstar. As Chuck Norris breathed his last on Friday, the Internet fondly remembered its original parody king.
Chuck Norris – Tough Guy
Chuck Norris was the proverbial tough guy. a martial artist who clashed with each other Bruce Lee made a name for himself in action films in the 80s and 90s in Enter the Dragon. But his role as a lone gunslinger in the ’90s TV hit Walker, Texas Ranger made him a household name across America. This also strengthened his image as a mean, tough man who could do impossible tasks without breaking a sweat.
Speaking about the show, Norris told the AP in 1996, “It’s not violence for the sake of violence without any moral framework.” “You try to portray the proper meaning of it – fighting injustice with justice, good versus bad. … It’s entertaining for the whole family.”
Chuck Norris Facts and Internet Fame
Websites in the early years of the Internet were not as grand as they are today. Most were rudimentary pages of simple code. They also included Chuck Norris Facts, an innocent all-text site devoted entirely to jokes about the man. None of them were mean, mind you. They only talked about how impossibly tough that guy was. His TV and screen persona, multiplied, became the basis of these jokes.
Chuck Norris facts went viral online with such wildly exaggerated statements as, “Chuck Norris had a staring contest with the sun – and won,” and, “They wanted to put Chuck Norris on Mount Rushmore, but the granite wasn’t hard enough for his beard.”
Norris eventually accepted the absurdity of the meme craze, and put together The Official Chuck Norris Fact Book, combining his favorite stories with supposedly true stories and the codes he wanted to live by. “Some people who know little about my martial arts or film career, but perhaps grew up with Walker, Texas Ranger, may feel as if I have become somewhat of a mythical superhero icon. I am pleased and humbled,” he wrote in the fact book’s forward.
In 2012, the actor parodied these facts in a cameo appearance in The Expendables 2, when he told a Cobra joke (as a matter of fact) after killing 20 people with a single gun.
Life and death of Chuck Norris
Born Carlos Ray Norris Chuck on March 10, 1940, in Ryan, Oklahoma, he grew up in poverty. At the age of 12, he moved to California with his family and joined the US Air Force after high school in 1958. While deployed in Korea he began training in martial arts. After leaving the Air Force, he became a six-time undefeated World Karate Champion and eventually founded his own American style of karate in the 60s, sometimes known as Chun Kuk Do and the United Fighting Arts Federation. Black Belt magazine eventually inducted Norris into its Hall of Fame as a 10th-degree black belt, the highest possible honor in the martial arts.
He began his acting career as an extra in the late ’60s, but rose to fame in 1972’s Enter the Dragon, when his face-off with Bruce Lee at the Coliseum became iconic. In 1993, he played his most famous role as a crime-fighting lawyer in TV’s Walker, Texas Ranger. The show ran for nine seasons.
He has taken on acting roles only on occasion in recent years, including the 2024 sci-fi action film Agent Recon. He is set to appear in the upcoming film Zombie Plane starring Vanilla Ice.
Chuck Norris died Friday in what his family described as a “sudden demise.”
“While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and is at peace,” the family said in a statement posted on social media.
Just a week before his death, he celebrated his birthday by posting a wonderful video on Instagram. He wrote, “My age does not increase. My standards increase.”
(with AP input)