How Strong Is Chuck Norris?

Does everyone remember those Chuck Norris memes from the internet's far more innocent mid-2000s days? "Death once had a near-Chuck experience," "Chuck drinks napalm to fight heartburn," "A cobra bit Chuck Norris' leg — after five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died," and so forth? It's not exactly clear where these jokes got started, but a thread of intrepid Redditors points to Vin Diesel memes on old-school Something Awful forums that pivoted to Norris. Others point to "Walker, Texas Ranger" era (1993 to 2001) offline jokes that migrated online, or even a running gag on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." It was all done in good fun — and with an obvious dash of love.

So the question begs: Is Chuck really all that? How strong is he? "Strong" is a vague, terribly defined word, but let's start with the basics: Is Chuck physically strong? Well, at 84 years old in 2024, he still worked out, boxed, and said that he feels like he's 48, so that's a yes. Besides, we've all seen, say, that legendary fight between Norris and Bruce Lee in 1972's " The Way of the Dragon," right?

More importantly, Norris was a six-time World Professional Middleweight Karate Champion. He was also the first person inducted into the Black Belt Hall of Fame in 1968, the HoF's Instructor of the Year in 1975, and Competitor of the Year in 1977. He is also the founder of the United Fighting Arts Federation and has numerous black belts. Besides all of that, Norris is an Air Force veteran. So yeah, let's say Chuck Norris is "strong" in a whole bunch of ways.

Long before Chuck Norris showed up on the big and small screen throwing roundhouses, he was throwing roundhouses in professional martial arts tournaments. He's not the only action actor who comes from a legit martial arts background – Jean Claude Van Damme and Jet Li come to mind — but Norris stands out because of the sheer amount of tournaments and titles that he's won. 

Does this mean that Norris needed to look like a 'roided-out brick of dehydrated stoneflesh to be "strong"? No. He looked rather au natural back in the day. But do you wanna bet that Norris was physically strong enough, well-trained enough, and skilled enough to flatten a burly dude who looked more muscular? We're not even going to dignify that with an answer. Would-be competitors can head back in time and give it a shot if they want. No takers? Point proven.

Norris accumulated a bananas fighting record over his professional martial arts career spanning 1964 to 1974. He might have lost his first three tournaments (a myth, some say), but he went on to win the National Karate Championships (1966), All-Star Championships (1966), World Middleweight Karate Championship (1967), All-American Karate Championship (1967), World Professional Middleweight Karate Championship (1968), All-American Championship (1968), National Tournament of Champions (1968), and more. He finished with a record of 65-5. When he retired in 1974 he was an undefeated Professional Full-Contact Middleweight Champion. He was the first person in the West to earn an 8th-degree black belt in Taekwondo in 1997, per UFAF. See? Strong.

Just in case being a world champion martial artist isn't strong enough, Chuck Norris served in the Air Force from 1958 to 1962. At that point, the 18-year-old Norris wanted a career in law enforcement and enlisted as an Air Policeman. He might not have been stalking the sweltering jungles of Vietnam looking for a P.O.W. camp (while not being named Rambo) like in 1984's "Missing in Action," or shooting baddies side-by-side excellent character actor Lee Marvin in 1986's "Delta Force." But, he has always been the dude that's kept other dudes in check, on and off screen. And in the Air Force, no less.

It was the Air Force that served as Norris' gateway to martial arts. Stationed in South Korea at Osan Air Base, Norris took a shine to Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art, and Judo via the Osan Air Base Judo team. Even though he suffered a shoulder injury that set his training back, he trained so hard that he came home in 1962 with a black belt in Tang Soo Do and a brown belt in Judo. Back in the United States, he earned a rank of airman first class (A1C) before receiving an honorable discharge.

More than martial arts prowess, Norris' time in the military proves his strength of character. As Impacting Our Future quotes him, "I didn't succeed at it [martial arts] immediately, but I continued to work on it, and I learned an important lesson. It was the first time I'd stuck with something and not given up."

So, what was left for Chuck Norris to do after finishing his term in the military and winning loads of worldwide martial arts championships? Why, everything. Looking at the timeline of Norris' life: He finished high school and joined the military in 1958, finished the military and opened his own martial arts studio in 1962, started his professional fighting career in 1964 and ended it in 1974, and before it ended had already started his acting career in earnest in 1972 with "Way of the Dragon" (with a couple of small roles before then). 

Later, Norris formed the United Fighting Arts Federation (UFAF) in 1979 featuring his own martial art, Chun Kuk Do. Chun Kuk Do, per Top Form Karate, is a "Korean-based American hard style of karate" derived from Tang Soo Do and even weaving Krav Maga into the mix. It's that very year — 1979 — that Norris really shifted his acting career into high gear with "A Force of One," followed by film after film, year after year (and sometimes multiple films in a year), almost every single year all the way to 2005.

Here's the point, in case you missed it: Norris was absolutely relentless in his pursuit of his goals at each step of life. Even those who dislike the man could hardly deny the strength of will, fortitude, and dedication necessary to do everything that Norris has done, in succession. And, he did it all after not experiencing immediate initial success in his chief domain: martial arts. 

Chuck Norris is also "strong" in another way unrelated to working hard enough to do the whole martial arts champion meets Air Force veteran meets film and TV star thing. We mean the kind of difficulties that everyone eventually contends with in some form: violence, death, and illness. His 1988 book was even titled, "The Secret of Inner Strength: My Story," so, besides physical strength, Norris worked on his mental and emotional strength as well. 

In an interview on The Dick Cavett Show in 1993, Norris said that his father was an alcoholic with "a bad temper." Years after Norris' father and mother divorced, his father came over one night to fight his stepfather. Norris, who was 17 at the time, faced off against his own flesh and blood. He didn't go into details, but he said that that was the last time he saw his father before the man died.

Norris' brother also died during the Vietnam War in a Viet Cong ambush, as he recounted on The Dick Cavett Show. "It was a war of monetary gains, rather than a war of principle ... ," Norris said, " ... They're just saying we're there to avoid communism, but these people here [in Vietnam], all they're concerned about is eating from day to day."

There are other tragedies in Norris' life, but his wife's recent serious health issue stands out. Norris left his career behind in 2017 to take care of his ailing spouse, Gena, whom they believed got sick from MRI dye. "She's dying. She's dying right in front of me," Norris said in a CBS News interview. Gena eventually recovered, but Norris sued gadolinium (MRI dye) maker Bracco Imaging in 2017 for $10 million but dropped the suit in 2020.

While it's not necessarily the case that those who die early lived unhealthy lives, it's rarely the case that those who live to an old age didn't live healthy lives. In this arena, Chuck Norris once again demonstrates a strength that's part-physical, part-psychological, and related to the same kind of tenacity he's demonstrated over his entire life: the endurance to age well. 

Looking at pictures of Chuck Norris nowadays, you've be forgiven for thinking that you were looking at a man in his 60s. But as we mentioned before, Norris is 84 years old. There's 2024 footage of him online on News.com.au doing a barbell curl "warm-up" routine that involves 12 weights, with at least one outer weight equaling 45 pounds. If all the weights were 45 pounds, that would be 540 pounds total, which is ridiculous. But then again, we can fall back to meme territory and say, "It's Chuck Norris — he's bending gravity to his will." Also, a 2024 video on FightHype shows Norris punching a boxing bag. While he's not as young as he used to be, let's just say that no sane person would volunteer to get hit by those fists. 

At Reader's Digest's The Healthy, Norris cites nutrition as one of his keys to aging well and says that swimming has helped him a lot as he gets older. He also cites, "the power of listening to your body and identifying what helps it perform at its best," as critical to his longevity. No matter how much longer Norris sticks around, he's demonstrated plenty of strength along the path to the present.