Benny Urquidez Talks About Chuck Norris, Bruce Lee, Ed Parker, Elvis Presley and the Man Who Motivated Him to Become a Champion!

Benny “The Jet” Urquidez was a six-time world champion in five weight classes, which explains why he’s considered a legend in full-contact karate and kickboxing. It should come as no surprise that along the way, he witnessed numerous changes in how fights were conducted, judged and scored. As sport fighting evolved, so did Urquidez.

“Back in the 1950s and into the ’60s, the rules for fighting were a lot different than they are today,” Urquidez said. “We fought on concrete slabs, wooden floors — there were never any mats. When you went down, you went down hard. The rules allowed us to grab and sweep our opponents to the ground. Takedowns and judo throws were OK. Once on the ground, we could continue to punch until the referee stopped us.”

Back then, the term “full-contact karate” hadn’t been coined, but a strong case could be made that this is precisely what Urquidez engaged in. In fact, The Jet deserves credit for being the first martial artist to compete in boxing, karate, judo and bare-knuckle fighting.

“You want to talk about contact? That was MMA before there was MMA!” he said. “We were beating each other up and guys were getting knocked out, but we tried to pull a punch after contact so as to not really hurt each other. We called it ‘controlled contact.’ That was our honor system, and that format of controlled contact continued until 1968.

“Eventually, point fighting eliminated a lot of those things, but what we did in the ’60s was full-contact fighting. I don’t know anyone who wore shin pads or leg pads or padded gloves like we wore in the ’70s. Even though the rules called for light contact, guys were getting hit with a lot of force, often with blood running down their face, but we kept on fighting. At the end of the match, we’d bow and no one got mad because that was the bushido way. We showed respect. It didn’t matter how hard you got hit — a broken nose, busted ribs — it didn’t matter. You just got back up and smiled [to] show respect to your opponent.”

Raised

“Because my father was a professional boxer, at the age of 5 — when most kids were playing with toy firetrucks — I had boxing gloves and was competing in a peewee boxing division,” Urquidez recalled.

“In 1959 I started training in judo and competed until 1963, when I started kenpo karate. I trained under Bill Ryusaki because my oldest brother Arnold was training with him. My other brother Rubin and my youngest brother Smiley were also training in judo. So I crossed-trained in judo and kenpo karate while I was boxing.” With each victory in judo, boxing and karate, Benny became more of a force to be reckoned with, but he was running out of people to fight. By 14, he’d dominated his age group and rank

division, and parents of other youngsters were complaining that he hit too hard and made their kids cry. A simple solution occurred to Urquidez: He would test for his black belt. Back in the ’60s, however, 18 was the minimum age for the rank. He lobbied for an exception and, against Arnold’s objections, it was agreed that the 14-year-old would receive a special test.

KEEPING IT REAL

“Back in the ’60s, we fought the way we trained, and we trained for a street fight,” Benny Urquidez recalled. “We fought honoring the bushido way, the warrior’s code. Today, the way many people train is memorized martial arts. By that, I mean if I can memorize the waza, the grappling and kata, I can get a rank.” When he conducts seminars — which he still does around the world — Urquidez likes to keep it real. “I teach students to hit the target, which could be the head, torso or legs: ‘Do not miss it, do not go 4 or 5 inches over their head, do not stop short of contact,’” he said. “Then I teach the proper way to block those punches and kicks. I do this because I believe that the way you train is the way you’ll respond in an attack. “When I’m choreographing fights for movies, I bring this same teaching reality to the big screen by using stunt guys who can act and actors who can do stunts. I started that at the Lee Strasberg [Institute] by doing fight scenes for movies as if it were a real fight.”

“Mr. Parker and sensei Ryusaki arranged a black-belt test that lasted three days,” Urquidez said. “I tested against 27 black belts, and at the end of the third day, I was awarded a shodan. That was in 1966, making me at the time the youngest person to ever be promoted to black belt.” His celebration was short-lived. “Part of our dojo’s tradition was that every black belt in the school got to kick the new black belt,” he said. “Arnold kicked me so hard that he broke my ribs, and I ended up in the hospital. He did that because he was upset with me for breaking tradition by testing before I was 18, and Mom was very upset at him for doing that.”

Broken ribs weren’t enough to keep the 14-year-old down for long. With his bones still bandaged, he signed up for Ed Parker’s Long Beach International Karate Championships, only to discover that because he was now a black belt, he had to play with the big kids, and they played rough.

“They told me that I had to fight in the adult black-belt division because there weren’t any black belts in the kids division,” Urquidez said. “I looked to see who was in my division, and there was Joe Lewis, Skipper Mullins and Chuck Norris, to name a few. I thought to myself, I can’t fight them — I’m just a kid. When he walked in, the veteran black belts likely viewed him the way a lion regards an easy meal. “They patted me on my head and taunted me with, ‘Look, a cute little kid with a black belt,’” Urquidez recalled.

“At the end of the day, they weren’t patting me on the head; they were shaking my hand after I won first place in fighting. I felt on top of the world. I’d earned their respect as a fighter!”

After taking a few minutes to celebrate his conquest at the competition, Urquidez sat ringside and watched a new guy from Hong Kong named Bruce Lee. The crowd was mesmerized as Lee demonstrated his 1-inch punch. Little did Urquidez know that he was witnessing a moment in martial arts history — or that the demo would change his life.

Conflicted

While Urquidez listened to Lee talk about using internal energy, he recalled snippets from his childhood. “My mother, who was a professional wrestler, used to talk to me about internal power,” he said. “She was a very spiritual person, but I never understood what she was talking about. My father was very external. Because he was a boxer, with him, it was always hit faster, hit harder.

“So I was being taught external by my father while my mother was trying to teach me about internal — but I never understood how it worked until that day at the Internationals when I heard Bruce Lee talking about how he accesses his internal power.

“Bruce’s partner was a big guy weighing about 240 pounds. He was holding a metal plate against his chest. There was a chair 4 or 5 feet behind him. Bruce had four fingers on this guy’s chest, then he let loose with a high-pitched, animal-like screech as he punched, sending that huge guy flying backward, hitting with so much force that he flew over the back of the chair. I stood up and said, ‘I want to do that!’” Urquidez was simultaneously awestruck and challenged. “I told my brother Arnold that I wanted to spar with him (Lee), and Arnold said to me, ‘You don’t have enough experience to spar with him.’ But I was determined to find a way.”

GREATEST NON-CONTACT FIGHT OF ALL TIME

Before the melee in LA, Benny Urquidez had another historic fight that also failed to find its way to television. In 1973, during his non-contact point-fighting career, he squared off against John Natividad in what’s considered the most exciting non-contact fight ever. In an unprecedented 25-point overtime match at the Long Beach International Karate Championships, “The Jet” battled “The Giant Killer,” who happened to be the heavyweight champion. Natividad wound up winning 13-12. It was Urquidez’s only non-contact loss and his last non-contact point fight.

Driven

With the seemingly impossible goal of someday going toe-to-toe with “The Dragon,” The Jet squared off with anyone and everyone regardless of style, age or rank to prove to his big brother that he was ready for the challenge.

“I already had a lot of ring experience, but no matter how many fights I’d won, Arnold still said I wasn’t ready,” Benny recalled. “It was 1968, and I’d won every tournament I’d fought in. About this time, I heard Elvis Presley was forming a karate team, so I competed for a spot on the team and destroyed everyone in my weight division. At 18, I became the youngest member of the Elvis Presley team in 1969.

“The team went to Belgium, and the guys were trying to decide who was going to fight who. I volunteered to fight first and was facing the European champion. I didn’t realize that nobody thought I could win — I was basically the sacrificial lamb for the team. Even if I lost, the team could still win by beating the rest of the Belgium team.”

Urquidez went for a sweep and missed, hitting his foe in the thigh and knocking him down. To everyone’s surprise, he won the match. He won the next one in Germany, as well. “After we fought throughout Europe, the team went home and I asked Arnold, ‘Now can I spar with him?’ But Arnold again said, ‘Benny, you just don’t have enough experience to fight Bruce Lee.’”

Benny wanted so desperately to test his speed against Lee that he decided to try his hand at professional boxing, hoping it might convince his brother that he was worthy.

Challenged

Several weeks before his first pro boxing match, Urquidez scored a spot on Norris’ Los Angeles Stars team, part of the fledgling National Karate League. That prompted him to stow his boxin gloves and prep for an event known as the World Series of Martial Arts, which was scheduled to take place in Hawaii. The two-day competition would have no rules and no weight divisions, making it right up Urquidez’s alley.

“I dropped the first guy with one punch and thought I was going to get disqualified, then I remembered it was OK to knock people out at this event,” he recalled. “I went on to stop seven guys on Saturday, then on Sunday I was scheduled to fight four more. I ended up fighting Ernest White, who was a Marine champion. After beating him, I was told my next fight would be against Dana Goodman — he was 6 feet 2 inches and weighed 245 pounds. It was a David-against-Goliath kind of Fight.

“I’m only 5 feet 6. My head barely came up to the Hawaiian heavyweight kickboxing

champion’s chest. Before the bell, Dana kept smiling at me, but I quickly put an end to that. I just kept swinging away and won the fight, giving me the first title in the sport of

full-contact karate.

“Just prior to that, I’d taken the Elvis Presley team title. I’d now won every martial arts

title there was to win. I went home and asked my brother, ‘Now have I earned the right to spar with Bruce Lee?’”

After defying seemingly impossible odds, The Jet was deemed by his brother to be

ready to ask Lee for a match. It would never happen, however, because the founder of jeet kune do passed away while filming in Hong Kong.

“His death was a terrible loss to the world of marital arts,” Urquidez said. “I never had a chance to spar with him, which was very disappointing on a personal level, but sparring with him was my motivation to be a better fighter and martial artist. So in a way, he helped me to try harder and to never give up. I did become friends with his daughter Shannon Lee and began training her. It’s funny how things turn out sometimes.”

Tormented

In 1975 an event of unprecedented magnitude unfolded at the Olympic Auditorium in LA. It pitted the Los Angeles Stars against a team of veteran muay Thai fighters from Thailand. Urquidez was used to the kind of attention this show was garnering. Many of his matches had been televised by the World Karate Association, which was founded by his brother Arnold and Howard Hanson. Once again, the WKA cameras rolled, and before the final bell sounded, a full-fledged riot would erupt. “I didn’t know anything about Thai fighting,” Urquidez said. 

“In fact, when Arnold told me I was going to ‘fight muay Thai,’ I actually thought that was the guy’s name. I had no idea that muay Thai was a style of fighting. So I told Arnold, ‘Sure I’ll fight him, no problem.’” When Urquidez entered the ring, the Thai boxer was in the middle of his wai khru pre-fight routine, but the American thought he was doing a dance — so he began bobbing and weaving to the music. And the crowd began booing. 

“They thought I was making fun of their ritual, and that’s when things started getting ugly,” he said.

“In the first round, he kicked me in the thigh, and the pain was intense. My eyes bulged out of my head — it hurt that bad. I’ve had charley horses before, but I’ve never had anyone try to break my leg. That was the first time I was introduced to a thigh kick.”

After the second round, Benny was in his corner, seeking advice from Arnold. His brother merely said, “Kick him back!” Benny obliged. “I threw a kick, but he leg-checked it. That was the first time I’d ever been leg-checked. The pain was instantaneous. In the next round, he grabbed me around my neck and started kneeing me in the face.

I yelled to Arnold, ‘What do I do?’ He yelled back, ‘Don’t let him grab you!’” That’s when Benny decides to call on his judo training. “In the fifth and sixth rounds, whenever he would grab me, I’d throw him on his head,” he said. “There were hundreds of Thais in the crowd, and they were getting really mad because they’d never seen a fighter get thrown like that. And the Americans were screaming mad because they had never seen anyone get kneed in the face. Even the referee didn’t know what was happening because there was a lack of communication about the rules before the fight.”

Urquidez said he thought he was winning — until, in the ninth round, his opponent knocked him down. “I got right back up, and that’s when the crowd started to fight. It got crazy real fast. My brother was getting our mom and sister out of the building. It was a full-on riot! That’s how America was introduced to muay Thai.”

Because of a mishap, that historic fight was never televised. Apparently an inexperienced videotape technician unknowingly placed the edited master on a degausser, a device designed to erase magnetic storage media.

Fortunately, most of Benny’s bouts were not erased. In fact, they fascinated fans around the world. That LA riot ended up earning him international attention, especially in Japan and Thailand. As a result, two of Japan’s best muay Thai fighters issued challenges. The American defeated both, netting him his first world-championship title.

“Those fights in Japan were where I introduced kickboxing to the world,” he said. “Over there, muay Thai was the most popular sport, but by winning those fights in Japan, I was able to introduce the WKA and the sport of kickboxing to the world.

“The rest is history.”

Terry L. Wilson is a freelance writer and jujitsu practitioner based in San Diego.

This article originally appeared in a 2021 issue of Black Belt Magazine.