You might be able to argue he was a bigger star than any of them.

His career lasted far longer. He had big movie appearances for 30 years, none of those people accomplished that.

Norris' first movie role was in 1968, first big credited appearance was 1972, Walker Texas Ranger finished in 2001.

> You might be able to argue he was a bigger star than any of them.

I think that's a hard argument to make.

Candace Bergen's career was just as long. Her first movie role was 1966, she was nominated for an Oscar in 1979, and she was on a popular sitcom from 1988 to 1998 that won her five Emmies and attracted national commentary after criticism from the Vice President.

I was a kid in the 80s and 90s and to me even then Chuck Norris was a B-movie self-parody joke character. He was not an A-list "action star" in the sense that Schwarzenegger, Stallone, or even Van Damme were.

The dude was a badass, 6 time undefeated karate world champion (!!!), created his own variant of karate mixed with korean martial arts, was a good friend with Bruce Lee and that scene in Colloseum - probably the coolest thing I saw as a kid growing up behind iron curtain... not many actors can have such a resume on top of their acting career.

Those who cared would/will know him regardless. But obviously those people would be relatively few and far apart.

An immense amount of time, dedication and talent must have went into all those achievements. This requires mastery of body and mind at an exceptional level. Putting aside all jokes and acting roles, the martials arts is where he earned my full respect and that will also stick in my memory about him.

He had is own line of denims, with extra stretchy crotches. Makes roundhouse kicking baddies in the face easier.

"World champion" is an embellishment, but he was a strong points fighter within North America. His six championships were for a tournament that crowned self-titled "Professional [weight class] Karate Champions", with the "World" embellishment added later. To be fair, occasionally, people from other countries did appear at these tournaments, but there weren't Japanese fighters there, and Japan dominates the gold medal count for the WKF World Karate Championship that started in 1970.

Reminds of King of Kong and those arcade and video game "World Championships" in 80s/90s basically only involving Americans.

Haha haven’t heard of either of those but I do know that when Chuck Norris does pushups he pushes the Earth down

We all do. That’s the only way you can do a pushup.

It would be more impressive to say that when Chuck Norris does pushups, he violates conservation of momentum and the Earth does not move.