Plenty of famous people in the 1950s and 60s were handed honorary black belts they hadn’t earned. Elvis Presley wasn’t one of them. He trained in karate for nearly twenty years, under a string of serious instructors across three countries, opened his own karate school, and reached a rank most people who train their whole lives never touch. His karate nickname was “Tiger.” And there is one wonderfully human detail at the heart of it all.
It started in the Army. Stationed in West Germany in 1958, Elvis began training with a German Shotokan instructor named Jürgen Seydel, often at his own off-base house. Soldiers got thirty days of paid leave a year, and Elvis spent his differently from most. On a trip to Paris, he took private lessons with Tetsuji Murakami, one of Japan’s leading Shotokan practitioners — on one occasion training with him for nine days straight, several hours a day. That’s not a photo opportunity. That’s obsession.
It was in Germany that he also began conditioning his hands to break boards by repeatedly banging his knuckles against hard surfaces. By the time he was discharged, he’d reached third-degree brown belt.
Elvis Doing Karate
Back in America in 1960, he earned his first-degree black belt under an instructor named Hank Slemansky — and the circumstances matter. There had been a rash of fake celebrity black belts around that time, and Slemansky was determined that this one would be real. He put Elvis through a punishing six-week program to make sure the rank was justified. When Elvis passed, Slemansky’s verdict was blunt and perfect: “The kid ain’t pretty, but he’s tough and he’s a Black Belt.”
Then came the friendship that lasted the rest of his life. At a demonstration at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in 1960, Elvis met Ed Parker, the founder of American Kenpo. Parker trained him on and off until Elvis died, and became one of his most trusted friends and bodyguards. Parker later wrote something that tells you exactly how deep this went: “Singing was his first love; the martial arts ran a close second.”
Elvis Presley: Black Belt Karate Master
Karate poured into everything. It shaped his stage act — the kicks, the stances, the sharp hand movements of the seventies shows all came from the dojo. He put karate on screen. In 1970, he returned to Memphis and trained with Grandmaster Kang Rhee, who promoted him to sixth degree in 1973 and seventh degree in 1974, with an eighth-degree certificate presented at a quiet ceremony in Rhee’s Memphis studio that September. That same year, Elvis backed the construction of a larger Tennessee Karate Institute in Memphis, and one of his training partners there was Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, a genuine world champion. Elvis is now in the Martial Arts Hall of Fame, and one of his custom karate gi is on display at Graceland.
And the human detail? One of his trainers later admitted something quietly funny and quietly sad. He never let Elvis lose a fight — because he was worried about what losing would do to the King’s ego. Elvis Presley trained for two decades, earned his first belt the hard way, and still, in the end, was surrounded by people who couldn’t quite bring themselves to let him be beaten.