Priscilla Presley said Elvis didn’t have good aim with his karate kicks. Still, he liked to show off whenever he could, even around complete strangers.
Elvis Presley loved karate, but according to Priscilla Presley, he wasn’t all that good at it. Still, he could rarely pass up a fight, even when he had no stake in it. On one occasion, Elvis, Priscilla, and his entourage were driving when they saw two strangers arguing. Elvis pulled over to break up the fight, and afterward, Priscilla said everyone played along with the fantasy he created about it.
Priscilla Presley watched Elvis break up a fight between two strangers
On a drive, Elvis noticed two service station attendants fighting. He ordered the limousine driver to pull over, telling him, “Someone’s in trouble.”
“He jumped out of the car, Jerry [Schilling] and Sonny [West] following him,” Priscilla wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “Going up to one of the men, he said, ‘Hey, if you want to give somebody trouble, give it to me.’”
One of the attendants, likely stunned that one of the world’s biggest celebrities was getting involved in the fight, responded with confusion. He told Elvis that the argument had nothing to do with him.
“‘I’ll show you something, if you want to get into an argument,’ Elvis said. He shot out a karate kick, and to his surprise — and everybody else’s — he knocked a pack of cigarettes out of the guy’s pocket,” Priscilla recalled. “Among our group, Elvis wasn’t known for his precision in karate.”
Priscilla Presley said everyone played along when Elvis talked about the fight
Elvis walked away from the fight with a “cocky” smile, telling the two men that there would be more where that came from if they continued to make trouble. Priscilla doubted that. She explained that she would joke about the “fight” with Elvis’ entourage long after the fact.
“Long after the service station fracas, we joked about it, saying, ‘Man, the Lord had to be on E’s side that day. That guy doesn’t know how lucky he was.’”
Elvis, however, found the encounter thrilling. He spoke about it in increasingly hyperbolic terms, and everyone supported his stories.
“When we got home, the way Elvis told it you’d think he’d just wiped out half a battalion,” Priscilla wrote. “We all supported his fantasy.”
He showed off his karate skills in front of other celebrities
While he might not have had the best aim, Elvis loved karate and often showed off his skills to guests. Several celebrities have stories of Elvis surprising them with his karate moves.
“We’re all just kind of sitting there, and [Elvis has] disappeared, so we’re kind of trying to chat,” Liza Minnelli said on The Graham Norton Show. “Suddenly, the door flies open, and I hear ‘Hi-yah!’ and he’s in the room in full dress.”
The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson heard that Elvis loved karate and playfully tried to karate chop him. On this occasion, Elvis’ aim had improved, and he hit Wilson’s arm.
“I knew he knew Karate, and he karate chopped my arm so hard. And he goes, ‘I’m leaving, I’m leaving,’ and he split,” Wilson explained on a 2012 episode of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. “And that was it.”
