{"id":197260,"date":"2026-03-20T20:08:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T19:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/uncategorized\/chuck-norris-iconic-star-of-walker-texas-ranger-dies"},"modified":"2026-03-20T21:16:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T20:16:02","slug":"chuck-norris-iconic-star-of-walker-texas-ranger-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/nigeria\/all-news\/chuck-norris-iconic-star-of-walker-texas-ranger-dies","title":{"rendered":"Chuck Norris, Iconic Star of Walker, Texas Ranger, Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. <\/strong><\/span>March 20 (Reuters) &#8211; Chuck Norris, the former martial arts champion and 1980s action-film hero who fought the bad guys in &#8220;Code of Silence,&#8221; &#8220;Missing in Action&#8221; and &#8220;The Delta Force&#8221; and upheld the law in the TV series &#8220;Walker, Texas Ranger,&#8221; died on Thursday, his family said in a statement on his Instagram account on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace,&#8221; the statement read.<\/p>\n<p>The six-time undefeated World Professional Middleweight Karate Champion, whose tough-guy image inspired satirical &#8220;facts&#8221; that made him an Internet phenomenon, had been hospitalized in Hawaii on Thursday, Variety reported.<\/p>\n<p>Norris starred in more than two dozen films portraying silent loners, soldiers, lawmen, veterans and All-American heroes who captured criminals, released prisoners of war, rescued hostages and battled terrorists.<\/p>\n<p>With his roundhouse kicks he fought martial arts icon Bruce Lee in Rome&#8217;s Colosseum in his 1973 film debut &#8220;The Way of the Dragon.&#8221; Along with actor Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis he helped defeat villain Jean-Claude Van Damme in the 2012 blockbuster &#8220;The Expendables 2.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Time magazine described him as &#8220;the ultimate tough guy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In his strictly wham-bam B-movie genre, Norris, a former karate champion, has become the undisputed superstar,&#8221; it said in \u20601985.<\/p>\n<p>Norris dodged bullets, landed kicks squarely on an opponent&#8217;s jaw and dismissed multiple villains at a time in his action-packed films.<\/p>\n<p>His macho image made him a hit at the box office and on the small screen. From 1993 to 2001, he played Sergeant Cordell Walker, an upstanding lawman, former Marine and martial arts expert in &#8220;Walker, Texas Ranger.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The bearded actor, writer and producer became an online cult hero in 2005 when an American student created what became Chuck Norris Facts, online jokes about the actor&#8217;s physical prowess and masculinity that became a viral sensation and inspired several books.<\/p>\n<p>Among the most popular were &#8220;Chuck Norris has a mug of nails instead of coffee in the morning&#8221; and &#8220;Chuck Norris doesn&#8217;t do push-ups; he pushes the Earth down.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>AN UNLIKELY TOUGH GUY<\/p>\n<p>Carlos Ray Norris was born on March 10, 1940 in Ryan, Oklahoma, the oldest of three brothers. The family moved to California after his parents divorced.<\/p>\n<p>He was extremely quiet and introverted, which he attributed to his father&#8217;s alcoholism and the family&#8217;s poverty.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In school I was shy and inhibited,&#8221; Norris wrote in his 2004 memoir &#8220;Against All Odds: My Story.&#8221; &#8220;If the teacher asked me to recite something aloud in front of the \u2060class, I would just shake my head no.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Norris was also not a natural athlete. He had to train remarkably hard to become a martial arts champion, he said. After graduating from school, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1958. While stationed in South Korea, he learned Tang Soo Do, a form of karate, and other martial arts.<\/p>\n<p>The future film star started teaching martial arts in California after his discharge. He also won major competitions. Actor Steve McQueen, who was one of Norris&#8217; students, encouraged him to try acting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He told me that I should think about projecting a presence, and never do a part that \u2060had a lot of dialogue,&#8221; Norris told the New York Times in a 1985 interview.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He told me, &#8216;Movies are visual, and when you try to verbalize something, you&#8217;re going to lose the audience.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Norris&#8217; films grossed millions and made him a popular figure among the U.S. military. He visited Iraq in 2006 and 2007 to show his support for American troops.<\/p>\n<p>In 1990, he founded his own martial arts discipline, Chun Kuk Do, and established \u2060the nonprofit organization, Kickstart Kids, to teach children martial arts and self-esteem.<\/p>\n<p>A patriot, Conservative and devout Christian, he worked with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and was a contributor to WorldNetDaily, a far-right news and aggregator website.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to his best-selling memoir, Norris published &#8220;The Secret of Inner Strength &#8211; My Story,&#8221; his guide to self-improvement, as well as several books on fitness and martial arts and \u2060two novels &#8211; 2006&#8217;s &#8220;The Justice Riders&#8221; and its sequel, &#8220;A Threat to Justice.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He was married twice and had five children.<\/p>\n<p>Norris defended his films to critics who claimed they promoted violence. If they are well written, he said, action films can tell a story as effectively as any drama or romance.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s how it\u2019s done. I don\u2019t advocate violence for violence\u2019s sake,&#8221; he told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. &#8220;What people hang on to is that the good guy wins in the end.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Nigeria<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Nigeria. March 20 (Reuters) &#8211; Chuck Norris, the former martial arts champion and 1980s action-film hero who fought the bad guys in &#8220;Code of Silence,&#8221; &#8220;Missing in Action&#8221; and &#8220;The Delta Force&#8221; and upheld the law in the TV series &#8220;Walker, Texas Ranger,&#8221; died on Thursday, his family said in a statement on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":197259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,31],"tags":[254],"class_list":["post-197260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-nigeria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Chuck Norris, Iconic Star of Walker, Texas Ranger, Dies - Nigeria<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 20 (Reuters) - 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