Footage of the fight shows LeBell towering over Savage. LeBell was in the midst of his pro wrestling career and was much larger than he had been as an amateur judo ace. Savage was a true middleweight but showed uncanny strength and balance for his size. Both men appeared terrified of each other in the first round, each cautiously circling, neither willing to make the first move. The restless crowd rained down boos as LeBell grabbed, but was unable to throw Savage. Apparently, LeBell had reinjured his left shoulder in pro wrestling competition. The bum arm left LeBell limited and he focused on a single technique he could pull off — the front choke.
Savage proved hard to get to the mat. He had obviously studied some judo and fought like a tiger every time LeBell got a grip on him. At the time, LeBell’s bad shoulder and Savage’s karate gi top, smaller and more slippery than a traditional judo gi, were blamed for LeBell’s struggles. In the decades to follow, LeBell’s litany of excuses grew.
According to LeBell, “The idea, to beat a boxer, is to tackle him below the waist, because he has no defense below his waist. . . . But at the last moment, they told me tackles are illegal. . . . When I got in close to him, he had grease all over him. He had great training — he was not only a boxer, he was also a wrestler. So when I threw him down, he grapevined my leg, which a boxer wouldn’t do but a wrestler would.”
Savage didn’t land many hard punches — LeBell was wary. But the wrestler would admit to friends after the bout that the boxer had him worried for a time. “It was a good thing the guy didn’t follow up on that first jab,” LeBell told his friend Jess O’Brien after the fight. “If he had followed through, I would’ve been down.”
LeBell was able to get the mount in round two, but Savage escaped. LeBell told friends he likely could have finished it with an armlock but was afraid the crowd might not understand. Everybody understood unconscious.
In the fourth round the judo ace pushed Savage into the ropes and used harai goshi, a hip throw, to toss the boxer to the mat. From there, LeBell secured a gi choke to finish the bout. Savage considered biting him as a defense, but the wrestler threatened to gouge his eye out if he did. The boxing referee in charge of the bout didn’t recognize the danger Savage was facing. Instead of breaking the hold, he wandered around the two fighters, checking Savage’s limp arm before finally stopping the fight.
A jubilant LeBell stepped on a limp Savage as he celebrated the win. The crowd was furious, throwing chairs and bottles. People weren’t used to seeing a fighter choked unconscious and it just felt wrong for many in attendance. It took time for the medical personnel to wake Savage up and some in the crowd feared the boxer had been killed. On his way to the locker room a fan even tried to stab LeBell. It was a tough night, but “Judo” Gene had defended the honor of his sport against the boxer.
A Hard-Knock Life
LeBell eventually left the wrestling business for a life in the movies. He became one of the most respected stuntmen in Hollywood, even landing a number of bit roles in classic films like Raging Bull. Only Gene LeBell could leave one dangerous job for something even more lethal.
“The hardest stunt is a stunt that goes wrong, because you’re investing your body, and that can be expensive if it goes bad,” LeBell said. “Contrary to my mother’s belief, I’m not perfect. I lost my concentration when jumping a car and looked away just to see how much air I was getting in the jump. The second I hit the ground I got whiplash so hard I couldn’t walk straight for a week. I’ve been burned, cut, and suffered broken bones.”
LeBell never stopped training and learning, he was just in the gym with progressively more famous partners. With his new Hollywood contacts, LeBell was soon training not just wrestlers like “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, but martial arts movie stars like Chuck Norris and even the great Bruce Lee.
“I was a stuntman on The Green Hornet,” LeBell recalls. “Bruce was a hard guy to get to know, always actin’ kinda sophisticated. So, when I got tired of it, I’d pick him up, sling him over my shoulder, and run all around the set with him. He’d scream, ‘Put me down, put me down.’ I reckon I teased him so much I eventually got him to loosen up a little. He got to where he took jokes pretty good — ’specially if ya’d grabbed him ’round the neck.”
Lee, like LeBell, had an insatiable thirst for the martial arts. Soon the two were exchanging techniques. Lee loved judo and saw the efficacy of the throws and holds, but he didn’t think they were capable of wowing an audience. Americans, Lee thought, wanted the flashy action he gave them in the films:
“Bruce loved to learn grappling, he ate it up,” LeBell said. “He said that people would never go for it in movies or TV because the fights are over too fast and most of the good stuff was hidden from view. He said they wanted to see fancy kicking, acrobatics, and weapons — he was a savvy showman who knew how to give ’em exactly what they wanted. I wish he could be around now to see how well grappling is doing these days. I remember one time he kicked me really hard. I remember thinking it was a good thing he only wore a size six shoe instead of a 14 like me, otherwise that kick would have sent me to China! He was strong for his size, lemme tell ya.”
Murder Was the Case
In 1976, LeBell’s life started to look a little like a movie in its own right. Months after being the third man in the ring for the Muhammad Ali–Antonio Inoki match, LeBell found himself in a tangled web of deceipt, chaos, and murder.
On July 22, 1976, private investigator Robert Hall was shot through a kitchen window of his Burbank, California, home as he rummaged through the refrigerator for a midnight snack. Hall died with a fresh cherry in his mouth and four more in his hand. Pornographer Jack Ginsburgs was charged with the crime; LeBell was a co-defendant, accused of driving his friend to Hall’s house and then taking him from the scene of the crime to LeBell’s house to lie low.
The three men had all been friends and business partners in a detective agency and a pharmacy, until, according to police, a business dispute led to a parting of ways — and a vicious feud.
“Mostly it was crazy stuff like having my phone cut off or calling the utilities companies and canceling my water and power. Once [Hall] even had a big bag of garbage delivered to me,” LeBell told the Los Angeles Times. “I’d also get phone calls at all hours of the night. He would know that I had stunt work, so he’d call me at 3 a.m. . . . But it was Jack’s life that Hall had turned into a nightmare with a lot of the same sort of stuff, plus constant threats to kill him.”
Tension between business partners had escalated when someone set LeBell’s truck on fire the month before the murder. LeBell blamed Hall and violence seemed imminent. LeBell blamed these pranks on Hall’s drug use.
Police Captain Jack Egger, a friend of all three men and a frequent guest of LeBell’s at the Olympic Auditorium for the wrestling matches, was central in bringing the accused killers to justice. Ginsburgs had actually called Egger to tell him they were going to take care of Hall, then called him again from LeBell’s house to tell him the job was done. Egger didn’t believe his friend was serious until Hall’s widow called him, crying hysterically.
Egger threatened to turn the two men in for the shooting. Ginsburgs in turn threatened the life of Egger’s son, and the police officer initially caved in to the pressure, providing LeBell an alibi and keeping the truth hidden. Eventually, wearing a hidden wire, he was able to get both men to confess.
According to court documents, LeBell told Egger, “The man did not deserve to live because he was on the earth the last couple of years to do harm to whomever he touched. . . . How do you say, ‘Get off my back’ without going out and risking beating the shit out of him and ending up in jail or something like that? I have thought a million times of getting him alone, but not to kill him, to giving him a permanent injury where there was no witnesses. . . . I always picture killing him by breaking his neck, you know, making him quiver.”
LeBell, allegedly knowing what Ginsburgs i
ntended, drove to Hall’s home and parked a half a block from the house. He waited there until Ginsburgs returned and told the wrestler, “I did it. I shot the son of a bitch.” With confessions recorded, both men were looking to do serious time. Ginsburgs was convicted and sentenced to life. A six-man, six-woman jury acquitted LeBell of the murder charges but convicted him as an accessory after the fact. LeBell was sentenced to a year in county jail, but was free on $3,500 bail while his appeal was processed. His sentence was overturned in 1979 when an appeals court ruling cost the prosecution all the statements LeBell had made about the Hall murder. LeBell was a free man.
Seagal Saga
Through the murder charges and legal battles, LeBell continued to work in Hollywood. The week before his sentencing, he was still serving as Henry Winkler’s wrestling coach on The One and Only movie set. His career never missed a beat.
Today, everyone in the movie business knows Gene LeBell. LeBell is still doing stunts, recently falling out of a casket on the ABC detective show Castle. According to coworkers he’s gregarious and fun to work with — unless you’re a bully like action star Steven Seagal.
Seagal is well known for throwing his weight around on set. He is rough with stunt men and tries to physically intimidate them with a bizarre habit of randomly kicking them in the balls. Former Pride announcer Stephen Quadros, one of the fight trainers on Seagal’s movie Exit Wounds, describes one memorable occasion when Seagal had him in his sights:
I kind of steered clear of him for the most part. But one time he came on the set and started walking right towards me. I thought, “Shit, I don’t have my cup on!” So he walks close to me and my radar was up. Then he grabbed my wrist. I am not an aikido guy and I’m not saying I am better than Seagal at wristlocks but my first instructor was Korean and had taught us hapkido, which included many techniques that were similar to aikido. So I reversed his grab to where my hand was on his wrist.
He grabbed the same wrist with his other hand. I reversed him again. This little game went on for about a minute. I was really trying not to upstage the guy because on a movie set it’s a no-win situation to do that to the star, especially him. But I for sure was not going to let him get me into a compromising position physically. I know guys he has hurt to the point of having to have surgery. He suddenly stopped and pointed at me and said, “You’re good.” I didn’t know what to say so I just smiled. He walked away.
Seagal’s legend in Hollywood as a legitimate tough guy grew as his movies found an audience. Seagal told anyone who would listen about his work for the Central Intelligence Agency when he lived in Japan, and his mastery of aikido and sundry weapons. The press and the studios ate it up. Even his ex-wife refuting the story didn’t stop the legend of Steven Seagal, according to a scathing article in Vanity Fair:
Seagal’s not-so-secret history, it must be said, was a PR masterstroke, the beauty of it being that the CIA never comments on personnel matters — if Tori Spelling claimed to be an agency assassin, no one could disprove her. So on Seagal went, self-mythologizing in the grand Hollywood tradition.”
When LeBell met Seagal on the set of Out for Justice, things didn’t go well for the actor. Like much of the LeBell myth, the story varies depending on who’s telling it. Some say LeBell was standing up for the battered and embattled stuntmen on the set. In Blood in the Cage, reporter Jon Wertheim writes that Seagal was incredulous the 50-something LeBell could choke him out. Seagal didn’t believe anyone could get close enough to him to execute a choke:
Seagal joked to him, “Old man, these guys are saying you could choke me out.”
“I’ve been around since the Last Supper,” LeBell is said to have responded. “I’m so old, my first movie was Birth of a Nation. But I could choke you out? Yeah.”
With that, he grabbed Seagal, threw him to the ground and choked him out.
Seagal, who claimed he wasn’t ready, wanted another go. This time, when LeBell choked him out, Seagal is rumored to have defecated himself. LeBell won’t talk in detail about the incident on the record — it doesn’t look professional and Seagal has a reputation of harassing people who embarrass him. But that doesn’t mean LeBell won’t talk about the incident off the record to anyone who will listen — including UFC announcer and comedian Joe Rogan, who shared his LeBell encounter with his podcast audience.
“Gene never really tells you the whole story,” Rogan said, shifting into a pitch perfect imitation of LeBell. “Steven was saying no one could choke him out, you can’t choke him out. He had this move that would stop you from choking him out. So I said, ‘All right, Steven, let’s try it.’ I get him in the headlock there, the rear naked, and [he] takes his free hand and karate chops me right in the old sisters. . . . Well, I guess he got tired after doing that and he just fell asleep. And I guess maybe he forgot to go to the bathroom, so he went to the bathroom then.”
LeBell is still active on the mat to this day. His students, like Karo Parisyan, have competed in the UFC, and another student, Neil Melanson, is training the next generation of fighters. “There’s one Gene LeBell and there’s only one you can claim,” Parisyan said. “He’s an amazing person. He’s a great guy. And he had that style, that catch wrestling style. . . . He helped us out with those techniques but at the same time he was more of a mental coach too. Never say never. There was no die in the guy. So that’s what really helped us out in our careers.”
Most assume that a young Gene LeBell, transported into the modern world, would excel in the sport. He’s not so sure he would have even pursued it.
“Maybe not. I do stunt work, and when you’re making $200,000 or $300,000 a year doing stunts and collecting residuals, why the heck should you get beat up? There’s only 1 in 1,000 MMA fighters who make money,” LeBell told BlackBelt.com. “Same in boxing. A lot of fighters are broke. The only thing I have against MMA is they don’t have a retirement plan. In the stunt world, I get a pretty doggone good retirement from SAG and AFTRA — and I can still work.”
Bad News
A decade after LeBell was in his judo prime, a young star exploded onto the scene, stunning observers and opponents alike with his physical prowess and knack for “the gentle way.” Allen Coage grew up hard in Harlem in the 1960s. Just going to and from school was a daily struggle. Fighting was part of his life when he saw a sign in concert pianist Jerome Mackey’s dojo that read, “Don’t Let the Hood Beat You Up and Take Your Money.”
Coage was soon as hooked by judo as he had been by that sign, ascending the ranks with shocking speed and ease. Something about judo just clicked with Coage. He hadn’t been a natural athlete, describing himself in high school as a kid with two left feet. He was a baker and worked nights, covered in flour. The days he spent on the mat. Black Belt magainze reported,
An Allen Coage comes along once in every generation. He has climbed from white belt to black belt in two-and-a-half years, winning some local tournaments along the way, and in five years of grudging practice at Mackey’s luxurious dojo has been promoted to san (third) dan. . . .
. . . Many others saw Mackey’s posters, but unlike most people who might have observed them, perhaps taken a lesson or two and waited for God to strike them with black belts (which has never happened) and then gave up, Coage was different. He immediately set for himself an intensive training schedule of three hours daily, four days a week.
In 1966 Coage won the heavyweight AAU championship. A year later, he brought Pan Am gold back to Harlem. In 1970 he traveled to Tokyo to study judo full time at Nihon University, a prelude to making a serious run on the world stage. He hurt his knee at the 1972 Olympic Trials, eventually necessitating surgery, and in 1976, internal politics almost cost him another opportunity at the games. When organizers changed the structure of the trials mid-event, Coage and his opponent bowed to each other and simply walked off the mat, refusing to compete even with television cameras rolling.
It took a lawsuit to get
him another shot at that Olympics, but he made the most of the opportunity, becoming just the second American to medal in the sport, when he fell just a fraction of a point short of the silver. It was the end of the line for his judo career — the world of pro wrestling was beckoning.
MR. HITO SCRAMBLES FOR SAFETY, BUT BAD NEWS'S DIVE FROM THE TOP TURNBUCKLE LANDS RIGHT ON TARGET
© BOB LEONARD
But even a historic bronze medal didn’t pay the bills. “I was always broke,” he said. “I came home from the Olympics with 60 cents in my pocket. [As a pro wrestler] I was getting paid. So I was happy.”
The fighter took to wrestling even quicker than he took to judo, earning him a spot with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. “Training for wrestling was a breeze compared to my judo training. Wrestling was very easy for me. New Japan Pro-Wrestling took care of me and booked me at various venues. I listened to advice given to me from the veterans. Most young guys out there have had six matches and think they know it all: you never stop learning and asking questions if you want to be good at what you do.”
While Coage was famous in wrestling circles for his judo accolades, his real claim to fame was a confrontation with Andre the Giant on a tour bus in New Japan. Andre had been making racist jokes and Coage, an African American, demanded they stop the bus. He got out and challenged the Giant to come and settle things man to man. “The Giant looked out the window and never made a move,” Bret Hart wrote in his autobiography Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling. The next day at the hotel, Coage renewed his challenge. Finally, the Giant backed down and apologized.
Hart’s family would become all too familiar with “Bad News” Allen Coage in the years to come. He was the lead heel in Bret’s father Stu Hart’s Stampede promotion for years. His propensity for in-ring savagery was legendary. Even Tom Billington, the reckless “Dynamite Kid” who helped popularize the ladder match and took enormous risks in the ring, often thought his matches with Coage were out of control:
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