Joe Lewis s'est éteint ce 31 août 2012 à 10H45 du matin, vaincu par le cancer.
Surnommé "le plus grand karatéka de tous les temps", il avait participé à écrire l'histoire du kickboxing aux Etats-Unis. Il avait notamment été l'élève de Bruce Lee.

Joe Lewis à propos de Bruce Lee et du Jeet Kune Do :

Joe Lewis : Bruce came to me when he was only 27 (early 1967) and asked me to allow him to teach me the different mechanics from his system---he gave it no name. I ignored him since he was both of the Chinese race and a Kung-fu practitioner. I wasn’t fond of Chinese fighters or Kung-fu non-fighting styles in those days.
Shortly after that, his kicks greatly improved and he added a great deal of tactical and mechanical boxing to his style as he was changing much of his Wing Chun practices. This was the same year when he started using the term Jeet Kune Do.
To capture my attention, he went through Mike Stone to contact me and he focused on his fighting principles instead of the mechanics of his then techniques of Jun Fan Gung-Fu, etc or what ever he called it back then. He did not give it a name around me.
While I was working with him and testing his principles against top fighters, he wanted to get away from all the excessive trapping his style was accepting as “appropriate” and yet not exactly “tactically” effective. His system back then was based on “interception.” However, he felt that if you have time to intercept or “trap,” you have time to hit. In boxing, if you have time to block---you have time to hit.
Bruce was working in 1968 and ’69 an attempt to avoid all the excessive “trapping” his practitioners were using as an attribute of that system. This was many of the changes Bruce was working on; remember, he was still young and in his twenties. Imagine what changes he would advocate today had he remained alive.
I do not tell many people of all the changes he was working on. Most martial artists are afraid of the word “change” anyway and feel more comfortable avoiding this, and prefer to cling to the past. In my judgment, remember this quote from my intelligent mentor, “A clinging to the past in the face of new and changing circumstances is itself a product of insecurity, a lack of self-trust.”

Bruce était un Précurseur dans la vision du combat et des different Arts Martiaux...
Joe Lewis ca me rappelle mes début dans le karaté en fin 70... Comme Bob Wall, Benny Orkides Bill Wallace et Valera...

Bob Baker, le champion russe dans "Fist Of Fury", était comme Joe Lewis, Steeve Mcqueen, et James Coburn notamment, un élève de Bruce Lee. Bob Wall, que l'on voit dans "The Way Of The Dragon", "Enter The Dragon" et "The Game Of Death" était lui un élève de Chuck Norris.
Il est clair que des gars comme Joe Lewis, Bill Wallace ou Dominique Valéra en France ont fait évoluer le Karaté traditionnel vers, disons, une "forme plus sportive", puis vers le Full Contact et le Kick-Boxing.