And the line from Elvis’ song “Because of Love”: “I hold the sun in the palm of my hand” meaning that his hand was so hard from Iron Palm training, that he could have held the sun? Or that he could generate enough chi (heat) to burn someone AS THOUGH the sun were burning them??
And the fact that Elvis liked to go to PALM Springs for vacation? Come on guys, you have to admit the clues are there. I think Elvis was an iron palm master in addition to Kenpo master.
Elvis entered the US Army and went to Fort Hood (near Killeen, TX) for training with an armored division. His first instructor was Juergen Seydal, a shotokan stylist. Elvis also supposedly did some training under Vietnamese teachers while on leave in Paris. While in Germany, Elvis spent a lot of time practising karate, his new passion. Unlike many other pursuits he really got into and then dropped just as abruptly, Elvis would stick with martial arts for the rest of his life (another 19 years). He trained under Hank Slemansky, a chito ryu stylist who also trained Dan Inosanto, and was certified as black belt when he returned to the US in 1960. A gospel album released the next year, called “His Hand In Mine” shows Elvis at the piano wearing a black-belt pin on his lapel.
Elvis helped to teach the members of his “Memphis Mafia” (the good-old-boys and friends he kept around him as bodyguards, and sparring partners – some of them had other functions and actually worked but many were hangers-on taking advantage of Elvis’ generosity and fame) karate, and later employed bodyguards and new members of the Memphis Mafia based on their martial arts backgrounds – some of them were recommended by Ed Parker and other martial arts luminaries. Jumping ahead to 1974 for a minute (9/1/74, to be exact, during a long on-stage talk Elvis gave on the martial arts), Elvis recounts how he had swollen his hand up that night by breaking bricks before the concert and then talks about a similar occurance while filming “G.I. Blues” in 1960 (Elvis’ first post-Army movie). He had spent much of his time between takes breaking boards, bricks, and tiles"