William 'Blinky' Rodriguez

Narong Noi was the guy that he fought that night.

Lompengi Stadium champion.

You could pick him up and throw him around, so I got him tired.

It's hard to remember because we weren't tracking them.

We were just figuring out how to fight them and give them lateral movement because everything was linear.

Everything was linear.

So the Americans started kickboxing.

Obviously, you had more hands, but they would clinch.

Once they clinched, they nullified.

So we were just making adjustments along the way.

You know, I was gonna say, there was a phase there, because you mentioned Chuck Norris earlier, that he raised money in Detroit, and he had done Into the Dragon, so he had that notoriety, and he had a cattle call, so fighters came from all over Southern Cal to his dojo in Santa Monica, and it was single eliminations to the knockout, to see which five guys would represent LA,

and the same was going on in New York, the New York Dragons, Detroit, the Detroit Dragons, D.C., the D.C.

Dynamos, and then the Texas Gladiators.

Those were the teams people were vying for, and we participated, and I ended up becoming the middleweight starter, Benny was the lightweight, and then Steve Sanders, who was the old name in traditional karate, three of his guys from the Black Karate Federation,

Ernest Madman Russell, Danny Ferguson, Sugar Bear.

We were the L.A.

team.

And what's crazy is that you won as a team.

If you went out there and knocked the guy out or you got knocked out, they got 25 points.

And so it was an accumulation of points that you would get $1,500, but the losers got $700.