Elvis Collapsed After Shoving a Potential Attacker Offstage in the Middle of a Concert
In 1973, Elvis Presley was in the middle of a performance when a group of four men stormed the stage. His bodyguards had long prepared for a moment like this and immediately jumped into action. Elvis also readied himself for a fight. He used his years of karate training to kick one potential attacker off the stage before collapsing.
Elvis helped clear four men off the stage during a concert
During one of Elvis’ performances in Las Vegas, four men climbed on the stage. Elvis had received multiple death threats over the years, so his bodyguards had been readying themselves for the possibility of an attack. Elvis, it seemed, had also prepared himself.
As his bodyguards handled three of the men, Elvis took up a karate stance and kicked one of the men off the stage. Afterward, he began shouting, “Come on, you motherf******!” (per the book Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick). His father, Vernon, ran to his side and tried to support him, but Elvis slid to the ground. Eventually, someone managed to convince Elvis to stand back up to continue the concert.
“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he told his audience before he continued performing. “I’m sorry I didn’t break his goddamn neck is what I’m sorry about.”
After the concert, Elvis obsessed over the potential attack
As it turned out, the men were drunk and overzealous fans. This information did not stop Elvis from obsessing over the incident. He convinced himself that Priscilla Presley’s new boyfriend, Mike Stone, was behind the attack. As a result, he began shouting that Stone deserved to die.
“You know it, Sonny,” he yelled at his bodyguard. “You know it. There is too much pain in me, and he did it. Do you hear me? I am right. You know I’m right. Mike Stone [must] die. You will do it for me — kill the sonofab****, Sonny, I can count on you. I know I can … He has no right to live.”
Elvis ranted about this for so long that someone called a doctor to sedate him. The medication did little to slow Elvis down, so his doctor returned multiple times before Elvis finally went to sleep.
He wasn’t known for the accuracy of his kicks
Elvis’ ability to kick one of the men off the stage may have come as a surprise to his entourage. Though Elvis had trained in karate for years, at least two people in his life said he wasn’t all that good at it.
“You are usually working out with someone of similar experience to yourself, someone who knows what he is doing,” his bodyguard, Dave Hebler said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “Within seconds out there on the mats with Elvis it was very obvious to me that one, Elvis didn’t know half as much about karate as he thought he did; and two, he hardly knew where he was.”
Priscilla Presley recalled another instance where Elvis used a karate kick on a stranger.
“He shot out a karate kick, and to his surprise — and everybody else’s — he knocked a pack of cigarettes out of the guy’s pocket,” Priscilla recalled. “Among our group, Elvis wasn’t known for his precision in karate.”
Luckily, Elvis seemed to be able to deliver more precise kicks when it counted.
