Chuck Norris was once bitten by a king cobra. After five days of agonizing suffering, the cobra died.

Now the master of the roundhouse kick has left us himself. Or rather: he has decided to leave.

There is an old internet saying that the Grim Reaper once had a near-death experience. It was called Chuck Norris. For decades, this claim seemed empirically proven. Just ten days ago, on his 86th birthday, Norris posted a video in which he beat up a sparring partner and declared: “I don’t age. I level up.” On Thursday, he died in Hawaii. His family announced that he passed away peacefully, surrounded by his loved ones. One may assume that the Grim Reaper politely knocked and asked for an appointment.

In his last video, Chuck Norris says: “I don’t age. I level up” — and reached level 86

The video was posted 10 days ago: it shows him training outdoors.

The boy from Oklahoma Carlos Ray Norris was born in 1940 in Ryan, Oklahoma, as the son of a housewife and a soldier whom he later described as an alcoholic. Poor, shy, unathletic. One would say: the worst possible starting conditions for a career as the toughest man in the world. But Chuck Norris didn’t do push-ups to get fit. He pushed the Earth down.

During his time with the Air Force in South Korea, he learned Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art, and found his calling. After returning to the USA, he became a six-time world middleweight karate champion, undefeated. He opened martial arts schools whose clientele read like a Who’s Who of Hollywood: Steve McQueen, Priscilla Presley, Bob Barker, the Osmonds. It was McQueen who advised him to take acting lessons. The rest is film history. Or rather: foot history.

The roundhouse kick as an art form In 1972, Norris faced Bruce Lee in the Colosseum in Rome in the film Way of the Dragon. Lee won, but Norris’s hairy chest and stoic determination made an impression. In the 1980s came a flood of action films: Missing in Action, The Delta Force, Code of Silence, Lone Wolf McQuade. The titles sounded like the names of a Texan biker gang, and the plots were usually about as subtle as a kick to the face.

Norris perfected the roundhouse kick into an art form. He planted his heel into the opponent’s stomach, spun once to throw him off balance, spun again to finish him off for good. His enemies never saw the kick coming. To be fair, one must say: Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door shut.

Walker and the internet When his film career cooled in the 1990s, Norris switched to television. Walker, Texas Ranger ran from 1993 to 2001, eight seasons in which Sergeant Cordell Walker fought crime in Dallas with Old Testament righteousness. The series was no critics’ favorite, but that didn’t matter. Chuck Norris doesn’t read reviews. He stares critics down until they change their opinion.

Then came the internet, and with it the “Chuck Norris Facts,” those absurd exaggerations of his abilities that turned him into a meme before the word “meme” even existed. Chuck Norris doesn’t count to infinity. He counts to infinity. Twice. Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep. He waits. When the Boogeyman goes to sleep, he checks under his bed to see if Chuck Norris is hiding there.

Norris took it with humor. He understood that these jokes weren’t mockery, but a strange form of affection. In a world that was becoming increasingly complicated, he embodied something simple: the man who solves problems with a kick. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “I’m aware that ‘Chuck Norris’ has become something like a mythical figure,” he once said. But he also knew: legends don’t ask for permission.

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The believer Off-screen, Norris was a man of faith, conservative, patriotic, a supporter of Republican candidates. He wrote books about Christian values and trained until the very end, because discipline was not a duty for him, but a form of prayer. In 2010, Texas appointed him an honorary Texas Ranger, which was only fitting. Chuck Norris didn’t play roles. The roles played Chuck Norris.

His family wrote in their statement that he was a devoted husband, a loving father and grandfather, the heart of their family. “He lived with faith, with a purpose in mind, and with unwavering loyalty to the people he loved.” Anyone who only knew him from his films might be surprised. But perhaps that is the real Chuck Norris fact: behind the toughest man in the world was a human being who used his toughness for others.

The end that isn’t one Chuck Norris has died at the age of 86, ten days after his birthday, in Hawaii, where he had been living in recent years. The cause of death was not disclosed, but speculation is pointless. Chuck Norris doesn’t die. He just decides to be somewhere else.

The internet will carry on as before. The jokes will remain, perhaps even increase, because Chuck Norris didn’t meet death—he only paid it a brief visit to teach it some manners. And somewhere in the infinite expanses of digital space, someone will write: Chuck Norris isn’t dead. He just leveled up to the next stage.

One wishes it were true.

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