Steven Seagal has been a cultural icon representing everything squinty and badass about action films for around 20 years. He exploded onto the scene in 1988, ponytail intact, and has never looked back. But it’s easy to get cocky about Seagal trivia; a lot of people think they know everything there is to know about this mysterious man of aikido chops and energy drinks. The truth of the matter goes much deeper, so here are seven facts you need to know to consider yourself a master of Steven Seagal.
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By Nathan Bloch
The following article does not represent the opinions of Spike TV or its affiliates.
7. Steven Seagal speaks fluent Japanese
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It’s pretty impressive that the man spent ten years in Japan and became a 7th dan black belt aikido master, and then came to America to teach overprivileged Hollywood insiders like Michael Ovitz the craft of kickin’ butt.
On top of all that, the man speaks fluent Japanese. Some have suggested that Seagal isn’t the real deal, that he’s just a fat, bloated, cowardly sack of crap who runs like a girl and is incapable of doing any of his own stunts or even telling the truth on a regular basis. To those apostates I would reply: Sayonara, pussies. Seagal has your number – and yes, he can count that high.
In Japanese, too.
6. Jean-Claude Van Damme challenged Steven Seagal to a duel
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Okay, so he didn’t challenge Seagal to a duel, exactly…no knives or rapiers or guns would be involved. But he most definitely did challenge him to a fight. I believe his exact words were: “I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover. If somebody's going to speak bad about me, I will walk away. But if a guy like Steven Seagal slaps me once, I will slap him twice as hard. Life is full of violence.” Wow, thems ain’t lovin’ words, thems be fightin’ words.
Would this be the all time best showdown ever in the history of multicellular life on planet earth? Perhaps. Few real or fictional fights can compare. A few that would be in the running: Batman vs. Superman, Alien vs. Predator, Abraham Lincoln vs. Barack Obama, or Mike Tyson vs. a younger, even crazier Mike Tyson. Otherwise JCVD vs. Steven Seagal takes the cake, hands down.
An interesting side note to this fact is that after Tyson had his butt handed to him on a balsa wood platter by Lennox Lewis, Seagal manned up and did what had to be done: he challenged Lewis to a boxing match, even promising to follow boxing’s rules and leave his lethal weapons (his right and left legs) out of the fight. Lewis is still contemplating the challenge. It’s this blogger’s opinion that Lewis is waiting for Seagal to turn 70 before taking him up on his offer.
5. A mystical dog saved Steven Seagal’s dojo in Japan
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How much this is truth and how much this has now become Steven Seagal lore is hard to say, but it’s important as part of the creation myth of Seagal’s greatness. Among the great origin stories – the Popol Vuh, the Koran, the Bible – Seagal’s has some of the best stories, full of the richest metaphors.
Legend (Seagal) has it that while living in Japan and training in aikido he adopted a stray white dog. A few days later the dog began barking at him and brought his attention to the fact that his dojo was on fire. Seagal got help and successfully extinguished the fire, but the dog was nowhere to be found. He never saw this mystical white dog again.
The lesson of this story is that magical things involving mystical animals are no big thang to Steven Seagal, and if that dog hadn’t warned him about the fire then another, way more mystical, even whiter dog (or wolf or bear or tiger) would have warned him.
It’s really hard to burn down Steven Seagal’s dojo, so don’t even try.
