“Family was everything to him. He lived a remarkable life and there is a hole in our hearts that will never be filled. His spirit and legacy will live on forever within us. He was our rock.”

Wall and Lee shared an iconic fight scene in Enter The Dragon (1973) – during which, Wall revealed years later, Lee had actually hit him so hard he broke his ribs.

But the California-born Wall got his big break when art imitated life and Lee cast him as the student of Norris’ antagonist character Colt in Way of the Dragon (1972).

Most of Wall’s scenes were filmed in Hong Kong, and he reminisced in a 2003 interview about filming with Lee.

“I loved Bruce, he was like a brother to me,” Wall said. “I’m so happy I forced myself into the first film, because I guess I did a good enough job I got two more after that.

“I prepared for it by working my butt off and anything he said I tried to get really good at. He taught Chuck and I how to take a hit. We worked hours at doing that. Mostly it was taking my martial arts skill, understanding Bruce was the expert, following his lead, and being on your toes 24 hours a day, if that’s what he had you shooting.”

Wall put in long days filming with Lee, with their Kowloon hotel quite a way away from the set on the border of Guangdong, China.

He had already known Lee for around eight years by the time they filmed Way of the Dragon and they had trained a lot together.

“Bruce knew I was a professional fighter, he knew I was famous for taking hits,” Wall said. “And he said, ‘Bob, I want to hit you, and I want to hit you hard’. I said go for it, great, terrific.

“It was Bruce’s vision, but we both agreed making contact wouldn’t leave any doubt about what your reaction was gonna be, because if you get hit for real, there’s no fake reaction.

“I liked it, Bruce liked it, and I knew I was there to make him look as good as possible. And it was fun, it’s like painting with Picasso, because Bruce is a genius. Just getting to be around the master was exciting.”

When Wall and Norris arrived in the city to film, Hong Kong newspapers carried a story of a local man challenging Norris to a fight.

But Lee told Norris to just ignore it, and made him promise he wouldn’t accept any challenges.

“They didn’t challenge me,” Wall said, however. “So I went out there to the press and I said, ‘Well, I’m Mr Norris’ student, and so I’ll accept all death matches. We’re gonna be on a show called Enjoy Yourself Tonight in a week, and I’ll fight anybody to the death, come on down. But I want to do it on live TV so there’s no BS about I’ve got three friends with pipes to beat you up. I’m gonna kill you on live television, come on down’.”

Wall said that when he arrived with Norris a week later for the live show, nobody was brave enough to step on stage for a fight – leaving the producer begging them to perform some martial arts demonstrations to fill the airtime.

“So now Chuck is really psyched up,” Wall said. “He’s the greatest martial arts fighter of all time in my opinion, undefeated middleweight champion. So we start doing the demo, and he starts beating the s*** out of me. And he’s just flat nailing me.

“He does a combination – hands, hands, feet, jump-spinning back kick – and he hits me, and I start flying. And all of a sudden I realise there was a screen around us. I grabbed this black curtain, and I looked down, I’ve got 20 feet of steel I’m falling down onto.

“Chuck realised at the last second and grabbed my Gi. and I fell on the floor and he pulled me back up, and pulled my Gi open. There were welts all over my body, the camera came in real close, and the audience went real quiet. After that, they gave me a Chinese name, and they wanted to hit me everywhere we went in Hong Kong.”