PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
The main entrance to TigerMan Karate Dojo and Museum, formerly a Kang Rhee studio in the 1970s.
Elvis Presley is well-known in pop culture as The King, but in the dojo, he was known as Mr. Tiger. Kang Rhee, Elvis’ karate instructor, bestowed that name upon him when Elvis began training with Rhee in 1970 at Rhee’s dojo on Brooks Road (now Lucibill Road). After 1974, the building became a church and then a space for Controlled Systems manufacturing. In June, the building returned to its 1974 form as a dojo, this time with an attached museum.
“This is not an Elvis museum. This is a karate museum that has Elvis, but we have other stuff, too,” says Billy Stallings, curator of the TigerMan Karate Dojo and Museum. “What Elvis wanted to do was get people fired up about karate, so that’s part of what we do here — we want to continue to do what Elvis was trying to do.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
Billy Stallings, the museum and dojo's curator.
Stallings, who has embraced this lifestyle, says that he started doing karate three years ago “because of Elvis, of course.” He discovered Elvis when he was in seventh grade and, after falling in love with his music, wanted to know more about him. “Fast forward to me being an adult in 1988,” he says. “I was finally able to afford to come to Memphis. You read these stories and you have to imagine the places, but I was able to see these stories brought to life
A few years ago, Stallings made his first Elvis-related video for his YouTube channel, Spa Guy. As a hot tub company owner in North Carolina, Stallings initially produced video tutorials on hot tub maintenance tutorials. But the video on the hot tub in Vernon Presley’s house took off. “That first month I got 30,000 views, and I thought — hmm, I might be onto something,” he says. “[Now] I have over 500 Elvis videos; I get 1 million views a month, thereabouts.
“The videos are not about me. They’re about me being an Elvis fan and wanting to tell a story,” he adds. “I have people tell me that the way it is filmed feels like they are with me, and it led me to this craziness.”
At this, he motions to the museum around him, filled with memorabilia — including perhaps the biggest selling point of the museum, the ambulance that drove Elvis to the hospital the day he passed on August 16, 1977. (Stallings found the ambulance in 2018, and Bill Adelman, the curator of the Memphis Fire Museum, confirmed its authenticity.)
Among other memorabilia, the exhibit contains photos taken by Kang Rhee and his hand-drawn preliminary sketches of an eighth-degree black belt certificate and patches. “Kang Rhee was very visual with the things that he did, which is very unusual for karate,” Stallings says. “I’m a yellow belt, and in my dojo — I didn’t do Pasaryu. I did Wado-ryu — we basically had one patch and a gi [karate uniform] and that’s it. [Kang Rhee] had been told that he’s like the Boy Scouts of karate because he has patches for everything. But I like it. (And based on his fondness for embellishments on his clothing, Elvis probably liked the patches, too.)
Rhee even designed Elvis’ special black belt, embroidered with the name “Tiger.” The belt and Elvis’ gi are also on display, next to Rhee’s last gi and belt. The master, perhaps the best-known karate instructor in Memphis, died in 2019. While patches decorate Rhee’s personal black gi, Elvis’ gi features a red-hemmed, white robe and a boot-cut pant, adorned with red, white, and black ties. “Elvis had to turn it into Elvis,” says Stallings, whose uniform shirt bears an embroidered “Spa Guy” in a script similar to Elvis’ “Tiger” belt.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
One of Elvis Presley's gis worn when he trained with Kang Rhee.
Also on display are Elvis memorabilia from collector “Tennessee Ted” Young and personal mementos from the Smith family, whose patriarch — Billy Smith — was Elvis’ cousin. The Smith children, Joey and Danny, now serve as general manager and tour guide at TigerMan. “When you come here, actual Elvis family runs this,” Stallings says. “Danny was 14 and Joey was 11 when Elvis passed away. They lived at Graceland at the time.”
The Smith parents, Billy and Jo, according to Stallings, were the last people to hear Elvis sing before he passed away in 1977. One of these final songs Elvis played was “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” which Stallings had playing on a true-to-the-era stereo in the dojo’s viewing room, the Jungle Den.
“This is our rendition of the Jungle Room,” Stallings says of the room decorated with the familiar green carpeting, wood-paneling, and chinchilla-fur couch and chairs with Witco dragon-head carvings. “You’ve seen the furniture of Graceland,” Stallings says, “but here you can sit on it. … I always thought that [the sofa] would be very hard, but it’s actually pretty comfortable.”
Stallings even researched the type of push-button light switches used in the Jungle Room and installed them in his Jungle Den. “They use these tap lights, which in the early 70s wasn’t really a thing — a flip switch, that was it,” says Stallings. This eye for detail carries throughout his re-creation of the dojo. In the back room where Elvis was photographed receiving his eighth-degree black belt, a few wood-panels to the right of the platform are stained a bit darker to resemble the photos.
All of Stalling’s detailed craftsmanship is in effort to ensure that his guests experience karate the way Elvis did. “I want to honor karate as well because Elvis would’ve wanted to honor karate. I have an understanding of what it is; it means something to me,” Stallings says. “I wanted to do something where I could exercise. ... Going to a dojo and knowing my sensei is expecting me to come and I’m working towards belts and stuff — I’m motivated to do that. ... It’s a way to achieve things in this little microcosm that’s completely different from that world out there.”
To Stallings, karate is a source of release. “You create power through relaxation,” he says. “You don’t force karate. Using momentum and using the force of your whole body — that’s where you create power. I think for Elvis it was a mental release. He needed something to take him away. When he first saw karate, he had just lost his mother.”
Elvis, who began studying karate while stationed in Germany in 1958, practiced the sport until a year or so before his death, when his health took a turn for the worse. But his enthusiasm for it never dwindled. After all, Stallings says, “Karate is not brute force. Karate is finesse,” so it’s no surprise that the sport attracted The King, who expressed himself through movement. And for fans wanting just a taste of Elvis’ finesse, karate might just be the answer. As Stallings says, “We all do karate because we love Elvis.”
For more information or to purchase tickets, visit thetigermanmuseum.com. TigerMan Karate Dojo and Museum will have its grand opening during Elvis Week in August, during which Yong Rhee, Kang Rhee’s son, will teach a Pasaryu karate class.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
All kinds of Elvis and karate memorabilia are on display.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
One of Kang Rhee's original gis.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
The original black belt, presented to Elvis by Kang Rhee, who designed the script.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
The original gi work by Elvis Presley when he trained with Kang Rhee.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
Other Elvis memorabilia, from personal collections, is on display.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
Another view of the gi worn by Kang Rhee when he was one of this city's best-known karate masters.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
Many of the personal objects on display are courtesy of Presley family members.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
The TigerMan Dojo includes a “Jungle Den” — its own version of Graceland’s famous Jungle Room.
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PHOTOGRAPH BY ABIGAIL MORICI
Elvis music is played on the same kind of stereo The King would have enjoyed in the 1970s.
