"Enter the Dragon" Jim Kelly has passed away. Jim Kelly died Saturday in San Diego of cancer.

Jim Kelly was most famous for his role in "Enter the Dragon", where he played a martial artist alongside Bruce Lee in a samurai-afro hybrid. He died at age 67. Kelly was credited as the first African-American to star in karate films.

His ex-wife, Marilyn Dishman, told press the cause of Kelly's death was cancer.

Jim Kelly broke the color barrier in a genre populated with Asian men and storylines. By contrast, he had an Afro and sideburns - but he still knew karate. It was a departure at a time when many black men knew how to box, but few knew martial arts.

Many of Kelly's most well-known lines in "Enter the Dragon" have become phrases with a cult-like status. "Enter the Dragon" fused martial arts and blaxploitation, both popular genres at the time; it became a box office smash.

"I broke down the color barrier," he said in 2010 to The Los Angeles Time. "I was the first black martial artist to become a movie star."

Jim Kelly's role in "Enter the Dragon" was a lucky accident - he won the part after another actor dropped out at the last minute. Of working on the film, he said, "It was one of the best experiences in my life. Bruce was just incredible, absolutely fantastic. I learned so much from working with him. I probably enjoyed working with Bruce more than anyone else I'd ever worked with in movies because we were both martial artists. And he was a great, great martial artist. It was very good."

Kelly was born in Kentucky in 1946. He played sports including track and football. He began studying martial arts in 1964 in Kentucky. By 1971, he had won the middleweight division title at the Long Beach International Karate Championships. He went on to star in "Enter the Dragon" and other films including "Black Belt Jones," "Three the Hard Way," and "Black Samurai."