One Down, Two to Go

The fights that take place during the fictitious martial arts tournament that open the film were not staged. Fred Williamson organized the bouts so the fights would look authentic. The winner of each fight was paid $500, and the loser was pais $100.

One of the major reasons Writer/Director Fred Williamson decided to make the film besides the down time between projects was because he wanted to give Jim Brown, Jim Kelly and Richard Roundtree work. He stated that besides doing a sequel to Three The Hard Way, that Brown, Kelly and Roundtree were not given the work they should've been getting in Hollywood at the time and deserved better.

Writer, Star and Director Fred Williamson stated that he approached Warner Bros. who produced and released, Three The Hard Way to do a sequel to that film and said that they weren't interested in doing one. Williamson thought of the idea of reuniting with Jim Brown and Jim Kelly to do a film, he thought of this one which would be in the vein of the former. He added Richard Roundtree to the mix because he was a close friend and of the popularity of Shaft.

The running gag of Three "The Hard Way" was that Fred Williamson and Jim Brown just kept firing their guns without ever reloading at any point during any of the action sequences which continues in this film. This would also be parodied in the comedy, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka", which featured Brown doing the exact same thing with Kadeem Hardison clearly pointing that out to him as in-joke in which Brown agreed.

Fred Williamson conceived the idea of the film while he was in New York filming Vigilante (1982).