Elvis Presley was 'so heavy' he 'didn't like to be touched' before death, according to former bodyguard

In the months leading up to his sudden death on Aug. 16, 1977, Presley was reportedly in a lot of pain.

"Elvis was at a point where he was so heavy he didn't like to be touched, because he was constantly perspiring and hot," he said.

Pryor, a super middleweight kick boxing champion, was hired to Presley's team because of his world champion status.

"Elvis, when he was younger in the service, he learned a little bit of martial arts, and he was infatuated with it," Pryor said. "Getting to bodyguard for 'the King' was pretty exciting for me."

Pryor and his friend Joe were training Florida law enforcement, FBI and DEA personnel on self-defense techniques to deploy in the field when they received a call from Presley's team offering work as bodyguards while he toured the U.S.

"Unfortunately, no one knew it then, but he was broke," Pryor told Fox News Digital.

The kickboxing duo traveled across the country from Tennessee and Florida to New York to California with "the King" but never internationally.

"Elvis never traveled outside of the United States," Pryor said. "Elvis' manager, there was a reason why he kept him in the U.S., because he had a gambling problem."

Despite Presley's weight gain, which has been widely analyzed in the decades following his death, women flocked to the "It's Now or Never" singer and maneuvered trickily through crowds to get to the stage.

"The women used to rush the stage," Pryor told Fox News Digital. "It was interesting, because you'd have a chokehold around their waist. We would take them to the floor slowly, and our junior bodyguards would take them away."

Pryor said the men would fend off three to four women at a time with takedown techniques and that one woman, who had been given a scarf by Presley himself, used the accessory to choke Pryor with it.

"She was trying to get to Elvis," he said. "She put it around my neck and started choking me."

"It wasn't a good call," Pryor said. "I think the whole world was shocked when that happened."