Quin is in his late fifties. Last week he asked me, “When I was coming up in the seventies it was Bruce Lee, everybody said Bruce Lee was the baddest man on the planet. As a man who trains fighters what’s your take on that?”
My take on it is that I’m about to make enemies of every martial artist over fifty, and piss off some of my close friends.
I have watched every movie and TV show starring Bruce Lee.
I have seen footage of Lee training and doing demonstrations.
I have read two books by Bruce Lee, one six times.
I have trained with people who trained with Bruce Lee.
I have read two books and seen two documentaries about Bruce Lee.
I have in my hands Bruce Lee: The Incomparable Fighter by M. Uyehara. I have not read it in 20 years. Let me page through the photos for some visual evidence of Lee’s effectiveness in combat. I will be generous and count sparring photos as well as competition footage.
98 photos show Bruce training, teaching, acting, talking and posing in group photos.
4 photos show Bruce sparring against his own students who seem to be cowering or in shock.
There are no extant Lee fight photos or footage that I know of, and not a single one of him sparring a fighter of elite amateur or professional level. If I did not know that Bruce Lee was the best fighter on the planet, if I had not been told that he beat down Ali in a secret death match, I would draw the conclusion that he was first and foremost a remarkable personality, secondly an excellent theoretical unarmed combat instructor, and thirdly a gifted but fragile athlete who was sidelined for a period by a back injury and never competed as a pro fighter in any combat sport
From the video, photographic and written evidence cited above I cannot even consider rating Lee as a fighter, let alone a good one, great one, or, God forbid, 'the best'. There is simply no factual basis among those sources for even making an assessment.
There is more to consider however. I have seen two interviews with people that recount Bruce in combat; one by Paul Vunak who tells a second hand account of Bruce fighting to a draw against another kung fu fighter, and the other a very convincing account by actor John Saxon of Bruce KOing a challenger in a match fight on the back of a film set.
One draw against a kung fu fighter and the whooping of one knucklehead local, does not a world-beater make. Jack Dempsey KO’d two young muggers when he was nearly 80! A blind retired Filipino boxer once KO’d a larger young man in a bar fight. There are hundreds of fighters I know of who have had more opponents than Bruce had students—and I think most of them would have loved to have had Bruce as a trainer, because that seemed to be his real gift, the inspiring of technical innovation in fighters.
Based on the evidence in its totality we have a gifted man who made an assessment of himself that he was better equipped to teach, to act, and to philosophize, than to fight. Honestly Quin, Bruce only weighed in about 135.
My fighter Craig is 165 stripped down, is an amateur boxer who has not competed but has extensive gym sparring experience, has done well in no-holds-barred stick fights, once beat the shit out of two guys who stabbed him with a knife on a parking lot, has KO’d numerous dudes in street brawls, beat the piss out of a pro MMA super heavyweight for five rounds, and has won an amateur jiu jitsu tournament. If we put Craig in a time machine, and send him back to 1973, I think he KO’s Bruce in the second round after getting his nose broken, or he eats a kick and takes Bruce down and the little dude doesn’t get up until we tap Craig on the shoulder and tell him to let him up.
However, to be fair—and I love you like a brother Craig—nobody is going to stand in line in Hong Kong to watch Craig’s first film, no Indonesian islanders are going to build a temple to Craig [not even the babes brother], no white dude who has never fought is going to make up a story about Craig beating the shit out of Wladimir Klitschko in a secret death match, no guys who train with Craig now are going to be cashing in fifty years from now on the seminar circuit teaching the secrets of why Craig beat up Wladimir, because I would never let him fight that monster even if it was possible—just like Bruce was never going to risk his health or reputation in the ring with Chuck Norris, Joe Lewis [the heavyweight kick-boxing champion] or any pro fighter.
The evidence points to Bruce deciding that he was not suited for real fighting, that he could make a more lasting impression on combat by developing innovative training methods, theorizing, writing, teaching and acting in martial arts films.
It appears that Bruce knew best and that he was more right than he could have guessed.
I am one of those 50+ guys. I am a realist as well. Bruce Lee was an enigma. He was clearly innovative, honest in his evaluation of martial arts, and a philosopher. AND, YES, he was a fighter. By accounts he was very good, but of course that is a relative term. As a life long Bruce Lee fan, a student of his by his own first generation students, and a proponent of many of his philosophies, I would agree with most of what you say. Many call him an actor who just did martial arts. Others who trained with him will testify to fighting full contact with him and him playing with them. Chuck Norris admits that himself. However, looking at the development of martial arts today, its evolution was just as Bruce would have wanted it. Many grapplers of that era will tell you they handled Bruce Lee on the ground with ease (Gene LeBell, some of the Japanese shoot wrestlers of that time). They will also tell you they would never stand and trade with him. He won a boxing match at a young age apparently utilizing wing chun to offset his limited boxing skills. With all this said, I agree with you. I don't think that is sacrilege, but I am a fan and a student of Bruce Lee, having trained under Bustillo and Inosanto (both of his first generation students). They will tell you he was very good, indeed. They will also tell you he had many limitations, as would Bruce Lee himself if he were alive. I consider Bruce Lee a phenomenally gifted martial artist. But sometimes that's not the same as saying he was a gifted fighter. His greatest gift was the propagation of the concept of freedom of expression in combat. His focus was to better yourself as a fighter in any range of fighting with or without a weapon. As Bas Rutten is fond of saying, he would have been a reasonable MMA fighter in this day and age, but would be beat on many levels. Then again, we will never really know. Seek the truth in combat, and don't be afraid of what you find.
Thanks David.
I have often been asked this question, and have often thought that Lee seemed too damned smart to get caught up in something as limited as prize-fighting and something as zero-sum as a 'just-because' street fight. Based on reading his Tao of Jeet Kune Do he seemed to have an approach to combat that was more vehicular-based than destination-based. When asked as a 'trainer' to assess a guy like him as a fighter my instinctive response is 'he's too smart to lie to himself at the level required of top combatants'.
I have heard that he had some amateur boxing bouts in Hong Kong. Of course to a guy like him such a thing would just be an experimental episode to help develop his holistic combat theory.
Thanks for the input David.
But didn't Lee demonstrate great feats of strength? If he got a hold of you, he could apply great pressure to a small area and easily break whatever limb he wanted to with ease, or choke you into submission. Boxing is different in that you can't strangle or grab, only punch.
Lee was, by all accounts extremely strong for his size and freakishly athletic, but was also injury prone, being side-lined with a back injury for a long period. The fighter of mine that I was hypothetically matching him up with in this article felt humbly under-qualified upon reading it. However, since my boxer is a middle weight judo player who has won all but one of the jiu jitsu tournaments he has entered, I pick him over Lee on size, durability, and grappling. Seriously, he would probably never lay a hand on Lee, and only take the smaller man down after eating a power shot.
Lee's grappling, by today's standards, was entry-level at best. He was toyed with by his Judo coach. I think he would be thrilled that so many fighters in his mold have since learned to grapple, for he saw it as a big hole in his own game and was seeking to rectify that in his later years. If he had lived longer he would have likely become a grappling guru, as was his student Larry Hartsell, who some of my training partners studied under. I highly recommend his book Tao of Jeet Kune Do, which I have read 7 times. In it you will see that his primary focus was boxing, and that he was beginning to look into grappling, although his greatest natural talent seemed to be as a kicker, which marks him as a growth oriented person looking to transform, not a comfort zone fighter content to stay with his strengths.
Thanks for your time.