Was Bruce Lee Actually A Good Martial Arts Fighter?
It is early 1960, and San Francisco's Chinatown is the place to be if you're a young martial
artist looking to prove yourself in this world.
Most of the martial arts masters however are reluctant, if not completely opposed to teaching
Westerners what they see as a uniquely Asian art.
Bruce Lee disagrees, and happily takes on any apprentice who can prove himself.
Wong Jack Man is amongst the greatest masters of his time, and he takes offense at Lee's
willingness to take on non-asian students.
Others however claim that Lee, new in town, has bragged loudly and constantly about being
the greatest martial artist in the world.
That bragging has worn on Wong's nerves, and now he has challenged Lee to a fight in Lee's
own studio.
Inside Lee's studio a small assembly of people are gathered to watch a fight that will very
quickly become the stuff of legends.
The doors are barred to the public- this is a private grudge match, and only one man can
be victorious.
What happens next will leave fans of Bruce Lee, and martial arts in general, searching
for the truth for decades.
In one account of the fight, Lee destroyed Wong Jack Man within minutes, pounding Wong
to the ground and getting two confirmations that Wong surrendered before ending the fight.
In another account, Wong, who realized that Lee's pride would never let him accept defeat
unless he was killed outright in the fight, was forced to fight defensively in order to
avoid committing murder.
The fight then ended in something resembling a draw.
In yet another account, Wong and Lee were almost evenly matched, and the fight turned
into a grind fest of blows and counterblows, lasting nearly a half hour before both combatants
were forced to admit a truce.
This fight, along with Lee's legendary exploits on film, have raised a haunting specter for
fans of the great martial artist in the form of one single question: was Bruce Lee really
as great a fighter as he was a teacher?
The answer may not be so easy to ascertain, given that Lee did not have very many fights
on the public record.
Unfortunately, Lee existed twenty years before the establishment of mixed martial arts as
a sport, and at the time there existed few actual martial arts tournaments.
Of those that did exist, they would not have appealed to Lee- nor would they have been
representative of his fighting prowess even if they did.
These 'point' tournaments, such as those that Chuck Norris participated in, awarded combatants
points for blows that landed on what were perceived to be critical areas- it didn't
matter if the blow would realistically have caused much damage or not.
Often, the fighters barely even touched each other, giving each punch and kick just enough
power to land on the opponent and not much more.
Famous American kickboxer Joe Lewis once commented that he trained extensively on his midsection
so that he could absorb tremendous punishment.
Yet in a point tournament if an opponent landed a blow there he would be awarded a point for
delivering a killing blow.
Clearly a point tournament would not have appealed to a fighter such as Lee, as they
in no way represented the true power, endurance, and capability to take punishment that a real
martial artist needed to win a fight.
Detractors of Lee though point at his lack of actual fights as proof that he was not
a good fighter, and yet this theory itself falls a bit flat on its face when looked at
logically.
Firstly, Lee may not have had many recorded fights, but he had plenty of incredible feats
of strength publicly recorded and verified.
Famously he once sent a man many pounds heavier than himself flying backwards from a six-inch
punch.
That man, who had volunteered for the stunt and even worn chest padding, ended up having
serious chest bruising regardless of his safety gear.
Simply put, Lee's power was so immense- as it is with any martial arts master- that he
could not have competed in a fight without threatening the life of the man he fought.
Having grown up before the establishing of MMA as sport, Lee's training was focused entirely
on martial arts as a tool to devastate an opponent- not a tool to win a martial arts
match.
Simply put, Lee did not train or practice his martial arts so that he could safely defeat
an opponent in the ring, the way that modern MMA fighters do.
Lee trained in martial arts to use them as a self-defense tool, and every effort into
further refining and evolving his martial arts techniques was dedicated into achieving
victory faster by delivering ever more punishing and devastating blows.
Evidence of this lies in Lee's well-publicized fascination and study of human anatomy.
Lee trained himself in the study of the body and its physical processes just as rigorously
as he did in his martial arts, and he did so with only one goal in mind: to discover
how to hit on the human body so as to cause the maximum amount of damage.
For Lee, martial arts was first and foremost a tool to kill, though one he adapted to entertain
audiences on screen.
Inviting Lee to fight in a standard MMA match would have been no different than using a
real gun in a paintball match, and today martial artists who compete in MMA events have the
knowledge to deliver devastating and crippling blows- but purposefully train themselves to
still abide by the rules of the tournament.
One point against Lee's fighting prowess in an actual street fight was the simple fact
that he definitely didn't have the experience of a modern MMA combatant in taking a great
deal of punishment.
MMA fighters train their minds and bodies to survive grueling round after round in the
ring, absorbing an incredible amount of punishment.
Again, this is because the fighters are prohibited from using techniques such as those that Bruce
Lee trained in daily- techniques which could kill or incapacitate an enemy.
If modern MMA allowed the same lethal fighting style that Lee mastered, then today's matches
would be a great deal shorter and a great deal more fatal.
On this point, it is true that Lee was not as experienced as a modern MMA fighter in
absorbing punishment for long amounts of time.
Yet this point really only hints at the fact that Lee may not have been a great modern
martial arts fighter- or competitive martial arts fighter, as it forces Lee to fight with
modern MMA rules that completely undercut Lee's strategy of securing victory as quickly
as possible by delivering as brutally devastating blows as possible.
Given Lee's incredible ability to innovate and adapt his own fighting style though, nobody
seriously doubts that Lee could have become a modern champion if he had lived today and
trained to fight in today's MMA tournaments.
Lee very famously adapted his personal style after his fight with Wong Jack Man, evolving
an even deadlier form of Jeet Kune Do within months of his match.
He also very quickly learned how to become a grappler after seeing the effectiveness
of the technique for himself, and adapted it as well into his fighting repertoire.
There is little doubt that Lee could have very quickly learned the rules of modern MMA
and adapted his fighting style accordingly.
Another point against Lee that detractors of his fighting ability tout is the fact that
he was an actor- as if somehow that made it impossible that Lee was also a genuine martial
artist, which he very much was.
While making his living as a film actor and wowing audiences on screen, his physical prowess
was very well documented and verified.
On the set of the Green Hornet for example, he was forced to slow down his movements so
the camera could actually catch them, and even then he was shot at a much higher frame
rate than normal to help capture a non-blurry image.
Careful analysis with the aid of computers of his performance across various films shows
that Lee was able to deliver devastating kicks in less than half a second, at times clocking
in as much as three or four kicks within a second and a half.
Then there is of course, his famous display of the one-inch punch, where he is documented
shattering boards and knocking men larger than himself off their feet.
All of this evidence points to a man whose body was so finely tuned, that there can be
little doubt that Lee's kicks and punches would've been absolutely devastating if delivered
against an opponent in a real fight.
But what about technique- after all, it doesn't matter how fast you are or how hard you can
hit, if you can't actually land a hit in the first place.
Well again there is little documented evidence of Lee fighting, though there are several
pieces of footage from Lee sparring with some of his more advanced students.
In these clips Lee and his student are both wearing heavy protective gear, and very clearly
limiting their attacks and counter-attacks so as not to cause mortal injury.
Some detractors of these videos claim that the sparring matches were staged to make Lee
look better than he really was, and yet carefully watching these matches show that Lee's students
managed to land numerous, and very realistic, blows on Lee throughout the matches.
What the footage also shows however, is Lee's incredible adaptability, speed, intelligence,
and power.
Lee's movements are completely economical, and even when his students managed to land
a blow, Lee used the opportunity to launch a far more devastating counter-attack which
often knocked the student off his feet.
This proves that Lee was well aware that not every blow could be blocked or dodged, and
that in a real fight, you may have to simply absorb a blow in order to deliver a winning
counter-attack.
It's clear that Lee understood the grim reality of a real fight- sometimes you gotta take
some punishment so you can win- and this speaks against the point raised by detractors that
Lee couldn't have been a real fighter.
In one example a student launches a side kick which Lee accepts with his midsection, allowing
him to in turn deliver a powerful jab to the head which sends the student to the mat.
In another a student lands a roundhouse kick to Lee's chest, which he once again takes
and absorbs the blow by bracing his left leg against it- then Lee launches a rapid right
jab which causes his student to duck his head, straight into a waiting left knee.
Clearly Lee knew that to win a fight, sometimes you had to take a blow or two, and even these
sparring matches showed Lee's ability to take blows and counter-attack with winning strikes.
Then there's the fact that many of the world's greatest martial artists and professional
boxers all attested to Lee's ability.
Mike Tyson, Mike Stone, and Joe Lewis all agreed that Lee was one of the strongest,
fastest martial arts practitioners they had ever met, and all believed that Lee could
have easily fought and won matches against even larger opponents.
It is true though that Lee's fights were extremely rare and poorly documented, but Lee's training
regimen, which included things such as sparring with metal dummies, was not.
Each day Lee would launch hundreds of punches against a metal dummy, which he did to toughen
his fists up.
That kind of intense training speaks for itself in many ways.
In the end, the world will never truly know if Lee was as great a fighter as he was an
innovator and teacher of martial arts.
All the evidence though points to a man who's skills were so finely honed, knowledge of
human anatomy so intensive, and training techniques so brutal, that there existed no true way
of measuring his skill as a fighter outside of a fight that ended in death.
A fighter such as Lee could never have competed in any tournament to measure his skills, which
is why he never bothered to while he was alive.
Sadly, the only way to prove Lee's fighting prowess would have been to absolve him of
all liability, and remove all rules and regulations that would constrain Lee's martial arts technique.
Go watch “The Superhuman Monk Who Can't Get Hurt!”
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