Did Bruce Lee reach the level of Grandmaster?

Martial Media, Culture and Other Arts Martial Media and Popular Culture
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:cool:
Hi

I’m new to these forums so please forgive me if I’m asking things that have been asked before.. I was just wondering whether anyone knew whether Bruce Lee achieved the level of Grandmaster? I know that he started out with Wing Chun under the great Yip Man, but did his skills surpass those of his teacher?

I’m a big fan of Bruce Lee but my Grandmaster is always quite derogatory about Bruce Lee, saying things like he was one legged and that generally he wasn’t as good as he was made out to be.. Despite this I still find myself admiring his abilities and the lengths he went to in order to achieve the level of physical fitness that he did. I find it hard to believe that anyone could have anything other than admiration for someone who was obviously incredibly driven and dedicated to his art.

What are your thoughts on Bruce Lee? Am I buying into the whole mythology that surrounds him or was he as great as I and many others like me believe he was?

Kevin

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I was just wondering whether anyone knew whether Bruce Lee achieved the level of Grandmaster?

Aside from the given “if his students are teaching their own, then he is grand master”…how does one reach a “GRAND MASTER” level? What determines whether you are or not?

welcome to the forum…

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Thanks for the reply. That opens up another question to which I’d like to know the answer. How do you reach the level of Grandmaster? Is there a formal grading or is it like like you suggested? I’ve often wondered about that. In theory anybody could call themselves a Grandmaster I guess?
Kevin

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Technically, I’m a Grand Master because my grand students call me Sigung. If there is a grading for Grand Master its a new creation to grab up some outsider money. In my opinion, the real indication of GRAND MASTER is time and age as we never stop learning until death.

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I’ve sort of been led to believe that to become a Grandmaster one must be adopted by a Chinese Master and then have the title effectively passed on to you..

I’m so glad that I joined this forum, I think it is going to be most educational. I think it’ll help me to cut through the bull and get to the truth about things.
Kev

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Just to say it, “Grandmaster” is a fairly new term adopted into the whole scene.
It is derived from the whole verbiage of the filial system of pais (clans/families).

Up until the 80’s or so, there was no such thing. But the filial systems remained and then got combined with belt ranks, then on it went down the garden paths until we arrive at the term “grandmaster”.

Filial system uses:

Founder - Jo si or si jo
Grandfather/Teacher - si gung
Teacher / Father - si fu
Teacher/Mother (sifu’s wife - si mo
Teacher /older brother - si hing
Teacher/ Older sister - si mei
you - whatever your name is. lol

there is also uncles and aunts and such and generally these filial styles didn’t use belt rankings.
But then, welcome to america and voila! Culture mix that some like and others consider taint. It can be for sure a bit of both.

as for bruce, if you think he’s a grandmaster and learn from what he wrote or one of his students or students, students, then he’s your grandmaster…these days anyway. :slight_smile:

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Bruce Lee (born Lee Jun-fan; 27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973)…

A 33 years old is just not qualified to be called grandmaster or even master.

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It seems to me that the term , to add to DJ’s post, was more akin to Masonic lodges.

Which is why the head of the KKK is a “Grand Dragon”.

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[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1137483]Bruce Lee (born Lee Jun-fan; 27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973)…

A 33 years old is just not qualified to be called grandmaster or even master.[/QUOTE]

Don’t know why you thought it necessary to start your post with his birth and death dates but thanks anyway :wink: …

Personally I don’t think age comes into it really, to a point anyway. If he’d have been in his early 20’s then I would have agreed with you, but by the time he’s 33 he’s had about 20 years experience in the Martial Arts.

It’s not always about the number of years you have under your belt. You could have someone in their 50’s who by your argument would’ve gained enough years to have earned the right to be called a Grandmaster, but he might have only trained three times a week. Alternatively you could have a man in his prime like Bruce Lee who trained 6 days a week. If you added up the hours of training completed by each you’d probably find that the later actually trained a lot longer than the former.
Kev

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[QUOTE=KJW;1137485] he’s had about 20 years experience in the Martial Arts.[/QUOTE]

20 years is not very long at all.

Bruce Lee did not define training program for:

  • beginner level,
  • intermediate level,
  • advance level,

in enough detail. He came from a TCMA background but he didn’t want to use the TCMA method in his JKD. It’s like to overthrow an old system by replacing a new system. But his new system is too “abstract” and not well defined yet at his early death. I’m sure if we can give him another 10 or 20 years, his JKD will be different from what we have today.

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Personally I don’t think age comes into it really, to a point anyway. If he’d have been in his early 20’s then I would have agreed with you, but by the time he’s 33 he’s had about 20 years experience in the Martial Arts.

My sifu used to say “you can tell how good a mans gung fu is by the age he is when he passes away”…

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Bruce Lee was a decent actor and really helped propel TCMA into the mainstream. Aside from that, he was a good fighter (not the best by any stretch of the imagination), very creative, curious, and always researching. He wasn’t a master or grandmaster, though. I think people misunderstand those titles and equate them with skill or athletic prowess.

Instead of wondering if he was title this or title that, just appreciate how he helped bring martial arts to westerners. You don’t have to be a grandmaster to do great things.

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Not to nitpick, but he wasn’t really a fighter either. He had lots of theories and lots of philosophy, but he only ever fought once that I know of. And, no one really knows what happened there.

Just saying.

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[QUOTE=YouKnowWho;1137489]20 years is not very long at all.
Bruce Lee did not define training program for:

  • beginner level,
  • intermediate level,
  • advance level,
    QUOTE]

I would have to agree with you there, but having read a lot of what he wrote I think what he advocated was mastery by obsorbing elements of many different fighting styles and self development through the application and study of all of the fighting arts whether it be Judo, Boxing, Kung Fu, Karate & Eskrima etc etc..

I can’t seem to find it on youtube but there’s a famous interview where he says something along the lines of ‘as long as fighters have 2 arms & 2 legs then the style is irrelavant’. I think he was looking at the bigger picture and trying to take the best and most effective bits from all types of fighting.

I think as we look back from our modern viewpoint; in the 30 odd years since his death when other people have tried to devolop their own hybrid or bastadised styles; it is easy to forget that when he was questionning the established martial arts styles he was a young man and the first to question and people didn’t like it. I think it’s important to question rather than to accept what your are taught, if I’m shown a technique and I think it wouldn’t be effective or that I could get out of it then I am going to say so, otherwise if I just take it on board and learn it without questionning then it is pretty pointless.

Bruce closed all his schools at one point because he felt that his students were just imitating what he did rather than trying to find there own path. If he would have been given more time I believe he would have formalized a more definate style and yes it probably would have matured but I think the philosophy would have been pretty much the same. I think he left us with was a Martial Arts philosophy rather than a Martial Arts system in the end.
Kev

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IMO, the word ‘grandmaster’ is something that’s very overused. Other than meaning your teacher’s teacher, I personally would feel very uncomfortable being given or using the title, or even the title of ‘master.’ I kind of doubt BL would have cared about being called such. Personally, I still admire BL for the fact he accomplished many things at a time when much was stacked against him.

Had he lived to the present time, I’m certain his JKD would be much different from what people who practice it are doing now. Like you say, JKD was supposed to be a MA philosophy, and not a MA system. Meaning your interpretation should necessarily differ from BL’s because every person is different. In fact, BL would have probably gotten rid of the the name ‘JKD’ eventually. We don’t really know what would have come about, because our image of him is perpetually frozen in time to 1973 and earlier. But the only constant is that people evolve, or should.

Let’s not forget that BL was NOT the first MAist to break from tradition and either create a great new tradition, or go on to great fame for his own exploits. Musashi Miyamoto; Judo founder Jigoro Kano; Aikido founder Uyeshiba; Kyosushinkai founder Mas Oyama; Mitsuyo Maeda; as well as the many kung fu practitioners over the centuries whose efforts contributed to the re-emphasis towards combat-oriented arts whenever the trend in kung fu swung too far over into the hua chuan/hsiu tuei {flowery fist/embroidery leg}.

BL accomplished a lot, indeed. But he was neither the first nor the most influential, in a MA sense; not by a long shot.

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its highly inappropriate to compare bruce lee to musashi. musashi killed people and fought in a war. bruce lee screamed high pitched noises in movies.

bruce lee made zero impact on martial arts. in the 1800s the most popular ma were catch wrestling and judo and boxing. its still the same sh1t in 2011.

what bruce lee did do is make a freakshow out of kung fu and adding one more way to humiliate chinese people.

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Musashi is my martial arts hero.

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Hey KJW Google an online PDF book titled ‘Unsettled Matters’ for additional insight into Bruce Lee’s life. I’m on my phone or I would link. Its a good read, any Bruce Lee fan should read it for perspective.

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[QUOTE=hskwarrior;1137467]Aside from the given “if his students are teaching their own, then he is grand master”…how does one reach a “GRAND MASTER” level? What determines whether you are or not?

welcome to the forum…[/QUOTE]
You have to be old to be a GrandMaster. Old and deadly. Bruce, like Jimi died young.

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Did Bruce Lee reach the level of Grandmaster ?

Hi

I’m new to these forums so please forgive me if I’m asking things that have been asked before.. I was just wondering whether anyone knew whether Bruce Lee achieved the level of Grandmaster? I know that he started out with Wing Chun under the great Yip Man, but did his skills surpass those of his teacher?

I’m a big fan of Bruce Lee but my Grandmaster is always quite derogatory about Bruce Lee, saying things like he was one legged and that generally he wasn’t as good as he was made out to be.. Despite this I still find myself admiring his abilities and the lengths he went to in order to achieve the level of physical fitness that he did. I find it hard to believe that anyone could have anything other than admiration for someone who was obviously incredibly driven and dedicated to his art.

What are your thoughts on Bruce Lee? Am I buying into the whole mythology that surrounds him or was he as great as I and many others like me believe he was?

Kevin[/QUOTE]Not really kevin , there are some people who like bruce lee as the way he was , and there were some people who did ’ nt like bruce lee at all . I ’ m just sharing my thoughts with you . Bruce lee ’ s life , martial arts training , carreer , was always in the center of controversies . We ’ ve had aguments about him on this forum . That the moderators of this forum , have decided to close the bruce lee topic . I myself was involved in those bruce lee topics . But , I ’ m a bruce lee fan , kevin go to The Bruce Lee Collection. com And you ’ ll find souveniers and memorbilias about bruce lee . And you know people will always criticize bruce lee all they can .

Bruce was ’ nt a GrandMaster or a master , he was just a student of wing chun kung fu . But also had training in various types of martial arts in general . But to me bruce developed himself and evolved himself as a martial artist . Kevin overall no matter what people say about him , he was the greatest martial artist who ever lived , but besides him , there were Ed Parker , Chuck Norris , Joe Lewis , And many other masters of the martial arts . Just like Dan Inosanto when he got his blackbelt in the Ed Parker system of Kenpo , dan went onto train with bruce , infact a majority of Ed Parkers’ students went onto train with bruce . To research bruce lee get those books written by Jesse Glover , you can get it through Warriorvideos.net . Which is what I did , it ’ s true he ’ s dead but his legacy still lives whenever people talk about him .

Do your own research through books kevin or get some information on this topic thread too , concerning bruce himself . You can talk to people but , you still have to verify the information you have now with them .

In the world of the CMA , if you ’ re very proficient in your own skills then the Grand Master will promote you into sifu . But lets say your Grand Master will retire , and only has you to carry on the teachings of your art . Because , besides you there is no one else . Then your GM will eventually pass on the torch of GM to you . And from there hopefully , one of your student becomes skillful that , he gets promoted by you , to the next level . Every school of kung fu has it ’ s own tradition of promoting from student into advance level , master , grandmaster .

Every martial arts master will in turn have there own way of promoting there students into the next level until they reach master and GM level . Provided that your skill in the martial arts is similar to your GM .

Kevin , if you checked out the JKD book that bruce wrote himself , you can tell that he did his own research towards the evolvement and development of his own JKD . To me other martial artist did ’ nt mind learning martial arts from bruce ,
because they knew that he was the best . But the masters who talk bad about him , probably are jealous of him . Because what took other martial artist many years of their lives to reach mastery level , it took bruce only a short period of time to master a technique . Bruce was a non traditionalists who did ’ nt like tradition , although he respected tradition . And he did ’ nt believe in styles anymore as times went by for him . He just took the techniques that was useful for him and reject what was less essential . Overall to me he was the man .