Bruce Lee’s original idea for JKD was that it wasn’t really and art form. It was a concept. Jun Fan was his art. So this begs the question:
Given Bruce Lee’s plans, is modern JKD really true JKD or is MMA?
JKD was meant to be followed as a schema towards creating one’s own martial art by studying numerous styles, keeping workable techniques from each and throwing out techniques that didn’t work for the individual or were too complication for real world use. It also advocated studying for all forms of combat. Standing or Ground fighting. Sounds like MMA. Many JKD teachers are just teaching their concept of JKD and the style they themselves have put together. Pretty much what MMA teachers teach. The only difference between them is that JKD teachers attach Bruce Lee’s name to there lineages.
So…
What’s your opinion? Mine is that real JKD is MMA. Especially ones that don’t have a specific name for themselves.
I label myself as a TWC practitioner but I really apply JKD concepts as I incorporate boxing, karate and taiji into it.
But even JKD schools becomes like a TMA school because it still teaches fixed movements that works by the JKD principles. And because JKD peebs also diss other styles, they usually keeps themselves in their specific JKD schools’ way of thought. thereby becoming what they didnt want to be in the first place.
Matt Thorton over at Straight Blast gym ( www.straightblastgym.com ) has tapes out on funtional JKD. He is certified in Paul Vunaks, and is a BJJ Black Belt.
But if you look at what he is doing its looks nothing like what other JKD people are doing. His students compete in NHB events and have won (Use of BJJ, Boxing.. techniques)
The only ‘true JKD’ out there is the students and diciples that Bruce Lee passed ‘his art’ onto. Everything else is just names, just letters, just labels. People call themselves what they want.
MMA is not JKD. MMA is a label for mixed martial arts, or modern martial arts. It has very little to do with what Bruce Lee taught people in his backyard and elsewhere.
Let’s not mix Jun Fan with Jeet Kune Do. I still think MMA, though technically not following Lee’s principals, is closer to following his principles than many modern JKD schools.
You don’t think Lee was suggesting creating an art by mixing arts? Taking out what’s useful and discarding what’s not while studying multiple styles sure sounds like MMA’s theory to me.
Don’t believe me? Read his ‘Tao of Jeet Kune Do’ again.
I think they have different goals. MMA is for the ring where JKD is usually more aimed for the street. My JKD’s school curriculum was very simlar to what I was training when I did MMA except we used weapons, multiple attackers, dirty moves, and some different strategies and tactics as add-on’s to the base MMA-like techniques.
I don’t think JKD was ever meant to have a set curriculum or a certain look. Good article by Bruce Lee:
