There are definate advantages to living life under the radar. One of those advantages is being able to RIP 32 years after death. If people really do turn over in their graves when controversy surrounds them, Bruce must look like a flopping fish.
he’s probably just laughing at these freaks who have no possible way of knowing this. Unless they trained with him personally or saw him in an actual streetfight, they are just talking out of their but.
I was alive when Bruce Lee was alive, unlike many of those who today have made him into some sort of demigod. Plain simple truth of the matter as I see it, Bruce Lee was a very talented athlete, not much of an actor, and possessed a fair amount of martial art talent. Here are some of my observations about the man.
He was way too small to compete in the tournaments of his time although I think he did do a demo at one of Ed Parker’s tournaments. People like Mike Stone, Chuck Norris, and Joe Lewis were much bigger and quite frankly much better and could have easily beaten him in the ring.
Bruce Lee was also a man who seemed to be battling his own demons. I think after the Wong Jack Man fight he came to question his own abilities and spent the rest of his short life trying to overcome his perceived limitations. He definately possessed somewhat of an arrogant personality but I also think he was very hard on himself and people seem to flock to him.
Bruce Lee though had a dynamic, charismatic personality and as I stated above, attracted quite a following. Three decades after his death, he apparently still does. He helped tremendously to popularize Martial Arts in his time, and again three decades after his death, he still does, which I find just amazing.
Bruce Lee was an iconoclast and as such rejected much of the traditions of CMAs including the practice of forms. I think much of that stemmed from the reasons I stated in the above paragraph. Whatever else though, Bruce Lee seemed to have possessed a high degree of curiosity about other MAs and had the keen sense to be able to pull many things together from many different arts. He therefore in my mind was a keen student, but had little patience for the traditional method of teaching found in most CMAs.
I have always been curious as to how Bruce Lee’s MA philosophy and with that his JKD would have evolved had he lived longer. Bruce Lee was very much a product of his time, a time when every facet in society was being called into question. The prevailing wisdom of the time was to reject the wisdom of our elders, but I wonder how this attitude would have changed as Lee grew older(and wiser). I somehow like to speculate that eventually he would have come full circle and and just maybe would have come to realize the value of at least some of the traditions in CMAs he had previously discarded and that his natural curiosity I believe would have him at some point in time devoting time and energy to the study of those traditions and that would have made him both a better teacher and a martial artist. Just a theory of course, and I could be dead wrong on that.
His statement that “become water my friends” is IMHO, one of the corniest pieces of psycho-babble that I have ever heard!
My most favorite Bruce Lee “moment” was his scenes in the movie, Marlowe, with James Garner.
Much of what today we think we know about Bruce Lee comes from Linda Lee, his widow, and I think she has distorted or at least exaggerated a lot of events in Bruce Lee’s life for her own financial gain and of course to promulgate his reputation and memory. I am not sure what to think of her or her motives.
Please note that these obsevations are made at a distance, and of course I never met Bruce Lee in person or for that matter, anyone close to him. Take them with a grain of salt if you want, doesn’t matter to me. Just my two cents worth.
RFB
The fact is Bruce Lee changed the face of modern MA. It was not merely because of his skill or his philosophy, but because he was the first major international MA media star. Or maybe it would be more appropriate to say the first “Western” MA media star! It was movies and marketing that created his mystique and thus the marketing empire that followed after his death! Historically, there are plenty of other not so well known martial artists that had/have comparable skill and innovative insight. Just because they are not internationally known does not detract from their skill or knowledge! Bruce Lee was not the first innovator in MA history, nor will he be the last. The history of MA is about innovation, as it is the history of warfare in general! His ideas became well known because he was a media star and after he died his movies and savvy marketing created a cash cow for those who stood to gain from his legendary status!
That should not detract from his ideas or his skills. They were just not unique to him, he merely popularized them!
Aside from his physical stunts, that anyone may accomplish with a little time and practice, his demonstrated skill should still be considered above average. MA stunts are all about creating awe in the lesser educated for the purpose of gaining status and financial gain anyway. Movie stunts and bravado are a performance designed to sell tickets and entertain audiences!
Bruce Lee influenced the MA in the West (or East from Hong Kong, LOL!!) in a big way. Kung Fu was almost unknown prior to him and the Kung Fu television series. His abilities and mystique inspired and motivated an entire generation of young MA and his well marketed legend still does to this day. The Japanese arts dominated in the 50’s and 60’s in America because many of the GI’s that came back from WWII learned Japanese arts while stationed in Japan! There were also some Korean arts brought over by GI’s stationed in Korea. Since the familiarity was of the Japanese and Korean arts, the Kung Fu styles were relatively unknown. Most of the Chinese instructors in America still would not teach to non-Chinese! Bruce was not the first, but one of the first to teach to anyone interested! Fresh ideas were infused into the American MA scene through the influence of Bruce. This is the background and foundation of the sensation created by Bruce Lee with his ideas! Most or all of the famous martial artists that were trained by him knew little of the Chinese approach to the MA! Many of the younger MA here were not alive back then so you really don’t know what you are talking about compared to those of us who were not only there, but also trained in the MA!
It is in the nature of man to derogate those we fear may be considered our superiors! It makes us feel better about our own mediocrity! Bruce Lee had plenty of drive and ability to match up against any of the best MA of today. Whether he could actually beat any of them in a fight doesn’t really matter. Those who believe that a true Master should be able to defeat all comers should ask himself why he never saw Bella Karoli perform a double backward somersault off the balance beam yet was able to train the world’s top FEMALE gymnasts for over 3 decades!! You don’t have to be able to DO it to TEACH it! Regardless, he could probably defeat most or all of us posting here when he was in his prime.
Before we complain about his perceived arrogance perhaps we should question our own arrogance. It seems to me there is plenty of it piling up on these threads from those who have accomplished a lot less in their puny little lives!
We are not Asians growing up in the 60’s when most Asians and whites did not approve of inter-racial marriages! We don’t have to fight our own culture to train and teach our arts. We don’t have to fight American commercialism that tells use an Asian can’t succeed in American cinema as the leading star. It is only a strong personality that could meet and defeat all the naysayers and obstacles that Bruce overcame, not to mention his debilitating back injury. “Enter the Dragon” made him the first movie star ever to be paid $1,000,000 for a movie. He became in some ways the biggest star of his era. Sure he is not the man his marketing says he is, but I am not the man you think I am and you are not the people I think you are! None of us are what we appear to be to others! We are who we are and who cares what others think!!
bruce
people bag bruce all the time i think if he hadn of died hed be another great master genrally talked about in ma circles but he made movies and it glorified him and persona he was arrogant but he was HUMAN all these people sayin stuff act lik there perfect could bif and im sure if he was alive today then he mite have more history to bak that but he died and thats that he jus used ma as a tool a medium if people dont look past the clouds theyll nva see the sky if he wasnt so great people wouldn always talk bout him so there must of been somthing i prefer to remember his insporation he gave to others
What exactly is the point of a Bruce Lee discussion anyway? Did you train with him? Did you know him? Then why waste your mind trying to validate whatever your point may be?
Recognize that he lived then died, and get back to your own studies. If you think he has something to teach you, great! Or not, great! No one knows the full picture because YOU’RE NOT BRUCE LEE!!
Happy Training,
Warren
Your post is very honest, and wise. Vash did his whole O M F G. and then gave a deatiled description of how Bruce Lee’s strengths and weaknesses, and said he was an average fighter. I tried to quote Vash, but every time I try my computer freezes, but anyways, I wanted to ask Vash all those questions you posted. There is no possible way for anybody here to know how good he was. How could anybody know? You can’t tell from movies. You really can’t. Even if you see sparring footage of him with a student, you can’t tell. This is how I look at Bruce. He offered a very mositive message of martial arts, that it didn’t matter what the color of your skin was. He changed martial arts, and I think he was a good man.
Thing is Jason that by the time Bruce appeared on the scene LOTS of people were teaching martial arts to us Lao Wai / Gaijin. The whole fighting for the right to teach whoever was mainly Linda Lee posthumous spin.
That’s
because
I’m
that
cool.
Well, apparently this thread has become a joke.
No, it pretty much started as one and went downhill from there.
Karate is teh l3th@l!11!!1eleven!1
Vash! Your Kara-Te cannot compete with my “Hungover man vomits Bile” style…
NOW BOW, PEON!!!
Just because I cannot do Drunken Style with Red Label Wine doesn’t mean I can’t hang with the most inebriated of them all!1!1!!!1
****, I hope this doesn’t detract from the more informative posts the JKD sometimes gets . . .
JKD is a joke 
Why do you say that? I mean I once thought that it was too, but I also used to think that fighting was very different from what really is. It took a few fights with some people to realize that my practice of forms and arranged sparring was leading me nowhere near anything I could use on the street or in the ring.
What do you mean by arranged sparring? Two man sets? Because my Sifu’s biggest criticism of JKD went thusly:
Bruce Lee took a bunch of principles that good Sifus had been using for hundreds of years, put his name on them and then said this is not Gong Fu because Gong Fu does not do these things.
Yes, two-man sets. They are not exactly the most useful thing CMA has put out.
I personally don’t think that’s what Bruce Lee meant. I think they (TCMA) did many things that are effective, I just think that they got stuck in this idea that it would work without actually trying it out i.e. arrogance. Plus the world has changed quite a bit in the last 150 years. Before that China never met with people from other countries, and there was little exchange of ideas. Even up to 10+ yrs ago, we were in a real mess concerning fighting. Although I still think that some people still haven’t gotten it yet, we are progressing in terms of fighting, no matter how slowly.
I think what Bruce Lee did is told us that we cannot just sit around and our Sifus/Senseis/Guros/Instructors to just spoon feed us the answers to combat. No, he taught us that we must investigate into many different things, and learn to make it our own and develop it to work for us. You are your greatest teacher, and the less you trust in your own heart and mind, the less that you will be able to progress in not only combat but in your own self-development.
I used to be a Buddhist Monk, I was ordained for a couple years. At first I was very attached to Buddhism, I followed as exactly as I could. By the time I disrobed, I had realized that that was not what true spirituality was and is not about. I discovered that it was about being who I really was, without holding onto who I really was and am. For a lot of being this is hard to understand, and for a while, even though I had realized it for myself, I had not fully understood and still I am learning. There is always room for growth, and if you are always clinging to the “principles that good Sifus had been using for hundreds of years” then you are always going to be stuck. Hopefully you’ll have good friends like I did to get you out of that mess, because I have been there and it sucks to be stuck.
I can honestly say that I have never learned a two man set.
Mushashi, the great Japanese swordsman, basically said the same thing. When asked what school of swordsmanship he adhered to, he said that he was his own teacher (paraphrase). Many great minds have thought outside the box, and found out that many discoveries must be made by one self.
It’d be cool if Dimmakseminar came in and totally pwnzord this thread.