Don’t worry Scott. After being a big Bruce Lee fan I’ve grown tired of the cult of personality that has sprung up around him. C’mon all, talk up the guys who are still with us.
Don’t anyone get me wrong. I’m not a Bruce Lee worshipper or a wing chun hater by any means. I know Bruce wasn’t invincible either…and he IS dead so its kind of pointless to speculate on this and that about him. BUT I admire him a lot and feel that he made a great deal of contribution to martial arts and cultural awareness. I’ve looked up to him as a great example (NOT an idol) long before I ever considered myself a praqctitioner of the JKD philosophy. Out of my respect for him I just don’t like to see people saying false things about him. If you don’t like him for whatever reason, you’re of course entitled to your opinion. But keep your facts straight at least. Bruce never claimed grandmastership of any system, he didn’t charge everybody $500 an hour for instruction…and there are plenty of documented instances that show that he had legitimately great skill. Those are the facts, plain and simple. My problem with many of the harsh critics of Bruce Lee is not the fact that they don’t like him, but the fact that much of their biases are based on half truths and minced words. That’s just ridiculous.
BTW Scott, an art by itself is not traditional. Its the way people think about it and practice it that makes it traditional/non traditional…and you’re right, Yip Man was not exactly traditional.
Anybody who’s REALLY practiced Wing Chun should be able to SEE that Bruce Lee had wondrous Wing Chun techniques and truly understood Wing Chun concepts to the degree to which it was shown to him.
As a Northern Shaolin practitioner, I’ll be the first to admit that Wong Jack Man was likely incapable of using his skills. If he were, he would never have agreed to fight Bruce Lee in a “challenge match” - the skills one learns from that style cause one to grow to a higher maturity level than that of the mere “I’ll kick your ass” variety.
Bruce Lee’s practice of JKD is actually closer to the way Wing Chun was MEANT to be used than virtually everyone else’s authenticated Wing Chun.
That is because Wing Chun was meant to be an art that was applicable to ANY combat situation. Bruce Lee took classical Wing Chun techniques and applied them to the Western kickboxing, movie, and streetfighting arenas. Even his concept of “formlessness” is an idea that WILL spring from the constant solo practice of Siu Lum Tao (Shaolin Thought, the 1st WC form).
To me, Bruce Lee was a great martial artist and one of the best exponents of Wing Chun in history. Too bad he didn’t complete his training - we’d likely still have him around today.
ok, you guys all have the wrong idea
bruce lee charged 250 an hour, to MOVIE STARS not his students, get it right,
another thing, he learned 60% of wing chun.
he wasnt a slacker, he learned faster than anyone yip man has ever trained. bruce lee was a great martial artist and is a mentor to many, dont say he didnt deserve to achieve what he did, and dont say he wasnt much of a martal artist. bruce lee was a gifted man, well beyond his years, and if he was alive today, your mouth would be knocked shut, master lee didnt need to document how good he was, he knew it, people who knew him also knew it, bruce once told me i was becoming quite good, so i asked him who would give you the title of good and you just did me? you? , he said, ive never said i was good, however when asked i politely say “if i said i was good you would probaly think im bragging, if i said i was not you would know id be lieing”
bruce lee helped make martal arts what they are today, if anyone has any respect for master lee, stop this topic, its just wrong to try to take away all he gained,
Sincerely
Keith
I agree with Kymus.
However I think Bruce Lee abused his body a bit.
i don’t mean to be rude but–
originally posted by haung kai vun
Lee’s practice of JKD is actually closer to the way Wing Chun was MEANT to be used than virtually everyone else’s authenticated Wing Chun.
absolute BS !
originally posted by kymus
another thing, he learned 60% of wing chun. he learned faster than anyone yip man has ever trained.
i am sorry but i have to disagree with these 2 statements,bruce was predominatly trained by wong shun leung not yip man.
he didn’t learn no where near as fast as others.
i have since asked again to make sure but he did only learn the first 2 hand forms & approx. 4 sections of the wooden dummy.(this is not even near 50% of the system)
at this level of training in those days this would have meant that he did have quite a good knowledge of chi sao & the also a good idea as to wing chuns philosophy on fighting.
i don’t claim to know it all but if you read my earlier post you may understand that i know someone who pretty well does.(not that my sifu claims to know it all either)
i don’t hate bruce either in fact i quite admire him, not only for his odvious martial skills but i think you have to admire anyone who could go to a foriegn land with virtually nothing & achieve what he was able to.
thanx
vts
vingtsunstundent I have a question what’s your lineage?
hi tekarius
my sifu’s name is barry lee & he is the first westerner to complete the system under wong shun leung & also his brother in law which as you may well imagine gave him the incredible good fortune to view all of wong’s personal letters from bruce lee.if you’d like to read a little bit more about my teacher try this link. http://www.vingtsun.net/sifuba~1.html
hope this has been of use.
vts
I spoke from PERSONAL experience that Bruce Lee’s WC was closer to “real WC” only because the practitioners I’ve seen (some of whom are authenticated Yip Man-Yip Chun lineage holders) don’t even approximate 10% of Bruce Lee’s “incomplete WC”.
However, I conveniently forgot that there are students like vingtsunstudent (that I HAVEN’T MET YET) who know and practice true WC.
My error!
i to am sorry, because yes there really are some poor wing chun teachers out there, as i have mentioned in other posts that a lot seem to be deviating from pure wing chun, for whatever their reason though i don’t know.
you only need look at some of the picture sequences, in magazines, that are by suppossedly high level practioners to see that they have either deviated from or don’t really have a true grasp of the systems fighting technics that they are teaching.
sorry again
vts
[This message has been edited by vingtsunstudent (edited 09-03-2000).]
very impressive vingtsunstudent. 
He charged $500 to rich celebrities. not civilians. Also, you say you walk 5,000 steps a day? that won’t make you an expert kicker, but I bet you never fall sown when you’re walking! Also He DID have a fight worth something. once he had a fight that determined whether or not he would close down his school or not.
[img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img] Animenigma [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]
Scott I read your definition of a great fighter…here’s mine…a great fighter is one that can FIGHT period! Bruce Lee was not a great instructor…in fact many of his students new that he was impatient and so forth…in terms of fighting…his brothers, his fellow wing chun classmates( WONG SHUN LEUNG, WILLIAM CHEUNG and HAWKIN CHEUNG ) has stated that Bruce won some and loss some…when Bruce came to USA he found out that he had to change his FIGHT GAME…especially against the stronger longer limbed AMERICANS! Guess what??? He picked up boxing and advocated CROSSTRAINING…if you done any research on JKD…and you didn’t…you would have known JKD is not a STYLE…it’s a philosophy of cross training and being individualized! I met many like YOU( SCOTT ) that heard it all from their wing chun sifus or whomever…and of course would reiterate…you can see if LEE was effective by sparring his students…they are his legacy now…do so and let us know what happens!!!
excuse me, but if i spar my students, i am going to look good. i dont remember any people outside bruce lee organisation who say he was such a great fighter.
and his students…who did they fight? who says they are such a great fighter! did chris kent, lamar davis, jerry poteet and those guys get permission to teach bruce lee art? why are they teaching? because they get paid because they knew bruce lee and can say “i remember when bruce…” now if you make money off bruce lee name are you going to say “well, this one guy beat him up pretty good…i spar him sometime, i didnt think was that good…joe lweis kick his ass..” no! you will say “he was phenonemal! he was lightning quick! he was so strong!”
the kuntawamna…well dude…you need to do some further research…there was an article by JUDO GENE LEBEL that stated BRUCE was simply the best at what he does…CHUCK NORRIS in his autobiography stated that BRUCE LEE was the most complete fighter at the time 60’s! Joe Lewis feels that he could have KO Bruce Lee but felt that Bruce was a very capable street fighter. Hawkin’s Cheung an old Bruce Lee classmate said BRUCE’s GAME improve greatly after his return from the US. Joon Rhee has stated that Bruce punching power was DANGEROUS. These guys do not consider themselves BRUCE’s student…they consider themselves training partners or equal or more! So question them…you probably need to read more..
LOL some of you need to check back a little. First off, Bruce Lee was a great fighter. I agree with the people who have a passive attraction to Bruce Lee’s work and think some of his ideas are good. They were.
Bruce Lee was by no means the end of all fighters. Some of you are actually claiming that Bruce Lee only knowing 2 Wing Chun sets and studying them for 5 years was FAR superior to a Wing Chun practicioner who studied all 6 sets for 10 - 15 years. This is ridiculous.
What Bruce Lee accomplished, he did so with his ONLY FORMAL TRAINING, WHICH WAS IMPRESSIVE. THIS IS WHY HE WAS A GOOD FIGHTER. What some of you Bruce Lee fanatics are claiming is that Bruce would have been better off if he had never trained in Wing Chun.
Some of you also need to understand his teachers. They were either Yip Man, or Yip Man’s direct student. The way Yip Man taught was by teaching about 1 set every two years, so you had a VERY good understanding of the system. However, Bruce Lee’s first two years he spent as a slacker. Later, he picked up his training. Still, Bruce Lee was not born with the knowledge of how to fight. Some of you need to recognize where ALL of his ‘talent’ came from. It came from his only FORMAL TRAINING, which was Wing Chun.
And now to defend my Sifu and the way that I’m taught Wing Chun, let be better explain, VingTsunStudent. We aren’t taught sets in class. At the beginning of class we all do Sil Lim Tao (Those of us who can, the others watch), Chum Kiu (same as above), and then Biu Jee (again those of us who are able.) During this time we are corrected in our mistake. The rest of the 50 or so minutes is spent doing normal Wing Chun stuff (combat drills, sometimes sparring, Chi Sao, Chin Na, so on.) If we want ot learn sets, we buy the videos and learn them at home. Then at open gym time, or time we have with more advanced classmates, we spend reviewing what we know, perfecting it, and asking questions. There are no belts in my Wing Chun class, and no rushing or slowing graduation by having an assigned time at which one is considered an ‘expert’ at the system (I’m not going to say ‘master’.) However, expected time to complete the class is 4 - 5 years. If you learned all the sets the first day, but practiced for 5 years; I don’t see any difference in learning them as you go. It may even be beneficial; because you would be more familiar with the movements. I agree that the sets are nothing more than a bad pop music dance unless you know the application and intricacies of the system.
- Scott.
"Bruce Lee’s practice of JKD is actually closer to the way Wing Chun was MEANT to be used than virtually everyone else’s authenticated Wing Chun. "
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Uhh…
Let me get this straight. You’re saying that he practiced Wing Chun the right way, the way it was meant to be used.. Yet you use JKD.. why? Why not take Wing Chun and use it the way its meant to be used?
Thats like saying.. “I think I’ll taking Boxing, and use it the way Wing Chun is supposed to be used.”
- Scott.
One more =P
Biu Jee is more advanced than Chum Kiu =P At least, in dificulty of the techniques. Based off what you’re saying, Sil Lim Tao could be more advanced than Chum Kiu, because Sil Lim Tao teaches to defend some of the Chum Kiu techniques. Biu Jee teaches you what to do when you make a mistake while using Sil Lim Tao or Chum Kiu; how to cover and get back in charge of the centerline. That’s more advanced than only knowing Chum Kiu, and not knowing how to recover the centerline. Unless of course you are the perfect fighter, like Bruce Lee must have been (since he didn’t know Biu Jee or the recovery techniques therein.)
Yes, I know the Mook and staff and double butterfly knives are more advanced than Biu Jee.
In reply to vingtsunstudent’s earlier message (“scott,if your teacher teaches the art this way although i’m sure it’s great to learn at this pace it is of absolutly no use
to you as there is no way possible to have grasped or developed your basics sufficiently.”
What in the world are you talking about going at a face pace will only be of “absolutely no use to you as there is no way possible to have grasped or developed your basics sufficiently.” That is completely untrue, and if you don’t believe me, start learning about ninjutsu. Ninjutsu is taught at an incredibly fast pace, faster than what pace Scott learned. Ninjutsu practioners and samurias were taught in this way. Samurais would go to school and learn everything the teacher would consider the best of his art in a matter of 2 or 3 days.
The pace of “ninjas” and samurais was to help them in this way, and I quote from Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi’s book, These warriors “would then go from place to place and put what [they] had learned into practice in contests and so on, until [they] had really grasped the feel and sense of the art deeply as part of himself. Thus, it was up to [them] to nurture and polish his own proficiency and understanding.”
And if you doubt Iemoto Hatsumi’s teaching methods and capabilities, bring it on vingtsunstudent (and anyone who agrees with him.)
I said “closer”, which means that I didn’t think Lee was the ideal WC exponent.
To me, the WC that he did do looks very good - better than what I’ve seen so far.
I haven’t seen any of you or your sifus do WC, and I don’t doubt any of your abilities in the least.
So when I make that claim about Lee’s WC being better than what I’ve seen, you must understand that I’m speaking only from my LIMITED perspective.