Bruce Lee wasn’t a Fighter — And that’s Okay

The concept doesn’t sound like Bruce Lee’s philosophy. He wasn’t a fan of tournaments or competition. Competition has always been at the heart of MMA.  I don’t think MMA exists without it.  Bruce wasn’t a fan of rules, and while early UFC didn’t have many, there were a few, and they grew out of necessity. Bruce liked unconventional strikes like groin and eye gouges.  There also weren’t any fighters from his school of thought.  One would think if he had really had an influence, that would have been a concern, there would have Jeet Kune Do.

Vale Tudo — the no-holds-barred fights from Brazil — dates to the early 20th century.  These matches inspired the Gracie Challenge, which would later inspire Rorion Gracie to co-create the UFC. That’s the most direct path to the UFC, and the goal was to recreate Vale Tudo in America. Vale Tudo is MMA.

Shoot fighting developed in Japan in the 1970s from the influence of Karl Gotch.  This evolved into Shooto, Pride FC, and Pancrase.  Ken and Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten came from Pancrase.  Ken Shamrock competed in UFC 1. So from the very first event of UFC, Shoot fighting was there integrating and competing with the Vale Tudo  and BJJ elements. Pride FC ran parallel to UFC and was its own iteration of MMA that evolved from that same ancestry. Anderson Silva, one of the best UFC fighters ever,  fought in Shooto and then in Pride. Shogun Rua started his career with Vale Tudo and moved to Pride and eventually to the UFC to be a UFC Light Heavyweight Champion.  Bellator and One Championship share this common lineage.  Shoot fighting is MMA.

Shoot fighting and Vale Tudo evolved without the input of Bruce Lee. The Gracies created the UFC without the input of Bruce Lee.  The whole ecosystem evolves and lives and thrives whether there is a Bruce Lee or not.

The quote from Dana White is just marketing rhetoric and it’s intended to elevate the reputation of UFC by drawing a connection to Bruce Lee. It’s an afterthought. Someone reads the book, sees the similarities in philosophy, and assumes the connection. Reading The Tao of Jeet Kune Do and seeing MMA is like reading Nostradamus to predict the next president.

As to Bruce Lee’s competitiveness

Jeet Kune Do means “way of the intercepting fist” and while that is really cool, it shows that JKD is still very much rooted in Kung Fu.  MMA is a pressure test for martial arts.  If it doesn’t work in the octagon, it falls by the wayside. I know, it sounds a lot like Bruce’s own theories kept his style out of MMA.  Bruce didn’t invent this idea and it was not unique to him.  JKD just doesn’t add anything that we don’t already have. It’s safe to say, everybody found better ways to combine disciplines than JKD. To be fair, Bruce did not formalize JKD and most of the work was done by his students.  Regardless, what he’d talked about was generalities and at his death there wasn’t really a JKD.  There’s not really a way to connect this to MMA and I don’t think any of this points to a style that would be effective in MMA. When I hear that you use groin strikes and eye pokes and your style is just too dangerous to be used in MMA, this is what I translate: “we aren’t good enough at basic kicks and punches to compete.”

Bruce Lee had some success and a reputation so training with him elevated their reputation especially for an artist trying to get into movies. Once Lee died, it became exclusive to have trained with him at all and it elevates your reputation even more to build him up.  Chuck Norris has avoided giving answers whether he could beat Lee but he has on at least on one occasion made it clear that he was a competitor and Bruce Lee was an actor.

Here’s that quote from Chuck Norris.

“I was a professional fighter and he was not. No, but he was good… “

I believe that’s from the interview in 2008.  I think that shows a clear delineation between both their career paths and skill sets. The rest of Chuck’s talk is just being gracious and humble.  Compare that to Bruce Lee’s quote from a 1970 interview where he said he could handle national karate champions Joe Lewis, Mike Stone and Chuck Norris, “almost as a parent would a young child”.  That’s big talk coming from somebody who never fought and it doesn’t show the same kind of gracious humility that Chuck has always offered.  So he didn’t train any fighters from scratch and I’m going to say this relationship hints at a power imbalance where the fighting skill and experience exist on Chuck and Joe’s side and the status and prestige that could get you into movies exists on Bruce’s side.  The kind of power and reputation someone who not only stars in but writes, produces,  and directs his own movies. To me it negates the idea that he was training anybody seriously and that whatever those people say was vested in their own interest.  It may be a stretch but in a veiled way, Chuck is saying “those who can do and those who can’t teach”. I don’t think Chuck or Joe or even Bruce really believed Bruce was capable of competing at their level.

Based on Bruce Lee’s size, there’s simply no place in the UFC prior to the advent of weight classes.  We also have to compare Bruce Lee at his peak with the skills and style that he had.  If you want to make him a martial-arts-as-a- child, NCAA-wrestler working on his BJJ purple belt and born in 1993, well, that’s a different fighter and it sounds like moving the goalpost.  You’d have to be making the argument that he was genetically superior and there’s no evidence for that either.  I can’t even find a reason to believe he could make weight or pass a drug test.

Fight Choreography is not fighting.  Using examples of techniques done in movies is of no value. It’s acting. If someone is good at Kata does that indicate success at fighting?  I don’t think anyone can give any credence to the idea that a leglock from “Game of Death” has anything to do with the skill of the practitioner or the effectiveness of the move.

The video of him sparring with a student is of no use.  That might as well be Seagal flipping his students with Aikido magic. I can already see you are headed to the Wong Jack-man fight and the details of this are contested, even the eye-witness accounts don’t agree. I also take issue with “street fights”.  There’s no footage, there are no records, and witnesses accounts vary wildly as to the number and extent.  What we can be sure of these fights  – if they happened at all- are shrouded in anecdote and exaggeration. We shouldn’t have to depend on fuzzy eyewitness accounts of rooftop fights in 1958 to determine his fighting ability. Don’t let it go to the judges, put a stamp on it. I don’t have to wonder if Chuck Liddell can fight, based on some scrap he told me about from his high school years. We’ve seen Jon Jones walk the walk. I have seen the documentation.  This is the way.

If I was already making money as an actor and instructor, why would I risk my reputation to fight? You can’t show up to do a scene as Cato with a shiner and a split lip.  Do students sign up with the guy who lost over the weekend? Do celebrities want to sign up with a guy who occasionally gets beat? We recognize that MMA fighters do lose, but you cannot present yourself as the unbeatable dragon and then lose.  We also know that he held competitions in low regard.  I’m not saying these are bad reasons but they are the reason he refused to fight. Bruce Lee knew that the secret to being unbeatable was … to never fight. That’s in the Art of War by the way.

There is a “martial” component that must be satisfied, it cannot be just “arts”. In Bruce Lee’s case, it’s overwhelming “art”. Bruce didn’t have a competitive style, he wasn’t on the level of professional fighters of his time, and there’s no proof he ever fought. There’s no reason to think he would be competitive in today’s MMA.

I find it incredibly disrespectful to try to compare a man who refused to fight with men and women who put their bodies on the line. Have you seen the ears? Literally, have you looked at an MMA fighter’s ears?  That’s a sacrifice. Torn ACL, torn rotator cuff, rib fractures, concussions, and the list goes on and on. How many broken legs have you seen in MMA?  The risk of CTE alone is life altering.  Michael Bisping lost an eye.  How could you ever compare a man who wouldn’t even compete in the smallest tournament for fear of injury to his reputation or body to a man who lost an eye to the sport he loves? Bisping is so hardcore, he faked his way through vision tests to keep fighting.  I refuse to  give the same credit to someone who never fought and I don’t think it’s fair to ask that of others, especially not fighters.

My theory on this is Bruce died 1973 and he was 32 years old.  It’s tragic.  It’s sad to see someone cut down in their prime.  It’s been nearly 52 years.  Like James Dean and Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Lee died young and at his peak. We never saw the decline, the losses, or the missteps. He becomes more of a myth than man and we start to see this halo effect. Bruce Lee did everything well. He could do no wrong.   In truth, he was a man, he had problems, he had successes. We need to stop trying to turn him into a mystic kung fu god and accept him as he was and enjoy the work he did.

Again, let me reiterate that I’m a fan of Bruce Lee.  I love his movies and I read his book.  But there’s  really no need to mythologize and mythbuild with someone who did great work.  Why do we have to ret-con him into the creation of MMA? Why this revisionist approach to making him competitive with actual living fighters who sacrifice every day for their sport? Bruce Lee deserves credit for the work he did. Can we just enjoy that? It’s okay to contribute  in different ways.  It’s okay to teach.  It’s okay to make movies. Some people don’t fight and that’s okay.

Bruce Lee was not a fighter — And that’s Okay.