Bruce Lee beaten by Trovador Ramos?

Not necessarily - How many fights of Charles Burley exist? Yet he is phenomenal

Because we live in a “film it” age we are accustomed to seeing even the smallest thing on camera- outside of Demos (Lonbeach and a few studio shots) most of the film of Bruce is him prepping for movie.

Guro Dan makes his living as Guro Dan - he does not need Bruce Lee to Abe recognized yet he still acknowledges his ability

Richard Bustillo was the same

There is a cadre of people who sell the name instead of their/his art and there is of course the family making money off the myth but even taking that as it is how much MORE money would someone make showing they beat him?

 

With all due respect to him guru Dan would have probably been a pe teacher until he retired without the fame brought about by Bruce that fame allowed him to become the life long student of the martial arts he is. Not saying he sort it or exploited it in any way, just saying its a fact.

Yes a fortune would be made from the films either way, and it would also serve to stop the endless debates about Bruce was he wasn't he and all the insults thrown at him being an actor not a fighter etc.

There is motivation on both sides to show the clips if they wanted to, the fact in over 40 years only some sparring footage and one or two roof top fights have been put forward is a bit telling,

and also In material the impact of the man on martial arts far far far exceeds anything to do with his abilities in real life

 

this is absolute drivel. People now days think that you have to compete to even be a fighter. It matters because bruce was at the time the best and most accomplished martial artist alive. He trained like he was preparing for war and could probably kill almost anyone he met without even trying. Its not a matter of weather or not he was a competitive fighter or not its a matter of who was better. Challenge fights happened and still do happen quite often in gung fu to test their skill against other accomplished martial artists. Even if bruce didn't even do martial arts he would be incredibly hard to beat in a fight with how in shape he was. He was probably the most fit man on earth His conditioning was through the roof.

 

this is absolute drivel. People now days think that you have to compete to even be a fighter. It matters because bruce was at the time the best and most accomplished martial artist alive. He trained like he was preparing for war and could probably kill almost anyone he met without even trying. Its not a matter of weather or not he was a competitive fighter or not its a matter of who was better. Challenge fights happened and still do happen quite often in gung fu to test their skill against other accomplished martial artists. Even if bruce didn't even do martial arts he would be incredibly hard to beat in a fight with how in shape he was. He was probably the most fit man on earth His conditioning was through the roof.

 

People thought it back in the 60s and 70s too, because competing, aka fighting in front of an audience and video cameras, is a more objective way of determining who is the better fighter. Given what footage we have of Lee's abilities and the stories that were told, he would likely have given a good account of himself but ultimately would have been smashed up by most of the top 10 full-contact fighters of the era.

No, we wasn't. His technical ability in boxing was very good, but his kicking skill was high-level intermediate at best, and he was likely nowhere near the ability of a judo black belt when it came to grappling. Bill Wallace started out as a wrestler and judo player and went on to become a phenomenal kickboxer who had far better technique, speed, and accuracy than Lee.

I've been to actual war and the way Lee trained is not how you train for war. I bet a lifer in San Quentin would be better at killing people than Lee.

Given his purported intensity and volume of training, he was probably living in an overtrained state for a long time. That means he was likely fatigued, sore, and not in his best possible physical condition, so the claim he was probably the fittest man Earth is probably inaccurate. One lesson that televised full-contact fighting has given us is that while conditioning is important in fights, it doesn't automatically guarantee victory.

 

He was not even close to being an average fighter at the time there were Thai boxers who would have killed him in any fighting situation.

The clips we have of him are some roof top challenge match's which are far removed from the NHB people claimed they were, they were more like teens having some fun in all honestly, and some average bag work.

That's the extent of what we have, people talk about secret videos only they have access to, but that's all we have in the public domain.

His impact on martial arts and the world is undeniable but that's as a martial arts actor first and foremost.

 

This is absolute drivel.

Fittest man on earth? What does that even mean? Could he outperform pearl divers? The top marathon runners and sprinters of the time? Win gold at Olympic weight lifting? Become a national wrestling champ? There were thousands, if not millions, of people who could outperform him at any given activity, and the vast majority were completely unknown.

As for competition; what is a challenge fight? It is nothing more than competition that is not sanctioned by a sport governing body. The film of Hong Kong "masters" fighting on rooftops shows a poor level of application from training to actual fighting. I've seen better fights down the pub.

If competition fighting is so inferior, why did Bruce Lee choose to study and train with predominantly sport fighters as his art developed?

He trained for film, not fighting, let alone war.

Anyone who fights enough people will be beaten. The myth of the unbeatable fighter is reserved for those who either don't fight, or time has shrouded their legacy in tall tales that profit those wanting to ride on the coat tails of others.

 

George Foreman and Joe Frazier, who fought each other in same year Enter the Dragon came out, would both have made mincemeat of Mr. Lee, regardless of Lee's level of training (which I personally find, superb and on a level few people are relatively capable of, and I don't just mean skill, I mean the discipline to train, which is not the same).

 

I think it's more yes and no. Yes, famous actor, but that's just the first layer. There's a lot more there and the influences can be found all over the place that aren't limited to old Hong Kong movies.

Lee's impact on martial arts was, in fact, to break stereotypes. He broke racial sterotypes as much as an activist as an actor. The whole sick man of Asia experience, funneled through the eye of physical discipline? Sign me up!

Also think whole "was Lee the GOAT fighter" argument is so old and tired. There is no such thing. If you're focusing on the skill of ONE PERSON, you're missing about a million others.

And apparently he had a mad cocaine habit, which tends to bring the whole "GOAT fighter" argument down to planet Earth. That's like saying the best linebackers are the ones on steroids. Yeah but there hearts sometimes explode.

But my opinion without Lee, there would be never have been UFC, because it was Bruce Lee's tremors in the martial arts that led to the entire "what's real fighting actually look like" mentality that made public Vale Tudo and MMA a reality. Before that it was an underground sort of thing, like illegal boxing promotions. Lee was an actor, but also an academic scholar AND lover and evangelist of full contact fighting methods who actually trained and more importantly interacted with and RECORDED his experiences, using his movie fame as a platform to distribute that. I think that's the real way to keep his sort of Kung Fu alive, don't put him on a pedestal or anything...just read what he wrote. And like Jake Paul, you don't have to like everything about him. He was probably really annoying a lot of the time.

 

Lee died in the 70s the UFC came around 20 years later and was given to us by a Brazilian family that had no idea who Bruce was. By the time the UFC came around the Bruce and the Kung fu fad was decades old and jkd was and is a fringe martial art most normal people had never heard of.

Honestly Bruce's impact on full contact fighting was minimal, his greatest impact was making wing chun popular, which is hugely ironic when you think about it

 

I think his biggest impact was against discrimination of Asians, especially postwar.

Suddenly there was an Asian guy on screen that Europeans wanted to be like. Before him, the closest thing you got to an Asian protagonist was Charlie Chan, which was the Asian equivalent of blackface.

 

I have to agree with this. I think he was the first asian that people admired or wanted to emulate in popular culture in the west and this was (is?) huge.

As for martial arts he might he was probably the first to make 'Kung fu' visible in the west with mainstream western audiences, with the possible exception of Diana Rigg as Emmal Peel in the Avengers who pipped him to the post in 1965, Chee Soo being her instructor. Though to be fair it looked to me almost indistinguishable from stuntman karate.

Chee Soo - Wikipedia

As for JKD/Martial arts I think he was a product of his time, a counterculture kid challenging the status quo orthodoxy, be it with the silver screen or the strictures of Traditional martial arts. His 'liberate yourself from classical karate' article in BB magazine drew repute and criticism in equal measure, but was in a sense a milestone.

Yup Incredibly ironic!

 

"Classical mess" you say? Sign me up!

 

The Gracie family had no idea who Bruce Lee was? Some beg to differ.

Are you messing with me?

 

That's Dana White not the Gracie's they were doing NHB 20years or so before bruce was born and the original UFC was about which style was best not getting rid of any classical mess

 

I thought the JKD influence came later with Matt Thornton?

 

Forrest Griffen was a jkd guy out of Matt's camp and a few of his guys and affiliates have fought in the UFC, as was coach Robert follis , UK fighter James wilks was a jkd guy as well, think that's the extend of the jkd influence. The Gracie's had nothing to do with Bruce and I don't think even used his name on anything.

 

And it was only JKD in spirit, none of Bruce Lee's training syllabus made it to the ring, right?

Matt Thornton broke away from the Bruce Lee lineage because he was disillusioned with his legacy. Particularly the incorporation of Silat, according to interviews with him.

 

Thornton went down the root of bjj, Thai and wrestling (couture was a big influence on him) don't think he even uses jkd in the title any more he was always a boxing wrestling guy mostly

 

Rorion had been in California trying to break into the movies for 15 years when UFC 1 happened, I'm pretty sure he knew the name of one of the most famous martial arts film stars of all time. Would the whole idea of a "no rules tournament" like in Enter the Dragon have even been commercially feasible without the martial arts flick boom?

Added to which lots of the early promoters of the Gracies like Paul Vunak, Inosanto were JKD guys; the long influence of Thornton/SBG with e.g. Conor McGregor; his association with Joe Lewis in helping to popularise full contact fighting on TV etc. etc. The guy didn't "invent MMA", and obviously any UFC-level flyweight would obliterate him if he fell through a time portal, but you also can't discount him completely as an influence at the level of both inspiration and coaching.

P.S. While the attitude of "absorb what is useful etc." and incorporating grappling training with striking is much more influential than his particular favourite moves; the low-line sidekick is a good example of a move that everyone in combat sports wrote off as kung-fu nonsense for like 40 years and then suddenly turned out to actually be pretty handy once everyone could both grapple and strike.