Did Bruce Lee ever lose a fight?

That is so completely irrelevant to the damage that can be inflicted with a punch

 

I don;t want to take anything away from Bruce. he helped spark the martial arts craze here. That is good and bad I know,...but I think more good.

I also loved the movie Enter the Dragon...as entertainment and watching some great acrobatics.

I do think Bruce was a very good martial artist but the thread ws talking about fighting...real fighting. My comments were directed at that...and the fact that we don't have any real klnowledge. At least I don't know of any...?

 

Ok, I guess everyone can agree that all of us grew up watching Bruce's movies and hearing about Bruce's exploits.
I think he was a talented MAist and entertainer and he started a great MA movement in the West... BUT. to be honest I don't think he would've got the JKD recognition if it wasn't for the fact that he was also a movie star, also he was arguably the first MA star. In the 70's no-one knew what chinese kungfu was, but have heard of Karate and other Japanese styles..but on a smaller scale. So when he showed what was before 'unseen' in the US everyone went WOW.
Basically, what The Matrix and CTHD has done over in the West. No-one knew what the hell the 'flying' was about. In the East we been seeing this stuff for years.
Suddenly, after the death of Bruce, 70's TV was full of MA series and spawned lots of cheesy and badly made MA movies. And the same has happened again after the Matrix, spawnings of badly made MA movies and an explosion of interest in MA culture.

Bruce is an icon, which brought out something which was there but was at first went unnoticed.

Also regarding a comment which hit close to my heart: MA movies arent phony, movies are made for the sole purpose of visual entertainment. There is crap ones and there are good ones...simply put.

 

I disagree on that. There is nothing more relevant to punching power than the muscle size and weight of the puncher.

 

legend has it trovador ramos beat bruce lee in hong kong!

 

Actually, ability to turn those two potential factors into power is more important. If seen big guys who don't have the punhcing body mechanic down and just don't transfer a lot of power.

Onve you get past body mechanics, then I agree with you. But a small guy who knows how to punch can outpower a big guy who doesn't.

- Matt

 

unfortunately Bruce lee did lose. He entered the world fighting championships and won a bronze or silver because at the time he never knew he had the disease that would kill him later which made him tire out easily and thats how he lost. I got this information on a tv bio about him.

 

What bio was this on?also what was the name/style/organisation of the competition.cheers

Also if muscle size and weight were the 2 most important factors of punching Ronnie Coleman and all Bodybuilders would be world Boxing champions.

 

Agreed. Another thing that we must not forget is that we learn from our mistakes. While Si-Gung Lee did immense amounts of studying of the arts from a third person prospective, at least some of his knowledge must have come from making mistakes then correcting them.

 

I'm talking about guys who know how to punch (but often big guys who don't know how to punch can punch a lot harder than a small guy who does)

But that aside a 150lb man will never punch like a 250 lb man no mater how divoted he is to training even if the 250lb man desn't train hard.

I do boxing/kickboxing and i have yet to see a big guy who doesn't punch powerfully even if he's a noob in the sport.

 

Not as much slow twich muscle fibers, though, which is what I think a lot of muscular people have a lor of.

 

Alex,

We'll have to disagree (though not by much). Like I said, once someone has punching body mechanics down stength and weight become a significant differentiating factor. However, from my experience, I have seen lighter people out power heavier people. Typically there was a training/experience gap in those cases. And the max weight difference was at most 50 lbs.

This, however, was not in a kickboxing environment and that might change things.

- Matt

 

Erm.... Nope

 

the ignorance in this thread is astonishing....

Thats BS, not only did he not enter a world fighting championship, but thats not how he died, and he didnt have a disease that tired him out.. he went on like 10 mile runs more than once a day ? i think he could make it in a 5 min fight

punching power has little to do with the muscles in the arms..Someone might be able to lift 200 lbs with one arm, but its how efficently he can use that strength that determines power

bruce lees art was about fighting, it encompassed fighting and how to fight... there are little spiritual aspects and little wasted movement...

How do you think Bruce Lee was treated when he first started telling people about Jeet Kun Do? Nobody liked it, close minded people with their own views and their own ideas on how things worked didnt like it, and he had to prove to them it was good, he had to prove to them that one inch punches worked and big stupid karate movements didnt work in real fights... So yeah, if i made my own style, nobody would accept it.. But neither was his...And yet JKD happened, and a lot of people enjoyed it...

It was HIS system, yes, he got help, and he was taught things, but hes the one that practiced all day every day, hes the one that studied and trained, and that was HIS way..

So lets say he took one move from everything he studied, and had a total of 5 moves.. and he perfected these 5 moves.. would it matter how long he took wing chun and tai chi? if these 5 moves could work in any situation that was thrown at him, plus creating his own style and perfecting it, how could anyone consider him "not a real fighter"

A good example is Tanemura, from the Genbukan of Taijutsu... He knows a lot of techniques, but as a police officer he only used like 6, ever.... He mastered them so that if someone grabbed, if someone had agun, if someone tried to stab him, kick him, throw him, lunge at him, one move could be used in all of these situations, and he had the whole cirriculum of the bujinkan/genbukan to work with...

anyways, what im getting at is he would have never happened if the talent wasnt there, and nobody not even the all knowing me ( lol jk ) knows everything about him... Personally, i think that he was in the right place at the right time, and i think his physique was perfect, and his attitude towards the martial arts was perfect... the reason i stopped taking JKD was because i realized it was HIS art, a small, strong, asian mans art... im not him, so wut worked for him, might not work for me... SO yeah, i usually just browse these forums and read posts, and im sorry for this post to be my first and for me to come off as a prick, but it had to be said, nice kinda meeting everyone, Have fun,
Ryan

 

and the TRACMA (trovador ramos academy of consolidated martial arts) camp says they have the tape to prove it.

 

LOL!

But they're not showing it becasue it's a secret huh?

LOL!

 

The movies are cheesy by our standards today because they were down right preachy because bruce was a man on a mission.

He wanted to put Kung Fu (doesn't even have to be JKD) on the hollywood map and break the then pervading weak kowtowing chinese stereotype. (Unwittingly becomng a stereotype himself).

But just because we are more knowledgeable doesn't give us the right to be know-it-alls. In fairness to Bruce even he did not want to be elevated to the demigod that some make him out to be or the sham that others make of him. He's dead stop kicking.

Whether he lost a fight or not, it doesn't invalidate his contribution to the martial arts community nor all the doors he has opened just so that each and every art could be called by their respective names (remember when everything used to be karate). It infact makes me wanna learn how he was beaten so his knowledge can be improved upon. This mindset of following the next one hit wonder is detrimental to progressive thinking. The Gracies have learned to kickbox but they have not abandoned Jiu-jitsu. So modern grapplers could possibly mop the floor with Bruce Lee, so what? That does not invalidate JKD.

Even newer icons who do not even study JKD like Tony Ja of Ong Bak recognizes Bruce as his influence even though his art is TKD and Muay Thai.
Jet Li, Sammo Hung and Jacky do not diss him, they just don't want to be compared to him.

 

xactly,

Bruce is worth more valuable dead than alive I suppose.

Everybdy else has beaten him, everybody else taught him.

Heck I'm Brandon's dad!

 

what are you talking about?

 

That's exactly what I find so annoying about his movies. Movies made for a semi-political agenda have this way of becoming cheesy.

Of COURSE Bruce Lee lost a fight. You do not train as long as he did for as hard as he did without losing some fights.