What do you guys think about Bruce Lee?

It's odd you say for the past 100 years its been accepted that L'il Artha was the greatest of all time- especially in light of Ray Robinson being considered the best boxer ever.For at least the last 50 years or so. Followed closely by Charlie Burly. You can look it up. I'm willing to hazard a wager I've read much more about Johnson than yourself and I've not run across any claims to his paramouncy past his own era.

As to your last sentence,that's way off base.Are you aware that JMAs,KMAsand OMAs were spreading in popularity among westerners in the west ever since the end of WWII? Or that in the early 60s before he was famous for Gung Fu flicks or Kato he was only one of the Chinese who initially opened the door to non-Chinese?

What Lee did was to popularize them into the everyday culture-sadly one result of the mass popularization of MAs was that EVERYBODY wanted to learn MAs,make MA movies,and teach for a living. One reason there's so much junk and so many "masters","professors",and "sokes" out there. Oh,well.Not his fault.

 

No. Yours is the opinion of someone who's watched too many kung fu movies. It's spoiled your thinking. Cross training is the pinnacle of fighting gung fu.

MMA is a rule set and the common training that goes along with that rule set, which over the years has come to include very effective styles for those ranges.

Bruce's philosophy was a little different in scope, and more about getting back to "real gung fu" than dismissing the concept. Simplifying the concepts. Some argue this led to modern MMA, I don't see a DIRECT connection, but I DO think many MMA fighters today grew up loving Bruce Lee, and still do even if it's not considered "cool" in some circles...you know who you are.

If anybody in the world today is showcasing "real gung fu" daily, it's MMA competitors. That doesn't immediately make what Bruce did anything like MMA today. But what Bruce felt in the 70s is what a lot of folks later on, decades after MA became big, also felt: "something is wrong with MA...". For Bruce, that wrong was the "classical mess". For some of us, it's "why does every 10 year old in America have a black belt", etc....

Bruce would probably have great respect for MMA, and so I think Bruce Lee deserves the respect of MMA.

And if I took Bas Rutten and threw him into 17th century, legends would have called him "The Iron Giant", the 11th Tiger of Canton anyway.

 

I honestly think, taking into account how he's idolised, he's incredibly overrated.

 

1 of 2 things;

He would have gotten hacked to pieces

He would have been called a Kurgan

 

I can see Bas mastering all the long weapons, and definitely the Flying Guillotine.

 

I don't know. Bas looks like he rather pound people with his hands

Flying Guillotine..scissor like kick or the "Fable Decapitator Device"?

 

Both, of course.

 

Bout to say, didnt Jean Lebell start learning Judo just after WW2 ? So surely SOME martial arts schools were teaching westerners.

 

Bruce was doing that's before he was famous and before any of his students were; he may not have been unique but he WAS one of the pioneers so it's right to give him his props on that

 

Japanese yes; Chinese schools not so much

 

2 things,tho'.

There's no denying that the popularity of MAs among the masses is directly linked to the Bruce induced Gung Fu Fever of the 70s,but the doors had been opened before the late 60s.

He does hold a place as one of the very few (only 3 others I can think of) who opened the door to the non-Chinese public in the early 60s.So he was almost the only one.And I mean the general public as opposed to the occasional non-C individual who learned due to some close connection of whatever type to the person who decided to teach them.

Most lay people don't know who the other three were either,but why would they? They're only known guys in martial circles.I feel safe in saying even many of their lineal descendants aren't aware of the role these guys played in history.Or the crap they went through for breaking the Code of Silence.By the late 60s people weren't receiving death threats or even challenges for teaching foriegners.

 

I don't think anyone is trying to say that BL is the "sole responsible" person for bringing "Chinese" martial arts to non Chinese and to the public. (And as Hannibal pointed out, we are not talking about Japanese arts)

What can be said, when he became popular, it became a mainstream and inspired a lot of people to take up martial arts, of any.