Bruce Lee’s martial arts skills may have looked stunning to the untrained eye, but for every fan there is a sceptic.
Was Bruce Lee actually any good at martial arts? Ask anyone who punches, chops, kicks or throws as a hobby or even a living and the answer will be one of incredulity – isn’t it obvious? Of course he was good, he was amazing! You can see how people might get confused – all the cat squeaks, the ambiguous scratches on his body from the tiger claw of Han, and the general kung fooey hysteria that still envelops martial arts. And then there was his death at 32 – very James Dean – just before the release of Enter the Dragon. So how do you know? How does a non-martial artist tell how good Bruce Lee was?
Born into a family of well-respected actors in 1940, Bruce Lee was in movies from the age of three, and by the time he left Hong Kong for the US, when he was 18, he’d been in more than a dozen feature films. But acting was always just a vehicle for Lee to promote his fascination with martial arts, which initially revolved around Wing Chun kung fu, taught to him by the famous master Ip (or Yip) Man. The fascination with Lee is such that even Ip Man is the subject of a soon-to-be-released biopic. One of Ip Man’s more interesting teaching ideas was that martial arts skills should be tested in the real world – and Lee was suspended from school several times for applying this by getting into fights on the streets.
It was only after he left Hong Kong to attend college in Seattle that Lee found that the kung fu he knew had its limitations. It was a turning point. Wing Chun, with its fast moves and low kicks, wasn’t enough. He began to assimilate moves from Japanese and Korean arts, taking everything that suited his style and physique and rejecting what didn’t work for him. For most people this would be a disaster – the equivalent of mixing curry with steak and chips – but in the hands of a master chef, you have fusion cuisine of the highest order. This was what made up Jeet Kune Do – Lee’s own system, featuring kicks, throws and any weapons he felt like using. In 1966 Lee appeared in the TV series The Green Hornet, which was a big hit in Hong Kong. He returned home a hero to make the five feature films that made him world famous, and revealed how good he really was.
There are three ways to assess his skill. First, performing strings of complex moves is easy – look at Keanu Reeves in the Matrix. It looks good but it’s all piffle. It’s harder to make a single move look good. If a performer has clarity, springiness and, above all, timing; then it’s a good sign. Lee (and Steve McQueen, one of his martial arts students, along with James Coburn) all had this in spades.
Next, you can tell how good someone is by their students. Apart from his Hollywood clientele, Lee taught known fighters such as Dan Inosanto and Taky Kimura, both of whom command great respect worldwide. Ever met anyone boasting of being taught by Jean-Claude van Damme?
Third, ask what’s it like being on the receiving end of their technique. There’s a sequence in Enter the Dragon during which Lee kicks an opponent out of the ring. This guy is catapaulted back into the crowd. What you don’t see is the fate of the man he landed on, whose arm is broken by the sheer force of Lee’s kick, even at one remove. On another occasion, when Lee was on Hong Kong TV, the presenter challenged him to push over a Tai Chi master. In a flash the Tai Chi master has disappeared. What happened was too fast for the camera to catch; eventually it panned down to see the master out cold on the floor. “I don’t push,” says Lee, “I punch.”
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