I read a biography on Bruce Lee many years ago. The
biography was approved by his wife.
When he was young and growing up in Hong Kong, he did like to
challenge the ang moh sailors to fights. And some of these
fights did get him into trouble with the law. It was due to
this that his father decided to send him overseas to study.
He went to the States, and majored in Philosophy. And
it was here that his own philosophy in his martial art began
to take form. And it is here that he boasted that he can take
down any Chinese Kung Fu masters who opened up martial art schools
in the USA, in less than a minute. This, of course, did not
go down well with the Kung Fu masters. One challenged him to
a fight. And in front of other martial art practitioners and
kung fu masters, he knocked out the master who challenged him in
less than 30 seconds.
Unlike the chinese kung fu practitioners at that time, he
believed in immobilising his opponent in as few moves as
possible. His brand of kung fu, which he termed "Jeet Kune
Do", is a style derived from Wing Chun, but he incorporated
many other fighting styles, and cutting away all the unnecessary
and limiting moves he saw in the various styles. What he
created is a style which is very economical in its moves, thus
improving speed and giving opponents very little chance of
anticipating what his next attack is going to be. He honed his body
to such an extend, it was said that he could break a thick
wooden plank with his fist just three inches from it.
What is seen in his old movies was not at his full speed and
power; it was said that he had to slow down the way he fight in the
movie because the filming was unable to capture his moves
as he was too fast for the camera.
There was an incident when he was at the set of the hollywood TV
series, "The Green Hornet", which he was a co-star. Two big
angmoh stuntmen, teased him and challenged him to show off his
martial art. One of the stuntmen, held a punching bag, and
asked him to kick it to test his power. Luckily the over
200Ib ang moh was standing with a swimming pool behind him.
Bruce Lee stood in front of the angmoh with the bag and
kicked from where he stood, sending the bag and angmoh into
the pool.
So there was nobody in USA who was his match?
