# yip man shuts down bruce lee



## kung fu fighter (Nov 21, 2014)

I found this online and thought you guys might find it interesting







*david-peterson*
*regular* - member
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Hate to contradict what has been mentioned in some of the posts above, but I clearly recall Sifu telling the story that on one occasion after Bruce Lee returned to Hong Kong, he attempted his 'JKD' skills against Sigung Yip Man himself and was shut down instantly. As Sifu put it at the time he recounted the story, Bruce was so embarassed that he left without even taking his jacket off the hook by the doorway and it still hung there days later. I remember Sifu also saying that when he and Bruce were "messing about" at his home one time, Bruce attempted his signature "3 kick Lee" action and Wong Sifu countered it, taking Bruce very much by surprise. When Bruce asked him how he had been able to stop it, to give "face" to Bruce, Sifu simply said, "Oh, I've seen you do it in the movies so I knew what to look for." Please don't misinterpret my intention by posting this - I take NOTHING away from Bruce Lee and Sifu himself always had nothing but admiration for what Bruce had achieved and gave him all the credit for his achievements - the point is that Bruce Lee was NOT superman, anymore than Wong Shun Leung was not a superman, and that Bruce's "hands-on" experiences being less than Sifu's or Yip Man's means that even Bruce Lee could be overcome. This is a lesson for ALL of us, especially those who spend more time trying to emulate the feats of others instead of doing the hard work to improve themselves. As someone posted in this thread earlier, Sifu observed that the more Bruce Lee explored the martial arts, the more he was coming back to a more Wing Chun way of thinking and moving - he just did it with his own "flavour", based upon his own strengths and limitations - this is the real advantage of the WSL Method because, being CONCEPT-based, it is able to be moulded and adapted to suit each individual's needs. JKD is quite simply Bruce Lee's own expression of Wing Chun "thinking" and this is what many in the JKD world fail to realise - the CORE of JKD is Wing Chun, and if you don't have Wing Chun at your core, you CANNOT reach anything like the level that Bruce Lee achieved. Jesse Glover makes the point most clearly: without Yip Man AND Wong Shun Leung, there would NOT have been Bruce Lee. 
DMP
__________________'Huo dao lao, xue dao lao, haiyou sanfen xue bu dao'
*reply*
*quote*
18 April 2006 04:04 AM

Ive also heard the tale of Yip man kicking Bruce Lee from one end of the room to the other. As I heard Bruce Lee said 'oh you didnt teach me that' to which yip man replied 'theres a lot I didnt teach you'


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## Tony Dismukes (Nov 21, 2014)

So, according to this person I've never heard of, his sifu (unnamed) says he saw a 77-year old Yip Man trounce a 29-year old Bruce Lee, yet this feat went unreported at the time and was only revealed 3rd hand on a message board 36 years later.

Well, I'm convinced. That's some incontrovertible evidence right there.


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## kung fu fighter (Nov 21, 2014)

Tony Dismukes said:


> So, according to this person I've never heard of, his sifu (unnamed) says he saw a 77-year old Yip Man trounce a 29-year old Bruce Lee, yet this feat went unreported at the time and was only revealed 3rd hand on a message board 36 years later.
> 
> Well, I'm convinced. That's some incontrovertible evidence right there.



The person you never heard of is Sifu David Peterson, his unnamed sifu was Grandmaster Wong Sheung Leung Whom was responsible for teaching Bruce Lee wing chun and was the number one Hong Kong wing chun fighter that fought over 60 challenge fights only losing two .


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## Tames D (Nov 21, 2014)

David Peterson is very well respected.


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## Marnetmar (Nov 21, 2014)

I call bull.


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## kung fu fighter (Nov 21, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> I call bull.



Why? was it because i burst your Bruce Lee Hero worship bubble?


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## Marnetmar (Nov 21, 2014)

kung fu fighter said:


> Why? was it because i burst your Bruce Lee Hero worship bubble?



No, I don't even like Bruce Lee.

But we're talking about an eighty year old man in the final stages of cancer here.


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## Vajramusti (Nov 21, 2014)

Marnetmar said:


> No, I don't even like Bruce Lee.
> 
> But we're talking about an eighty year old man in the final stages of cancer here.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ip Man died when he was 69 and he retired several years before that.
David Peterson would accurately state what WSL told him.
His handling of Bruce Lee was before he retired.


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## Tony Dismukes (Nov 21, 2014)

Vajramusti said:


> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Ip Man died when he was 69 and he retired several years before that.
> David Peterson would accurately state what WSL told him.
> His handling of Bruce Lee was before he retired.



Yip Man died when he was 79. This supposedly happened after Bruce Lee developed JKD and returned to Hong Kong, so Yip Man would have been somewhere from 77 to 79 years old at the time. (If you are correct about him retiring several years before his death, then he would have been retired at the time he supposedly "handled" Lee.)

i'm not any sort of Bruce Lee fanboy, but I do find it somewhat likely that the story got embellished somewhere along the decades since the death of both men.


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## donald1 (Nov 21, 2014)

Huo dao *lao*, xue dao *lao*, haiyou sanfen xue bu dao'

I know that dao means big knife but what does lao translate to? (are those names of dao forms by any chance?)


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## KPM (Nov 21, 2014)

First point....I agree with Tony that, while I'm sure there is truth in this story, its also likely it has been embellished a bit!  Chinese tradition is all about saving face.  You can bet that WSL would never tell a story that portrayed Yip Man in any kind of negative light.

Second point....I've thought for years that if Bruce Lee had lived to old age and his raw physical abilities began to decline, his JKD would have evolved back to something very similar to Wing Chun.


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## LFJ (Nov 22, 2014)

donald1 said:


> Huo dao *lao*, xue dao *lao*, haiyou sanfen xue bu dao'
> 
> I know that dao means big knife but what does lao translate to? (are those names of dao forms by any chance?)



Different _dao _character. It means "until" here, and _lao_ means "old".

The first part is a Chinese idiom, "Live till old, learn till old", aka "you're never too old to learn". 

Then it's extended to say; "Live till old, learn till old, and there's still another 30% that can't be learned".

This was just the line in the signature on the post that was copied over here.


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## Vajramusti (Nov 22, 2014)

Tony Dismukes said:


> Yip Man died when he was 79. This supposedly happened after Bruce Lee developed JKD and returned to Hong Kong, so Yip Man would have been somewhere from 77 to 79 years old at the time. (If you are correct about him retiring several years before his death, then he would have been retired at the time he supposedly "handled" Lee.)
> 
> i'm not any sort of Bruce Lee fanboy, but I do find it somewhat likely that the story got embellished somewhere along the decades since the death of both men.


----------------------------
 Sorry, I meant 79.not 69.
Read Peterson- no embellishment there.
I take Peterson at his word in quoting WSL and I take WSL at his word. Ip Man wasa small man and he did not use muscular strength
but structural strength.


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## Tony Dismukes (Nov 22, 2014)

Vajramusti said:


> ----------------------------
> Sorry, I meant 79.not 69.
> Read Peterson- no embellishment there.
> I take Peterson at his word in quoting WSL and I take WSL at his word. Ip Man wasa small man and he did not use muscular strength
> but structural strength.



Hey, if you personally know Peterson and knew Wong and are confident that neither of them would ever misremember or embellish something that happened many years ago, then you are in a better place to make that judgment than I am.

Since I know nothing about either one other than that they are/were respected WC instructors, I have to fall back on my general rule of thumb: 2nd/3rd-hand accounts of "I totally beat this guy" or "my instructor fought 50 times and never lost a match" without external validation are not given a lot of evidentiary weight. Not only do people misremember, spin, embellish and outright lie, but two people can often have very different perceptions of what just happened in a fight that they just witnessed or took part in.

This is the case even if the individuals involved are highly skilled and respected martial artists. Rickson Gracie is a great fighter, but his claimed 400-0 record was almost certainly marketing BS. Sifu Wong may have been a genuine badass, but his claimed 60+ wins were unverifiable secret matches behind closed doors. The one time he fought in a public tournament he got knocked out in his first match. (I'm not saying he did or did not win all those closed-door matches or that the results of those matches has anything to do with the accuracy of his story about Yip Man and Bruce Lee. I'm saying we have no way of knowing.)


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## kung fu fighter (Nov 22, 2014)

Tony Dismukes said:


> Sifu Wong may have been a genuine badass, but his claimed 60+ wins were unverifiable secret matches behind closed doors. The one time he fought in a public tournament he got knocked out in his first match.



Can you elaborate on this public tournament where he got knocked out in his first match?


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## Argus (Nov 22, 2014)

Tony Dismukes said:


> Hey, if you personally know Peterson and knew Wong and are confident that neither of them would ever misremember or embellish something that happened many years ago, then you are in a better place to make that judgment than I am.
> 
> Since I know nothing about either one other than that they are/were respected WC instructors, I have to fall back on my general rule of thumb: 2nd/3rd-hand accounts of "I totally beat this guy" or "my instructor fought 50 times and never lost a match" without external validation are not given a lot of evidentiary weight. Not only do people misremember, spin, embellish and outright lie, but two people can often have very different perceptions of what just happened in a fight that they just witnessed or took part in.
> 
> This is the case even if the individuals involved are highly skilled and respected martial artists. Rickson Gracie is a great fighter, but his claimed 400-0 record was almost certainly marketing BS. Sifu Wong may have been a genuine badass, _*but his claimed 60+ wins were unverifiable secret matches behind closed doors*_. The one time he fought in a public tournament he got knocked out in his first match. (I'm not saying he did or did not win all those closed-door matches or that the results of those matches has anything to do with the accuracy of his story about Yip Man and Bruce Lee. I'm saying we have no way of knowing.)



They're not unverifiable. There are countless first generation students of Yip Man, Wong's contemporaries, and martial artists from outside WC altogether who witnessed and attested to Wong's prowess in beimo. Just because it's not on Youtube for all to see, or wasn't broadcast on television doesn't mean anything.

Now, I realize that people, by their nature, tend to embellish stories - even unconsciously. But I see no reason to call BS on everything. Even a good lie contains a large element of truth. Just how deceptive do you have to believe someone to be to write their stories off as complete BS? BS stems, usually, from misinformation rather than deception, and misinformation isn't something WSL or David Peterson are very prone to. DP does have a very emphatic style of writing and may come off as strong-headed and biased, but he's a very knowledgeable and respectful individual. And WSL himself was very apt to call people out on what he discerned to be BS.

It's fine to doubt something, even to question it, but to point and call it BS without any good reason or semblance of evidence is just arrogant.


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## Hong Kong Pooey (Nov 22, 2014)

Good story. Might be true, might not be. Believe it if you like, or don't. 

There doesn't seem to be too much point in arguing about it as no-one will ever prove it one way or the other.

Personally I'm a fan of both and would like to think it could be true.

Under the likely circumstances and constraints of their contest I certainly wouldn't think it impossible for YM to win due to his age, or if it is true that Bruce suffered serious damage to anything other than his pride.

But as I said, we'll never know...


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## kung fu fighter (Nov 24, 2014)

Here is the origional source of where I got this info from JKD and Wing Chun - How They Differ in The Bruce Lee Connection Forum


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