With boxing rules I would give it to Ali, with no rules I would give it to Bruce Lee, but I also would never necessarily consider that a given. Ali was bigger and could also be very surprising. Interesting to consider but we will never know.
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...for Heaven's sake, can't discussions about the man not sound like comic fanboys debating whether or not Wolverine could beat Spiderman?
Daniel
Absolutely. The only reason I picked one is because the OP asked and, of course, there's nothing on the line.And Ali, great as he was, fast, skillful and fearsomely powerful with his punches... did lose, sometimes, to other highly skilled boxers. Joe Lewis lost, Rocky Marciano lost...it can happen to the very best. So no one should be too certain that on the day, someone whose knowledge of real-world violent combat we have only the murkiest idea of might have lost to one of the greatest boxers of all time, if not the very greatest. That's why I said that I'd prefer not to bet on this one.
I think that such debates can be beneficial. When discussed honestly, they force us to look a little closer at the people in question. We're on Martial Talk, so it is a given that we've all studied Bruce Lee to some extent or another, some even studying his system.
But how much do most people, particularly young people, who aren't boxers actually study Ali?
How many martial artists have an inkling of Ali's record? We all probably know Chuck Norris' record or at least have a good idea of it.
We all know that Lee studied boxing and fencing, but how many knew that Ali studied taekeondo under Jhoon Rhee? I did, but I live in the DC area and went to a Jhoon Rhee school when I was a kid.
That sure puts a different spin on the quantity of tools in Ali's box, though.
There's a lot of cool facts about Ali, and Xue, I'm sure that had he lived longer, Lee would have studied with Ali. Now that's a training session that would have been historical.
The wonderful thing about Lee was his openness to the effectiveness of styles outside of his base. He studied western boxing and he even studied fencing and applied its mechanics to his system. He also trained with Jhoon Rhee.
What Lee did was the basis for modern MMA. He also made the martial arts movie a viable choice for a western audience with Enter the Dragon.
Kept in the light of learning about people that we may not normally think about, such debates can be healthy.
Daniel.
Boxing rules? Easy answer.
Other rules/no rules? Who knows. Muhammad Ali had a lot of experience hitting people. But Bruce Lee had more tools at his disposal.
I don't think either would have been disrespectful of the other's abilities and knowledge.
Why does everyone assume that a guy with no verifiable documentation of any fights would somehow magically win if there were no rules? Several people have made this comment in this thread, and I'm sorry, but the logic doesn't hold up.
Didn't some pro karate league have to change the rules to force more kicks at one point because because boxers were going in and cleaning people clocks?
I hate to say it but this mentality is one of the reasons that TMA's get knocked.
It is the same mentality that I've seen in kendo when a guy lost a match to someone else and then spouted off all this crap about Musashi and how if targets weren't limited then he would have done thus and so. The guy is an idiot. No rules mean that the other guy can do the exact same thing.
Pro boxers train at a level far and above that of a movie martial artist. So do pro MMA competitors. Now, Lee probably trained harder than every other movie martial artist of his day, and maybe of any day, but he was still a movie martial artist who's profession was making movies. All that flashy stuff he did was for looking cool in a movie.
I have seen numerous XMA threads where the entire board goes off about how the flashy stuff in XMA isn't applicable in an actual fight, be it tournament or otherwise. How is it that everyone somehow forgets this when Bruce Lee comes up?
Oh yes! He beat up a movie extra who ran his mouth on the set of one of his movies! Now it all makes sense.
Ali was full of bravado and he put it on the line and proved it in what was the biggest, most visible venue of the day.
Lee supposedly said that he could beat any man alive in a real fight. If he said this, he never did anything to prove.
But what was Bruce Lee really?
He has tons of rumor and legend, but the only actual fight mentioned was an unverifiable boxing match on Wikipedia against some guy named Gary Elms, a supposed three time champion (no federation or organization mentioned; big red flag). I sure can't find anything on the fight or even the man himself exept on pages that brag about Lee and read pretty much like the bio given in Wiki and in tributes in MA mags.
Admittedly, I didn't look that hard, but he doesn't even rate a Wikipedia page of his own, so I honestly can't take the claim seriously, nor that of three supposed knockouts in the first round against unnamed opponents.
So what is he? He's a guy who studied Wing Chun for five years, did some tai chi, some boxing and some fencing, then went off to create a style of his own, start a movie career, and train a cadre of loyal disciples. He contributed greatly to the promulgation of martial arts and made some fantastic movies and developed a fantastic system who's merits are accepted as tried and true by many accomplished fighters and martial artists. And he died at 33. That is a serious accomplishment! I sure can't claim that kind of accomplishment, and very few people in any field can claim that kind of accomplishment.
Look, I'm probably sounding like a Bruce Lee hater at this point, but I assure you that I am not. But for Heaven's sake, can't discussions about the man not sound like comic fanboys debating whether or not Wolverine could beat Spiderman?
Daniel
The way that the two trained were dramatically different. Training in a sport where you can only use your hands is very different than training to use everything as a potential weapon. Hearing the way people Like Joe Lewis and Chuck Norris talk about the skills of Bruce Lee are pretty good testimonials. I only met Ali once (although I watched countless hours of tapes of his fights) and I never met Bruce Lee so I can't have a qualified opinion.Only a guess. Either way, it would have been great to see a fight like that. Both men were very remarkable.
Well, we will never know, but I think it can be fun to conjecture about who would win this fantasy fight. I'm pro fun. With Lee's speed you have to respect his ability, in a no holds barred fight I still think Lee would win, in the boxing ring, Ali.