Who would win in a real fight? Bruce Lee all the way. Boxing is a sport with many rules, and boxers train to win by those rules. Kung Fu has no rules, and they train every part of the body to be a weapon.
And we see this tested how? You yourself stated that MMA is as close to a real fight as possible. WC and kung fu styles do not fare particularly well in that environment. WC is treated with derision by a goodly amount of MMA fans. What makes you think that Lee would somehow be the exception to this? Too-deadly-for-the-cage moves is not a viable answer.
Boxing is way to limited to stand a chance. Put Bruce Lee in the ring and put rules on him like no kicking, no elbows, ect, and you have just turned the fight into a joke.
Ali had training in things outside of boxing. He is documented to have trained with Jhoon Rhee, so it isn't as if kicks are foreign to him. No fight record in any of it, so I suppose it doesn't count. But then Lee has no fight record in anything and no documented fights of any kind outside of the movies.
Real fighting has no rules, the closest thing to real fighting in a safe way is MMA. Put Ali in a MMA match and he would be destroyed.
Now he would be. The man has Parkinsons. Had MMA in its current form been around at the time Ali was in his prime, however, he would certainly have trained for it before entering. Lee would have likely struggled more than Ali, not having any documented fights, in or out of competition. It is unlikely that he could have withstood the punishment the way that Ali in his prime is factually documented to have been able to.
Also, boxers have historically fared quite well against multifaceted strikers of other arts. The real question would be how Ali would handle grappling, which is not something that Lee was particularly known for (though I am sure that he had some level of grappling training under his belt, it certainly was not on the level of modern MMA fighters). It is also something that Lee would have to contend with as well.
Ali was a master of Boxing and the rules of Boxing.
Boxers only use there arms, and dont even use elbows, backfists, knife hands. Boxing is so limited.
This is kind of a tired argument and a flawed argument as well. This is really the only argument that anyone can make on Lee's behalf. Criticize Ali and the sport that he competed in because there really is nothing factual to base Lee's performance in a real fight upon. Ali outmatched Lee in every conceivable way in terms of a fight. Consider also that Ali was the kind of fighter that Lee specifically stated that he feared: the man who had practiced a limited few techniques thousands upon thousands of times.
"I fear not the man who has practiced ten thousand kicks, but the man who has practiced one kick ten thousand times"
Before you ask if Lee could beat Ali in a fight, you must first ask yourself if he could beat George Foreman or Joe Frazier. Foreman in particular, who was, and likely still is, insanely durable and and insanely powerful. I question whether Lee in his prime could beat Foreman as his is now, let alone in Foreman's prime. Frazier and Ali in their prime would be out of the question.
Keep in mind that Lee set out to do something other than, and in my opinion, bigger than, just being a great fighter. Lee set out to be a star (and he succeeded) and to develop a system that would create great fighters (likewise, he succeeded). Had Lee lived, he likely would have continued to raise the bar on fight choreography and on production quality of MA movies in cinema, two bars that he set higher than anyone else at the time. More importantly, he likely would have been regarded as a trainer of fighters and the father of a very advanced and effective hybrid system and for his philosophy in MA (the latter two he has in fact achieved), which really were his true strengths.
Just to clarify, yes, I believe that Lee was certainly capable of fighting and defending himself. In no way do I mean to imply that he was some kind of paper tiger. Certainly, effective MA and what makes MA great goes well beyond fight records. Both Lee and Ali demonstrated this.
Now here is a question: How would Ali in his prime fare in modern MMA with Lee as his trainer and Lee fully versed in the rules of modern MMA? Now
that would be a trainer/fighter combination that would have serious potential.
Daniel
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