How good was Bruce Lee?

[Tensei85]

Yes I am.

Awesome! Give Rahim Sifu my best regards :ultracool

 

[graychuan]

Boy, this could be the subject for a whole new thread....
Another point. With a list of seniors, or "si-hings", as long as your arm, it would have been difficult for Bruce to catapult to the top levels of the Yip Man lineage, regardless of his skills. So he may have felt that he had little choice but to find his own path. Was the trade-off worth it? Did he come out ahead, or not? Maybe if he were alive today, he could tell us.

Respectfully, I dont see how this would explain peeps like Leung Ting, Augusten Fong, or even William Cheung. Those guys finished the system. And they were not in the first group with which Yip Man started. I dont think its about how high he ranked in the lineage but more about his skills and the information he aquired.
Bruce's 'path' clearly included Hollywood. Nothing wrong with this. He was great, extremely competent in fighting and I loved is movies.

 

[mook jong man]

I asked one of my instructors what they thought of Bruce Lee in Sigung Tsui Seung Tin's school in Kowloon
Apparently they said he could have been really good if he kept on training in Wing Chun.

 

[geezer]

Respectfully, I dont see how this would explain peeps like Leung Ting, Augusten Fong, or even William Cheung.

Exactly my point! I met Sifu Augustine Fong many years ago and he struck me as a modest man and a gentleman. He has also generally avoided the limelight. But both Sifus Leung Ting and William Cheung have stirred up a lot of controversy with their ambitions to present themselves as the ultimate authorities in the art. I do not want to revisit that discussion. I'm simply pointing out that it would have been very difficult for Bruce Lee to establish himself as the icon he became without moving beyond the confines of Wing Chun.

Graychuan, I think your second point about Bruce Lee's aspiration to make it in Hollywood is right on the money. Finally, his premature death also played a huge role in his near deification. Had he lived, I suspect he would have been just another martial arts action star to most people.

 

[graychuan]

Exactly my point! I met Sifu Augustine Fong many years ago and he struck me as a modest man and a gentleman. He has also generally avoided the limelight. But both Sifus Leung Ting and William Cheung have stirred up a lot of controversy with their ambitions to present themselves as the ultimate authorities in the art. I do not want to revisit that discussion. I'm simply pointing out that it would have been very difficult for Bruce Lee to establish himself as the icon he became without moving beyond the confines of Wing Chun.

Graychuan, I think your second point about Bruce Lee's aspiration to make it in Hollywood is right on the money. Finally, his premature death also played a huge role in his near deification. Had he lived, I suspect he would have been just another martial arts action star to most people.

NOW I got ya, man. excellent point!

 

[Xue Sheng]

This whole posts reminds me of a comedian I once saw that was doing a monolog about a guy he knew that was telling everyone how good Bruce Lee was.

Guy: Bruce Lee was so good he could punch you in the chest, rip out your heart, show it to you and toss it the bean dip before you died…what do you think of that?

Comedian: Well I’m not going to have any of the bean dip

Bruce was good but I got to go with Geezer on this one, particularly on the whole near deification bits
.

 

[zepedawingchun]

I asked one of my instructors what they thought of Bruce Lee in Sigung Tsui Seung Tin's school in Kowloon
Apparently they said he could have been really good if he kept on training in Wing Chun.

I had read somewhere, and I don't remember who said this, whether it was Guru Dan Inosanto, or maybe Hawkins Cheung Sifu. But it goes that before Bruce died, he was beginning to understand their were things in Wing Chun that he didn't get (and needed) and was going back to his Wing Chun roots. If so, and he hadn't died, who knows how much better he would have become.

Hawkins Cheung Sifu has some interesting reading on his website concerning Bruce. Having been one of (IMO) Bruce Lee's closest friends, I think he has a better handle on the real Bruce Lee and his JKD. No disrespect to Guru Dan Inosanto, or any of Bruce Lee's students, but Guru Dan was a student where as Hawkins Cheung Sifu was a fellow student, training partner, and childhood friend. As teachers, we only let our students get to a certain level of closeness. And close friends are like family, they see more of what we are like.

http://www.hawkinscheung.com/html/hcarticle3.htm

 

[graychuan]

I had read somewhere, and I don't remember who said this, whether it was Guru Dan Inosanto, or maybe Hawkins Cheung Sifu. But it goes that before Bruce died, he was beginning to understand their were things in Wing Chun that he didn't get (and needed) and was going back to his Wing Chun roots. If so, and he hadn't died, who knows how much better he would have become.

Hawkins Cheung Sifu has some interesting reading on his website concerning Bruce. Having been one of (IMO) Bruce Lee's closest friends, I think he has a better handle on the real Bruce Lee and his JKD. No disrespect to Guru Dan Inosanto, or any of Bruce Lee's students, but Guru Dan was a student where as Hawkins Cheung Sifu was a fellow student, training partner, and childhood friend. As teachers, we only let our students get to a certain level of closeness. And close friends are like family, they see more of what we are like.

http://www.hawkinscheung.com/html/hcarticle3.htm

I had also heard something of this. it may have even been mentioned in one of the many documentaries on Bruce.