The Bruce Lee Memorial Thread (awesome facts, pics, videos)

Filmography

Profile:

Name: Bruce Lee
Chinese name: Li Yuen Kam. Li Siu-Lung (Little Dragon).
Born: November 27th 1940, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Died: July 20th 1973 in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Hong Kong, at the age of 32 years.
Brothers/Sisters: Bruce was born the fourth of five children. His brothers and sisters were: Agnus, Phoebe, Peter and Robert.
Wife: Linda Emery.
Children: One son, Brandon Lee (died March 31st 1993) and one daughter, Shannon Lee.
Height: 5 feet, 7.5 inches.
Weight: 140 lbs.
Education: Bruce went to several schools in Hong Kong, one of them being La-Salla College, and then moved to St. Frances Xaviers College. Following this Bruce went to the USA and attended Eddison Vocational High School and finally majored in Philosophy at Washington University in Seattle. Bruce studied there for three years but never completed the course.
Residence: Cities in which Bruce lived in for any lengh of time included San Francisco, Hong Kong, Seattle, Oakland, Los Angeles and finally Kowloon Tong in Hong Kong.

Facts:

Pioneering Mixed Martial Artist
Lee studied with different masters of classical martial arts forms, but became dissatisfied with them. He took the best of all of those arts, combined his own ideas and created his own style called Jun Fan Gung Fu, a modification of Wing Chun combined with western boxing and fencing. This would later lead to his own refined school of the martial arts: Jeet Kune Do.

In his promotionals and demonstrations, Bruce never did the standard martial art stunts like breaking boards, which he felt had nothing to do with what the martial arts are really about.

Bruce Lee Never Lost a Fight
Well, actually he lost a fight only once in his life: when he was 13 years old. This loss actually prompted Bruce to learn martial arts from a Wing Chun master named Yip Man. After other students learned that Bruce wasn’t pure Chinese, they refused to let him train in their class. Yip Man had to train him privately.

Bruce Lee was an Excellent Dancer and Boxer
Actually, Bruce studied dancing as hard as he studied martial arts: he was an excellent dancer who, at 18 years of age, won the 1958 Hong Kong Cha Cha Championship! Bruce was also a great boxer: he won the 1958 Boxing Championship - by knockout, of course.

Bruce Lee was a Philosophy Major
Bruce wasn’t just all muscle and no brain. He attended the University of Washington, where he majored in philosophy with focus on the philosophical principles of martial art techniques. As you might imagine, Bruce supported himself in college by teaching martial arts. Later, Bruce dropped out of college to open his martial arts school.

Want to challenge Bruce Lee? Just tap your foot on the ground!
After he got famous, a lot of people thought they could beat Bruce - they would walk up to him, tap their foot on the ground (symbolizing a challenge) and then proceed to attack him! Well… maybe not that literal, but Bruce’s popularity certainly attracted a lot nutcase trying to prove they’re better than him.

One day, while filming Enter the Dragon, an extra taunted Bruce Lee and challenged him to fight. The whole thing went on like this:

"This kid was good. He was no punk. He was strong and fast, and he was really trying to punch Bruce’s brains in. But Bruce just methodically took him apart."

"I mean Bruce kept moving so well, this kid couldn’t touch him…Then all of a sudden, Bruce got him and rammed his ass into the wall and swept him, he proceeded to drop his knee into his opponent’s chest, locked his arm out straight, and nailed him in the face repeatedly."

Typical of Bruce Lee, after the fight he didn’t fire the extra - he actually gave his challenger lesson on how to improve!

Bruce Lee was Strong
In 1964, Bruce was invited to a karate championship in Long Beach, California. There he performed his famous "One Inch Punch," where he would deliver a devastating blow from only an inch away, sending his opponent flying back!

[youtube]keS3OTNger8&e[/youtube]

Bob Baker of Stockton, whom Bruce hit, said "I told Bruce not to do this type of demonstration again. When he punched me that last time, I had to stay home from work because the pain in my chest was unbearable."

… and Fast!
Most martial art films are sped up to make fighting scenes appear fast, but not Bruce Lee’s. His moves were too fast to be captured on the regular 24 frames per second film - so they had to film him at 32 fps, and run the film slower so you can see his moves.

Resilient
One of Bruce's legs was almost a whole inch longer than the other, causing pain from the misalignment of his spine, which he had to overcome through weight training and conditioning.

Facts Continued:

Very Little Body Fat
"..Bruce's body must have been less than one per cent fat, sais Dr Donald Langford, the Lee family's physician in Hong Kong. It was obscene how little body fat he had."

Movie Prodigy
Lee's first fame came as a child star in many Hong Kong movies. He was six years old when he did his first film The Orphan.

Bruce Lee's first Hong Kong produced feature film The Big Boss was a massive hit and out-grossed The Sound Of Music, taking in more than $3.5 million in it’s first three weeks of release.

X Rated
In the film Tang Shan Da Xiong, a brutal fight scene, which had Bruce slicing a man's head open with a saw, had to be edited to avoid an X rating.

Back Injury
Bruce suffered a serious back injury while weight training, attempting a heavy dead lift. He used his recuperation time to write several books on his views and ideas about the martial arts.

Bruce Lee's Abdominal Routines:

Stomach Exercises:
1.Waist twist - 4 sets of 70 reps
2.Sit-up twist - 4 sets of 20 reps
3.Leg raises - 4 sets of 20 reps
4.Leaning twist - 4 sets of 50 reps
5.Frog kick - 4 sets of as many reps as possible

Stomach/Waist Exercises: (2 sets)
1.Roman chair sit-up
2.Leg raises
3.Side bends

Running:
1.Sit-up - 4 sets of 20 reps
2.Leg raises - 4 sets of 20 reps
3.Side bends 4 sets of 15-20 reps

Bruce also used to ride for 45 minutes (10 Miles) on a stationary bike.

For more info on Bruce's workout routines: The Art of Expressing the Human Body


Stories about Bruce:

Dan Inosanto
"Bruce was always a dapper dresser. Once he asked me to go with him to a clothing store so we went to one where most college students shopped, now bruce never liked people to touch him. Inside an employee came up to us and said hey you have some nice threads what do you do for a living? Bruce ignored him and he kept asking the same thing until he touched him. Eventually bruce said, I do a thing called gung fu, the employee asks whats gung fu? bruce replied let me show you. He stands him in front of a clothes rack and says, now this is the one inch punch and he sends the guy across the store into the clothes rack with his feet up in the air, I said looks like its time to leave so the guy ended up in the sports jacket section. It was like a scene from his movies."

Tom Bleecker
"Two men entered through the rear door and were greated by Parker. The shorter more reserved of the two were James Lee. James had often driven from Oakland to visit Parker, and this time he brough with him an unknown Kung Fu practitioner from Hong Kong, who was meeting parker for the first time. His name was Bruce Lee.

He was a well dressed, good looking man in his early twenties In sharp contrast to Parker, Bruce stood a mere five feet seven inches and weight around 140 pounds. Soon Parker and Bruce started to exchange ideas, with Bruce often using James Lee (no relation to Bruce) to demonstrate his point.

Above all else, what instantly impressed me about Bruce was his unmistakable self confidence. In the two years since I had begun training with Ed parker, Bruce Lee was the first man who didnt seem intimidated by this massive hawaiian. Although this meeting took place over thirty years ago, three distinct characteristics still stands out in my mind: the intense level of enthusiasm with which Bruce expressed his art; his awesome physical and emotional energy; and most notably the incradable speed of his hands."

Davis Miller
"It is hard to overstate how visible the martial arts disciplines have become because of Bruce Lee. If he had not existed, few of us would have heard of martial arts or kung fu. Before Lee's death there were fewer than 500 martial arts schools in the world; by the late 1990s, because of his influence, there were more than 20 million martial arts students in the United States alone.

There isnt a martial artist on this planet who hasn't been influenced by Bruce, George Tan claims. And this seeming overstatement is probably true."

"..Internationally, Enter the Dragon was Warner Brother's highest grossing movie of 1973. A cinema in Iran played the film daily until January 1979, when Sha Pahlavi was overthrown by the Ayatollah Khomeini."

"...As for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lee's death, including worldwide video and television sales, Enter the Dragon has grossed over 400 million dollars and had been listed, for more than twenty years, as one of the twenty most profitable movies in the history of cinema."

"...On 20th of July 1986, Betty Ting Pei gave birth to a son, who, she told friends, was the reincarnation of Bruce Lee."

About his fighting ability:

PaulBax: You once mentioned Joe Lewis in regard to a conversation you had with Dan Inosanto in which Danny claimed that during a workout session with Bruce Lee that Lewis "could not do anything." Can you expound on this?

JamesDemille: It is hard to recall the exact conversations that took place many years ago. But this was the gist of the talk. Danny had seen Bruce Spar with Joe and Chuck Norris and said he would neutralize everything they tried. His ability to close, trap and shut down any attack was amazing. I did not doubt this since I had had personal experience with his skills. Bruce was a street fighter, and they were tournament players. There is a definite difference between the two. I have always been more than happy to explain the differences to those who think that winning trophies and smashing heads is the same thing.


PaulBax: It seems he learned it well. Joe Lewis once said, "I remember I fired at him three times in a row and he (Lee) couldn't touch my hand. And I thought, "Ha, I finally got him!" Then he went to that alpha state of consciousness, sort of self-hypnosis he did on himself and then asked me to try again, and then of course, he popped me every single time. I couldn't touch him. He was great with those little mind games." You’re thoughts?

JamesDemille: I was not there, so it is hard to qualify what happened. I saw Joe back in the early 70's when he was in a full contact tournament here in Hawaii. He was good but not especially fast. He was very aggressive but I would personally question his ability to touch Bruce at any time. Bruce did use his ability to focus within, but again, his speed of motion and reactions were constant and I doubt anyone could touch him unless they were very close to him and knew how to move. However, Bruce would play games and maybe he wanted to give Joe a moment of .................

Quotes:

There's no challenge in breaking a board. Boards don't hit back.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

Willing is not enough; we must do. Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

Gifs and Pics:



statue

videos:

Tribute
Tribute

Enter the Dragon Highlights
[youtube]QQORnYPqU3A[/youtube]

Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris
[youtube]JLO1YIWQuXE[/youtube]

Interview
[youtube]uXOtmhA6Nvw[/youtube]

Part2
[youtube]RRdTJi0v3fQ[/youtube]

Bruce Lee vs. Jackie Chan
[youtube]WTl_ZSaeDBo[/youtube]

Vs. Kareem Abdul Jabar
[youtube]RBRJ2qCx5VM[/youtube]



Sources:

posters:

psunit
Brahman

sites:

Neatorama.com
Jsbains.co.uk
Tv.com
Quazen.com
home.no

for any updates

Open for comments.

Let me know if anything's missing or screwed up. Tribute to a pioneering MMAer.

so badass...

bruce was that dude

Nifgga was a beast.

I bet he was hung despite his racial handicap.

lmmfao.. wtf.. haha..


Nice post Mac...

fedor

?

bwahaha.

He really was a beast, though. I didn't even find all of the facts and stories that I've read. I read this one story one time about a bet that Lee couldn't take these two big bodyguards, so he stormed through the door and knocked both on their asses.

or that his explosive power got to the point where people couldn't hold pads and bags for him while he practiced striking anymore.

A lot of the myth makes people think that he wasn't shit, but the real story is so fucking unbelievable by itself. I don't believe any man is invincible, but he came as close as anyone ever will.

Also a beast, but Bruce would've beat him with a swift kick to the nuts.

He wasn't really with competitive fighting. He looked at it more as a way to defend yourself on the street, and some of the target points he indicated were testicles and eyes.

but still, he taught about how one discipline was shit by itself. Unfortunately, a lesson forgotten until grapplers destroyed one dimensional fighters in the beginning days of UFC and Pancrase.

Thank you so much.

This man truly deserves legend status.

Did you see the quick punches in that second interview video?

Jesus Christ.

bruce lee >

good shit Mac.

I wish there was more actual fighting or sparring footage of him.

one of the greatest inspirational figures in my life, no doubt

i worshipped him growing up

the mysterious tale of sifu jack man wong and bruce lee's legendary showdown is one of my favorites

go to the link below...

lakungfu.com/sifujackmanwong

ill as fuuuuuuck. gotta read this later.