Boxing - Martial Arts Training TV
Born in San Francisco and raised in British Hong Kong, Lee was introduced to the Hong Kong film industry as a child actor by his father. However, these were not martial arts films. His early martial arts experience included Wing Chun (trained under Yip Man), tai chi, boxing (winning a Hong Kong boxing tournament), and apparently frequent street fighting (neighbourhood and rooftop fights). In 1959, Lee, having U.S. citizenship due to his birth, was able to move to Seattle. In 1961, he enrolled in the University of Washington.[7] It was during this time in the United States that he began considering making money by teaching martial arts, even though he aspired to have a career in acting. He opened his first martial arts school, operated out of home in Seattle. After later adding a second school in Oakland, California, he once drew significant attention at the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships of California by making demonstrations and speaking. He subsequently moved to Los Angeles to teach, where his students included Chuck Norris, Sharon Tate, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the 1970s, his Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the Hong Kong martial arts films to a new level of popularity and acclaim, sparking a surge of Western interest in Chinese martial arts. The direction and tone of his films dramatically influenced and changed martial arts and martial arts films worldwide.[8]
Boxing - Martial Arts Training TV
He is noted for his roles in five feature-length Hong Kong martial arts films in the early 1970s: Lo Wei's The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Golden Harvest's The Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Lee; and Golden Harvest and Warner Brothers' Enter the Dragon (1973) and The Game of Death (1978), both directed by Robert Clouse.[9] Lee became an iconic figure known throughout the world, particularly among the Chinese, based upon his portrayal of Chinese nationalism in his films,[10] and among Asian Americans for defying Asian stereotypes.[11] Having initially learnt Wing Chun, tai chi, boxing, and street fighting, he combined them with other influences from various sources into the spirit of his personal martial arts philosophy, which he dubbed Jeet Kune Do (The Way of the Intercepting Fist).[12]
Lee died on July 20, 1973, at age 32. Since his death, Lee has continued to be a prominent influence on modern combat sports, including judo, karate, mixed martial arts, and boxing, as well as modern popular culture, including film, television, comics, animation, and video games. Time named Lee one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.
In 1956, due to poor academic performance and possibly poor conduct, he was transferred to St. Francis Xavier's College, where he was mentored by Brother Edward Muss, F.M.S., a Bavarian-born teacher and coach of the school boxing team.[16][21][22] After Lee was involved in several street fights, his parents decided that he needed to be trained in the martial arts.
In 1953, Lee's friend William Cheung introduced him to Ip Man,[23][24] but he was rejected from learning Wing Chun Kung Fu under him because of the long-standing rule in the Chinese martial arts world not to teach foreigners.[25][26][additional citation(s) needed]
After a year into his Wing Chun training, most of Yip Man's other students refused to train with Lee when they had learned of his mixed ancestry, as the Chinese were generally against teaching their martial arts techniques to non-Asians.[30][31] Lee's sparring partner, Hawkins Cheung, states, "Probably fewer than six people in the whole Wing Chun clan were personally taught, or even partly taught, by Yip Man".[32] However, Lee showed a keen interest in Wing Chun and continued to train privately with Yip Man, William Cheung, and Wong Shun-leung.[33][34]
Until his late teens, Lee's street fights became more frequent and included beating the son of a feared triad family.[36] In 1958, after students from a rival Choy Li Fut martial arts school challenged Lee's Wing Chun school, he engaged in a fight on a rooftop. In response to an unfair punch by another boy, Bruce beat him so badly that he knocked out one of his teeth, leading to a complaint by the boy's parents to the police.[37]
In 1959 Lee started to teach martial arts. He called what he taught Jun Fan Gung Fu (literally Bruce Lee's Kung Fu). It was basically his approach to Wing Chun.[39] Lee taught friends he met in Seattle, starting with Judo practitioner Jesse Glover, who continued to teach some of Lee's early techniques. Taky Kimura became Lee's first Assistant Instructor and continued to teach his art and philosophy after Lee's death.[40] Lee opened his first martial arts school, named the Lee Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute, in Seattle.
Lee dropped out of college in early 1964 and moved to Oakland to live with James Yimm Lee. James Lee was twenty years senior to Bruce Lee and a well-known Chinese martial artist in the area. Together, they founded the second Jun Fan martial arts studio in Oakland. James Lee was responsible for introducing Bruce Lee to Ed Parker, an American martial artist. At the invitation of Parker, Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups, using the thumb and the index finger of one hand, with feet at approximately shoulder-width apart.[45]
In response, Wong published his own account of the fight in the Chinese Pacific Weekly, a Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco, with an invitation to a public rematch if Lee was not satisfied with the account. Lee did not respond to the invitation despite his reputation for violently responding to every provocation.[49] There were no further public announcements by either, though Lee continued to teach white people. Lee had abandoned thoughts of a film career in favour of pursuing martial arts. However, a martial arts exhibition on Long Beach in 1964 eventually led to the invitation by television producer William Dozier for an audition for a role in the pilot for "Number One Son" about Lee Chan, the son of Charlie Chan. The show never materialised, but Dozier saw potential in Lee.[52]
The Green Hornet introduced the adult Bruce Lee to an American audience, and became the first popular American show presenting Asian-style martial arts. The show's director wanted Lee to fight in the typical American style using fists and punches. As a professional martial artist, Lee refused, insisting that he should fight in the style of his expertise. At first, Lee moved so fast that his movements could not be caught on film, so he had to slow them down.[58]
Jeet Kune Do originated in 1967. After filming one season of The Green Hornet, Lee found himself out of work and opened The Jun Fan Gung Fu Institute. The controversial match with Wong Jack-man influenced Lee's philosophy about martial arts. Lee concluded that the fight had lasted too long and that he had failed to live up to his potential using his Wing Chun techniques. He took the view that traditional martial arts techniques were too rigid and formalised to be practical in scenarios of chaotic street fighting. Lee decided to develop a system with an emphasis on "practicality, flexibility, speed, and efficiency". He started to use different methods of training such as weight training for strength, running for endurance, stretching for flexibility, and many others which he constantly adapted, including fencing and basic boxing techniques.[citation needed]
At the time, two of Lee's martial arts students were Hollywood script writer Stirling Silliphant and actor James Coburn. In 1969, the three worked on a script for a film called The Silent Flute, and went together on a location hunt to India. The project was not realised at the time, but the 1978 film Circle of Iron, starring David Carradine, was based on the same plot. In 2010, producer Paul Maslansky was reported to have planned and received funding for a film based on the original script for The Silent Flute.[63]
In 1969, Lee made a brief appearance in the Silliphant-penned film Marlowe, where he played a hoodlum hired to intimidate private detective Philip Marlowe, played by James Garner, who uses his martial arts abilities to commit acts of vandalisation to intimidate Marlowe.[64][65] The same year, he was credited as the karate advisor in The Wrecking Crew, the fourth instalment of the Matt Helm comedy spy-fi film starring Dean Martin.[66] Also that year, Lee acted in one episode of Here Come the Brides and Blondie.[67][68]
In 1971, Lee appeared in four episodes of the television series Longstreet, written by Silliphant. Lee played Li Tsung, the martial arts instructor of the title character Mike Longstreet, played by James Franciscus, and important aspects of his martial arts philosophy were written into the script.[71][72] According to statements made by Lee, and also by Linda Lee Cadwell after Lee's death, in 1971 Lee pitched a television series of his own, tentatively titled The Warrior, discussions of which were confirmed by Warner Bros. During a December 9, 1971, television interview on The Pierre Berton Show, Lee stated that both Paramount and Warner Brothers wanted him "to be in a modernized type of a thing, and that they think the Western idea is out, whereas I want to do the Western".[73]
Lee played his first leading role in The Big Boss (1971), which proved to be an enormous box office success across Asia and catapulted him to stardom. He followed up with Fist of Fury (1972), which broke the box office records set previously by The Big Boss. Having finished his initial two-year contract, Lee negotiated a new deal with Golden Harvest. Lee later formed his own company, Concord Production Inc., with Chow. For his third film, The Way of the Dragon (1972), he was given complete control of the film's production as the writer, director, star, and choreographer of the fight scenes. In 1964, at a demonstration in Long Beach, California, Lee met karate champion Chuck Norris. In The Way of the Dragon Lee introduced Norris to moviegoers as his opponent. Their showdown has been characterised as "one of the best fight scenes in martial arts and film history".[84][85] The role had originally been offered to American karate champion Joe Lewis.[86] Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon grossed an estimated US$100 million and US$130 million worldwide, respectively.[87] 041b061a72