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Over the years, I have heard hundreds of people repeat the idea that in Bruce Lee’s day, the only form of martial arts competition that existed was point karate no one touch sparring. While Bruce Lee existed primarily with the point karate social circles of the west coast of the USA in the 1960’s, in the world at large, full-contact fighting contests with limited rule sets not only existed already, but had been established decades, and in some cases centuries prior to the advent of Bruce Lee.
Mr. Lee is often credited with the revolutionary idea of pioneering full contact fighting, integrating striking and grappling together- meanwhile in Russia (sambo), Brazil (vale tudo), China (sanda), and Thailand (Muay Thai), among other countries, such contests were old news.
Gene Lebell, a contemporary of Bruce Lee (who actually taught Lee judo techniques) was doing full contact mixed martial arts challenge matches back in the 1960’s (including his well documented fight with boxer Milo Savage) while Lee was merely pontificating about the possibility of such things.
Bruce Lee did no more to “invent MMA” than Sylvester Stallone did to “invent boxing”. Both men were charismatic actors who made popular action movies that dramatically raised public interest in combat sports.
In this video, I go on a tangent about dueling in China prior to the cultural revolution, illustrated with the contrasting narrative of Xu Xiaodong, the infamous Chinese retired MMA fighter who blew up the internet after beating up Wei Lei, a fake tai chi master. Since dueling has been banned in modern China (as it has in most countries) Xu Xiaodong has run into some legal trouble- which has been spun into a tear-jerker narrative of oppression.
Finally, Bruce Lee was an American. A proud American. Don’t believe everything the media shines in your eyes.