So by the time of Enter the Dragon, Bruce had people challenging because they wanted to make a name for themselves; they were offended about the stuff he said about other styles of kungfu compared to his art of Jeet Kune Do; or they didn’t believe the he was as good as people said, and they wanted to see if he was worth the hype.
And that’s how we got these stories about the extras challenging Bruce Lee on the set of Enter the Dragon from various sources. Paul Heller and Fred Weintraub both said in various interviews how guys were walking up to Bruce Lee to challenge him. They both said guys would stomp their foot 3 times and cross their arms, which I understand to be an invitation to cross hands, or test each other’s skill.
Now if you’re not at all familiar with the culture in Chinese martial arts, this idea of crossing hands can be anything from a friendly exchange to a flat out fight. For example, I did a video last year where I mentioned some drama between The Martial Man and the kid who runs the Totally Pointless channel.
I said that I have never met Keiren, or his teacher Liang De Hua, but that I would really like to cross hands with them– meaning I’d like to see how skilled Liang De Hua is, not fight him. Now there’s another Tai Chi teacher who is featured a lot on that channel, and all I’ll s
ay is if I were to cross hands with him, it won’t be friendly…and y’all can tell him I said that. Anyway, getting back to our story, on Valentine’s Day in 1972, Fred Weintraub sent a letter to his family where he mentioned Bruce Lee being challenged by an extra, and Bruce Lee completely wiped the floor with them. So it sounds like that may not have been a friendly exchange. One story that has been making the rounds lately regarding these challenges on the set of Enter the Dragon actually comes from Bruce’s wife, Linda Lee Cadwell, who happened to be visiting the set that particular day.
She said that the extras were taking a break while working on a scene that occured on the tennis court that is supposed to be the courtyard on Han’s island where the tournament fights are taking place. Anyway, this kid is taunting Bruce saying he’s just an actor, can he throw a real kick, and basically calling him a paper tiger.
So Bruce calls him down from the wall, and according to Linda, they have a friendly exchange that lasted for about 30 seconds. Bruce sent the kid away “as a true believer,” and she said that Bruce did not have any more problems from that kid. When I heard Linda’s story, I thought that she might be talking about the same fight that Bob Wall recalled after I saw a picture of Linda, Bruce, and Bob all sitting together on the tennis court, but Bob tells a few different stories.
In the case of this exchange that Bruce had with another stuntman extra, Bob Wall says that Bruce was called out by a guy who was bigger than Bruce. They had an exchange going back and forth firing shots at each other before Bruce finally rammed the guy’s head into a wall and then put him in an arm bar followed by a leglock until the guy tapped.
This does not sound at all like the friendly exchange Linda mentioned, so I’m not sure if these were separate incidents. There was an incident that John Saxon witnessed during the 8 days that he was shooting his fight scenes on the tennis court where another kid up on the wall started to disrespect Bruce.
He asked if Bruce could really do the stuff from his movies, like was he really legit, or just a bunch of Hong Kong movie hype. Now it kinda sounds like Bruce is going around beating up on these poor stuntmen, but the truth is that Bruce was all about helping these guys. If you pay attention, these fights and challenges were happening during breaks because Bruce took his breaks with the stuntmen and the extras.
Bruce ate lunch with the stuntmen. Bruce was fighting for the stuntment to be paid more money because without them, there wouldn’t be a Han’s Island. Bruce even got in a big fight with Raymond Chow because he wanted to hire 100 additional stuntmen. Some of the guys who went on to become big kung fu stars who worked on Enter the Dragon w
ere Lam Ching-Ying who starred in The Prodigal Son, Sammo Hung, who…you know, it’s Sammo! Jackie Chan was in multiple fight scenes, and so was Yuen Biao. Yuen Wah was Bruce Lee’s stunt double — so Bruce worked with at least 4 members of the 7 Little Fortunes, and they all loved him. Even some of these guys who didn’t come from these well known Chinese Opera troupes, Bruce Lee tried helping them.
Some guys would step to him for a challenge, and he’d give them advice on how to improve their kung fu. If things got a little too physical, Bruce would even offer to cover their medical expenses, but unfortunately, you just can’t help everyone no matter how hard you try. In the case of this one particular young man, and his brother, they took Bruce Lee’s kindness for blindness.
Remember the letter that Fred Weintraub sent home to his family about how Bruce Lee completely wiped the floor with some kid? Well, this kid was with a group of other stuntmen, and he started calling Bruce out. You know how it is, it’s easy to talk smack to somebody when you’re with your boys. Now in this case, Bruce couldn’t let this slide because he was worried that this incident could make things difficult for him later, so he called the kid off the wall to fight.
The thing is there wasn’t really much of a fight. Bruce kicked the kid in his grill. I don’t know if he lost any teeth, but he was spitting blood. The kid needed to go to the hospital, and Bruce offered to cover his hospital visit. Now on top of that, Bruce didn’t want the kid to be fired. I had heard about this incident before, allegedly from Bolo Yeung, but when I found the article I’d read a few years ago, their source was Beerdy’s back-up channel, and you know how things go with Beerdy – Even his Mixed Martial Arts career and fight record is fake.
But it turns out that I saw an interview with Bruce Lee’s secretary, Madalena Chan, who was also a production assistant on Enter the Dragon. She said that this kid was actually a Triad member, and she had him fired immediately. A few days after the incident, that kid’s body was found somewhere with multiple stab wounds.
Now to further add to the story, Fred Weintraub revealed in his book, “Bruce Lee, Woodstock, and Me,” that the guy who broke his arm when Bruce Lee kicked Bob Wall was that kid’s brother – he was also a problem on set, so I guess stupidity runs in the family, and as one of my Chiefs used to say when I was in Nuke School,”and the stupid shall be punished.
” So those are 3 times Bruce Lee was challenged by Stuntmen on the set of Enter the Dragon. This is the first video in a new series I’m doing called Bruce Lee’s Real Fights and Challenges where I’ll be talking about just that — Bruce Lee’s real fights and times he was challenged. Be sure you’re following the channel so you’ll know when I put out the next video! If you’re new here and you’d like to check out more of my Bruce Lee videos, a good place to start is my video on why Yip Man stopped teaching Bruce Lee when Bruce first started
studying Wing Chun, and then a good follow-up to that video is Bruce Lee’s Real Wing Chun Fighting Skills. I’ve got some really cool stories about Bruce Lee’s fights coming soon, so I have to get back to work on those videos, so while you wait on the next video in the series, Keep training, remember to breathe, and I’ll see you soon!
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
