Look, he’s trained since he was about 8 years old. Eight black belts. He’s sparred with UFC champions, kickboxing champions, boxing contenders, people like Jon Jones, Michael Bisping, Francis Ngannou. He’s sparred with real fighters, not actors. Fighting is not pretty. It’s trading blows.
You know, if you’re not used to getting hit, guess what’s going to happen. So when Michael Jai White says fighting is trading blows, look y’all, he’s speaking from experience. To him, a fighter is someone who’s been tested, someone who’s bled through the rounds, felt the canvas, and found out who they really are under pressure.
It’s a fair definition. A combat sport athlete, but it’s not the only one. Bruce Lee’s definition of fighting didn’t come from trophies or winning titles. It came from survival. Bruce refused to compete in tournaments because he believed that once you added rules, you stripped away reality.
He called point fighting and sport karate of his day dry land swimming. You’re going through the motions, but you’re not actually in the water. To Bruce Lee, real fighting had no referees, no rounds, and no restart bell. It was about survival, not sport. So where Michael Jai White defines a fighter by who they fought under rules, Bruce Lee defined a fighter by how honestly they fought without them.
Two different definitions, two different eras, but here’s where things get interesting. Michael Jai White often cites two men who shaped his idea of what a real fighter is, Joe Lewis and Bill Superfoot Wallace. Both were champions in American kickboxing. Both were pioneers of full contact karate. And both were heavily influenced by Bruce Lee.
>> >> I know a lot of people who trained with Bruce Lee and knew Bruce Lee. On my birthday a few weeks ago, I’m training with Bill Wallace yet again, which is one of my instructors. These guys all they they know Joe Lewis so there’s so many people who’ve trained with Bruce Lee and sparred with him and all that. I love Joe Lewis.
>> >> I was a former world kickboxing and karate champion of the world. Joe Lewis, world champion in point karate and full contact kickboxing. He trained directly with Bruce Lee before he first started fighting professionally in 1970. Bruce Lee taught him timing, interception, and adaptability, principles that became the backbone of American kickboxing.
And as a matter of fact, Joe Lewis’s business partner says that in that first fight in 1970, Joe Lewis wasn’t kickboxing. That was his expression of Jeet Kune Do. So here’s the twist. Joe Lewis publicly said >> him by far the greatest. But behind Bruce’s back, he called him a little Chinese actor.
He said Bruce didn’t spar anybody seriously except people who were sucking up to him. So which is it, Joe? Because these people, they wouldn’t lie and it’s and they love Bruce Lee as well. So here’s what Michael Jai White doesn’t mention on those Vlad TV interviews. When Bruce Lee demonstrated at the Long Beach International Karate Championships in 1964, a kid named Benny Urquidez was in the audience.
Benny later said that performance inspired him to start competing. Benny the Jet Urquidez, the same fighter Michael uses as an example of a real fighter that Bruce Lee couldn’t beat. Like there were people like Benny Urquidez around. Like Bruce Lee couldn’t fight Benny Urquidez. That would be terrible. Bruce Lee didn’t compete in kickboxing tournaments because kickboxing didn’t exist yet.
Joe Lewis didn’t have his first full contact match until 1970 after training with Bruce. And by then Bruce was off making movies in Hong Kong. Bill Wallace, he didn’t become Superfoot the kickboxing champion until the mid-1970s after Bruce’s death. So when Michael Jai White criticizes Bruce Lee for not being a fighter, Yeah, he he’s a martial artist, the greatest martial artist who ever lived, but he’s not a fighter.
I mean, he’s criticizing the man who inspired the very sport that defines what a fighter is today. It’s like criticizing the Wright brothers for not being airline pilots. Orville, it’s moving and yet nothing’s flapping. It has no propeller. Where is the propeller? Look at the size of it. It’s bigger than our entire workshop.
And they let people sit inside? All those people? Southwest Airline. Is that an airline or a continent? Whatever it is, it’s stealing the sky, Orville. >> Gate A16, final boarding call. >> more notebooks. So if Bruce Lee didn’t fight, well then what did he do? Okay. >> Yeah. Bruce Lee versus Wesley Snipes. Who knows who knows? I I have no idea with that.
Like I I don’t know of either one of them in a real fight before. Let’s look at the record because the record does exist. Bruce Lee entered with zero formal boxing training. And he won by unanimous decision defeating the 3-year reigning champion Gary Elms in the third round. A challenge match against a Northern Shaolin assistant instructor.
Bruce Lee won, but he left with a black eye. His opponent left with a missing tooth after he woke up from being knocked out by Bruce Lee. A karate teacher publicly challenged Bruce for disrespecting traditional martial arts. The fight lasted 11 seconds. Bruce’s punches fractured Yoichi Nakachi’s skull.
This here This is the fight that everyone knows. Wong Jack Man, backed by the San Francisco martial arts community, challenged Bruce to prove himself. The fight ended when Wong Jack Man ran. Bruce chased him around the room, caught him, pinned him, and forced him to yell, “I give up! I give up!” Bruce Lee won, but the fight lasted 3 minutes and that left him winded, embarrassed by his own lack of stamina.
That fight became the catalyst for Jeet Kune Do. But it wasn’t just challenge fights and street brawls. Bruce regularly sparred with world-class martial artists at his home, at his gym, and sometimes even at their schools in Los Angeles. Joe Lewis, world karate champion. Chuck Norris, world karate champion.
Bob Wall, karate champion. And we know all of this because well, someone else was there watching. Hayward Nishioka, judo gold medalist and karate black belt. Nishioka would visit Bruce’s house to exchange techniques and to train together. He later recalled that Bruce would practice with people such as Chuck Norris and Joe Lewis.
Very quick, very fast, and very tough. In his assessment, Bruce was just too fast for them. He didn’t say pretty good. He didn’t say Bruce held his own. He said Bruce Lee was too fast for them. Nishioka was so impressed by what he witnessed that he brought his physical education professor, Dr.
