Bruce Lee and Wing Chun?

Question

In reality, Bruce made Wing Chun popular and known throughout western society in his arsenal of JKD. He did a lot for the martial arts society with his concepts and philosophies and he changed the heart of martial arts dramatically. But not many Wing Chun sidais and sifus like Bruce, I take Wing Chun and i personally like some of the stuff he did, but i think the main reason most Wing Chun practitioners don't like him is because he left Yip Man without permission to teach and spread it to the Western Civilization which Yip Man went against. I think i sort of answered my own question, but do any of you disagree or agree with these opinions/facts? Share some of your thoughts. Thanks.

Answer 1

Yip Man ALWAYS liked Bruce. While a lot of what you say is correct, this bit isn't accurate. I was a student of Yip Man's eldest son, Ip Chun and he said on many occasions that his father thought a lot of Bruce. This can be demonstrated by simply looking at the photographs of Bruce and Yip Man together when he RETURNED to Hong Kong in the 1960's with his son Brandon. There is a famous picture of Bruce, Yip Man and Brandon with Yip Man positively beaming. Yip Man was a very conservative individual who wouldn't teach foreigners himself but he didn't treat Bruce any different because of this.

A lot of Wing Chun people dislike Bruce because they believed he had basically made a criticism of Wing Chun by developing JKD. Their argument is that had he learned the complete system, he would not have needed to develop JKD. Some (such as Leung Ting) are simply jealous.

The simple fact is that regardless of what martial art Bruce studied, he would have developed his own art. This is the same thing that hundred of other style founders did. Why did the founder of Shantung Black Tiger style decided to change the style he knew to this new stuff? Why did Funakoshi decided to 'create' Shotokan from his previous arts? Because he felt he had something to add. No doubt some will come out and say he didn't have the right because he hadn't trained long enough or learn't the complete system but , you know what? He did it anyway.

No doubt, bearing in mind that this is a Bruce/JKD question that the usual 'We hate Bruce' dullards will respond (just watch for the negatives) but the simple facts are there. I haven't said a word that isn't true but what the h**l!

Answer 2

Bruce Lee was the one who wanted to teach westeners MAs he had many fighters chanllenging him to a fight and if they one he could not teach westeners but bruce lee defeated his opponents and continued to teach westeners and i think we all oh him a favour without his determination to MAs no one except the chinese would know MAs and alot of people say that bruce lee was not a fighter but an actor but open your eyes people i have seen many documentories of bruce lee and he was the worlds greatist MAist and he was amazingly strong for a small unit, you try and do one handed pushups on only your index finger and your thumb and also try and side kick a 135k kickbag and make it swing up and hit the roof.

Answer 3

Yip Man and most Chinese sifus are racist. Thanks to Bruce Lee, Wing Chun are now available worldwide. In the old days in China, many masters only teached his secret advance techniques to a handful of students resulting in the losses of these techniques forever...