Bruce Lee
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 UFC ACTION FIGURE BRUCE LEE US $30.00
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I realize that in the literature of martial arts practitioners, there are endless references to Bruce Lee and countless examples using Jackie Chan. This is not another one of those. What I am doing here is merely pointing out the most fundamental difference between the these martial arts movie stars and their styles.
That difference lies in the real versus the Hollywood.
Both Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are great on-screen fighters and physically amazing to see on the big screen as they move, jump, punch, and fight. Jackie Chan is a physical masterpiece of athletics for both flexibility and control while Bruce Lee was a physical masterpiece of athletics for both strength and speed. Both are unmatched on the movie screen.
Jackie Chan, however, admits that while he practices martial arts, he mainly does so for his on-screen performances. He is not a street fighter, competition fighter, or traditional practitioner of the martial arts he studies. He, for lack of a better term, is an extremely talented dancer.
Bruce Lee, by the same token, also practiced martial arts for on-screen use. He worked hard to turn his early training in Wing Chun into a television and movie career. To do this, he had to make it flashier, more flamboyant, and less deadly.
Unlike Jackie Chan, however, Bruce Lee also studied martial arts as a self-defense tool and put most of his personal efforts into finding the most effective fighting techniques for the real world. The result was Jeet Kune Do, which, sadly, he died before being able to show to the world properly.
The lessons he compiled in his book, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, were not lost, however. Self-defense martial artists like myself have taken the ideas presented by Master Lee and used those ideas to broaden our perspective on fighting for defense.
Street fighting is very different from the movies or the dojo. In the introduction to his book, Bruce Lee wrote:
"Some martial arts are very popular, real crowd pleasers, because they look good, have smooth techniques. But beware. They are like a wine that has been watered. A diluted wine is not a real wine, not a good wine, hardly the genuine article.
"Some martial arts don't look so good, but you know that they have a kick, a tang, a genuine taste. They are like olives. The taste may be strong and bitter-sweet. The flavor lasts. You cultivate a taste for them. No one ever developed a taste for diluted wine."
In years of training, I have found this to be true. Some martial arts, such as the popular Tai Kwon Do, are nearly always taught as movements and pretty styles and have very little real fighting in them. Others, such as Pencak Silat, are brutal, ugly to watch, but can be extremely effective in the real world.
That is not to say that one martial art is inherently better than another. Having studied over a dozen of them, I can tell you that each has strengths and weaknesses. The teacher and the student are the important parts, not the art itself.
I have met street fighters who were extremely effective and had very little formal training. I have met decades-long masters of Kung Fu who were useless in a street fight. And I have met mixed martial artists who have eight or ten styles and are extremely effective fighters on the street.
In fact, I have seen a fight between a black belt and a Western boxer and seen the boxer, who has no idea how to kick effectively, still easily defeated the karate expert.
It comes down to the fighter, his or her experience in real fighting (versus the ring or mat), and the type of training received to prepare them for that street fighting situation.
There is room in the world for both the Jackie Chans and the Bruce Lees of martial arts. The question is what you, as the student, want to know how to do: look impressive and be extremely competent in a specific scenario or situation, or be effective in most every situation presented to you?
There is nothing wrong with either approach, provided you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen path.
http://www.beststreetfighting.com
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