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Could Bruce Lee Have been the Chinese Manny Pacquiao?
Could Bruce Lee Have been the Chinese Manny Pacquiao?
By Brent Matteo Alderson
Manny Pacquiao’s fame is transcendent in the Philippines and his fistic accomplishments have left an indelible mark on the philipino boxing landscape.
Today young kids dreaming about becoming the next Pac-man are filling up the gyms that are sprouting up through out the nation that is made up of more than seven thousand islands.
In addition people of Philippine heritage all over the world have embraced Pacquiao and created a demand for Manny that had two of the sport’s most powerful promotional firms battling for his services.
The Philippines is the world’s twelfth most populated nation with over ninety million inhabitants and its populace has yielded it influence on the boxing world by creating a new market paradigm. Top Rank is putting on pay per view shows entitled Pinoy Power and Golden Boy Promotions has put on a number of cards with a Mexico versus the Philippines theme.
Now what if a fighter with an appeal similar to Pacquiao came out of China, a country with over one billion inhabitants, and ascended to the top of the boxing world the way Pacquiao has?
It could potentially open up an enormous untapped market and shake up the entire industry!
Not surprisingly, a number of people close to Bruce Lee have opined that he could have been that boxer.
People that grew up with Bruce Lee still perceive him as the ultimate martial artist, the master and the popularity of his films has transformed Lee into an icon to the degree that he has almost become a fictional entity, a figment of pop culture.
Even though serious martial artists respect Lee’s accomplishments as a martial artist and readily acknowledge his mastery of the discipline, they don’t acknowledge some of the myths that have spawned from his cinematic performances and are more adapt at separating his fictional performances from reality and don’t equate beating Chuck Norris and twenty other warriors in a movie to actually defeating them in combat.
Yet with the distortion of factual history, almost everybody still agrees that Bruce Lee was a genuine bad ass. Even Lee has been quoted as saying he could beat any fighter in the world and some people still claim that he was the best fighter (not boxer) in the world, while others doubt if Lee could have competed with 200 pound-plus heavyweights.
Joe Lewis, who trained under Lee’s private tutelage and was a world kickboxing champion and is generally considered to be one of the greatest karate fighters of all time, downplays Lee’s fighting ability and stated that “Bruce was not a fighter. He was an actor and a teacher. He was a great teacher.” In the same interview which can be found at HYPERLINK "http://www.bruceleedivinewind.com" www.bruceleedivinewind.com, Lewis noted that “Bruce was a wealth of knowledge and nobody knew what he had.”
I’m not here to debate Bruce Lee’s street fighting prowess, but to analyze his ability and accomplishments and try to hypothesize what type of career he would have had as a professional boxer and ascertain if he could have been to the Chinese what Manny Pacquiao has been to the world’s Philippine population; a legendary champion who popularized the sport throughout his region of origin.
There really has been a lot of conjecture regarding Lee’s hypothetical foray in the ranks of professional boxing. In an article in Black Belt Magazine, Dan Inosanto, one of only four people to be certified by Bruce Lee to teach his style of Martial Arts which is called Jeet Kune Do, stated "there's no doubt in my mind that if Bruce Lee had gone into pro boxing, he could easily have ranked in the top three in the lightweight division or junior-welterweight division.” Of course most of these claims and prognostications have come from outside of the boxing community because boxing insiders tend to be very cynical about unproven talent.
In analyzing Bruce Lee potential as a professional boxer, you have to look at the numerous physical attributes he would have brought to the game and assess them in conjunction with his experiences that would have had a significant barring on his aptitude as a boxer.
Different fighters utilize different physical attributes in the ring. James J. Jeffries and Rocky Marciano used their toughness and their ability to take punishment as well as their awesome strength to win fights. Most great fighters either have exceptional speed or power or a lethal combination of both.
Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali are widely recognized as the two greatest fighters in history and both had an amazing amount of speed. It takes 24 frames of film to create one movie second and it reportedly took Ali less than eight of those frames to throw his jab while Robinson could throw his in less than ten. Even today, the world’s most elite fighters, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are successful in part because of their devastating speed.
It’s just a fact, speed kills and its lesson that has been learned by many fighters. Just look at the first Ali-Liston bout or more contemporary fights such as Chavez-Whitaker and Jones-Toney. A fighter’s speed is probably one of the most important variables in determining the outcome of a bout, probably even more so than power and it’s a characteristic that Bruce Lee undeniably possessed.
In fact it was Lee’s incredible speed and crisp movement during an exhibition at the 1964 International Karate tournament in Long Beach that amazed Hollywood insiders and enabled Lee to earn a part in the Green Hornet television series.
And it’s probably that one quality more than any other which endured him to the public as well as to the martial arts community because his speed was so much more enhanced than other Karate Practitioners around the world. It really distinguished him from the rest of the pack. Kind of like how Roy Jones’s speed in his prime differentiated him from the other pound for pound fighters in the world. Speed was the underlining trait that made them both truly special.
In fact Bruce Lee’s speed was so infamous that most of the myths associated with the Bruce Lee legend revolve around tales of speed. Numerous sources which include books, magazines and websites claim that Lee could throw a handful of rice into the air and catch each grain before it landed. One website stated that Bruce could take a penny out of the palm of someone’s hand and leave a quarter within a split second.
A lot of these claims seem to be disingenuous and are hard to substantiate. After some quick investigative work a lot of the information regarding Bruce Lee, especially on the net, seems to be inaccurate.
For instant most websites with information on Bruce Lee state that a teenaged Lee entered a amateur boxing tournament in Hong Kong in 1958 and state that he knocked out his first three opponents in the first round and then knocked out his third and final opponent, Gary Elms, in the third round to win the Inter School Hong Kong Boxing Tournament, a local amateur competition. According to the eye witness testimony of Rolf Clausnitzer, Elms lasted the distance in a bout which was dominated by Lee. In his account of the tournament Clausnitzer commented “I honestly believe that Gary did not land even one single scoring punch throughout the entire three one minute rounds. Gary was knocked down several times, but he was not knocked out contrary to what has been reported in various articles and books!”
Regardless of the validity of these contradicting reports, Lee still dominated the first amateur boxing tournament he entered and beat the three time defending champion in the process and obviously demonstrated that he was a naturally gifted puncher. Around the same time period Lee also won the Hong Kong Royal Crown Cha Cha Dance competition which is tantamount to his coordination and rhythm, two attributes that most successful prize fighters possess.
Another characteristic that Lee possessed which a lot of world class boxers have is phenomenal strength. Bruce Lee’s ripped physique and his commitment to training and fitness has been well publicized and a lot of his physical feats have been validated. Lee regularly performed two finger one armed push-ups and could hold the sitting v-position for periods exceeding thirty minutes and performed curls with 70 pound dumbbells, an incredible amount of weight for a man who usually weighed around 140 pounds. This type of strength usually doesn’t translate into knockout power, but can still be used advantageously in the ring. Carlos Baldomir doesn’t have knockout power, but one of the things that make him a world class fighter in lieu of his many deficiencies is his strength that enables him to wear down more skilled fighters just as it did in his bouts with Arturo Gatti and Zab Judah.
As a professional prospect, potential fight managers would have viewed Lee as a diamond in the rough. They would have seen him for what he was, an extremely gifted yet a very inexperienced amateur who had won the first amateur competition he entered that possessed blazing speed, awesome power, and athleticism, a physical package that embodied the qualities of a great fighter.
By Brent Matteo Alderson
Manny Pacquiao’s fame is transcendent in the Philippines and his fistic accomplishments have left an indelible mark on the philipino boxing landscape.
Today young kids dreaming about becoming the next Pac-man are filling up the gyms that are sprouting up through out the nation that is made up of more than seven thousand islands.
In addition people of Philippine heritage all over the world have embraced Pacquiao and created a demand for Manny that had two of the sport’s most powerful promotional firms battling for his services.
The Philippines is the world’s twelfth most populated nation with over ninety million inhabitants and its populace has yielded it influence on the boxing world by creating a new market paradigm. Top Rank is putting on pay per view shows entitled Pinoy Power and Golden Boy Promotions has put on a number of cards with a Mexico versus the Philippines theme.
Now what if a fighter with an appeal similar to Pacquiao came out of China, a country with over one billion inhabitants, and ascended to the top of the boxing world the way Pacquiao has?
It could potentially open up an enormous untapped market and shake up the entire industry!
Not surprisingly, a number of people close to Bruce Lee have opined that he could have been that boxer.
People that grew up with Bruce Lee still perceive him as the ultimate martial artist, the master and the popularity of his films has transformed Lee into an icon to the degree that he has almost become a fictional entity, a figment of pop culture.
Even though serious martial artists respect Lee’s accomplishments as a martial artist and readily acknowledge his mastery of the discipline, they don’t acknowledge some of the myths that have spawned from his cinematic performances and are more adapt at separating his fictional performances from reality and don’t equate beating Chuck Norris and twenty other warriors in a movie to actually defeating them in combat.
Yet with the distortion of factual history, almost everybody still agrees that Bruce Lee was a genuine bad ass. Even Lee has been quoted as saying he could beat any fighter in the world and some people still claim that he was the best fighter (not boxer) in the world, while others doubt if Lee could have competed with 200 pound-plus heavyweights.
Joe Lewis, who trained under Lee’s private tutelage and was a world kickboxing champion and is generally considered to be one of the greatest karate fighters of all time, downplays Lee’s fighting ability and stated that “Bruce was not a fighter. He was an actor and a teacher. He was a great teacher.” In the same interview which can be found at HYPERLINK "http://www.bruceleedivinewind.com" www.bruceleedivinewind.com, Lewis noted that “Bruce was a wealth of knowledge and nobody knew what he had.”
I’m not here to debate Bruce Lee’s street fighting prowess, but to analyze his ability and accomplishments and try to hypothesize what type of career he would have had as a professional boxer and ascertain if he could have been to the Chinese what Manny Pacquiao has been to the world’s Philippine population; a legendary champion who popularized the sport throughout his region of origin.
There really has been a lot of conjecture regarding Lee’s hypothetical foray in the ranks of professional boxing. In an article in Black Belt Magazine, Dan Inosanto, one of only four people to be certified by Bruce Lee to teach his style of Martial Arts which is called Jeet Kune Do, stated "there's no doubt in my mind that if Bruce Lee had gone into pro boxing, he could easily have ranked in the top three in the lightweight division or junior-welterweight division.” Of course most of these claims and prognostications have come from outside of the boxing community because boxing insiders tend to be very cynical about unproven talent.
In analyzing Bruce Lee potential as a professional boxer, you have to look at the numerous physical attributes he would have brought to the game and assess them in conjunction with his experiences that would have had a significant barring on his aptitude as a boxer.
Different fighters utilize different physical attributes in the ring. James J. Jeffries and Rocky Marciano used their toughness and their ability to take punishment as well as their awesome strength to win fights. Most great fighters either have exceptional speed or power or a lethal combination of both.
Sugar Ray Robinson and Muhammad Ali are widely recognized as the two greatest fighters in history and both had an amazing amount of speed. It takes 24 frames of film to create one movie second and it reportedly took Ali less than eight of those frames to throw his jab while Robinson could throw his in less than ten. Even today, the world’s most elite fighters, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao are successful in part because of their devastating speed.
It’s just a fact, speed kills and its lesson that has been learned by many fighters. Just look at the first Ali-Liston bout or more contemporary fights such as Chavez-Whitaker and Jones-Toney. A fighter’s speed is probably one of the most important variables in determining the outcome of a bout, probably even more so than power and it’s a characteristic that Bruce Lee undeniably possessed.
In fact it was Lee’s incredible speed and crisp movement during an exhibition at the 1964 International Karate tournament in Long Beach that amazed Hollywood insiders and enabled Lee to earn a part in the Green Hornet television series.
And it’s probably that one quality more than any other which endured him to the public as well as to the martial arts community because his speed was so much more enhanced than other Karate Practitioners around the world. It really distinguished him from the rest of the pack. Kind of like how Roy Jones’s speed in his prime differentiated him from the other pound for pound fighters in the world. Speed was the underlining trait that made them both truly special.
In fact Bruce Lee’s speed was so infamous that most of the myths associated with the Bruce Lee legend revolve around tales of speed. Numerous sources which include books, magazines and websites claim that Lee could throw a handful of rice into the air and catch each grain before it landed. One website stated that Bruce could take a penny out of the palm of someone’s hand and leave a quarter within a split second.
A lot of these claims seem to be disingenuous and are hard to substantiate. After some quick investigative work a lot of the information regarding Bruce Lee, especially on the net, seems to be inaccurate.
For instant most websites with information on Bruce Lee state that a teenaged Lee entered a amateur boxing tournament in Hong Kong in 1958 and state that he knocked out his first three opponents in the first round and then knocked out his third and final opponent, Gary Elms, in the third round to win the Inter School Hong Kong Boxing Tournament, a local amateur competition. According to the eye witness testimony of Rolf Clausnitzer, Elms lasted the distance in a bout which was dominated by Lee. In his account of the tournament Clausnitzer commented “I honestly believe that Gary did not land even one single scoring punch throughout the entire three one minute rounds. Gary was knocked down several times, but he was not knocked out contrary to what has been reported in various articles and books!”
Regardless of the validity of these contradicting reports, Lee still dominated the first amateur boxing tournament he entered and beat the three time defending champion in the process and obviously demonstrated that he was a naturally gifted puncher. Around the same time period Lee also won the Hong Kong Royal Crown Cha Cha Dance competition which is tantamount to his coordination and rhythm, two attributes that most successful prize fighters possess.
Another characteristic that Lee possessed which a lot of world class boxers have is phenomenal strength. Bruce Lee’s ripped physique and his commitment to training and fitness has been well publicized and a lot of his physical feats have been validated. Lee regularly performed two finger one armed push-ups and could hold the sitting v-position for periods exceeding thirty minutes and performed curls with 70 pound dumbbells, an incredible amount of weight for a man who usually weighed around 140 pounds. This type of strength usually doesn’t translate into knockout power, but can still be used advantageously in the ring. Carlos Baldomir doesn’t have knockout power, but one of the things that make him a world class fighter in lieu of his many deficiencies is his strength that enables him to wear down more skilled fighters just as it did in his bouts with Arturo Gatti and Zab Judah.
As a professional prospect, potential fight managers would have viewed Lee as a diamond in the rough. They would have seen him for what he was, an extremely gifted yet a very inexperienced amateur who had won the first amateur competition he entered that possessed blazing speed, awesome power, and athleticism, a physical package that embodied the qualities of a great fighter.
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