Bruce Lee And MMA

THE RELATIONSHIP between Bruce Lee and MMA differs from most of us think. Today, many people believe Lee was the father of MMA. He wasn’t. The whole Ultimate Fighting thing started 20 years after his death to prove which style was the best. That wasn’t Lee’s doing.

- Jason Korol

That distinction belongs to the Gracie family, in general, and Royce Gracie, in particular. As you recall, the Gracie family was on a mission to prove their Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu was the best fighting system in the world. No one, at the time, considered a guy laying on his back a formidable fellow. The early UFC has fixed that rather nicely, thank you.

However, Bruce Lee’s philosophy of combat, quite controversial back then, was vindicated by MMA. You see, Lee prided himself on being a principled pragmatist. He believed there were certain true principles of combat, but these principles had to be pragmatically applied against real opponents. He favoured being able to strike, clinch, throw and grapple. The initial UFC featured people beholden to a set approach, all of which eschewed grappling—except for Gracie, of course. This was 1993. Not even 25 years later, no one would dare enter the octagon without being well-rounded.

But if you remember, this wasn’t the original take on things. Gracie’s success was so astonishing that many were overwhelmed. One young man visited my school in 1996 and told me I should stop teaching “everything else” and just do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. If I didn’t, my wise visitor counselled me, I would soon be out of business. Being a principled pragmatist, I kindly pointed out to him that the minute wrestlers adjusted and strikers learned to sprawl, the dominance of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu would wane. He scoffed and, if memory serves, has never returned with an apology.