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The documentary I Am Bruce Lee asserts that he’s the father of mixed martial arts. Some agree with that claim. Others don’t.
The irony is that Bruce Lee might not have wanted the title. As much as he enjoyed his fame, he was a devout iconoclast. To name anybody the father of anything could be the first step in calling a person or style infallible—a notion Lee could never get behind.
Regardless, the claim made in the documentary sparked debate across the martial arts community, with heavy names weighing in on both sides of the issue.
SOME DEFINITIONS
All good debates begin by defining terms—otherwise, you might wind up arguing for hours with people you agree with. For the purposes of this conversation, the term “mixed martial arts” refers specifically to competitive MMA as practiced in the UFC’s octagon.
That’s not to say this is the only valid definition of the term, but it’s certainly the definition they meant in the documentary. One look at the clips played during the infamous segment, one listen to the comments in the voice-over and one glance at the roster of interviewees will make that clear.
“Father” is the other key term in this debate. To define it, we need to look at the traits that make MMA what it is—and see how many we can trace back to Lee’s training and philosophy.
MIXING TECHNIQUES
“Bruce was mixing stuff when that was a sin,” says jeet kune do authority Ron Balicki, referring to the competition between traditional martial arts during Lee’s life. Teachers of a given style considered all aspects of their art superior to every aspect of all other arts. To adopt an idea from a rival style was pure heresy.
Lee, of course, ignored that dogma. He chose to adopt whatever he admired from wherever he could find it.
UFC President Dana White reflects on the similarities between Lee’s approach and modern MMA: “You take the good things from every different discipline. You use what works for you, and you throw the rest away. That’s what MMA is all about. There is no style but the one that works and gets the job done.”
What he describes is identical to the JKD maxim of “take what is useful and discard the rest.” In drawing from multiple styles, Lee’s art is clearly a precursor of MMA. But was it the first?
Lee developed the concepts he’d ultimately name “jeet kune do” in the mid-1960s, decades before the UFC and MMA as we understand it came into being. This was the same period during which Ed Parker drew from different systems to develop kenpo and a few years after Gene LeBell fought Milo Savage in the world’s first televised multi-discipline fight. Adriano Emperado, Joe Holck, Peter Young Yil Choo, Frank Ordonez and George Chang hammered kajukenbo together from eight different arts nearly 20 years earlier. Although one can legitimately argue that Lee fathered MMA, he’s not the only—or the strongest—candidate.
ELIMINATING CANON
Lee made it clear that his JKD was not his students’ JKD, that blind obedience to any given canon was disastrous for the development of a fighter. This philosophy also lies at the heart of MMA training. Jon Jones fights a different game than does B.J. Penn, and neither fights like Renzo Gracie. An MMA fighter takes the parts of different styles that best suit his physiology, background and temperament—then adds elements that are likely to work against his next opponent.
In this aspect of MMA’s ancestry, Lee stands out. While other artists worked with multiple arts, none was so vocal about abandoning the restrictions of style in favor of effectiveness and personal development. Even other pioneers of mixing techniques chose to blend those techniques into new styles, each of which came with its own restrictive canon.
COMBATIVE FOCUS
Lee loved to watch boxing but would mock sport fighting and similar noncombative displays of martial prowess. He’d say you can’t learn to swim while walking on land and you can’t learn to fight by doing anything other than fighting.
MMA is pretty close to actual combat, but it’s still a game with rules. Some techniques are banned, and some that don’t work in combat are emphasized because the structure of competition makes them advantageous. There’s a ref to keep things from getting out of hand, and your opponent’s buddies will never jump in if it looks like you’re winning.
Were Lee alive today, it’s likely he’d have loved watching MMA matches as much as he did boxing. He’d have especially enjoyed the boost MMA has given to the martial arts in general. He might have been chagrined at being called the father of a new genre of sport fighting—but then no father approves of every aspect of his child.
EFFECT ON THE CULTURE
As his film career soared, Lee’s persona boosted the popularity of the martial arts around the world. American kids stopped playing John Wayne and bought a pair of nunchaku. Fighting arts from karate to kung fu to judo became mainstream. That’s why Balicki calls Lee the “Jimi Hendrix of martial arts.” Hendrix didn’t invent the guitar, but you can still find his poster on dormroom walls across the country—often right next to a poster of Bruce Lee.
White calls Lee “the guy who changed martial arts forever.” Half the men and women fighting in MMA are doing so because of Lee—even if they don’t know it. Some younger fighters might think they got into it because of Jet Li or Cung Le, but both those stars fight because of Bruce Lee.
Without his influence, it’s entirely possible the world wouldn’t have embraced the UFC when it premiered in the United States in 1993. MMA as we know it might never have had a chance to evolve.
THE VERDICT
JKD instructor and author Tim Tackett points to the opening scene of Enter the Dragon as conclusive evidence of Lee’s influence on MMA. Lee begins a standup sparring match before transitioning to the ground, where he wins by submission. Years before an octagon was anything but a traffic sign, Lee imagined, choreographed and filmed the progression of a typical MMA bout.
On the other hand …
Emperado and his colleagues were busy mixing martial arts nearly two decades before Lee started, in many ways clearing the ground Lee would later cultivate. LeBell was switching between wrestling and judo at the same time.
Meanwhile in Brazil, the Gracies were doing their thing to popularize their family’s way of fighting in challenge matches against practitioners of other arts, and their contribution may be larger in terms of actual awareness and audience. Bruce Lee isn’t the only potential proud papa where MMA is concerned.
In the end, the question is similar to Lee’s martial creation. Jeet kune do uses fast punches, but not as fast as those of a professional boxer. It uses precise, fluid footwork, but it’s like that of a champion fencer. It’s not a specialist’s style; rather, it’s a combination of the best of what many disciplines have to offer, rolled into a package that’s effective, profound and enduring.
So it is with Bruce Lee as the father of MMA.
Other martial artists might have better claim to any one aspect of what the title means, but when you look for someone with a genuine claim to all those attributes, only Lee fits the bill.
