Did Bruce Lee reach the level of Grandmaster ?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
KJW
:cool:
Hi
I'm new to these forums so please forgive me if I'm asking things that have been asked before.. I was just wondering whether anyone knew whether Bruce Lee achieved the level of Grandmaster? I know that he started out with Wing Chun under the great Yip Man, but did his skills surpass those of his teacher?
I'm a big fan of Bruce Lee but my Grandmaster is always quite derogatory about Bruce Lee, saying things like he was one legged and that generally he wasn't as good as he was made out to be.. Despite this I still find myself admiring his abilities and the lengths he went to in order to achieve the level of physical fitness that he did. I find it hard to believe that anyone could have anything other than admiration for someone who was obviously incredibly driven and dedicated to his art.
What are your thoughts on Bruce Lee? Am I buying into the whole mythology that surrounds him or was he as great as I and many others like me believe he was?
Kevin
Not really kevin , there are some people who like bruce lee as the way he was , and there were some people who did ' nt like bruce lee at all . I ' m just sharing my thoughts with you . Bruce lee ' s life , martial arts training , carreer , was always in the center of controversies . We ' ve had aguments about him on this forum . That the moderators of this forum , have decided to close the bruce lee topic . I myself was involved in those bruce lee topics . But , I ' m a bruce lee fan , kevin go to The Bruce Lee Collection. com And you ' ll find souveniers and memorbilias about bruce lee . And you know people will always criticize bruce lee all they can .
Bruce was ' nt a GrandMaster or a master , he was just a student of wing chun kung fu . But also had training in various types of martial arts in general . But to me bruce developed himself and evolved himself as a martial artist . Kevin overall no matter what people say about him , he was the greatest martial artist who ever lived , but besides him , there were Ed Parker , Chuck Norris , Joe Lewis , And many other masters of the martial arts . Just like Dan Inosanto when he got his blackbelt in the Ed Parker system of Kenpo , dan went onto train with bruce , infact a majority of Ed Parkers' students went onto train with bruce . To research bruce lee get those books written by Jesse Glover , you can get it through Warriorvideos.net . Which is what I did , it ' s true he ' s dead but his legacy still lives whenever people talk about him .
Do your own research through books kevin or get some information on this topic thread too , concerning bruce himself . You can talk to people but , you still have to verify the information you have now with them .
In the world of the CMA , if you ' re very proficient in your own skills then the Grand Master will promote you into sifu . But lets say your Grand Master will retire , and only has you to carry on the teachings of your art . Because , besides you there is no one else . Then your GM will eventually pass on the torch of GM to you . And from there hopefully , one of your student becomes skillful that , he gets promoted by you , to the next level . Every school of kung fu has it ' s own tradition of promoting from student into advance level , master , grandmaster .
Every martial arts master will in turn have there own way of promoting there students into the next level until they reach master and GM level . Provided that your skill in the martial arts is similar to your GM .
Kevin , if you checked out the JKD book that bruce wrote himself , you can tell that he did his own research towards the evolvement and development of his own JKD . To me other martial artist did ' nt mind learning martial arts from bruce ,
because they knew that he was the best . But the masters who talk bad about him , probably are jealous of him . Because what took other martial artist many years of their lives to reach mastery level , it took bruce only a short period of time to master a technique . Bruce was a non traditionalists who did ' nt like tradition , although he respected tradition . And he did ' nt believe in styles anymore as times went by for him . He just took the techniques that was useful for him and reject what was less essential . Overall to me he was the man .