Quote:
Originally Posted by PAChiefsGuy
Lets not get carried away here. I'm sure Bruce Lee could of been a hell of a fighter if he would have trained for it and gotten into some professional fights. I mean there's stories about him and how quick he was and how hard he hit you just have to Google it. While his films are fiction, you can see he had ability and most of all his intensity was off the charts.
In addition to LeBell, Lee worked for years with the likes of Norris and Joe Lewis, two of the most celebrated non-boxing fighters of their day. Before he became an action star, Norris was the world middleweight karate champion from 1968 to 1974. Lewis won what is regarded as both the first kickboxing match in the U.S. and the bridge between the karate point fighting era and the full-contact kickboxing we know today.
UFC welterweight Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson, unusual among prominent mixed martial artists for being a karate stylist, amassed a 57-0 record as a professional and amateur kickboxer before joining the UFC. He knew Lewis personally and says Lewis told him one of the hardest kicks he'd ever endured was from Bruce Lee. Lewis was a heavyweight kickboxer; Lee was 5-foot-8 and weighed less than 150 pounds.
"You can't tell me that Bruce Lee is not a hard guy, wasn't a good martial artist, wasn't a good fighter, if you got guys like Joe telling me that," Thompson says.
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id...win-real-fight |
Yeah, Bruce's speed/quickness/agility were well-documented. He was so fast, that the directors' of all his films and the TV show the Green Hornet asked him to slow down so they could capture what he was doing. And his strength/power was nearly as legendary. He used to replace a 110-lb(unsure of the exact weight over 100) heavy bag every other week, iirc. He kicked/punched the things so hard that in just a couple weeks he'd bust the seams on the things. And somewhere there's tape of him jumping a 5 ft fence almost flat-footed.
But Tyson was a mutant freak as well, and that's the problem. He was just too strong and too fast, and then on top of that in his prime he was one of the best technicians in boxing. I don't think Bruce's edge in speed/quickness would be enough in a sanctioned type of fight.
Against a normal heavyweight, maybe. Might even give him better than even odds against a normal heavyweight. Kind of Holyfield's size/strength/quickness.