What REALLY Happened When Bruce Lee FOUGHT Joe Lewis

Bruce Lee versus Joe Lewis is one of those what if fights that fans from the blood and guts karate era love to debate what if Bruce Lee had chosen Joe Lewis for the role of Colt in way of the Dragon instead of Chuck Norris how would that fight of look but more importantly hey we know that the two of them trained together did they Spar together what would those Spar in sessions have been like which one of them would have come out on top well what if I told you that these two actually did have a real fight that only a few people witnessed I know there's a lot of stories floating around the internet from people who claim to be knowledgeable Bruce Lee fans but I want to tell y'all what really happened when Bruce Lee fought Joe Lewis what's up y'all my name is Prince and this is Golden Bell training where we like to separate the facts from the fiction especially when it comes to Bruce Lee and every day I practice martial arts you see and since we're talking about fiction I wanted to hit you guys with some facts after seeing a lot of fiction being posted about Bruce Lee having several fights with Joe Lewis and you don't have to guess who it is posting all of these fake stories hey everybody it's birie here what's going on guys well regardless of whether beardy posts his brand of Bruce exploitation or not there actually are a lot of misconceptions regarding Bruce Lee's relationship with Joe Lewis so so I hope that I can clear up some of those misconceptions debunk some of these myths running rampant on YouTube and then tell you all about a story that's been kept under wraps for decades and that's the real fight that happened between Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis but before we dive into what actually happened in their secret fight hey let's take a moment to look at who Joe Lewis really was and why his legacy with Bruce Lee is so controversial I mean think about it Bruce Lee some call him the king of kung fu even Joe Lewis called him the greatest martial artist of all time I considered him by far the greatest so what happens when the goat crossed hands with Joe Lewis the father of American kickboxing and the Man known is the greatest karate fighter of all time hey y'all this dude Joe Lewis was no slouch at all do you know how great Joe Lewis was I mean besides being considered the greatest karate fighter of his era and of all time he was the inspiration for Ken Masters in the street fighter games but then what about Bruce Lee I mean Bruce Lee basically inspired all fighting games in inner the dragon all of the greatest martial artists in the world are brought together by the shadow organization to come to Han's Island to battle it out but it turned out to be a way for Han to recruit people into his organization and then what about the game of death in that movie Bruce has to fight a different Master on each level of this temple in order to progress and he has to use a different method to beat them as they get progressively more difficult so when you think about Enter the Dragon in Game of Death it basically sounds like every fighting game that's ever been made so that's how great both of these guys were but Bruce I mean Bruce Lee was just on another level as far as his impact on not just martial arts but also on pop culture so of course with that level of impact it's only natural that someone as iconic as Bruce Lee would have myths following them that make the legend of Bruce Lee greater than the actual person I mean it's only natural to slightly embellish the details of a story about Bruce Lee look I'd say it's human all of us do it but there's a difference between slight embellishments and then straight up lying about Bruce Lee and that's what I've seen happening too much on YouTube with the two largest channels that focus on Bruce Lee content an example of a story that has misled a lot of people is this video put out by both the Bruce Lee real fight Channel and beardy Bruce Lee Central where they claimed that Joe Lewis was part of Bruce Lee's 1-in punch demonstration at the 1967 Long Beach Internationals okay so this is the famous Bruce Lee versus Joe Lewis footage BR Lee invited Joe LS on stage again to demonstrate the real one inch punch and beardy claimed that after Joe Lewis won the championship at that tournament well Bruce Lee was so impressed that he invited Joe to watch his exhibition and during Bruce's exhibition Joe Lewis decided to participate by demonstrating a karate punch in contrast with Bruce Lee's 6-in je kundo punch and according to beardy Joe Lewis was so impressed by Bruce's demonstration and his philosophy that he switched from okan and karate to G kundo right there on the spot in 1967 but this isn't true Joe Lewis didn't win the grand championship at the Long Beach Internationals I think he got disqualified and I don't even know if Joe Lewis was even present for Bruce's demonstration on the next day the person wearing the ghee in that part of Bruce Lee's demonstration was actually a student of Chuck Norris's you can tell by the uniform that he's wearing but it was also confirmed by Meo uhara the founder of Black Belt Magazine in an article that he wrote about that tournament and well beardy didn't just stopped there with his fake stories about Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis he went on to say that well when Bruce Lee finally approached Joe about training with him after Joe Lewis won Jun Reed's 1968 Nationals that Joe's response was that they needed to have a real fight to test the validity of Bruce Lee's je kundo in this fight it was supposed to be a real confrontation not just sparring and it was intended to test Bruce Lee's abilities and the effectiveness of G kundo against traditional karate Joe Lewis reportedly wanted this fight to verify Bruce Lee was as formidable as he was reputed to be he basically wanted to test Bruce Lee to see if he really is this guy that everyone is talking about now question for you guys if Joe Lewis was so impressed by Bruce Lee at the Long Beach Internationals in 1967 that he decided to train with him well why did they fight each other after Joe won at June re's tournament in 1968 in order for Joe to decide that he needed to train with Bruce Lee none of these details added up at all well the stories don't stop there apparently Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis had a big fight in the locker room at Joe Lewis's gym now pay no attention to the part where Joe Lewis worked out at Chuck Norris's school and he didn't have a gym of his own but I mean those kinds of details aren't important in a beardy story what is important is that an unknown source can confirmed that Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis had a fight in the locker room Joe was seen leaving all blooded up and all he said was he got me a blooded up Joe Lewis walks out the door and he just says he got me he got me later Bruce was seen leaving the same locker room with bloody knuckles oh and at some point Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis had the first MMA fight in Bruce Lee's backyard and guess what y'all beardy managed to secure the only existing footage of their fight but beyond the clickbait headlines and YouTube myths the truth about Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis's relationship was much more complex in just a moment look I'm going to share a little known fact about their training sessions that sheds a new light on their Dynamic now look y'all might be surprised that the majority of the comments on these stories beard is telling about Bruce Lee's alleged fights with Joe Lewis have been surprisingly positive some Bruce Lee fans really want to hear the truth about Bruce Lee to the point that well they'll believe anything and some of them have gone to the point of accusing me of being obsessed with beardy because well I don't hesitate to call him out on his BS Bruce Lee stories and see I've said this before I'll say it again the truth is pretty much almost always better than a lie the truth is that when Bruce Lee first tried to meet Joe Lewis outside the office at Black Belt Magazine after Joe won his first tournament at Jun re's Nationals Joe Lewis blew him off he wasn't really interested in what Bruce Lee had to say because back in those days I didn't have a lot of respect for little guys and if you were under 5'8 in my book you were little and if you were under 150 lb in my book you were little plus most of the Chinese styles weren't into fighting weren't into the combat aspect of it like the MU Tha Fighters are the point fighters of today and this might surprise you guys hearing this now but back then no one was impressed with Bruce Lee when they first saw him he was just under 5'8 and to say he weighed 150b PS would be generous for a guy like Joe Lewis he probably felt a lot like some of the comments that Michael J white has said about Bruce Le he could run across the street dive off a table and punch Mike Tyson with all he has and it's not going to not going to affect him usually people's attitudes quickly changed after they saw what Bruce Lee could do but for Joe Lewis well it took a little bit more than that what he saw was what other people could do after they train with Bruce Lee see Joe Lewis was doing a routine at clubs with Mike Stone and they included some karate as they were hoping to break into Hollywood something that gets overlooked in all the talk about how these guys were real Fighters because they competed in tournaments and Bruce Lee didn't was that they were not getting paid to compete in any of these tournaments prior to 1968 whereas Bruce Lee he was getting paid to play KO on the Green Hornet he was getting paid a whole lot more than they were to win tournaments after 1968 but anyway Joe started to notice that Mike had a lot of new moves and after a while he asked where Mike had picked up the new stuff Mike mentioned that he was training with this guy Bruce Lee and he said that Bruce was trying to get in touch with Joe now what I've heard is that well Bruce Lee and Mike Stone were just working out together and that's it this isn't true I recently saw pages from Bruce Lee's planner that confirm that Mike Stone was actually a jundo student and of course course our focus in this video is on Joe Lewis and not Mike Stone but I'm saying this because well it's relevant to what was really happening with Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis and this isn't talked about enough when people talk about their relationship so Joe Lewis didn't just start working out with Bruce Lee they were doing private sessions at Bruce's house not at some gym owned by Joe Lewis like beardy said in his videos Joe Lewis was a gundo student at tournaments they were announcing Joe Lewis as representing G kundo and Bruce Lee is his coach his trainer his teacher whatever word you want to use Bruce was it now Joe was quite literally Bruce Lee's crash test dummy if Bruce had some idea he trained that with Joe and then he pretty much sent him off to compete in a tournament to test their ideas out they go back in the lab they tweak some things based on Joe's performance and the reason that Joe Lewis was able to transition to do kickboxing was largely because of what Bruce Lee t him if you read about Joe Lewis people will say that when he was fighting initially he only had his sidekick and his back Fist and this was enough for him to win most tournaments what he didn't have before he started training with Bruce Lee was footwork timing and being able to judge distance as far as moving in and out of striking ranges that's the reason Vic Moore who was much smaller than Joe was able to beat him in 1968 in Joe's words he couldn't chase people who wanted to play tag and then run away from from him for the rest of the match and then went on points anyway Bruce and Joe trained together for roughly two years from 1967 to 69 Joe Lewis's ex-wife was the reason that they fell out she said Bruce made a pass at her while she was putting highlights in his hair Joe immediately stormed off to confront Bruce after hearing about the alleged incident well when Joe asked Bruce about what his wife said Bruce called Linda into the room and asked Joe to repeat the claim to her at that point Joe just dropped his head went home and he and Bruce Lee never spoke again so you see there was never a fight that ended their friendship it was just Joe's wife at the time saying something out of jealousy because she didn't like how much time Joe was spending with Bruce this incident happened sometime in 1969 and by the time Bruce Lee made way of the Dragon it had been about 3 years since Bruce and Joe Lewis last spoke so the story is about them falling out over Joe not being cast as cult in the way of the Dragon are not true at all Joe is never considered for that part and according to some recent information shared by Alex RoR over on the Kung Fu genius show Chuck Norris wasn't even the original choice for that character either now look I don't fault beardy for spreading the story about Joe Lewis turning down the role of Colt because well I have interviews where Joe seems to imply that he was up for consideration or that Bruce really wanted to cast him in the role over Chuck Norris so like I said these stories about Joe Lewis and Bruce Lee having locker room fights that ended their friendship or fights after some tournament to prove that je kundo works or even falling out over a movie role these are just madeup stories from beardy to trick people into believ in his madeup nonsense about Bruce Lee but what if I told you that the intensity of their relationship eventually did lead to a real fight one that was witnessed by only a few people so next I'm going to reveal what really happened during that fight and why it was kept under wraps for so long now there actually was a real fight between Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis but this fight was actually witnessed by herb Jackson one of Bruce's students at the Los Angeles JKD School John little talked about it on one of the First episodes of the Kung Fu genius show and he also wrote about it in his recent book Wrath of the Dragon now there was some stuff leading up to the fight that herb Jackson witnessed that might add a little bit of context to what I'm going to tell you guys so hold on I promise I'm going to get to the fight but anyway remember when I said that Joe was literally Bruce Lee's crash test dummy yeah well Joe was starting to not like that and this is kind of the same thing that happened with Bruce Lee and Mike Stone so when Joe started running off all these victories at karate tournaments people were forgetting that he was already a champion they said it was all because of whatever he was training with Bruce Lee so there was at one tournament Joe was finally fed up and he put down his style as okan now and T instead of G kundo and he list as his instructor as John corab instead of Bruce Lee well Bruce was there at that tournament as Joe's coach and he didn't say anything at all at the time well later Bruce decided to drop by the Los Angeles gundo school for an after hours training session with Ted Wong herb Jackson and Joe Lewis now think back to Bruce Lee's demonstration at the 1967 long Internationals where they put on gear and they did full contact sparring for some reason all these people on YouTube talk about that demonstration as if it was a real fight it wasn't it was a demo to show that they did full contact sparring something that was unheard of back then well anyway Bruce told herb to lace up the gloves and spar with Joe Lewis and now at this point Joe is the reigning National karate champion and probably a few other titles from some lesser tournaments he's in his 20s and he's a heavyweight herb is in his 40s and he's smaller than Bruce Lee this was a real David versus Goliath matchup and this time David was not about to come out on top Joe Lewis completely dominated herb Jackson and then to add insult the injury Joe smacked herb with an open Palm strike to his ear and Herb says that well he thought Joe popped his eardrum and his ear was ringing for about 3 weeks later well Bruce really didn't like that Joe intentionally hurt one of his stud students and as Joe was about to undo his gloves well Bruce told him to hang on he walked over to where they kept the gear and Bruce laced up a pair of gloves and motion for Joe Lewis to square up with him now according to Herb Jackson Bruce put on the gloves and Joe Lewis could not touch him at all Bruce Lee hit Joe Lewis all over he kept hitting him in the face and Joe Lewis just could not touch Bruce Lee later Bruce told her that he put on the gloves to spar with Joe Lewis just to let Joe know that he does not have all the answers and now apparently this wasn't the only time that Bruce humiliated Joe Lewis during a sparring session because Kareem Abdul Jabar also talked about seeing Bruce spar with Joe Kareem said that Bruce had fun just putting Joe Lewis down and showing him that he was not going to beat everybody he said Joe had this attitude that he was going to beat everybody he fought but he was just too slow for Bruce he said Bruce like to have fun with Joe and Joe could never figure out exactly what was going on and well he thought it was kind of funny well there's this one person who's always leaving comments in my videos saying that Bruce Lee never sparred with Joe Lewis they only did drills and I never sparred Mr Lee there have been some rumors out there that Mr Lee and I had spared well I guess the name of this particular drill was can Joe Lewis stop Bruce Lee from punching him in the face over and over and over and over again how you like that drill cuz but I mean it really makes you think twice about what Joe had to say about Bruce and one of the few times he wasn't trying to claim Bruce Lee wasn't really a fighter compared to karate Point sparring champions from his era I know how hard Bruce Lee could hit I know how fast he was cuz he nailed me and uh I've always told people I know what real jendo was because I got popped with it a few times so here's a question for you guys after hearing eyewitness accounts from people who saw Bruce barar with Joe Lewis why do you think guys like Chuck Norris Joe Lewis and Bob Wall later talk down about Bruce's fighting abilities I mean why did they bring up their success at karate Point sparring tournaments as some indicator of superiority when it sounds like Bruce completely took these guys apart when there wasn't an audience and then Bruce never felt the need to brag about it but this hearing that Bruce Lee had his way with Joe Lewis changed the way that you think about Bruce's actual skills when the movie cameras weren't around well hearing what Bruce did to Joe actually sounds very similar to the story about Bruce Spartan with heavyweight boxing Contender Joey orbo that I shared in a previous video fast was fast but you cannot see you know what can you say I mean fast is fast you're not seen and it also supports what Judo Champion Hayward nishioka has said numerous times about Bruce Lee in one interview Hayward said as far as sparring with Bruce goes he just played with us I mean I could move around but I could never match him he was just too fast he was just too fast for us well if you like these kinds of stories about Bruce Lee's real fights and challenges you should check out this video about what really happened when Bruce Lee sparred with a goju karate master and if these stories sound really intense we'll wait until you hear about Bruce Lee's Showdown with the top Kung Fu stunt man in the next video in this series it's a pretty interesting story that will set up a bunch of other challenges Bruce experienced in Hong Kong while he was making movies so stay tuned for more interesting stuff about Bruce Lee and um I hope you guys keep training remember to breathe come back and holler at me on the next video

Channel: Goldenbell Training

Views: 44,444

Keywords: Goldenbell Training, What REALLY Happened, Bruce Lee real fight, Joe Lewis vs Bruce Lee, Martial Arts legends, Bruce Lee myths debunked, Joe Lewis karate champion, Bruce Lee training secrets, Martial Arts history, Jeet Kune Do techniques, Bruce Lee and Joe Lewis training, Legendary Martial Arts Battles, bruce lee facts, bruce lee, joe lewis highlights

Id: EOGauKtN2Lk

Length: 20min 22sec (1222 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024