Episode 843 - Time to Let Bruce Lee Go?

Since the 1970's Bruce Lee has often been lauded as the best martial artist of all time. We certainly can't deny that he has had an impact on martial arts that was certainly huge.

Time to Let Brice Lee Go? - Episode 843

Bruce Lee was certainly an iconic figure in martial arts. His impact can be felt today, through movies, books, and teachings from all over the world.

In this episode, Jeremy and Andrew discuss if we have placed him on a pedestal, and have made it hard for others to make as big an impact on the world.

After listening to the episode, it would be exciting for us to know your thoughts about it. Don’t forget to drop them in the comment section down below!

Show Transcript

You can read the transcript below.

Jeremy (00:01.09)

Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome, this is Whistlecake, Martial Arts Radio. And today, Andrew and I are, I was gonna say live. We're in the same physical place. This is, look at this. This is not, this is not editing. We are here coming to you from my living room. That's right. As we have often done, but not for awhile. So it's kinda cool, kinda fun. Thank you for being here. Thanks for making the drive. And on today's episode, we are going to...

present our argument for why it's time to let Bruce Lee go. Some people just hit stop right now. Some people did just hit stop, but I've got a feeling some others said, I'm gonna hate watch this or hate listen to this, and that's okay. Yep. Because as we have always said, our goal here is not to tell you what to think, it's to get you to think. And if after this episode you think, you know what?

Jeremy, Andrew, you are completely wrong and I hate you both. That's fine, as long as you've considered what we're giving to you. But before that, just a couple things to keep in mind. What do we do here at Whistlekick? Well, we are here to connect, educate, and entertain the traditional martial artists of the world, no matter where you are, no matter what you train, how, when, why, with whom you train. We have published our six freedoms of martial arts that the entire team is very much behind. And if you haven't checked that out, you might go to whistlekick.com and check out.

those freedoms while you're there you could also find something in the store like maybe a shirt or some pants or some sparring gear or whatever else is over there and if you use the code podcast one five to save 15% whistle kick martial arts radio dot-com is the place to go for everything related to this show it's where we bring together transcripts and all that good stuff and while you're over there you can sign up for the newsletter

You could check out every single episode we've ever done. And why do we do it? Well, because we believe that martial arts makes people better. We believe that if we could get everyone in the world to train for just six months, the world would be a dramatically better place. And that is our mission. And if you're aligned with our mission, please consider helping us out in any way that makes sense. And the way that I would ask you most to consider is our Patreon, because yes, there are financial elements to what we do.

Jeremy (02:24.982)

And if you contribute as little as two bucks, you can help us out at patreon.com slash whistlekick. And we've got tiers that go up from there with tremendous value. And how do we know there's tremendous value? Because people don't stop their contributions. It is an absolutely insane retention number as we go through. So, yeah.

Anything else? No, I think that's good. All right. It has been over 50 years since Bruce Lee passed, right? 1971? I think it's 50 years this year. 50 years, okay, 73? Yeah, I think 50 years last month, actually. Okay, that's right, I did see a bunch of stuff. And it is difficult to overstate.

Bruce Lee's role in the martial arts community globally. I would argue that he is one of the most recognizable figures anywhere. Yep. I don't think there are very many people who, if you show them a picture of Bruce Lee, would not know that it's Bruce Lee. He is iconic. Absolutely. His contributions to cinema, his contributions to the martial arts.

his one of the things we've heard on past episode of martial arts radio, his contributions to the world for essentially non-white individuals. Yeah. Huge. Yeah. And not something that he had planned on, but his contributions to pop culture. Yes. Huge. In fact...

If I go back to the early days of Whistlekick and working for venture funding, which never panned out, but if somebody's out there with a lot of money, and you want to help, let me know. One of the things that I said in my, my pitch was as a, as a kid growing up in the martial arts, the only thing I had to represent what my passion to the world was a Bruce Lee T-shirt.

Jeremy (04:38.078)

It's Bruce Lee. He's larger than life. And I wanna make sure everyone understands that as we walk down this path, that we've just kind of completely set up and everyone's out there probably saying, yeah, I agree with where you are so far. Where's the fire and brimstone that you're gonna throw at some of us and make us very unhappy? I wanna make sure we set this up right because we're on the same page. Bruce Lee has made massive contributions. Absolutely. Right now I can see two books on the bookshelf.

Bruce Lee box. You gave me one. I did, if you will.

Jeremy (05:13.942)

But here's the general idea. As long as Bruce Lee occupies this... Pedestal. Basically. Pedestal. And such a large one, and in such a large way, it makes it impossible for other people to come up.

Jeremy (05:33.126)

If you watch a lot of medieval such movies, right? Game of Thrones-esque, there's often a discussion about, hey, King so-and-so, you're old, it's time to let the crown go so somebody else can come up with some new ideas. And that to me is kind of the premise that we're working from here. If the King of our realm of martial arts,

has been gone for 50 years, nothing can change. We can't grow. You can't have growth without change. So if we are locked into whatever Bruce Lee was, and thus is, there's very little we can do. Yeah, and we run the risk of the longer we have him on a pedestal, the harder it will be for him to be taken off that pedestal. And we did an episode.

a couple hundred episodes ago about not putting your instructors on a pedestal and how bad that can be. And I feel like we as a society, as martial artists, as a group, as a community, have placed him on a pedestal and for many people think he can do no wrong. And so it makes it harder, as you said, for anyone else to contribute as much as he did. Yeah. Now one of the things those of you out there may not realize

because we don't talk about stuff kind of back end nitty gritty stuff in this way, is that if we do an episode that mentions Bruce Lee, if we do an episode where Bruce Lee is mentioned in the description, if we record an episode with a guest who talks about Bruce Lee for awhile, that episode will always do better longterm because of the search engine optimization, the SEO, the fact that people are still searching for Bruce Lee on a continual basis because of the pedestal.

that he has been placed on. That's not why we're doing this episode. We're doing this episode because we want everyone to consider this very simple premise that growth cannot happen without change. And that if we do not change how we do this, if we do not change the fact that Bruce Lee is where he is, then we cannot grow beyond it. How many martial artists out there have learned

Jeremy (07:57.794)

from what Bruce Lee set forward, have improved upon it, and dare I say, are better. What the argument can be made, tons. I would suggest that there are quite a few. Yeah, absolutely. We do not need to say that Bruce Lee is the best of all time and cannot be bettered in order to say Bruce Lee accomplished absolutely incredible, amazing things and deserves recognition for them. Absolutely.

It doesn't matter what you look at if you look at anything but martial arts if you look at the people who came before music Most people love music of some genre or other think about a genre of music that you know best think of someone who was considered the best at some period of time and tell me that there haven't been others who learned from them and Have gone on to become even better you know if you think of something like

like Jimi Hendrix, absolutely phenomenal guitarist. And from what I have kind of seen, read in documentaries, at the time was considered by most of the best guitarist living and possibly ever living. But there are plenty of guitarists now who are better than Jimi Hendrix was then. And a lot of those guitarists idolized Jimi Hendrix, Joe Satriani, for example, like,

phenomenal guitar player and a lot of his influences came from listening to that stuff and Arguably, I mean music is subjective, but I think it's just as good if not better than Jimi Hendrix Now when people say Jimi Hendrix is the greatest of all time. I may have to shut the door Would you do me a favor and shut the slider? Yeah, I don't know if you can hear it. There's a bird out there who's being Very loud. I don't know what it's yelling at probably me

I have a long standing feud with birds. Maybe they feel that Bruce Lee shouldn't be taken off the premise. Perhaps that is the personification of the folks out there who are unhappy with our premise. If you say that Jimi Hendrix is the greatest of all time, you're likely saying that Jimi Hendrix at his peak in that period of time, because

Jeremy (10:21.39)

who he was versus who everyone else was, was significantly better. If you claim someone today is less than, you're probably suggesting that the gap between them and everyone else is much smaller. But it doesn't mean that the people you're comparing to aren't better than Jimi Hendrix. There are people who have a better understanding of the physiology.

of martial arts and how the body works than Bruce Lee did then because we've had 50 years of increased understanding. Yeah and you might say he may have been ahead of his time. Absolutely was. And I would agree but was he 50 years ahead of his time? I mean he was ahead of his time but so much time. Are we not allowed to catch up? Correct exactly that's my point and you know if

And we're not saying, no one is saying you're gonna take his contributions away. He has been a huge influence on martial arts. We're not taking those things away, but if we are not allowing other people to be recognized for their contributions, it diminishes the whole community. This circles back to the argument that we've made on this show a number of times with some sort of math logic.

to show that if your goal as an instructor is not to help your students become better, then martial arts is doomed to degrade over time. And this is very similar to that. If what we do as martial artists can only ever be as good as Bruce Lee, we cannot improve. Correct, yeah. We will always be less than. Martial arts will not improve, and we could fast forward 10,000 years, and well, you know.

Nobody's as good as Bruce Lee, which to me is a ridiculous way to look at things.

Jeremy (12:30.03)

I am far from an expert on Bruce Lee's writings. Same with me. But my basic understanding of the things that he stood for suggests that he would never have wanted people to take what he put forward and leave it unchanged. And preserve it in amber. It seems in fact the antithesis.

What he set forward with Jeet Kune Do it was meant to evolve it was meant to be personal. Yeah, and You know there are folks out there we've Talked about them. We've had some of them on the show who have encapsulated what Bruce Lee taught in the 60s as Jeet Kune Do and Treat that as a style. I'm not gonna say that that's wrong I find that actually incredibly interesting from a historical perspective from a martial arts perspective from the idea of

How do you get into the head of somebody who has been gone for 50 years? Well, what was it they were teaching towards the end of their life? Great. But I'm never going to say, this is all I wanna learn. Yeah. And the other thing to think about is one of the things that he is lauded for is his combining of styles, right? A perfect example is in Enter the Dragon that fight scene in the beginning when he does an armbar.

Like that, as I understand it, I was not around then training, but as I understand it, like he was a striker, and then all of a sudden he got on the ground and did some what we know today as BJJ. That was a big deal. But how many martial artists today train in multiple different styles? Whether they realize it or not. Correct. Most martial artists have at least a little bit of understanding of wrist locks, self-defense sort of stuff.

And so, you know, I'm not taking away that he was prolific in terms of combining those styles and training and other things, but it's not like no one else does that now. Everyone does that. Right. So I think we've done a pretty good job of explaining our position on what has happened and why this needs to change. How do we change it? That's a darn good question.

Jeremy (14:51.854)

that I don't know that I have an answer for. First, we have to agree to change it. First, we have to agree to say, you know what? It is okay to recognize Bruce Lee for what he is and was. We do not have to be divided into these camps of Bruce Lee is the God of martial arts and everything he touched turned to gold. You know, he was not King Midas.

Or a camp that does exist that seems a bit smaller. Bruce Lee is an overrated hack and didn't really do that much and wouldn't have won in a fight and, and. Those are two very strong extremes that I don't think serve anyone. And I don't think we should think of things in that way. I think if we recognize that

like anyone who has come before, we can look at Bruce Lee's achievements, learn from them, grow from them, and improve upon them in the same way that we might look at General Choi of Taekwondo, or Funakoshi of karate, or, oh, I don't know. Or, or, or. Or, whoever. Osensei Yoshiba. Of Aikido. Yeah, yep. Right, like there's just.

We've done a pretty good job in a lot of other styles, right? I don't see very many people holding up the Okinawan Karate Masters in this way and saying, we can't ever change the things that they put forward. Some people do, but I see a lot more variability there. And we've had a number of people on the show who have gone in and around Aikido in a lot of really interesting ways. In fact, I don't think it's aired, but we just had somebody on the show.

Who actually yeah, you're talking about Rokas. Yeah. Okay

Jeremy (16:59.894)

not just taking what's there, but digging and trying to understand and improve on if possible. And still doing so. And I think that if we were to apply the same attitude to what Bruce Lee has put forward, if we read his writings, if we trained his curriculum, and if we watched his movies, because from what I understand of people who really know Jeet Kune Do, there's a decent amount of Jeet Kune Do in his movies, because he had a lot of say on his choreography.

I might be wrong on that, but that's my understanding. If we looked at that not as this is gospel, but this is foundation, where could we go? We could go pretty darn far because it is a very stable foundation. There's a lot of information there. And I think that, you know, there's, it reminds me of religion. Because for a lot of people, Bruce Lee is, I don't wanna say capital G.

God, but you know the word God that he is a God that he had he put forward so much wonderful stuff that

it's sacrilege to try to improve upon it. And a lot of, and I'm putting this in air quotes for those that are just listening, a lot of his disciples can be very fanatical about him and what he's done. And so yeah, it does, for some I have seen, they definitely view that kind of as a religious figure. I would suggest, and I think we'll.

probably start to wind here, because I think we've beat this horse a bit. I would suggest that...

Jeremy (18:42.994)

if Bruce Lee was alive today. And he'd be in his 80s, right? I really should, yeah.

Jeremy (18:52.286)

I don't want to pretend to know what he would have done over the last 50 years. I don't want to pretend what place he occupied. He would occupy what further contributions he would make. But I would guarantee...

that what he was doing would have changed. Absolutely. It would have evolved. For sure. So if that's true.

Jeremy (19:19.81)

then why are we doing that? Why are we locking it in so many ways? That's a really good point. The goal for any of us should be to become better versions of ourselves. This is what martial arts teaches us. I wanna be better tomorrow than I am today in some way. Bruce Lee would have wanted that as well.

So...

I'm distracted because there's heavy equipment rolling on my road. That's right. I think if Bruce Lee was alive today, Whistlekick would probably be his favorite podcast. I'm quite certain of that. We can say it right now. We are Bruce Lee's favorite podcast. I don't know if I can bring myself to say that because I don't want somebody to cut that soundbite out. Maybe we would have had him on the show.

You know what? I bet we would. Yeah. If you look at who else we've had on the show, I bet he would have come on the show.

Jeremy (20:19.746)

So, let's see, is that picking up? It's probably some background noise. That's right. This is what happens when you live on a dirt road, they maintain it and it takes a lot of noise.

All we're asking of you is to consider this. In the same way that we've asked you to not put your instructors on pedestals, in the same ways that we've encouraged you to constantly make progress, not just in your own training, but what your goals are. As you get closer to your goals, as you become better and more refined, I want you, we want you, you should want you to set bigger loftier, higher goals that require you to grow.

Even more if you've reached that goal if you've got nothing more to do Well now you die. Yep, not necessarily literally, but at least figuratively you've got that is moving forward and that's sad Yeah, and I would suggest that we owe that to the memory of bruce lee In fact, I would say the more you hold him in high regard the more you owe it to his legacy To take what he has provided and advance it to grow it

to make it more than it was, because I cannot imagine he wouldn't want that. Agreed. If you have feedback for this, find us on Facebook. We have a relatively new group. We grew out of the behind the scenes group. We are now the Martial Arts Radio page on Facebook, but you can also reach out to us individually with emails.

Jeremy at whistlekick.com, Andrew at whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. We'll change that soon. That's on the list too. You can leave comments. You can go to the website, whistlekickmartialartsradio.com. You can leave a comment there. But if nothing else, I hope that you really do consider what we're saying. And if there are people in your life that idolize Bruce Lee, maybe you can have a conversation with them.

Jeremy (22:28.674)

can understand why. See where that takes you. If you wanna support us, remember we've got that Patreon, patreon.com slash whistlekick. We do events, we do all kinds of cool things. Check us out at whistlekick.com. See all the things that we've got happening. Hopefully we can see you somewhere at some time. And if you wanna follow us on social media, we're at whistlekick. I think that takes us down through to the end. So until next time, train hard, smile, and have a great day.

Jeremy (23:05.102)