‘Grandfather of MMA’ Bruce Lee and his starring role in the birth of modern mixed martial arts
- Hong Kong martial artist was many fighters’ first exposure to mixing various disciplines, and a one-minute scene in film ‘Enter the Dragon’ is considered a seminal moment in the sport’s development
In the opening frames of Enter the Dragon – shot in 1973 – Lee and the great Sammo Hung Kam-bo meet in organised combat, with Hong Kong’s Chan Chung Koon Temple standing in for the famed Shaolin Temple of central Henan province. Their characters wear unusual gloves, tiny shorts, and they throw everything they have at each other, until Lee brings the fight to an end with his own unique version of the “armbar”.
It’s a fighting technique that was up until then only commonly associated with the likes of jiu-jitsu and judo and by deciding to use it in this scene with Hung – in a kung fu film, no less – Hong Kong’s “Little Dragon” gave the world at large its first taste of mixed martial arts (MMA).
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) hall of famer Urijah Faber says “that was the moment” that MMA was born. In a movie scene from more than four decades ago, which lasts all of a minute.
“Mixing martial arts for fighting – that’s the key with Bruce Lee,” explains Faber, who fought at the top level of professional MMA for more than a decade.
“He was the first one to say, ‘Hey you need to know wrestling, you need to know submissions, you need to know boxing’. A lot of people from outside [MMA] don’t know that is why he was so influential.”
