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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8037079">One of the big things that set Bruce Lee apart from other martial artists at the time was his philosophy eventually became about taking what works, and not focusing so much on styles. A lot of people in MMA, even those who push back against some of the legend that has emerged around Bruce Lee, still usually respect him for this reason. Also, these are movies. The martial arts you see in a Bruce Lee film, are different from the way he sparred with his students. Obviously he is a martial artist from a much different time, and martial arts have evolved a lot since that period. For his time though he was very forward thinking. But movie martial arts and real martial arts are not the same thing. What is effective in terms of actual combat is a much bigger discussion (and one where I think MMA has shown us a lot, but also one where even many of the harsher critics of TMA are starting to realize there is value in many TMA techniques). That, again, is a big topic. My thinking has evolved a lot on it over the years, and I think at the end of the day, whether a martial art is valuable to you, depends on why you are training in it. I started in TMA, got exposed in a competition in a painful way, to the advantages of fight sport style MA, and switched to Muay Thai, and from there trained in a variety of more MMA oriented styles. But many of the things I learned in TMA I was able to incorporate into MMA. And you see this in actual MMA, where a particular technique is not thought of much until someone figures out how to use it well within the MMA ruleset. If someone were to press me, I would say I do think combat sports are better training for real fights, but for me the point of training in martial arts is not to get into real fights, so it doesn't matter in the end. Also when you are talking kung fu movies in general, there is a very big difference between the way Bruce Lee was doing it, and the way many of the other kung fu craze films were doing it. Bruce Lee moves much more like a sport fighter on camera (his footwork looks like it is derived from regular sparring for example), whereas a lot of the other kung fu craze movies, even the ones that came after him, are much more stylized or much more traditional. But even those run the gamut in terms of authentic martial arts. Lau Kar Leung Films are known for their fidelity to real styles of Kung Fu, for instance. Ultimately though these are still movies, and the thing that makes them beautiful isn't that the things the actors are doing would work in real life. It is beautiful because of the displays of athleticism, the way the scenes are edited and choreographed. A well done fight scene in one of these movies is stunning to watch (whether it is realistic or not).</blockquote>

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