Showdown in Oakland: The Story Behind the Wong Jack Man - Bruce Lee Fight

[fabhui]

The art of Jeet Kune Do is on another level to a lot of other martial arts.

The problem is the majority of Jeet Kune Do practitioners are in a word shite. They're either doing something that bears absolutely no resemblance to Bruce's art and calling JKD. Or they are lazy, out of shape wannabes that couldn't fight the tide in their bath never mind a violent encounter where someone's sole intent is to destroy them. They get by by using Bruce's name and riding on his coattails. 

I've been fortunate to have trained with several of Bruce's students over the years and the ones who have impressed me I could count on fewer than the fingers on one hand but those guys were something else!

It also doesn't help that there is no governing body that can point people in the direction of legitimate instructors which wold also weed out the con artists and bullshitters. The estate had the chance to sort things out years ago but they failed to follow things through. They would rather make a few quid peddling Bruce Lee aftershave, lamp shades and other tat! 

 

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

I think Bill's issue is that also, the Gracies basically stole Judo and relabelled it. Here is a another thing is that back in the early days Judo training was fairly integral training for most Karate and Tae Kwon Do stylists. Also wrestling was part of Chinese arts. As the arts became more commercial the striking based arts discarded mat work and chokes, focusing on point sparring and breaking boards, etc. Bill was a wrestling coach, and a Judo black belt, so he, Benny the Jet and Don Wilson all had some serious grappling training. But most Karate/Kung fu guys didn't. 

 

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

9 minutes ago, fabhui said:

The art of Jeet Kune Do is on another level to a lot of other martial arts.

The problem is the majority of Jeet Kune Do practitioners are in a word shite. They're either doing something that bears absolutely no resemblance to Bruce's art and calling JKD. Or they are lazy, out of shape wannabes that couldn't fight the tide in their bath never mind a violent encounter where someone's sole intent is to destroy them. They get by by using Bruce's name and riding on his coattails. 

I've been fortunate to have trained with several of Bruce's students over the years and the ones who have impressed me I could count on fewer than the fingers on one hand but those guys were something else!

It also doesn't help that there is no governing body that can point people in the direction of legitimate instructors which wold also weed out the con artists and bullshitters. The estate had the chance to sort things out years ago but they failed to follow things through. They would rather make a few quid peddling Bruce Lee aftershave, lamp shades and other tat! 

 

Lots of the good students also moved over to BJJ. You can tell who is good as they have no problem with challenges and full contact training. There's no Wing Chun slapping "I could have killed you right there!" stuff. Plus we have modern MMA. You can figure who is good right there. That being said, self defense and fighting have many different situations. What a cop does and what a guy that doesn't want to get robbed are two different things. If you really want self protection, be aware of your surroundings and carry a gun. But most people are not in those situations.

[laagi]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before but here's an interesting letter from James Y Lee apparently written in the 60s.

Quote

Dear Gene, Bruce Lee was challenged by black belt karate instructor form Japan after one of his exhibition Bruce gave. Bruce refuse to fight then & there not-dignify. But every time Japanese instructor see Bruce he renew challenge. After a few weeks of avoiding fight Bruce got tired of Karate instructor tactics of begging him. Match was arranged at YMCA Seattle-each with two students with them. As witness match lasted 14 seconds, Bruce send the karate man to hospital for stitches to his side of face- around 12 stitches- no skull was broken-but lot of bleeding-. Bruce was recently challenged by G. Fu man from Hong Kong –took place at the gym-the other man had to give up after about 2 minutes with a Black eye, swollen lips ect.

[DragonClaws]

 

Hi @laagi thanks sharing that, here a few more snippets on the same subject. The following artilce lists the Japanese Karate man as Yoiche Nakachi.

 

 

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Bruce Lee, The Karate Man and Jesse Glover

Sometimes I mistakenly vocalize things which should have remained firmly in my head. For instance, I try not to talk about my contempt for Karate, but sometimes I slip up. Ironically, my teacher Jesse Glover recently confirmed a story regarding a fight that took place between his instructor, Bruce Lee, and a Karate man back in about 1959. For years, Jesse kept the identity of the Karate man hidden but all has now been revealed;

“Yoiche Nakachi pushed for a fight with Bruce and he got. Bruce knocked him out. How do I know this? I was the referee and I stopped the fight with Yoiche knocked out on the floor.”

I have had the pleasure of hearing Jesse tell the story. Ed Hart was the timekeeper at the fight which lasted only 11 seconds. Bruce closed in on Yoiche and straight punched him into a wall, leaving the Karate man with a considerably damaged face.

 

 

Here's another account of the same event from Jesse Glover again.

 

 

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Whatever happened to Yoichi Nakachi, the Karate expert who challenged Bruce Lee and was defeated by him in 22 seconds?

In 1961, in Seattle, where Bruce Lee taught teach Wing Chun to other students in his college, he was challenged by Yoichi Nakachi, a local Karate black belt.

 

In the match, Yoichi Nakachi was knocked down by Bruce Lee within 22 seconds. He was also badly beaten up by Bruce Lee.

Source- https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20180622155349AA2fgm4&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHnnQMZgH0Y2Tk5jnarKnjgb-Z2rI8vHraXWbgRg8EhO36E3vnTyoU8CaZBt_QUssJjfOdcyYNES8YY59tjlnrF9IGT37EHQG75DauWz6wR47cbv9EZOtokjBPguljdiiqLFsnX6MEVJzjRAwIJ4ev5CAOQnA1Li3EJ0ZetF_JHl

 

[laagi]

@DragonClaws Thanks for the additional information. Is it safe to assume that the Gung Fu Man J Y Lee mentions in his letter is Wong Jack Man?

[DragonClaws]

30 minutes ago, laagi said:

@DragonClaws Thanks for the additional information. Is it safe to assume that the Gung Fu Man J Y Lee mentions in his letter is Wong Jack Man?

 

I'm not sure on that one?.

 

He sadly passed away in 1998, here's a part of a brief biogrpahy for the Martial Artist.

 

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In 1944, Yoichi Nakachi at the age of 12, started studying karate under Yon Pon Gun in Kushimoto, Japan. In 1948, when the ban on martial arts was lifted, the open practice of Shinpu-ren resumed. By this time, at the age of 16, Nakachi had his 2nd degree black belt . Because of business, Gun often visited the small fishing village of Kushimoto, Nakachi's home town. This was during the ban on Japanese budo (martial arts), enacted by the American military government under General MacArthur (1945 - 1948). In spite of this ban, Nakachi and his schoolmates continued to study martial arts in secret under the instruction of Yon Pon Gun and several other Koreans in the Kushimoto area. Due to the economic hardships of the post-war period, the practice of the martial arts took place outdoors, either in the surrounding mountains, in open fields, or on the beaches near the Kushimoto area, since a "dojo" was a luxury that people could not afford. This meant that training was often interrupted by rain or darkness. The small group of students with which Nakachi trained, and in 1950 came to lead, was made up of a small group of high school students. These seven or eight students would get together after school to practice what Yon Pon Gun had shown them on his last visit to Kushimoto. The outdoor classes were usually done in their school uniforms and consisted of kumite and kicking drills, as well as some weapons training. In 1950, Yon Pon Gun and the other Koreans stopped going to Kushimoto, and since Yon Pon Gun had left for Korea, Nakachi took over the group,as he was "sempai" (senior student).

 

Click on the link below for the complete biography.

Link- http://www.jabka.org/smalhist.html

[DragonClaws]

2 hours ago, laagi said:

@DragonClaws Thanks for the additional information.

 

I've already posted ths one elswhere, but it also suits the topic here. Ed Hart and Jesse Glover give their first hand accounts of the fight between Bruce Lee and Yoiche Nakachi.  I think this interview was recorded by George Tan?.

 

 

 

[DragonClaws]

 

Fight With Wong Jack Man

Source- http://www.storiespreschool.com/bruce_lee7.html

 

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Mental Floss magazine's Jack Rossen said author Rick Wing, a dedicated student of Wong's, presented a somewhat different account after Wing interviewed Wong and several eyewitnesses to the fight for Showdown in Oakland: The Story Behind the Wong Jack Man – Bruce Lee Fight, Wing's book on the bout -

Rick Wing: Lee began by lashing out immediately after a handshake, cutting Wong’s forehead, and then proceeded to launch a series of groin kicks and high-volume punches, most of which Wong absorbed in the chest.
Wong moved laterally, and was not as aggressive as the temperamental Lee; he [Wong] had told his friends he wouldn’t be using kicks, which he considered his most dangerous weapon, because he didn’t want to permanently injure Lee. He did, however, sport a pair of leather bracelets he wore over his wrists, and one of his strikes caught Lee near his neck, staggering him. Wong followed up with a headlock, but chose not to strike while Lee was doubled over.
After 20 minutes of Lee pressing the action and Wong picking his spots, Wong lost his footing and fell to the ground, where Lee tried to pounce on him. Observers told Wing they feared Lee was getting too heated and stepped in to break up the bout.

 

Martial Artist - Wong Jack Man

Source- http://davidnicksay.com/2017/08/02/the-bruce-lee-fight-nobody-knows-about/

[Killer Meteor]

I always assumed Wong Jack Man was a grizzly veteran, when in reality he looks quite young.

[DragonClaws]

19 hours ago, Killer Meteor said:

I always assumed Wong Jack Man was a grizzly veteran, when in reality he looks quite young.

 

Maybe the disgruntled Chinatown Masters wanted to use someone closer to Bruce Lee's age?. Was Wong Jack-Man seen as being in the best physcial shape, of all their students/reprensentatives?.

 

That picture you commented on, might have been taken some year's before the fight?.

[Yihetuan]

Great stuff guys. Learning so much about this topic from reading your posts. I was so disappointed by the movie version with Philip Ng that came out a couple years ago. It seemed the writers of that script were more focused on the interracial romance between Bruce's caucasian student and the Chinese girl than the actual fight with Wong Jack Man.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

10 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

 

Maybe the disgruntled Chinatown Masters wanted to use someone closer to Bruce Lee's age?. Was Wong Jack-Man seen as being in the best physcial shape, of all their students/reprensentatives?.

 

That picture you commented on, might have been taken some year's before the fight?.

Wong had a lot of white students, even in the 1970's. If you read Matthew Polly's bio and some others Lee had a problem with flashy kung fu (which there was a lot of in Northern Shaolin) That being said, Wong had several students who fought full contact, others who could do beautiful forms. I sparred one of the, fucking tough. Now, nothing he did looked like Shaolin, and he caught me with a flying armbar (which was a new move back then and we doing stand up sparring) but I did kick him in the face, so, there's that. Anyway, he crossed trained in Kyokushin, boxing, BJJ and Greco Roman. I was seeing if I could sign my son up with him, but he didn't have kids classes. The opposite of McDojos. Anyway, I bet if we had film, it would look like a scuffle at best. You have to remember, Karate and Kung Fu advanced a ton from the time of the fight into the 1980's. Here's the thing, Judo and Muay Thai were already excellent fighting arts, it really was Karate and Kung Fu that needed to be updated. A lot, in my opinion, of what impressed people about karate and so on were board and brick breaking tricks. It didn't look as tough as boxing or judo.

 

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

 

 

[Yihetuan]

On 1/6/2020 at 9:09 PM, NoKUNGFUforYU said:

 

 

Way before my time since I grew up in the 80s but my favorite MT fighters all time are Dieselnoi (tall lanky frame with knees from hell once he got you in the clinch), Saenchai (one of the best pound for pound) & Jomhod (so slick with such swagger). These are just my personal favorites irrespective of Lumpinee championships or world title accomplishments based on vids of I've seen of their fights.

[DragonClaws]

 

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There is a 8-mm film of Bruce Lee doing Bei Shaolin #5 or attempting to perform BSL#5. He paid someone to film Wong Jack Man who was demonstrating BSL#5 and then BL learned from that film. Bruce Lee then had himself filmed doing the same set but from what I understand the quality was obviously not the same.

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For about three decades, Chinatown’s kung fu culture was presided over by two longtime local tong enforcers—Lau Bun and TY Wong—whose trailblazing careers have mostly fallen into obscurity. In the 1930s, Lau Bun opened Hung Sing, which is likely the first public school of the Chinese martial arts in America. He maintained a rigid discipline over his students and other martial artists within the neighborhood. For years, Lau Bun did not allow Chinatown to devolve into the sort of daily youth violence that Bruce Lee grew up around on the streets (and rooftops) of Hong Kong during the 1950s, where students from rival martial arts schools regularly challenged each other to fights.

 

Wong Jack Man's & Bruce Lee's Private Match(Extenive Article)

Quote's Source- http://www.jadedragonalaska.com/bruce-lees-lost-fight.php

 

 

Oakland's Chinatown district during the 1960's.

Picture Source- http://www.millspolicyforum.com/community-economic-development/oakland-chinatown-displacement-vulnerability-and-the-ethnic-economic-enclave/

[DragonClaws]

 

 

[DragonClaws]

 

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From BRUCE LEE VS. WONG JACK MAN: FACT, FICTION AND THE BIRTH OF THE DRAGON FIGHTLAND BLOG, By Charles Russo

"So why, as Leo states in the article, did Sifu Wong "run" in the initial stages of his match with Bruce? It was because Bruce was acting irrationally and saying no to any rules during the match. He basically said he was going to fight all-out with eye gouges and groin kicks. It was as if he was considering it a death match because he was nervous and his ego was in jeopardy.

Traditionally, at the beginning of the fight, opponents are supposed to join hands and jump backwards. With no regard for traditions, Bruce went straight for an eye gouge after he pretended to shake hands. At that moment Wong ducked but not before Bruce nicked him with his finger nail just above his left eye and left a cut. This was seen the next day by Grandmaster Ming Lum himself and it was the only injury that could be seen on all of Wong's face or body. Right after Bruce struck he kept going for the eyes in earnest. Being surprised at this onslaught of potentially lethal strikes, Wong back pedaled to keep his distance. It was for this reason that Wong’s people wanted to jump in and stop the fight initially. Unlike how it was characterized by Bruce, the match continued in earnest between both of them.

Would David Chin have said he felt it “went both ways” in the KF Magazine article he was featured in if Bruce had been chasing Wong around the room and threw him to the ground? Let me ask all of you, who should be considered as having more integrity when it comes to judging the outcome of a challenge match, a grandmaster like David Chin and the Tai Chi master William Chen or Linda Lee Caldwell, who’s NOT a professional martial artist and who’s been trying to capitalize on her former husbands fame as much as she possibly can? And, in my opinion, the only reason it “went both ways” was because Wong was obviously holding back."

Source- https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/7c7o1j/master_wong_jack_manthe_man_who_beat_bruce_lee/

 

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

14 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

 

Source- https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/7c7o1j/master_wong_jack_manthe_man_who_beat_bruce_lee/

 

No offense, but that is a picture of Wong Shun Leung, Bruce's instructor for the most part. Ip Man supposedly was a little uptight about teaching half bred young men. From what I can tell Ip Man was a bit of a sleaze, and had to leave China as he was from some corners, a dirty cop. How do you become wealthy AND be a cop? In Republic China, during the Japanese occupation.

 

[DragonClaws]

1 hour ago, NoKUNGFUforYU said:

No offense, but that is a picture of Wong Shun Leung, Bruce's instructor for the most part.

 

Thats right, it's him in at least one of the pictures @NoKUNGFUforYU

 

It was supposed to be a link to the source of the text, not just a single picture. There are a few Martial Arts related images on the same page. The Wong Shun Leung one, was just one of those related pictures. The text exceprt was taken from a public forum, and not the entire article. It was never my intention to post a link to a single image. That was only done by mistake, so no offense taken.

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

I've said before, I doubt this was anything but an ugly scuffle.

[CT KID]

On 2/1/2020 at 11:37 AM, NoKUNGFUforYU said:

I've said before, I doubt this was anything but an ugly scuffle.

Yep, most real fights always are unless someone gets knocked out quick!

[NoKUNGFUforYU]

Also, I bet most MMA fights today make this fight look like patty cake. And I'm not just talking about the gross wrestling matches that drag on and on. Watch this guy.