Could Bruce Lee beat a Professional Boxer?

[MysticNinjaJay]

where are your links, evidence that's what mike said about the situation? he certainly could have said it to cover for snipes career which was big at the time.

and yes, i hope people go to that thread so they can see mysticninjaJay's cooly sucking off wesley snipe's karate c*ck.

My source is Mike Tyson's book Undisputed Truth.

I got this quote from Google Books:

I spent a lot of time in L.A. in the late '80s. I had an apartment in Century City off Wilshire. A friend of mine was christening is boat and he had a party where I met this beautiful girl named Hope. She was with a girlfriend of hers and they arrived near the end of the party when the food had run out. I was sitting at a table with a big plate of food in front of me, so Hope walked up to me out of the blue and went in to a great Andrew Dice imitation. "Look, my friend will blow you if you buy dinner. Me and my friend are starving." I thought she was hilarious. I invited them to pull up a seat and I shared my food with them. I didn't get any feeling that she wanted to be intimate with me so we just became running dogs. She had a lot of girlfriends and I would say, "Hope, I really like that girl a lot." So she hooked me up. I became a big brother to her. She was always having problems with men. I would take one look at a guy and tell her, "Hope that guy's gay," or, "This guy will never care about you." I was really good at seeing through people's bullshit. Except for the women in my life.

We became close. Hope was going to college then and she didn't have much money, so I let her stay in the spare bedroom in my apartment. But we were just platonic friends. No one could believe it because Hope was so hot. "Mike, you're fucking her. I know you are," all of my friends would say. "I saw you fuck that ugly fat bitch, you got to be fucking this one." I became super protective of Hope. One of our favorite places to go was this club called RnB live. That was where Hope bumped in to Wesley Snipes. She started dating him while I was out of town. When I got back to L.A., she came to me crying. Wesley had broken her heart; he didn't want her anymore. "See, Hope, this is what happens when you mess with those kinds of men in your life. You need a straight guy," I told her. But Hope she didn't want to hear that. She wanted to hear "Why are you crying, Hope? I'm going to kick his ass."

Hope didn't get what she wanted from me, so she said to me, "Oh, and Wesley didn't get why I was, with you. He said, 'What are you doing with a guy like Tyson?' to me."

I knew that was bullshit.

A few days later I made plans to meet Hope at RnB. I sat next to her and asked her how school was, when we saw Wesley Snipes walk in. I excused myself and walked over to him. Wesley looked up, saw me, and panicked.

"Mike, please don't hit me in my face, that's how I make a living," he said.

"Man, don't worry about that thing with Hope. She's just hurt."

We both laughed about it.

So now you're saying that Wesley Snipes AND Mike Tyson are lying?!

Yeah I bet he was just covering for Snipes' career which he cared oh so much about. So much so that he challenged him to a fight in a bathroom and viciously knocked him out.

Or maybe you're finally prepared to deal with the most likely situation which is that Rudy Gonzalez is just a liar who made up a story to help sell a book.

[LoadedWraps]

I don't know, being dead is a hard handicap to overcome.

This question has to pop up at least every 6 months

It's disgusting, I am tired of seeing crap like this on NSB.

Absolutely not.

Well, not a top level one atleast. There's nothin what so ever to suggest he could.

Exactly. Well said.

[J.Dempsey]

Lee could obviously fight, but it's his screen presence, charm, speed, ripped body and timing that made him the legend he is, we'll never know how good he was and most sources put him down as a being a gd street fighter, and u know the standard thug in the street is prob not trained to pro boxer lvl.

Lee against a pro boxer....who knows?!

Let the man RIP

[Divine Hammer]

i once took karate and it's very tough.

i think bruce knew a lot of different techniques including boxing. so he could beat up a professional boxer for sure.

[LoadedWraps]

Lee could obviously fight, but it's his screen presence, charm, speed, ripped body and timing that made him the legend he is, we'll never know how good he was and most sources put him down as a being a gd street fighter, and u know the standard thug in the street is prob not trained to pro boxer lvl.

Lee against a pro boxer....who knows?!

Let the man RIP

Good post, from a Bruce Lee fan.

i once took karate and it's very tough.

i think bruce knew a lot of different techniques including boxing. so he could beat up a professional boxer for sure.

I won free classes for it but nevr pulled the trigger when I was a pup.

I have taken wing chun though, low levels of mma from being in the military, and I have been boxing for 8 years. There is just something special about the sweet science that always mesmerized me, it's just special.

[darius45]

Manny Pacquiao vs Bruce Lee at the same weight? Who knows... If Lee spent all his time training for boxing...he had the mind of a fighter, incredible speed/athleticism and of course, power...

But obviously, he wasn't as fast as the one and only Roy Jones Jr...

[sbbigmike]

the greatest fighter of all time, hitting the heavy bag like a god.

He moving the bag like that bare handed, do you understand what hitting a heavy bag barehanded does to the average person...........

[tibbar]

I believe Bruce Lee probably did win an inter school boxing tournament in a country where boxing is not very popular. Winning a school tournament is a worthless piece of information in figuring his chances in a fight with a top pro fighter. It's not like he won the boxing gold medal at the Olympics.

you must have missed the point, Bruce defeated a boxer, who competes, in high school when he was not the "BRUCE LEE" as everybody knows him later. Yes, that's equivalent to winning boxing's Olympic gold medal.

[MysticNinjaJay]

you must have missed the point, Bruce defeated a boxer, who competes, in high school when he was not the "BRUCE LEE" as everybody knows him later. Yes, that's equivalent to winning boxing gold medal.

The point isn't that Bruce Lee is a Boxing prodigy because he won an amateur high school tournament. The point is that he had experience with Boxing. He did well for a beginner. Then he went on to improve on his Martial Arts skills and incorporated Boxing techniques in to his training. He studied Boxers which also means he studied how to beat Boxers. We have one testimony of him actually getting the better of a Heavyweight Boxer in a demonstration and Bruce Lee on film explaining the mechanics of his fighting style. He never fought a professional Boxer but he trained to be able to beat any opponent in a real fight.

Maybe I'm way off base here and there are good arguments for why he wouldn't beat a professional (elite) Boxer. Let's hear them.

[theface07]

I think it's fairly ignorant for people to seem to think they know what Bruce Lee would've been like against an elite level boxer. I don't see how that could be determined since Bruce Lee generally did not even attend martial arts tournaments because his style was an amalgamation of a number of styles and he would refuse to conform to the rules and standards of the bulk of competitive fighting.
If you've ever actually done any research on his fighting abilities the examples you would find would be limited to footage of him sparring, his observed movements and defensive techniques as well as stories from friends, family and people who may have known Lee. Such information can be taken with a grain of salt but if you discover many people with a reputation for honesty describing similar circumstances or encounters they may possibly be true.
A common reference to Bruce Lee is that his strength was unparalleled in that his level of focus or as he referred to it, the level of "chi" or energy in his body was so concentrated that he could easily knock people back and onto the ground with one quick, short motion. He had reputedly done this on several occasions to individuals much bigger than himself.
He was an actor yes but his reflexes and overall speed were incredibly high. He trained more rigorously than most boxers today and was in absolutely peak physical condition.
I honestly don't know if he would beat the best boxers in the world but I really don't think it's possible to say for sure one way or another. His legend has certainly been associated with a lot of myth over the years, no doubt due to the plethora of unofficial films that fictionalize his abilities and history.