Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are two of the biggest icons of Kung fu movies. The former defined the genre in the early 70s through movies like Fist of Fury and Enter the Dragon. The latter grabbed the torch after Lee and helped the movie genre and the practice itself gain worldwide popularity with countless hits across multiple decades.
The two never co-starred in a movie, but Chan did portray a nameless opponent in Enter the Dragon and faced Lee for a brief second. Considering their great martial arts prowess and the fact their fans never got to see them face to face properly, many wonder who would’ve won the ultimate battle. In that regard, our money is on Lee. Here are three reasons as to why:
Bruce Lee Is More Versatile
Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan are both known for being Kung fu experts, but what many fans don’t know is that both opted for different styles to master the craft, which is categorized into hundreds of types. Lee based his skills on Wing Chun before developing his own style – Jeet Kune Do – which combines different fighting styles. Elements of boxing, taekwondo, and karate are all spread across Lee’s fighting style.
Chan has also shown openness to adopting different methods but he chiefly practices hapkido, a Korean form of martial arts. His reliance on traditional Eastern methods would have proven too little when defending Chan’s attacks, which are likely to be more unpredictable due to the incorporation of both Eastern and Western ideas.
Bruce Lee’s Violence to Trump Jackie Chan’s Acrobatic Skills
One of the big reasons behind Chan’s popularity is that his style doesn’t just cater to fans of the action genre but also comedy, as seen in all three Rush Hour movies. In all his action sequences, Chan uses his acrobatics skills and improvisation techniques to both attack and evade attacks from his opponents.
So Chan might sell more tickets, but in a face-to-face martial arts battle against Lee, who’s known for his aggressive and violent style combined with his quickness, Chan’s jumping and sliding would have not worked that well. Lee’s front-foot approach and pure ruthless mixed martial arts ability would trump humorous athleticism on any given day.
Bruce Lee Is Stronger Due to His Background
Chan had a pretty disciplined childhood as he was sent to the China Drama Academy, a Peking Opera School run by Master Yu Jim-yeun, where he trained for the next decade. After school, he took little time to become a sensation on the big screen, and as per his memoir, Never Grow Up (via Variety), he spent a considerable part of his 20 partying and drinking after his early success.
Lee’s teenage years, meanwhile, were spent being engaged in gang violence in Hong Kong. He was regularly involved in rooftop battles. And we all know that training how to do one-on-one hand combat and actually translating those skills in real life are two different things. As such, it would be wise to back Lee’s real-life fighting experience over Chan’s training hours.
