Bruce Lee created Jeet Kune Do from a wide range of different martial arts – discover the martial arts disciplines seen in Lee’s movie fight scenes.
Bruce Lee would utilize techniques from a wide array of different martial arts throughout his film career. Lee’s legendary status as a martial arts movie icon has its foundation in his childhood, having studied Wing Chun under the tutelage of the famed Ip Man. As an adult, Lee would bring his skills as a martial artist to movies and television, achieving his first big success as Kato on The Green Hornet, before appearing in several kung fu movie hits in his native Hong Kong. Though Lee sadly passed away just before the 1973 release of Enter the Dragon, the film would become a towering martial arts classic.

Lee’s success in martial arts films lies in his deep knowledge of different martial arts forms. Lee would come to the conclusion that no one martial art has a monopoly on combat effectiveness, leading him to research many different martial arts and distill them into his own fighting philosophy known as Jeet Kune Do. With Lee’s emphasis on fluidity and adaptability in fighting, it is no accident that the fight scenes in his movies draw upon techniques found in numerous different martial arts forms, with Lee also using numerous martial arts weapons, as well. Here are the martial arts forms Bruce Lee uses techniques from in his filmography.
7Wing Chun

Bruce Lee’s base art of Wing Chun helped form the foundation of Jeet Kune Do, and Wing Chun elements are a component of Lee’s on-screen fighting style. Wing Chun is especially well-known for its trapping and in-fighting techniques, with the chain-punching of Wing Chun being a renown staple of the art. One prominent display of Wing Chun can be seen in Lee’s fight with O’Hara (Bob Wall) in Enter the Dragon, with Lee crushing O’Hara with traps and short-range strikes. Lee also uses Wing Chun traps and in-fighting strikes in his Colosseum fight with Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon.
6Kung Fu (Various)

Lee would also draw from various other forms of kung fu in his creation of Jeet Kune Do, and this too is reflected in the fight scenes of his movies. Bruce Lee is said to have been particularly enamored with Choy Li Fut, Lee reportedly calling Choy Li Fut “the most effective system that I’ve seen for fighting more than one person” (via Bamboo Kung Fu). Some of Lee’s more elongated arm strikes and kicking techniques resemble those seen in Choy Li Fut, which can be seen in fight scenes in Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury.
Additionally, some of Lee’s kicks in numerous fight scenes also look similar to the long, powerful kicks found in Northern Shaolin kung fu. These include some of Lee’s flying sidekicks in his fight scenes in the climactic fights of Enter the Dragon, The Big Boss, and especially Fist of Fist. With the elements of Choy Li Fut and Northern Shaolin kung fu combined with Wing Chun, Bruce Lee’s on-screen fighting style incorporates both short and long range strikes from various Chinese martial arts.

5Tae Kwon Do
Bruce Lee’s friendships with Jhoon Rhee and Chuck Norris would lead to him incorporating kicking techniques from Tae Kwon Do into Jeet Kune Do. One of Lee’s signature on-screen kicks is the sidekick, with the way Lee uses it drawn from traditional Tae Kwon Do. In many of his fight scenes, Lee either thrusts a sidekick into an opponent from a standing position, or performing a stepping side kick from a greater distance to send his opponent flying. One of most famous examples is seen at the end of his fight with O’Hara in Enter the Dragon, with Lee hurling O’Hara back with a powerful side kick.
4Jiu Jitsu
Bruce Lee is often regarded as a pioneer in contemporary mixed martial arts, or MMA, and his use of grappling techniques from Jiu Jitsu in multiple movies is certainly testimony to this. Lee’s opening fight scene in Enter the Dragon with Sammo Hung is an example of this, with Lee putting Hung into a neck crank and forcing him to tap out with an armbar. Additionally, Lee’s fight scenes with Ji Han-jae and Kareem Abdul Jabbar in Lee’s unfinished movie Game of Death see him use Jiu Jitsu chokes and submissions even more extensively, with both being some of the first grappling-heavy fight scenes in martial arts films.
3Judo
Partially due to his friendship with the legendary “Judo” Gene Lebell, Bruce Lee was also a big fan of Judo and implemented many of its throwing techniques into Jeet Kune Do. Lee’s use of Judo throws can be seen in the aforementioned opening fight scene of Enter the Dragon as well as in Game of Death. In both films, Lee uses Judo-derived throws to counter the attacks of both Sammo Hung and Ji Han-jae, with Lee’s Judo techniques adding a whole different dynamic to his ’70s era martial arts movie fights.
2Boxing
Bruce Lee was a huge believer in the power of Western boxing and made it into an indispensable element of Jeet Kune Do. Lee’s boxing style punches and stance work can very clearly be seen in many fight scenes throughout his filmography, but perhaps nowhere more prominently than in Bruce Lee’s fight with Chuck Norris in The Way of the Dragon. When Lee’s character Tang Lung recognizes the need to be more fluid in his approach against Norris’s Colt, he adopts a boxing-style stance and rhythm for the fight, and uses hooks, jabs, crosses, and uppercuts right out of Western boxing to defeat his opponent.
1Weapons
Aside from the unarmed combat of Bruce Lee’s fight scenes, Enter the Dragon also sees Lee use a bo staff in the movie’s cave fight, with Lee also using a pair of Kali sticks against his legion of enemies in the same fight. However, Bruce Lee’s true signature weapon is the nunchaku. Though Bruce Lee at first hated the nunchaku, he would become a true master of the dual-stick weapon and use the nunchaku in many fight scenes. Bruce Lee’s use of the nunchaku would come to be his mic drop moment in any fight scene, with Lee being instrumental in making the nunchaku a popular martial arts weapon worldwide.

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