Several famous martial arts stars have opposed Bruce Lee in his films.
Like many early kung fu films, Lee’s films did not feature many actors with martial arts backgrounds. In films like Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, he hired martial artists like Bob Wall and Dan Inosanto to appear in his films as his opponents, but the leading roles were played by key studio players rather than famous martial arts stars. . This is not surprising, however, given that the genre was still young in the early 1970s when Lee’s films came out. However, several of the actors who fought with Lee in his films became stars themselves in the years after his death. And of course legendary Bolo Yeung, who together played the “Enter the Dragon”, but unfortunately they didn’t have a fight in the film. Here are all the martial arts stars who have faced off against Lee on the big screen.
5. Tony Liu
Memorable for appearing in all of Bruce Lee’s kung fu films, Hong Kong martial artist and actor Tony Liu fought the actor in The Big Boss, playing a Japanese thug. After The Big Boss, Liu returned with much larger roles in Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon and Enter the Dragon, where Liu played allies of Lee’s characters. Lee’s films represent only a small portion of Liu’s martial arts film career. After appearing in Lee’s unfinished film Game of Death, Liu went on to star in dozens of kung fu films, some of which were produced by major studio Shaw Brothers. Liu played the lead role in Shaolin Temple, a classic kung fu ensemble that featured other famous Shaw Brothers stars.RELATED:
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4. Corey Yuen
In a scene from the 1971 film Fist of Fury, Chen Zhen (Bruce Lee) entered a Japanese dojo and beat up an entire group of karate students. One of them was played by Corey Yuen, an actor who had yet to make a name for himself in martial arts films. Yuen grew up with several future martial arts stars (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao) and participated in their kung fu training. Keeping in touch with old classmates, Yuen starred in a number of kung fu films with Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao in the 1980s. It was during this time that Yuen began the transition to directing, a field where he arguably found greater success. As a director, Yuen has directed The Transporter, Jackie Chan’s Dragons Forever and Jet Li’s Hero.
3. Sammo Hung
At the beginning of Enter the Dragon, Lee scored a short and easy victory over an unnamed kung fu student played by an uncredited Sammo Hung. For Hung, Enter the Dragon was just one of several kung fu films of the early 1970s in which he played a supporting role. They were all stepping stones on the way to bigger parts. Hung, who supposedly fought Bruce Lee on camera as well as in Enter the Dragon, has had a long and successful acting career, often collaborating with martial arts film director and leading man Jackie Chan. By the way, Chan, Hung is known for combining his comedic abilities with martial arts skills, which helped him become one of the most popular kung fu stars of his time.
2. Chuck Norris
Of all the martial arts stars who fought Lee in his films, only one played a character strong enough to truly pose a challenge. Long before he became a major US martial arts star in the 1980s, world karate champion Chuck Norris fought a now-legendary fight with Lee in the finale of the “Way of the Dragon.” While planning the film’s climax, Lee devised a plan to film an action sequence set in the Colosseum, where he would meet Colt, who would be played by a fellow martial artist. Lee apparently realized that by casting someone trained in martial arts to play Colt, Way of the Dragon could end with an intense battle that audiences would believe was real, especially since it wouldn’t require much cutting.
1. Jackie Chan
Although Jackie Chan’s career began only a few years after Bruce Lee’s death, it is worth noting that their paths crossed more than once. In the early 1970s, most of Chan’s work was as a stuntman. Among the films he took part in was Fist of Fury, where he first met Lee. In addition to his role as a stuntman, Chan appeared on screen in the film Enter the Dragon, where he fought with Lee not once, but twice. In the scene where Lee had to destroy several
minions at once, the enemy trying to grab Lee from behind can be recognized as none other than Jackie Chan himself.
In the scene in question, Lee easily escapes his grasp and appears to break his neck. In the same scene, Chan (who may have been playing a different character) lunged at Lee a second time, this time hitting him in the face with his staff and knocking him out. As Chan later explained, he was genuinely hurt by the blow, but Bruce Lee immediately apologized for hitting him so hard.