Dang, man - Bruce Lee died on this day back in 1973.
Lee Jun Fan Yuen Kam (that's your boy's birth name, FYI) was born in the year of the dragon (1940) at the hour of the dragon (which is any time between 6am and 8am), in Chinatown, San Francisco - though once he was three months old his family moved back to their hometown in Hong Kong. Lee Jun Fan homo-phonically means "return again", which his mother chose because she believed he would always return to America one day.
While living in China Lee got up to all kinds of neat shit, such as becoming the leader of "The Tigers of Junction City" gang, learning the style of Wing Chun under Yip Man, and getting into some serious street fights, including one particular ass beating he delivered to the son of a Triad family. Upon learning there may now be a contract out for his life because of this fight, Lee's family decided it would be best to send him back to America to live with his sister in San Francisco - kinda parallel to the whole premise to Fresh Prince, if you think about it, right? Right?
Roll with me here, people.
Lee wasn't just a formidable fighter, however, you may not know but he was also a fantastic dancer, and Hong Kong's cha cha champion. In 1961 he also took on dramatics and philosophy at the University of Washington, where he met fellow student Linda Emery, his future wife, who he married in 1964.
From the mid-60s onwards, Lee and his martial arts skills became even greater, seeing him master the "one-inch punch", which saw one poor victim have to take a day off work from the pain it caused during a demonstration, and if that wasn't cool enough, Lee began to craft his own martial art - Jun Fan Gung Fu - which he created after deciding the fighting styles at the time were too slow and didn't allow him to beat his opponents fast enough.
Despite his successes however, Lee did face problems. He began to face pressure from the Chinese community for teaching non-Chinese pupils in his classes, and was subsequently called out by a man named Wong Jack Man, with the ultimatum that if he lost, he had to close all his schools. Lee beat his ass within 3 minutes.
Soon after, Hollywood came a-knockin' when a man named William Dozer spotted Lee at an exhibition in '64, and invited him to audition for a role in a pilot of Number One Son, which never got off the ground, but did help Lee bag a role in The Green Hornet. Eventually dissatisfied with the small roles he was finding in the US, Lee returned to Hong Kong and buddied up with Shaw Brothers Studios, and from this relationship he starred in The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and Way of the Dragon. The success of these films saw Hollywood once again grow very interested in the now big-name Bruce Lee, and so it was that he came to star in Enter the Dragon, a joint project between Shaw Brothers and Warner Brothers.
These films sent a wave of kung-fu appreciation throughout US pop culture in the 70s, and thanks to people like Lee standing up to the old traditions of keeping martial arts exclusive to only Chinese students, any kid in the Western world could now practice the arts, cementing kung fu as one of the very strongest pillars of what is rad.
Sadly however, things came to an abrupt end in 1973, when Lee passed away in his sleep of a cerebral edema, brought on as a possible reaction to medication he was taking for what he believed to just be a standard headache. Notable pallbearers at his funeral included Steve McQueen, and Chuck Norris.
But even after death Lee lives on through his legacy. He will forever be remembered as one of the most powerful fighters the world has ever known, beating countless high-profile opponents in ridiculously quick time, with one notable example being an extra on the set of Way of the Dragon who dared to call him a phoney - the fight lasted 30 seconds, by the end of which Lee had the man slammed face first into a wall with his hair pulled back and arms trapped until he admitted defeat.
Outside of the many tales of his victories, Lee is also hugely remembered in the videogame industry, with fighters from games such as Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, and Virtua Fighter all being built based on Lee's techniques, and of course there's a loving tribute in the form of Hitmonlee in the Pokemon franchise. Incidentally, fellow Pokemon tributee Jackie Chan still claims to this day his most painful injury he'd ever received in his acting career was when Lee accidentally hit him in the face with one of his nun chucks in Enter the Dragon.
Bruce Lee, we miss thee.
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