Bruce Lee’s Final Phase JKD Videos
JERRY BEASLEY
ABSENCE OF LIMITS
By Jose M. Fraguas
“Black Belt” magazine recognized him as America’s foremost martial arts educator at his induction into the “Black Belt Hall of Fame” as Instructor of the Year 2000. Dr. Jerry Beasley was the first American to earn both a Master’s degree and the Doctorate in part for his research in martial arts teaching and administration from VA Tech in Blacksburg, VA. Beasley first gained attention in 1973 when he fought then ITF world champion Ho Kwon Kang of Venezuela, in an exhibition bout. A multiple Dan holder Beasley was the first to earn the 6th (1985), 7th (1990) and 8th Dan (1995) from his mentor and world champion Joe Lewis. Beasley was the only person ever to earn authorization to teach jeet kune do from Bruce Lee’s top fighter Joe Lewis (1993). Dr. Beasley received the board awarded 9th Dan from Professor Wally Jay and GM Michael DePasquale Sr. (2000) and the board awarded 10th Dan from GM Michael DePasquale Jr. and GM Bill “Superfoot” Wallace in 2016. In 1998 Dr. Beasley received the Distinguished Alumni Award from VA Tech and was four-time recipient of the Radford University College of Education Scholarly Activity Award. Currently Dr. Beasley is the professor emeritus of Asian Martial Arts at Radford University where he created the nationally known Asian Martial Arts curriculum in 1986. With partners Joe Lewis and Bill Wallace Beasley developed the award-winning Karate College in 1988 and the Jeet Kune Do Council with partners and original Bruce Lee students Ted Wong and Joe Lewis in 1993
How long have you been practicing the martial arts and whom were your teachers?
I have been training in martial arts for close to 60 years. My first instructor taught us Korean karate, judo and boxing. I earned the Black Belt in 1971. When the Jhoon Rhee Safe-T gear became popular around 1974 I converted to the full-contact evidence-based training which eventually led me to Joe Lewis and to jeet kune do. In 1977 I entered the doctoral program at VA Tech in Blacksburg, VA and trained with the campus boxing and judo clubs. After earning the Ed.D. (Doctor of Education) from VA Tech I joined the faculty at Radford University and taught multi-cultural martial arts theory and practice full time until I retired in 2021.
When did you meet Joe Lewis for the first time?
I first met Joe Lewis in the spring of 1982. Joe had rented a room at the Raliegh and I heard he was going to fight again and was looking for sparring partners. So, a friend and I drove down to spar with him. At the time I had contracted with a publisher to research and write a book about Bruce Lee’s jeet kune do and I knew Joe had been Bruce Lee’s top fighter.
For the next few decades Joe and I trained together as often as possible. Joe and I partnered-up to form the Joe Lewis American Karate/Kickboxing Systems association which featured no kata and to test you fought 3 rounds with Joe Lewis. What Joe taught in seminars as Joe Lewis American Karate Systems was predominantly jeet kune do in a karate gi. It was the art of fighting and testing your skills in the ring but could be easily transferred to the street.
What did attract you to the training then?
I loved the full-contact reality training. In 1983 Joe and I decided to partner-up. I would do publicity for him, run the association and organize seminars and in return he would personally teach me the exact jeet kune do he had learned from Bruce Lee in 1968 and 1969. Together Joe and I published articles on the Joe Lewis Method of jeet kune do in most of the major magazines and in several books. So instead of the sport kickboxing Joe was teaching in seminars I was privileged to get the jeet kune do instruction directly from Joe Lewis. In 1993, ten years after we started working together Joe authorized me to teach the jeet kune do principles and strategies originally taught to him by Bruce Lee.
I am the only person Joe Lewis ever authorized to teach jeet kune do. I might add that I was also personally tested and promoted by Joe to the ranks of 6th Dan in 1985, 7th Dan in 1990 and 8th Dan in 1995. The promotion to 8th Dan made me the highest ranked instructor in the Joe Lewis American Karate Systems. In 1997 Joe and I co-authored a book on the Joe Lewis American Karate Systems. That same year in 1997 Joe Jennings selected me to star in a jeet kune do video series called JKD: Scientific Street fighting. Some of the lessons from that series stayed on the Century Martial Arts Supply Top Ten videos list for over a decade. An unedited version of that series is available to view free on YouTube.
How was the way Joe explained and taught what he learnt from Bruce in those early days?
Joe trained seriously with Bruce Lee for roughly 18 months between 1968-1969. Joe quickly became Bruce Lee’s “test-tube” for jeet kune do. Everything Joe learned was tested, evolved and then tested again under the pressure of world-class competition. At Joe’s final conference in 2011 (he developed brain cancer and passed in August 2012) Linda Lee told the audience that Joe was at her house all the time because “Bruce and Joe were research partners. They were like two peas in a pod.” “They were so much alike”, she said.
Bruce and Joe shared a passion for training. Once a week Joe would pick up Bruce at his house, Bruce was a terrible driver so Joe refused to ride with him, and the two would go to one of the area Chuck Norris schools for Black Belt sparring night. Joe would spar everyone in attendance and Bruce would coach Joe.
There were a lot of local tournaments that Bruce and Joe attended together. Several 60s and 70s champions I interviewed recall seeing Joe and Bruce going over sparring strategies before the matches. And Joe and Bruce would often meet up at national tournaments where Joe was the defending champion and Bruce was the trainer to the defending champion. That was good publicity for Bruce and for Joe. The 1972 and 1973 International champions Darnell Garcia and John Natividad also told me they were present when Joe would bring Bruce to the weekly sparring sessions.
Chuck Norris and Jhoon Rhee, two personal friends to Bruce, were both making big money on the chain karate schools concept and in 1968 Bruce was seriously considering what that could mean monetarily for him and his family. Black Belt Hall of Famer Jerry Piddington and National Champion Jay T. Will, both were close friends to Joe Lewis, told me that it was well known in tournament circles that Bruce was training Joe to be the lead instructor when and if, he opened a chain of JKD schools. Ultimately Bruce chose acting over teaching.
Nevertheless, Joe Lewis was the recipient of a specialized and extensive education in jeet kune do. Bruce very much wanted Joe to identify his art as jeet kune do. Since 1983 I had been writing articles on Joe, Bruce and jeet kune do. I really tried to get into Joe’s brain so to speak. As a university-trained researcher, I cataloged my information and analyzed the content over and over again. I tested the methods, tried various approaches and arrived at critical conclusions. My office and classrooms at Radford University became my laboratory and I was paid by the university to do my best work. To earn university tenure and advance your position at a university you must successfully teach and publish and I worked my way to the top ranks of senior full professor.
From a philosophical perspective, wasn’t the JKD philosophy confusing to you?
The wording around the yin/yang symbol “using no way as way, having no limitation as limitation” is best translated for the Western mind as “the rule is; there are no rules”. That makes more sense. In his landmark 1971 article for Black Belt magazine Bruce Lee outlined the final phase of his JKD evolution. In the article, Liberate Yourself from Classical Karate Bruce Lee explained that he had not created a new art and that JKD was bound by no style. The JKD that intrigued me, the JKD that I have sought to understand is the 1971 version which I refer to as the Joe Lewis Method since this is the process that Joe and Bruce explored during their mutually beneficial research in 1968 and 1969. As Joe Lewis often said “Bruce would come up with the principle and I would pressure test it in world class competition”.
“Joe Lewis trained seriously with Bruce Lee for roughly 18 months between 1968- 1969. Joe quickly became Bruce Lee’s “test-tube” for jeet kune do. ”
What do you think are the most important principles in the art of JKD?
It is a universally accepted truth that Bruce taught different things to different people because different people had different wants and needs. As a result, we now have the Original jeet kune do method as presented in the 1967-1969 Chinatown curriculum which some refer to as Jun Fan Gung Fu. A post 1973 version of JKD is called the JKD Concepts as researched and presented by Bruce Lee’s protégé Dan Inosanto. The 1971 final phase version in the evolution of JKD can be best seen in the Joe Lewis Method. All three share the same root, but yield very different branches. In Joe Lewis Method of evidence-based JKD there are four primary principles.
#1 First one must train to maximize personal attributes. It is often said that Bruce was so quick and powerful that he could apply just about any kick or punch to score. Bruce would at times employ the karate-style reverse punch with such speed and timing that even though it represented a classical method, Bruce could make it work over and over again. Joe Lewis used only the side kick and Bruce’s forward hand strike to win countless titles. Strength and conditioning, attribute development represents an initial mandatory component to successful jeet kune do.
#2 Simplicity. Take 100+ techniques from as many arts as you wish to explore, test them in full contact sparring over and over again and you will discover that you really can count on only a few to work the best. Bruce first attempted to teach Joe, Mike Stone and Chuck Norris the wing chun kung fu skills like trapping. All three champions agreed that the skills were too complicated and too much emphasis was placed on the opponent to make the right moves. Both Bruce and Joe were boxing fans. They would watch boxing films over and over again to determine how each boxer would control the opponent’s set point. If the opponent isn’t set, he can’t deliver his best offense giving the opponent and advantage. Eventually Bruce and Joe agreed that the boxing footwork and methodology would best fit Joe’s needs. So, for offense Joe would rely on the jab, cross and hook. The back fist was delivered straight out, no chambering and with an emphasis on weapon first. So, Joe was very much delivering Bruce’s signature straight lead plus he would withdraw the strike like a traditional backfist so that the judges would recognize it as a backfist. He would deliver the technique so fast that the judges would only see the opponent’s reaction and the way the skill was returned.
#3 Interception. Jeet kune do can be translated as the way of the intercepting fist. I think it was Jerry Poteet who was one of the top jeet kune do instructors, that told the story of how Peter Lee, Bruce’s older brother and a champion fencer in his own right basically showed Bruce when Bruce was still a teen, that wing chun had its limitations. Peter had had his fill of Bruce’s bragging about wing chun so he challenged Bruce to a match. Each fighter would put the left hand behind the back and fight with only one hand. Using the fencing strategy and footwork Peter proceeded to slap Bruce at will. Bruce would remember the event as he later created his own art. Jeet kune do loosely means to “intercept” the opponent’s attack and Bruce Lee tells us that the higher form of jeet kune do is to intercept the opponent’s intention. Classical arts react to the opponent’s attack with predetermined responses. Lee is often quoted as saying, “To hell with circumstances, I create opportunities.” He may well have added, “To hell with reactions, I create intentions.” Here’s why:
Lee’s personal jeet kune do had a strong reliance on boxing-like mobility. From fencing Bruce adapted the concept of the dominant lead side, the interception and the all-important five ways of attack. Herein lies the essence of Bruce Lee’s final phase of jeet kune do. And, it’s what identifies the Joe Lewis method of JKD from the differing interpretations. JLM is 100% focused on discovering evidence-based knowledge. Previously JKD instructors have suggested that to intercept intention meant to look for certain movements, facial expressions, perhaps a twitching of the eye. In other words, they missed the point. Bruce and Joe determined that how better to intercept the opponent’s intention than to initiate the intention within the opponent? To do so requires superior speed and mobility.
Bruce adopted a strategy which included direct, indirect, immobilization, combination, and broken rhythm attacks. Each attack, when properly presented, would result in the opponent demonstrating “intent” to move, strike, or block in a specific and recognizable manner. Classical jeet kune do practitioners would readily point to the stop hit and HIA (hand immobilization attack) or trapping as an expression of interception as it applies to jeet kune do. But HIA is only one of the five ways of attack, and each way can be used to intercept intent. You can’t know that unless you experience it for yourself. And that requires that you suit up and freestyle spar. As you spar you are collecting evidence that what you are doing works for you.
I can create intent by way of my initial move. For example, if I convincingly fake a kick to your groin, I have created your intent to defend the groin! Knowing your intent to block low allows me the opportunity to intercept your intention and strike your unprotected face. If I quickly move in one direction, I have created your intent to follow. I may then disrupt the rhythm to allow for an unanticipated strike. And of course, I may combine several strikes (ABC) thus realizing your intent to block or move.
In the Joe Lewis method of evidence-based jeet kune do there are no limitations on how I may freely express myself. The Joe Lewis method is not about collecting techniques. It’s about the personal expression of techniques. Personal expression refers to how you as an individual can deliver the technique. The fight is won or lost not by selecting the right technique but by delivering the technique successfully. Any technique that misses the target or is too slow or too weak or not deceptive is always going to be less effective than the technique that hits its mark with proper power and speed. It’s the delivery or what Bruce would call, the personal expression, that makes the difference. Joe and Bruce worked closely together as “research partners”. Bruce would come up with the idea or hypothesis and Joe would test it to see if it worked. Together they would tweak the idea until they had what they wanted. Principles that could be and must be personally tested.
#4 Constant evidence-based testing is the fourth cornerstone. Bruce Lee said “there is nothing better than freestyle sparring in the practice of any combative art. In sparring you should wear suitable protective equipment and go all out. Then you can truly learn the correct timing and distance for the delivery of kicks and punches.” That’s the test. Gear up, and fight! On the one hand you have classical arts with kata, prearranged sparring and strict adherence to cultural norms. Truth in classical arts is typically provided in the form of antidotal evidence. In other words, we will hear how the master of the classical style once fought a bull and survived or broke stones with his bare hands or defeated an opposing army with just a stick and so on. The antidotal evidence is passed from one generation to the next without ever having been personally tested. And if the skill being taught is questioned a quick response is typically “If I hit you for real you may be paralyzed or killed.”
JKD represents the non-classical approach. Learn the skill, be disciplined in performing the skill as originally taught and then be ready to adapt and evolve the skill to reflect your personal expression. Here’s an example. In the 1970s groin kicks were often legal in competition. The fighters who had learned a classical front snap kick quickly evolved the kick in to a quick flip kick that was not chambered and independent of other movements.
As you spar you must include a degree of risk. If you get hit it hurts. Pain, as they say is an excellent teacher yet few want to take the class.
In sparring wear protective gear. You can start with light contact or low-risk sparring and advance to different degrees of contact until you feel comfortable with high risk. You can isolate the skills so that you are just boxing or just kickboxing or include clinch fighting, which I typically call “trapboxing”, or include all aspects including “dirty boxing” that is holding and hitting, sweeps, throws and takedowns. The more you engage in high-risk sparring the more you learn to perfectly express yourself. About 15 years ago I published a book called JKD: High-Risk Sparring which details scheduled advancements in sparring methods from low-risk to high-risk.
If you have to ‘describe” what is Jeet Kune Do, how would you do it?
Jeet kune do as identified by Bruce Lee is “scientific street-fighting”. Bottom line is that JKD must follow the science. It must be based on acquiring personal evidence-based experience of what works for the individual. It can’t be mass produced. Yes, it is useful to read about science but equally if not, more important we must practice the science. The Joe Lewis Method promotes evidence-based scientific testing as the focal point. Reading science and collecting information on science does not make your art scientific. Testing the hypothesis, your best guess on what may or may not work, makes you a scientist. JKD values simplicity and testing allows you absorb what works for you, and what does not.
Keep the skills that are tested. Catalog the skills that are not tested. Bruce Lee told us that full-contact sparring with protective gear is the highest form of training in JKD. Sparring is the fire that burns away that which is not essential. But sparring has to be for real, with real intent to do harm and real consequences for failure. In return you develop real knowledge. Knowledge that is earned and not just learned. I can’t overemphasize this fact. The skills that you personally and frequently test and evolve become your personal expression of JKD. The skills that you collect and never test become your personal collection of skills and drills.
It is written – by the founder himself – that JKD was essentially wing chun, boxing and Western Fencing. Would you please elaborate how these methods became the foundation for Lee’s art of JKD?
You have to consider the fact that in reality the strict reliance on wing chun failed Bruce Lee when he fought the challenge match with Wong Jack Man. In Bruce’s experience, the recognized failure and limitations of wing chun was the primary reason Bruce developed jeet kune do. According to the Bruce Lee foundation Bruce was moving away from an identification with wing chun and many say he abandoned any affiliation with wing chun.
You could say the first phase of jeet kune do was modified wing chun the second phase began when Bruce introduced the full contact evidence-based sparring. For example, in the scientific method you begin with a question. Why did the wing chun not work? Was it too structured? How could you make it better? You form an educated guess or what we call the hypothesis. Then you must test the hypothesis. The testing is paramount to the development of the second stage of jeet kune do. Bruce sparred with his own students to gain some information or data. But Bruce also had the advantage of having Joe Lewis as a research partner. Bruce was justifiably proud of Joe. The legendary screenwriter Stirling Silliphant said that Bruce Lee personally told him that his student Joe Lewis was the greatest tournament fighter in the history of the sport. Joe Lewis was an undisputed world champion and he was without question the best fighter ever trained by Bruce Lee.
“I learned to train for skills and not arts. I began to train for situations and not styles. ”
Joe would purposefully take the principled skills or methods to be tested to tournaments where he would face a highly skilled opponent who was intent on winning by kicking Joe’s butt. That added a new dimension to the experiments. The end result was that Joe and Bruce could analyze their findings, some things worked some didn’t. They could then develop a new theory on how to intercept the opponent’s intention and win the fight. I think Bruce’s final phase of jeet kune do became more conceptualized after Bruce began the serious study of Jiddu Krishnamurti in 1970 and penned his final treatise on jeet kune do in the 1971 article for Black Belt magazine. And of course, after July 1973 Bruce could make no changes in the jeet kune do.
So, it must have occurred to Bruce by 1971, and maybe due in part by his study of Jiddu Krishnamurti, that trying to create a new style based on the old classical premise that a master could develop a set of skills that would work for or transfer to anyone was a shortsighted idea. Bruce could lead you down the path to self-discovery, self-knowledge but he couldn’t make you evolve unless you tested his theory yourself. That’s why I employ the term “evidence-based” to infer that you the individual must personally test your skills. You only experience the final phase jeet kune do when you engage in personally testing your skills over and over again. This is the Joe Lewis method. The principles of the art need not change. You will always have the same variables: you have to be able to kick to the front, the side, hook, maintain constant mobility, use your boxing style strikes, develop attributes etc.
Not unlike boxing with the hands and feet, Bruce Lee’s final phase jeet kune do and this is what I have termed the Joe Lewis Method since Joe Lewis was the only one of Bruce’s original students to carry on this line of thought, consisted of a few simple striking skills including kicking to the front, kicking to the side and kicking in a round or hooking motion. The front kick could be turned outward to use as a stop kick. The side kick could be used as a spin side or back kick and other variations could be employed. Similarly, hand strikes included striking with the forward fist, hitting with the reverse hand and using the hand to hook around, up or back. Both Bruce and Joe liked the jab or lead hand strike using the vertical fist or fingertips, cross and hook, the uppercut and back fist. Bruce also liked to use the straight blast chain punching in close. Joe preferred the boxing blast often called a “shoeshine.” In competition Lewis relied heavily on just the lead leg side kick and lead side vertical fist.
When Bruce said jeet kune do could be all arts but bound by none he meant that since all arts include a front, side, and round kick of sorts, the essence of jeet kune do could be found in all arts yet his method, the way he preferred to express his skill was bound by no classical method. Shotokan, taekwondo and jeet kune do are three very different arts. Each art incorporates a front kick. However, shotokan and taekwondo have a pronounced way that they must follow to perform the kick. Jeet kune do, on the other hand has no limitations on how the skill may be performed. It may resemble shotokan or any other version or be completely unique to the fighter. When this principle is understood it becomes evident that Bruce did not create a new “form” or “style.” He simply used already existing skills with his unique expression or presentation. “The height of cultivation leads to simplicity, the ability to express the utmost with the minimum,” said Lee.
I am going to refer to a statement I made in a publication a few years ago. The evidence-based jeet kune do fighter’s basic battery is simple, 4 or 5 hand strikes, 4 or 5 kicks and no limitations on how the fighter may personally express himself with said fundamentals. Bruce Lee was fond of saying, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”. Here’s why. The unique quality of final phase jeet kune do or JLM can be found in the simplicity of the fighter’s uncompromised mobility evidenced in his mastery of the 5 ways to intercept the opponent’s intention and the constant development of the fighter’s efforts to enhance speed, power, timing, accuracy, and deception. Every skill is tested until only a few techniques are preferred.
A martial art is basically a combination of hypothesis, many of which are completely untested. Perhaps, and this applies to most martial arts, a master at one time discovered that if an opponent performs a certain attack, then there is a perfect answer. Why? Because the master at one time was successful in answering an attack with a certain response. There are stories of certain cultures being undefeated because they used certain skills or certain weapons and therefore it is assumed that if I use the same type of skills or weapons, I too can defeat my opponent. Thus, a preliminary theory is developed but still, it has to be tested by each individual. Joe and Bruce felt they must test their skills to develop evidence-based knowledge and the best way to do that and the only legal way to do that was to fight with full contact and with intent to do harm while wearing protective gear.
How has the JKD philosophy influenced your training in other arts?
I learned to train for skills and not arts. I began to train for situations and not styles. Although I learned from several styles, I eventually became no style. To me a punch is just a punch and there are many successful ways to perform a punch. People that are members of a “style” have been conditioned to think there is only one correct way to perform a particular kick or punch. There is a difference between expressing an art or style and perfectly expressing yourself. One is imitation the other is transcendence. I often quote Bruce Lee’s phrase that goes like this, “Before I learned the art, a punch was just a punch, and a kick, just a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick, no longer a kick. Now that I understand the art, a punch is just a punch, and a kick is just a kick.”
You will never understand the evidence-based final phase AKA the Joe Lewis Method jeet kune do until you embrace this basic concept. A front kick by any other name is still an act of kicking to the front. Your front kick may look different than mine and if my version is faster, stronger, and more deceptive what your front kick is called, where it originated, just doesn’t matter. The Joe Lewis Method of JKD is the essence, “the thusness,” as Bruce Lee told Joe Lewis and is therefore not a style.
The goal of the Joe Lewis Method of jeet kune do is to evolve into no art at all. You can’t just “practice jeet kune do: you must “experience” jeet kune do. Each experience can be slightly different. And my experience may differ from your experience. Let’s suppose you have a person, a cigarette and a lighter. Those are the components of smoking but just collecting the components does not equal “smoking.” Only when you light the cigarette and put it to your mouth and inhale then exhale do you have “smoking.” Smoking is an experience. And again, my experience may differ from yours.
And of course, we “experience” JKD while fighting. Lee called this process “to use no way as way”. A punch is a punch, a kick is a kick. Sparring sessions can include sweeps and throws, elbows, headbutts and knees. Adaptation is experienced and refined in the contact sparring. In the final phase of the evolution of jeet kune do the art is always simple and direct. “Efficiency is anything that scores,” said Lee. Bruce Lee used the term “dissecting the corpse” to identify the way the classical martial artists (including the classical practice of jeet kune do) create, catalog, and rehearse a new technique for every possible self-defense situation. “It is halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation,” said Lee. They collect skills and rehearse drills for every conceivable altercation. This is why Lee abandoned the original curriculum and disbanded with prejudice the teaching of said method.
Self-defense is most always spontaneous and unrehearsed. Lee and Lewis believed that a few often-tested skills delivered the right way was the best approach to scientific self-defense. However, you will reach this final phase jeet kune do only after engaging in endless rounds of Bruce Lee’s all-out contact testing method. The more you test and refine, the more you evolve your personal expression of final phase jeet kune do. When you continually test and refine your skills you discover that simplicity trumps complexity and that freedom to personally express yourself is more valued than “groupthink”.
“Bruce did not expect to die in 1973. The Chinatown school had been closed for almost three years. It is not fair to say that this person is sole heir while others receive nothing.”
Dan Inosanto, Ted Wong, Joe Lewis, etc.…all were Bruce Lee’s students but their “product” seems to be very different one from each other. Why do you think is that?
Well, you have a master teacher and aficionado and a fighter. Of course, their wants and needs will be different. Bruce Lee was talented enough to design his JKD to be specific to the individual. Dan, the teacher knows so much about so many martial arts he can forever keep you spell bound with his flow from art to art. Dan helped structure the Chinatown curriculum and taught 90% of the classes. Ted represented a pristine, uncompromised look at JKD as Bruce was developing his art in the late 1960s. And in Joe Lewis we see the fighting art of JKD taken to its apex, fully tested and modeled to perfectly suit the individual fighter. Bruce’s advanced JKD theory and Joe’s natural attributes and zest for testing his skills created a fighter the likes of which had never been seen before the 1970s. And interestingly enough Dan, Ted and Joe were each taught privately by Bruce in separate locations. In other words, one did not influence the development of the other. Put another way no cross referencing and no cross contamination.
Bruce passed away unexpectedly so he did not have an “heir” for his Martial Arts legacy, in fact he wanted to break away from all schools he previously had. What is your opinion of how the art developed after Bruce’s death?
Obviously, Bruce did not expect to die in 1973. The Chinatown school had been closed for almost three years. It is not fair to say that this person is sole heir while others receive nothing. Certainly, we can agree that Dan is heir to the Chinatown JKD and Concepts method, while Ted is heir to Bruce’s personal JKD and Joe is heir to the final phase of JKD. Three very different personalities and three very different but valid approaches to the understanding of Bruce Lee’s art.
JOE LEWIS
THE JKD PREMIER FIGHTER
By Dr. Jerry Beasley
In 1967, the JKD names that we know and respect today – Bruce Lee, Ted Wong, Dan Inosanto, etc – went virtually unnoticed in the great sphere amen as martial arts, And although Lee had gained some identity as a fictional martial arts hero, his true celebrity status among martial artists was, at best, only beginning. The “gods of the arena” in the late 1960s were the tournament champions best known as the “golden boys” of a bygone era. Joe Lewis, Chuck Norris, and Mike Stone were champions whose reputations as effective fighters were seldom questioned.
Lewis, Norris, and Stone each worked with Bruce Lee, but it was Lewis who spent the most time and unquestionably gained the more innovative insights from Lee. Before and after he created full-contact karate/ kickboxing in 1970, Lewis was the most feared fighter of his day. It was because of his tournament reputation that Lee approached Lewis with the idea of the two working together. And for the next few years, the two enjoyed a close relationship.
When Joe worked with Bruce, according to Ted Wong, “Bruce would teach a technique or theory and Joe would put it to the test, “earning Joe the title: “Bruce Lee’s Test Tube.”
In 1970 and 1971 Joe defended his “kickboxing” title 10 times with 10 wins by the KO. No opponent made it past the second round. At the time Joe Lewis was the most dominant fighter in his field and was the only martial arts competitor to be featured in “Sports Illustrated.”
The circumstances and effects of Lewis’ personal involvement with Bruce Lee have as yet never been fully explained. In this interview – originally conducted in the 1980s we asked Joe about his work with Bruce Lee – the readers will learn how Lewis’ friendship with Lee both began and ended.
“I think Bruce wanted the prestige of being able to say that he was a master and that his students were national champions.”
Q: When did you first hear of Bruce Lee?
A: I met Bruce the first time at the Mayflower Hotel, he and I were both guests at the 1967 U.S. National Championships in Washington, D.C. I met him in the lobby. He came up and introduced himself to me, I was defending champion of the tournament. Robert Culp from the “I Spy” series and Bruce Lee from “The Green Hornet” series were the other two invited guests. I was with Bob Wall at the time we met him, Then the next time I met Bruce Lee was at the Black Belt magazine office in Southern California. As I left the building, I was walking out into the parking lot to get into my car and Bruce Lee came outside and called me over in the parking lot and reintroduced himself, saying he wanted to talk to me. I sat there and listened to him and he started to pitch me on becoming my instructor. He talked to me and showed me all these different moves.
Then the next time I crossed paths with him was after Mike Stone started taking some lessons with Bruce. Mike Stone, Bob Wall, and I had been putting together this nightclub act. It was just some entertainment stuff. We’d show up and we’d pick on Bob Wall and tell jokes and do some self-defense techniques and then Mike Stone and I would spar. Mike Stone started telling us about this guy Bruce Lee who was phenomenal – all the different techniques he was doing. I had a lot of respect for what Mike believed in because he didn’t believe in much of anything. So, for him to compliment some- body unknown like Bruce Lee was strange. As a matter of fact, I can’t remember ever hearing Mike Stone compliment anyone. So, to hear him compliment someone for a change was very strange.
I can’t remember exactly how, but a few weeks after that, Bruce and I got together and started working out. This was in 1968, right before I sold my karate studio to Chuck Norris – very early in 1968. It was interesting because I won 11 straight tournaments – consecutive tournaments – after I started working with Bruce Lee. It was like no one could beat me. “The Green Hornet” series had only run one year and he was drawing residuals off that. I think he told me he was getting about $15,000 a year of that and that was what he was living on. And then from time to time he would do private lessons, He said he had about seven private lesson students and guys like Stirling Silliphant, James Coburn and Joe Hyams… he would charge them $500 for a ten-lesson course and he would always get it in advance. I don’t know how active he was at teaching because charging $50 an hour back in those days wouldn’t bring in that many students. I was charging $25 back then but I didn’t have that many students paying me $25 an hour. So, I’d go to his house once a week usually on Friday or Saturday. We’d set up an appointment schedule on Wednesdays at first but after that I would just show up or call first. Or we would meet somewhere else. Sometimes even during tournaments. I had a key to the Chuck Norris school that Bob and I had owned so sometimes we would meet there. I taught a lot of my private lessons there too.
Q: Did you pay him?
A: No. I think he wanted the prestige of being able to say that he was a master and that his students were national champions. At the time, I think he was about 27 years old or so. He was two years older than I was and he didn’t get a lot of respect because of his age I mean, from the kung-fu world. He wanted to be considered a master and when they wouldn’t call him that, it really hurt his feelings. He didn’t get any respect from the kung-fu masters during that time. He didn’t believe in the system of having to pay your dues or waiting for a certain length of time. He felt that he had the knowledge then and had the ability and he just never used that term, “paying your dues.” I don’t, either, so I don’t relate to it. At the US Nationals in DC in 1968 Bruce was there, we talked strategy for a while and warmed up. Then I went out and won the tournament as the defending champion. Bruce was at ringside so when they called me up to accept the trophy, I just naturally pointed to Bruce to come up with me. He liked that. That was like payback.
Q: He could have entered tournaments and built a reputation like you did.
A: No. He didn’t like the tournament fighting because he thought it was all silly. Of course, most of the kung-fu guys said that. So, I went along with that aspect. We started working together at least once a week or more. Bruce really inspired my mind and gave me confidence which in turn gave me a superior edge and made me more deceptive. A lot of times after a match guys would come up to me and say, “Joe, you hit me so fast, what did you hit me with.” That was the result of initiating the weapon first as an independent motion which allowed me to bridge the gap before my opponent could get set and make adjustments. That was the result of working with Bruce. It had never been seen before in tournament competition.
I feel like guys could see a change in my style after working with Bruce for most of 1968. They would ask me “What are you getting out of those kung-fu lessons?” Kung-fu got no respect back then. So, I agreed to hold a seminar at the US Karate Championships in Dallas to show them what Bruce was showing me. You could say that was the first ever public jeet kune do seminar ever given to the karate world.
Q: Is that what you learned at the workouts?
A: They weren’t workouts. They were teaching exchange sessions. One of the things he got from me was that I taught him a lot about vitamins and nutrients – like protein powders and things like that, And I showed him some different exercises with weights to build his body up because he was really self-conscious about his narrow chest. He had a flat rib cage and his legs were really skinny and that kind of bugged him. He wanted some meat on his body. He was 5-foot-7 and weighed about 135 at that time, and he had been lifting for a while. He was really strong, but he just had no muscle mass. And that comes from just not eating. He showed me a lot of fighting principles and, primarily, he added mobility to what I was doing. He helped me concentrate a lot more on exploding on my initial move (which I was doing anyway), but he made me more cognizant of it. Here’s an example: We were taught to explode on the side stance with the side kick in Okinawa. Well, he sees me fighting in tournaments and he sees that I’m exploding and I’m blasting that side kick in there. I know they didn’t teach a side kick in wing chun, but I go to his house and here’s this little sucker blasting the side kick at this bag and I’m saying, “Well, it’s just like mine,” you know, and then he’s trying to tell me how to improve my side kick. I’ve already won a national championship, kicking everybody’s butts with the thing, but what he says to me improved my confidence. It enabled me to better identify what I was doing. I was just intuitively doing something and he was able to give a label to it.
Now obviously, he had to get a majority of what he knew from other sources because he didn’t go out on the tournament floor and do it himself. Therefore, where did he get it from? That’s what creativity is all about – taking something from one source and something from another source and putting it together, So, that’s what he was doing. Nothing wrong with that. I was curious as to how he could help me. Because of Bruce I added different things to the techniques that I was already doing, I was trying to maximize the effectiveness of my movements. The way I could do that was not so much in focusing on techniques, but on adding new dimensions to the techniques I already knew, to become more deceptive. A lot of his ideas came from Fencing manuals. I think his brother was a fencer, too, and he picked up a lot of movements there. Plus, he was a very good dancer and a lot of his ability with footwork came from that. Primarily, he emphasized footwork to me and the importance of using distance, deception and mobility against an opponent.
Q: But you never sparred with him?
A: No. Well, he never really sparred anybody when I was around. We put gloves and head gear on at times and we’d do a couple of drills, but not real sparring where you go three minutes and rest a minute, three minutes and rest a minute . . . he was not in my weight class. I weighed about 196 at the time, and there was a period when I got over 200 pounds when I was working with him, But, no, we never really sparred. He would only do the drills, kind of controlled sparring, back then. I always called it controlled, or academic, sparring, but it’s not sparring – not in the sense of almost fighting or where one guy wins the other guy loses.
“One of the things Bruce got from me was that I taught him a lot about vitamins and nutrients – like protein powders and things like that.”
Q: Did he teach you the concept of the angles of attack that you made famous?
A: He came up with the terms “direct” and “indirect” angular attack and the term “broken rhythm.” which applies to the footwork. At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate it yet because he presented it in terms of kung-fu. So, what I did was use the principle, the conceptual part, and I created my own movements for it. I learned the fakes on my own – mainly by going into boxing gyms and just looking at myself in the mirror and being realistic about how to move. I tried to figure out ways of identifying broken rhythm and set point control in the tournament sense. You see, kung-fu techniques are so different than tournament techniques. So yes, Bruce coached me on the ideas and then I went out and made them work.
Q: Are you saying he showed you kung-fu techniques to explain his ideas and that you did not relate to the kung-fu?
A: Yeah. Of course. He didn’t box using the orthodox Western boxing. This was 1968 so he boxed using the vertical fist. The hands – one fist in front of the other in front of his chin – were from the wing chun kung-fu chain punching. In Western boxing you keep a horizontal fist instead of a vertical fist, and you keep your hands on each side of your head to guard against the hook. In other words, you guard the sides of your head not the front of it. So that’s one aspect of what he was doing that I didn’t think I could relate to. He believed in putting the power side forward. In other words, if you are right-handed, you put the right side forward. Well, the theory worked very well, but one thing he lacked was sufficient experience. A lot of his knowledge came out of books and manuals and his own abstract thinking and, of course, controlled sparring. But, like I said, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just that I see fighting as bone against bone, the art of drawing blood. I never got the feeling that Bruce was a violent person or that he really enjoyed street fighting. I am sure he could fight. I just never saw him do it.
Q: Why do you think Bruce was so interested in fighting arts if he, as you say, did little competitive fighting? Was it that kung-fu wasn’t popular in the 1960s?
A: I could only conjecture on that. I can only assume that he felt very undernourished in some respects. He felt very invisible and very misunderstood by people around him. I felt that he needed attention – a sense of people looking at him and feeling that he was significantly meaningful in some respects. In other words, could he and did he affect other people? And he didn’t want to be looked at as a kung-fu expert. That was the label he had and it was hard for him to shake. He was hurt personally when he tried to get the “Kung Fu” television series and didn’t get the role. He experienced a lot of rejection and that added to and complicated his problem, I think. I call it a problem because I think it was. I think Bruce was very charming and very friendly and all the things you might like in a person, but I think a lot of it came out of his being starved for just some love from other people. I don’t think he got a lot of it.
Q: Do you consider yourself a Bruce Lee student?
A: I do. Bruce and I trained together. We spent family time together. We were good friends because we liked the same things like martial arts, acting and bodybuilding and nutrition.
Q: When you started the kickboxing in 1970, were you still in contact with Bruce Lee?
A: Not really. We weren’t exactly speaking to each other at that time although he did call me in late 1970 or first part of 1971 when he wanted me for a role in a kung-fu movie he was producing.
Q: What do you mean?
A: It all began in the summer of 1969. I went to the International Karate Championships in Long Beach. He was seated at ringside and we talked a little strategy before the matches. That particular morning when I came in there to sign up for the fight, after I had gone through eliminations, they handed me this application. I never used to fill out these applications to fight in tournaments, so I said, “Screw them.” They still handed me the application – with all this nonsense stuff on it, like what sex are you, who is your instructor, what rank are you, what school are you from . . . I thought, “Hey man, I’ve got on a black belt and you’ve got my five bucks. Just let me fight.” I always just put my name on the applications and signed – and that’s it. I wouldn’t give them all that information. To me, it was just no one’s business who my instructor was, what school I was from, or what rank I was. But that particular day they insisted that I fill it out. I put down my karate instructor was John Korab because John Korab was the guy who taught me how to spar. So, I put Okinawa-te as the style. I never thought of putting Bruce Lee as my instructor or jeet kune do as my style since it was a karate tournament. Bruce would always ask me to go out and tell people that he was my instructor which I did. He wanted the publicity. Maybe there was a sense that I didn’t want to let everyone think I was giving credit to kung-fu because everyone knew that Bruce was a kung-fu instructor. Some of the guys had kidded me about that before and there was still real competition between styles back then and no one related to kung-fu. I don’t know. I guess also Bruce and I were both a little immature and childish back then.
Well, that night I got up there to fight and I won the Internationals grand championship. Just before my match, the announcer on the microphone says, “Joe Lewis, his instructor – John Korab, his style – Okinawa te.” They had never done that at a tournament before – read all that stuff off. Well, I didn’t think anything of it. I found out later, through the grapevine, that it really upset Bruce Lee — that it just blew him away. And he called me a punk because of that. Those were his exact words. He thought that was real low-down and punkish-childish of me. And I thought, “Why did he take what that announcer said as an attack against him?” I could never put that together and I didn’t know how to communicate back in those days or think in a socially mature manner, so all I could do was either get real upset and attack somebody or just turn around and walk away. We still were friends because he wouldn’t tell me he was mad because of that. I was married at that time and Bruce and I were seeing each other quite a bit socially.
“Bruce felt very invisible and very misunderstood by people around him. I felt that he needed attention – a sense of people looking at him and feeling that he was significantly meaningful in some respects. ”
So, my wife went over there to fix his hair one time right after Thanksgiving 1969. She was going to streak his hair. She was always trying to separate me from all my friends – all of them – because she wanted me 100 percent to herself. So, she would always conjure up stories to separate us. Well, I didn’t figure that out until it was too late. She came back from fixing Bruce’s hair and said he had made a pass at her. Her description of the incident was a little more detailed than that. It’s been years and I can’t fully remember it, but it made me mad. And I knew Bruce was a big flirt so what she was telling me could have been for real. I had just gotten back from a photo session, I was wearing a suit and tie, so I went up to Bruce Lee’s house and knocked on the door because I partly wanted to kick his butt. Another part of me said to be cool, be a gentleman. I had mixed feelings about it. Anyway, I knocked on the door. Linda answered the door and she called Bruce, Bruce came to the screen door but didn’t open it. I just talked to him through the screen. I said, “I want to talk to you.” He said, “Yeah, about what?” I said, “Well, Suzanne told me that you made a pass at her.” He just acted like he was shocked, like it was ridiculous. He said, “Linda, come here. Tell Linda what you just said.” Then I started feeling like a fool – like, hey, I didn’t expect that reaction. He caught me off guard and I had just embarrassed myself in front of Bruce and Linda. I thought if it was true he would get upset and jump out there and he and I would have it out yelling at each other. But no, they just told me to take off and I took off and I never saw him again. Bruce moved to Hong Kong so we couldn’t get together after that. In other words, with the help of the announcer at the karate tournament and with the help of my ex-wife, my relationship with Bruce Lee was pretty much over.
I had a phone conversation with him once or twice after that about being in his movie but I was advised not to do it because the karate chain I was working for at the time told me it would look bad for the world heavyweight karate champion to get beaten up by a little kung-fu guy. I told Bruce that and he basically called me a punk. And that’s when he told me that I had not given him proper credit for being my instructor. After he died, I just stayed out of the picture.
Q: With respect to him?
A: Yeah. I just didn’t need my name being associated with his anymore. I felt like he was who he was and doing his thing and that I was who I was, and I didn’t want people to think I had to lean on him. After he died, I heard a film producer in Hollywood say, “His death was like a $2 million publicity campaign.” And Warner Brothers milked it for all it was worth.
Believe me, all those stories and junk coming out about him dying by a delayed death touch and all that stuff was all made up. It was nonsense. I don’t think there was anybody in Hong Kong who could have nailed him with a punch, anyway. By kung-fu standards, he was a god; he was the superior master. I always tried to protect Bruce behind his back. As long as he was alive, people put him down — I mean everybody. And as soon as he died, everybody started talking good about him. “Oh, yeah, I knew Bruce Lee.” “Oh, yeah, Bruce Lee and I were friends.” And those who talked good when he was still alive switched on him when he died. They started putting him down. I never understood that. I always remained consistent. If I felt that I couldn’t afford to tell the truth, I just kept my mouth shut. Like a lot of times when I would be asked in interviews whether Bruce Lee was my instructor, I would just say no. I didn’t want to deal with it because I knew that I was going to get into all these issues that I don’t want to talk about. For a while, people would ask me how Bruce would rate as a fighter. Well, I am a fighter, so I can make my evaluations objectively. Even so, whenever I would say something about Bruce that someone didn’t like, personality would be read into it. I say if you don’t want the truth, don’t ask for it.
“We would study the strategies of different fighters on film. We learned to identify the set point, like when the fighter was ready and when he wasn’t. I thought it was the greatest life that ever existed!”
Q: Bruce Lee closed his jeet kune do school in January 1970. That same month you created the first kickboxing match. Where did you get the idea to fight full contact?
A: Bruce had us wearing boxing gloves and headgear. Even though we weren’t doing freestyle, everything was taught in the form of a drill like I throw a jab and you respond with a slip, hook to the body and hook to the head. I guess you could say Bruce Lee is the unofficial Grandfather of American kickboxing. His guys were sparring with the gear too. When I was in Okinawa, we sometimes put on the kendo armor and fought. I liked the idea of fighting for real, fighting until one guy quits. I was tired of fighting in competition and then have the referee tell me I hit too hard or having a guy scoring a point on me for just waving his foot and getting close to making contact. I had intended to call my new sport Joe Lewis-Style Self-defense just for the publicity but that night the ring announcer saw the boxing gloves and started calling the event kickboxing. The name kickboxing stuck so I just went with it. At first, it was what I had been teaching in private lessons and to some extent what I had learned from Bruce. In fact, in the first event I won with a right hook downstairs and follow up with a double hook up top just like Bruce and I had worked on.
Q: Do you feel like Bruce Lee showed you a lot about fighting?
A: Yes, he was a very good teacher. He had hundreds of books in all the different dialects of Chinese – of all the fighting artists that he had read about. He read about Wrestling and he read about boxing, He had hundreds of boxing manuals – Western boxing. And he had dozens and dozens of films on fighters. We used to just sit down and analyze each film. Some of our favorites were Muhammad Ali, Jack Dempsey, those types. We would study the strategies of different fighters on film. We learned to identify the set point, like when the fighter was ready and when he wasn’t. Once a fighter gets set you could lose really fast if you didn’t immediately block, move or fire a shot. Then we would go to tournaments and we would watch guys fight and we would analyze them together. I was like the test tube. I would go out and get in the street fight or I’d go out in a tournament and I’d prove whether it worked or not. You can’t have a better setup than that. We would watch boxing on TV and do the same thing. So, it’s like a research laboratory. I thought it was the greatest life that ever existed, And I don’t think there was ever anything like it before or ever will be again.
About the Author
Dr. Jerry Beasley is the professor emeritus of Asian Martial Arts at Virginia’s Radford University where he taught for over 40 years. A personal jeet kune do student under Joe Lewis, Dr. Beasley is the only person authorized by Lewis (1993) to teach the jeet kune do strategies and principles. He is currently promoting the Joe Lewis Method of jeet kune do. You can reach him at www.Aikia.net