Messrs. Bee and Gee, Part II (Enter the Mind of the Dragon Wannabe)

July 5, 2000

THEN Lee died and on the third frame he rose again. And he has been resurrected every time a Lee movie festival or Beta, VHS, laser disc, VCD, and DVD of his movies are played. Van Damme has expressed his gratitude to Lee for giving him a career in the movies, giving the genre a full leg-split and palm-strike spin of his own. The hedonistic Lamaist Seagal is more self-centered and has never laid a josh stick before the Altar of Lee.

Stories have circulated in Hollywood and US martial arts circles of Seagal bragging of his ability to get out of any hold or evade any attempt of grabbing him. Mouthing off before a bunch of veteran stuntmen in the set of his movie (must have been Hard to Kill), Seagal challenged those present to test him. A fiftyish 250-pound white guy volunteered to find out if Seagal could walk his talk. He got Seagal in a standing rear-naked chokehold and in about four seconds, Nico the Glimmer Man passed out. End of lesson.

After Mr. Seagal came to, the crew had packed up. He stood up and silently went back to his trailer to sulk and re-examine his skills. Many years after Bruce Lee died, reports alleged that the venerable Lee lost an abbreviated fight in similar circumstances that Seagal had embarrassed himself. Another venerable martial artist, “Judo” Gene LeBelle, did the honor of making Lee realize he was mortal.

There were no challenges made, just professional disagreement on how the stunts should be performed and how the stuntmen should earn their pay during the shooting of an episode of the Green Hornet. Le Belle, being stunt coordinator, told Lee, playing Kato in the TV series, that the stunts he had in mind were too dangerous and he wouldn’t allow his fall guys to be put at more risk than necessary. One strong word after another and the bulky LeBelle had Lee in a vise-like ju-ji-gatame (cross arm-lock). End of argument.

Lee was obsessed with that humiliation and he looked for ways to counter the technique. That obsession extended to his movies: in The Chinese Connection, he bites Mike Stone’s leg to free himself from a stomach-down cross-arm lock; while in the opening sequence of Enter the Dragon, it is Lee’s turn to get Samo Hung in an armlock and Hung doesn’t have the luxury of biting any of Lee’s legs as Lee performs the submission hold from behind.

Lee got over his initial reservations and fears by practicing and expanding on his martial arts knowledge. Mr. Bee, on the other hand, is not Seagal. Was not and never will be. In the first place, he doesn’t know aikido. But he is like Seagal because he had gotten a resounding defeat by being knocked out reportedly by an elbow to the chin from a muay Thai stylist, whom Mr. Bee challenged to a fight after he learned that the muay Thai guy wasn’t impressed by his loud-mouth ways. That abbreviated encounter was supposedly recorded for posterity on a hand-held video camera by the minions of Mr. Bee.

His troubles really started when he decided to go on his own and teach what he had learned. He has the agility and crowd-pleasing moves, the propensity for self-serving myth making and not much of anything else.

Chinese martial arts teachers have a time-honored tradition of “protecting the (rice) bowl,” of not teaching everything to their students, an insurance that if their students go open schools of their own, the original teacher still has more in his course curriculum. Or if any of the students get too confident and challenges the teacher, the latter still has an advantage in knowledge and technique.
Mr. Bee obviously has not learned this and he has no right to teach before he learns what he needs to learn first.