Bruce Campbell owns them both. His chin alone is the deciding factor.

Perfecting a martial art and displaying your talent are two different things. His philosophy started the entire mma thing, but he never really fought anybody ever so we can't really decide how well he actually can fight. Yes he was just an actor, an actor with good philosophy on fighting, but an actor nonetheless.

Quotehe never really fought anybody ever...he was just an actor

No. That statement is actually the opposite of true. See, this is why I told you to learn something about the man before spouting this crap. It's painfully obvious you don't know anything at all about Bruce Lee. He was a big competitive martial artist long before he ever got into making movies. There were other competitive martial artists who would say the same things about him, that he couldn't possibly have any real skill if he's also an actor, and Lee's response was usually to offer them a chance to prove their point. He kicked their asses.

God damn it, Ocelot. If you're going to continue to post things that are entirely untrue, I'm going to have to assume that you're just trolling. If that's not the case, then I would suggest that the next time you try to make a bold statement of fact that you make at least a cursory attempt to find out whether or not what you're saying has any relationship to factual reality.

Quote from: Ocelot on June 29, 2009, 03:08:09 AM
He never really fought anybody

Behold! Wikipedia delivers! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_lee#Fights

Sorry Ocelot, you're wrong.

Quote from: Phatman_Dover on June 21, 2009, 06:04:51 PM
On that note Bruce Lee is more badass since Norris studied under him.

But a student could surpass his master given enough training and experience, and a "higher cap" on how strong he can get.

Not in this case though. Bruce Lee's abilities border on the godly. He would leave no one standing, even Norris. :3

And some of you, quit trying to suggest that actors can't fight. The WWF guys are actors, but that doesn't change the fact they can often lift 500+ pounds and kick down solid doors. Sometimes a guy like Lee needs money and has to do a few movies or TV shows.

Do not feed the trolls, please. They love the whorish attention.

Ok well i suppose i judged to hastily on the subject just its not the fact that he's an actor that i believed he wasn't able to fight. It was the fact that he never went against anybody that was really notable on being a good fighter as well. If he had fought somebody like Muhammad Ali and won then yeah he would have got his props from me. I just don't buy into the whole "He was the best" deal that surrounds him simply because he never really proved it he did his career and was very good at it. iIam a fan of his just not because of his "mystical" fighting abilities, but because he was a pretty cool guy in movies.

You know what if that doesn't satisfy and you still want to go on about how he was a "insanely skilled competitive fighter" then show me a fight.

I invite you to conduct your own google search. I don't believe there were many videos made of his competitive fights, but there were some, I believe. The most common videos are strength and speed demonstrations, in which you can see him move blindingly fast and hit ridiculously hard. He was freakishly athletic. If you search, you can probably even find the one where he punches a guy, giving his fist less than a foot of travel between rest and the strike, and knocks the guy back several feet.

It seems like you've already come to your conclusion before doing any research, though, believing that without him competing in a commercial tournament against paid athletes who are sufficiently famous, he could not possibly be on par with your favorite branded fighters. That's fine. Odds are nobody here is going to be able to sway you, and there's no way to prove that Bruce Lee in his prime could tear apart "Rampage" Jackson, "The Spider" Silva, "The Dragon" Machida, or whoever.

If you're genuinely interested, there's a wealth of information on the internet that's very easy to find. Seeing as the thread is one-half about him, I think that this thread is likely to continue "[going] on about how he was [an] 'insanely skilled competitive fighter'" without necessarily obligating anyone to prove anything with primary source material. If anything, I'm curious to see whether any of the top MMA competitors are capable of half the physical feats Bruce Lee was known to do.

Bruce Lee yes.
Wasn't there an instance back in the day when even the laughable Jackie Chan was on the set of a Bruce Lee movie as an extra and got into an argument with chcuk Norris and ended up knocking him out? i remember hearing/reading something about that...

I think mostly the argument i used to hear people arguing about was Jet Li vs Bruce Lee...

I just remembered something relevant:

A friend of mine told me that he saw an interview with Bruce Lee where he said he liked to work with Chuck Norris because Chuck was one of the few actors willing and able to take a kick to the groin. And Bruce Lee thought that was a very empowering image for Asians: him kicking a white man in the crotch.

Not sure if that was true. My only source is a friend of mine known for his horrible memory.

I have to go with Bruce Lee with this myself and do I need an reason?

yeah im going to have to go with bruce lee on this one. like stated before, he did it once, he can do it again.

I'd have to go with Bruce for the reasons given by everyone else already.

Also, just how good was Chuck Norris? I know there's all the jokes about him because he's such a bad actor. What can he really do? I don't know that much in detail about him.

As stated before, Chuck Norris was world-class fighter having won many championships and only lost ten times in his early days.  He was the third (then believed to be the first) westerner to achieve 8th degree grandmaster blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, a style based around flexible punching and kicking.  So, in short, he was one of the best martial artists in america, having won well over 100 matches.

However, Bruce was regarded by many martial artists of his time to be the best in his class, if not the world.  The problem is, that he fought in very few official and recorded fights or tournaments.  He fought a lot of street thugs and brawls.  So its very problematic to compare him to a lot of fighters in his time.  What we do know is that many nigh-superhuman physical feats (holding yourself up with your shoulder muscles, anyone?) are attributed to him, and that his fighting style is very skillful and enlightened.  Its hard to compare a legend to reality.

chock norris hes a cowboy