Bruce Lee’s iconic battle call, do you still remember?
Years behind this great Chinese Kung Fu Master’s pass away, his wildly famous battle call still echoes. Now you’ll have another chance to refresh your memory of that roar — a new biopic movie titled “Birth of the Dragon”, centered on Bruce Lee’s short, eventful and strikingly amazing life, is secretly in the works. According to what we’ve learned, Christopher Wilkinson together with Stephen Rivele will co-pen the origin story, and the movie is jointly produced by Groundswell Productions and QED International.
Birth of the Dragon will merge Bruce Lee’s legendary life with a dose of action movie hyperbole. Bruce fans will feel excitingly glad to unveil the scene of the much talked fight between the Kung Fu King and Wong Jack Man, another prominent Chinese martial arts professional and coach, who, at the time, led a life as a Shadow Boxing practitioner teaching classes in T’ai chi ch’uan, Xingyiquan and Northern Shaolin at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
That duel between the two took place at a local gym in 1964’s Oakland, and it was critical to both, because it was after this fight that Bruce Lee began to rethink his style of fighting which finally led to the development of Jeet Kune Do. In the meantime, this match was full of controversy as it was held in private, which means only a few witnesses were there, which also explains why so many people have a spying interest in knowing what really happened in that gym.
Shannon Lee, Bruce’s daughter who runs the Bruce Lee Foundation, was quoted by saying that the fight was significant in her father’s life because of the impact it had upon him.
“It was a pivotal moment in his life because he was very disappointed after the fight.” “Happy that he won, obviously, and happy he won the right to teach whoever he saw fit is what the challenge was over, the fact that he was teaching non-Chinese people the art of Kung Fu.” “He was very upset and my Mom said he was sitting outside and had his head in his hands. He told her that he felt the fight had gone on a lot longer than he thought it should and he felt tired and winded from having to run to chase [Jack Man]. He felt his training had let him down. … He thought it should have been over a lot faster, and it was really from that that he started to change his whole thinking on martial arts.”
The movie will depict the match in great detail, which was fought with no rules and no referees, and culminate in Wong and Lee teaming up to battle a band of Hong Kong gangsters who then controlled the Chinatown in San Francisco.
Although the timetable on when the movie will hit the big screen and available in streets is yet to be announced, there surely will be Bruce fans keeping their eagles’ eyes on this.
