New footage of Bruce Lee sparring his students Ted Wong and Taky Kimura at the Long Beach Karate Championship in 1967 has recently emerged, and it’s a joy to watch.

The clip was billed on Facebook and even in the national press like the Daily Mail and Mirror as footage of Bruce Lee’s only “real fight caught on camera”, but that’s just nonsense, obviously, as it’s just a sparring session. True, it’s not a choreographed demonstration, but it’s also a long way from being a “fight”. The sparring partner is also frequently, incorrectly, named as Bruce’s other famous student, Dan Inosanto.

I actually trained Jeet Kune Do for a good couple of years, so I can see what Bruce is doing in the clip as it’s pretty much what we trained every class: a strong lead forward fighting stance with the back heel up, the front fist pointing at the opponent, the use of hand trapping, the footwork, the lead leg attacks, but most of all the idea of intercepting the opponent’s attack using superior timing. This is the “Jeet” part of Jeet Kune Do, which translates as the “Way of the intercepting fist”. (Interestingly, I found later on that the Chinese martial art of Xingyiquan is also very big on this idea).

Bruce really was ahead of the game here. His quality of his movement has the same sort of fluidity that you see in modern high level fighters like Connor McGregor, and his timing is excellent. As Connor McGregor says often “Precision beats power, timing beats speed”.

What’s also interesting is the gear they are wearing. When I was training Jeet Kune Do we wore almost identical gear for sparring. I still have it all somewhere in my loft! The lineage of Jeet Kune Do I trained in came down from Tommy Caruthers, who was based in Glasgow, UK, and was influenced by all of Bruce’s students (including Jesse Glover), but at the time I was training it, Ted Wong was a probably the biggest influence.

If you want to get a better idea of what’s going on in the clip then there are videos out there that break down the technique he shows, like this one:

And this one:

Being able to see such good quality clips of Bruce Lee sparring from 1967 is a treat. He was one of the great innovators in martial arts and rightly deserves his place amongst the greats of the art. What would he be doing now if he hadn’t died such an untimely death? We can only wonder.