Bruce Lee remembered: how Steve Kerridge is devoting his life to keeping the martial arts icon’s teachings alive, writing books on classic kung fu films Fist of Fury, The Way of the Dragon and The Big Boss
British writer Kerridge admired Jimmy Wang Yu, Lo Lieh and David Chiang but it was Hong Kong icon Bruce Lee that inspired a career in teaching martial arts, while daughter Shannon Lee and others have helped in his research
“Like thousands of others, the whole explosion of what is generally known as the ‘kung fu boom’ grabbed my attention as an impressionable 10-year-old around the late summer of 1973,” says Kerridge. “But for all the Jimmy Wang Yus, Lo Liehs and David Chiangs, there was only one that truly hit home, and that was Bruce Lee.”
London-born Kerridge has built his career on his passion for martial arts. He has authored eight books and produced multiple magazines dedicated to Bruce Lee, all of which have been authorised by Lee’s family. He has been practising martial arts since he was a child, attaining 3rd dan in karate, and has taught kick-boxing and martial arts for the past 30 years. He is now the proprietor of Essex Kickboxing Academy in the UK.
“For today’s younger generation with everything at their disposal through the internet, it’s challenging to describe the excitement and somewhat the mystery, this Eastern-style genre instilled in the more simplistic era of those early days. Not only didn’t we have an ‘instant fix’ at the click of a switch, but we barely had three television channels, let alone video, smartphones or tablets,” says 57-year-old Kerridge. “We, the 70s generation, relied solely upon the newspaper stands or magazine racks in our local shop to find our kung fu fix. Sadly, the man that has shaped my life for the past five decades had passed away a few months before I had even heard of him.”
His passion for the star and the art of kung fu led him to collect all things Bruce Lee, which in turn led him to publish several magazines for collectors and fans over the years. Then in 2008, Kerridge published the first book, Bruce Lee: Legends of the Dragon.