How Bruce Lee and street fighting in Hong Kong helped create MMA (long before it emerged as UFC)
- SCMP Sport investigation discovers that modern mixed martial arts has its roots firmly in Hong Kong
- Bruce Lee was among the earliest adopters of techniques that would become MMA
The South China Morning Post has discovered that modern mixed martial arts was being practised on the streets (and more often the rooftops) of Hong Kong long before Rorion Gracie, Art Davie and John Milius’ brainwave to organise a formal competition among practitioners of various disciplines and call it The Ultimate Fighting Championship.
A group, consisting of sports administrators, martial arts teachers and local law enforcement, had the idea to mix the disciplines in crowd-drawing contests, which brought Hong Kong to a standstill, long before the idea took root anywhere else.
This week’s series on the history of MMA and the characters who established it in Hong Kong is the culmination of much research and hard work by the Post’s award-winning Graphics and Video teams.
Below is the first part of the series, an infographic entitled “How Bruce Lee and street fighting in Hong Kong helped create MMA”.
Stay tuned to SCMP.com this week for the rest of the series.
Post
Advertisement