- Chael Sonnen discredited Bruce Lee’s ability to fight
- The “Bad Guy” said training hard is still better than mastering a martial art
The late legend Bruce Lee is known to this day as a pioneer of mixed martial arts. However, Chael Sonnen insists that when it comes down to real fighting and competition, Lee was far from what he was in movies.
Bruce is a myth
Discussing the subject on his YouTube channel, Sonnen said Lee turned out to be right as far as philosophy goes because what he did back then, which was training multiple martial arts, paved the way to MMA. But for the “Bad Guy,” Lee’s ability to fight in a competitive way was just a myth.
According to the former UFC middleweight title contender, he did a recent piece about Lee and his legacy in which he was complimenting the late martial artist’s philosophy. However, they were all just theories as he believes Lee had never proven himself in a competition.
Sonnen even thinks that Lee wouldn’t stand a chance against most MMA fighters at present.
“I was talking about the philosophies of Bruce Lee and I was complimenting them, that they held up. Bruce’s philosophy turned out to be true, even though his ability to fight sucked,” Sonnen began…”Whenever I talk about Bruce Lee, I feel a need. I have an urge that’s stronger than my ability to be like, to be polite. To make sure that I include that he couldn’t fight. That’s a very personal thing when someone who did not fight, who does not deserve the credit, who was not a champion, who did not risk it. When somebody that did none of those things can come over the top of the hard-working men and women that do all of those things, some of them never to a top 10 level. Some of them never to a major promotion. Most of them never to the top of a card, world title opportunity or the world title, but they would all beat up Bruce Lee really fast. Really easy and really fast.”
It’s all about hard work
Sonnen went on and said gyms and dojos let people think that non-martial arts practitioners could beat everybody, including trained fighters once they learned and mastered a martial art. But in reality, that doesn’t happen as the only proven way to beat a skilled fighter is to train hard.
“The frustration between the competitive guys and the traditional martial arts really comes down to work ethic,” Sonnen concluded.
Indeed, Sonnen has a point but sadly, there seems to be no way to prove if he’s right about Lee.
