Several well-known martial arts stars have gone up against Bruce Lee in his movies. In spite of the actor completing only four martial arts movies, Lee is responsible for a long list of memorable movie fight scenes. Most are known just for Lee’s part in them, but a few also feature other famous kung fu movie actors.
Like so many other early entries in the kung fu movie genre, Lee’s films weren’t heavy on actors with martial arts experience. In movies like Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, he hired fellow martial artists like Bob Wall and Dan Inosanto to appear in his movies as his opponents, but the main roles were filled by key studio players, rather than high-profile martial arts stars. That’s not altogether surprising, though, considering that the genre was still young in the early 1970s when Lee’s movies were released. However, a handful of the actors who fought Lee in his movies went on to become stars in their own right years after his death. Here’s every martial arts star to have clashed with Lee on the big screen.
5 Tony Liu
ed for appearing in all of Bruce Lee’s kung fu movies, Hong Kong martial artist and actor Tony Liu fought the actor in The Big Boss, playing a Japanese thug. In the movie, Lee plowed through a group of gangsters before eventually squaring off with Liu’s character in a brief fight, which Lee won without much difficulty. After The Big Boss, Liu returned with much bigger roles in Fist of Fury, Way of the Dragon, and Enter the Dragon, where Liu played allies to Lee’s characters.
Lee’s movies only for a small portion of Liu’s martial arts movie career. Following an appearance in Lee’s unfinished Game of Death film, Liu went on to make dozens of kung fu movies, some of which being with Shaw Brothers, the biggest studio in the business. With Shaw Brothers, Liu was given the chance to headline several of his own movies, most notably Clan of Amazons and Duel of the Century. Liu also had a major part in Shaolin Temple, a kung fu ensemble classic packed with other prominent Shaw Brothers stars.
4 Corey Yuen
A scene in 1971’s Fist of Fury saw Bruce Lee’s Chen Zhen walk into a Japanese dojo and beat up a whole group of karate students. One of them was played by Corey Yuen, an actor who had yet to make a name for himself in martial arts movies. A former member of the Seven Little Fortunes child acting troupe, Yuen grew up alongside several future martial arts stars (Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Yuen Biao) and shared in their kung fu training. Similar to the other Seven Little Fortunes, Yuen found work in the martial arts movie genre and eventually became a star. His biggest lead role came in 1979 when he made Dance of the Drunk Mantis.
Maintaining his ties with old classmates, Yuen co-starred in a string of kung fu movies with Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao in the 1980s. It was also during this time that Yuen began a transition toward directing, a field where he found arguably greater success. As a director, Yuen made The Transporter, Jackie Chan’s Dragons Forever, and Jet Li’s Hero.
3 Sammo Hung
At the beginning of Enter the Dragon, Lee had a short, easy win over a nameless kung fu student, played by Sammo Hung in an uncredited appearance. For Hung, Enter the Dragon was just one of several kung fu movies from the early 1970s in which he had a bit role. They were all stepping stones toward much larger parts. Hung, who allegedly fought Bruce Lee offscreen as well as in Enter the Dragon, enjoyed a long and successful acting career as a frequent collaborator of Jackie Chan, a martial arts movie director, and a leading man. Similar to Chan, Hung is known for being able to blend his comedic chops with his martial arts skills, which helped him grow into one of the most popular kung fu stars of his time.
2 Chuck Norris
Of all the martial arts stars to fight Lee in his movies, only one played a character powerful enough to really pose a challenge. Long before becoming the United States’ top martial arts star in the 1980s, world karate champion Chuck Norris had a now-legendary fight with Lee in Way of the Dragon’s ending. When planning the movie’s climax, Lee devised a plan to film an action sequence set at the Colosseum where he would face Colt, who would be played by a fellow martial artist. Lee seemingly understood that by casting someone trained in martial arts as Colt, Way of the Dragon could end with an intense battle that the audience could believe was real, especially since it wouldn’t require many cutaways.
Lee originally had karate expert Joe Lewis in mind for his opponent, but later settled on Chuck Norris, with whom he was already friends. Together, the two worked on the choreography and managed to craft a ten-minute scene that lives on in cinematic history as one of the genre’s best fights. For Norris, who only had a non-credited role in The Wrecking Crew under his belt at this point, Way of the Dragon’s Colt was his original claim to fame, even though his role didn’t involve much talking and was limited to the final fight. That said, it still helped Norris land more roles in kung fu movies. It took a few years, but by the end of the decade, Norris had become an important figure in the genre.
1 Jackie Chan
Although Jackie Chan’s career didn’t take off until a few years after Bruce Lee’s death, it’s worth noting that their paths did cross more than once. In the early 1970s, most of Chan’s work was as a stuntman. Among the movies he was involved with was Fist of Fury, where he first met Lee. In addition to his stuntman role, Chan made an onscreen appearance in Enter the Dragon, where he fought Lee, not once, but twice. In a scene where Lee had to take down multiple minions at once, the opponent who tries to grab Lee from behind can be recognized as none other than Jackie Chan himself.
In the scene in question, Lee effortlessly breaks out of his hold and appears to snap his neck. In the same scene, Chan (who may have been playing a different character) rushed at Lee a second time, this time taking a staff to the face, knocking him out. As Chan has since explained, he was genuinely hurt by the blow, but Bruce Lee immediately apologized for striking him so hard.
