The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Weird Wednesday: LSU Wins It All. Plus, Matthew Polly on 'Bruce Lee: A Life' | The Ryen Russillo Podcast

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Fresh off a plane from New Orleans, Russillo talks about LSU's National Championship win over Clemson (1:30), before talking to Matthew Polly, the author of 'Bruce Lee: A Life,' about the legend of Bruce Lee, his journey to America, some of his grandiose stories and infamous fights, his untimely death, and much more (11:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

today's episode of the ryan rosillo show on the ringer podcast network is brought to you by state farm just like basketball the game of life is unpredictable talk to a state farm agent and get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected um not unexpected. I think Bill House and I were texting about a three-hour All-Star Game podcast. And that would be All-Star Game selections. Snubbed is always one of my

least favorite things really in sports. Like sometimes people get snubbed and then sometimes it's like, hey, here's an idea. There's this many All-Stars and some guys are going to make it. That's all. Nothing personal. Some coaches have rules about you can't be in a losing team, but then sometimes guys have such great individual seasons that you can't help but vote them onto the All-Star team. I haven't looked at it once. So I am ready to go. I just keep seeing like guys in the Lakers are really high in the fan voting.

And then as bad as we all think the fan voting is, this is really what the all-star voting story has become, is which players voted for who, and how many guys voted Pat Connaughton an all-star. Not dumping on Pat Connaughton, but I think it's safe to say, I don't think it's breaking news, that he would be one of the best players in the East. Get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected,

like Pat Connaughton, or talk to a State Farm agent the best players in the East. Get a teammate who can help you navigate the unexpected like Pat Connaughton or talk to a State Farm agent today. Here's the plan. Excited to do another book review. Bruce Lee, I've talked about it a little bit. The interview is going to be incredible. It's Matthew Polley. Before we do that, fresh off a flight back from New Orleans,

off LSU's National Championship win against Clemson, I just want to share a few things with you. I have been going to LSU games since 2008. The first game I ever went to was Saban's return, Nick Satan. They have a turnover in overtime, and LSU loses this game that they weren't supposed to win. It's like the worst way to lose. You wanted to show up Saban because they felt like,

you know, this is ridiculous. Saban gets this place up and running. He leaves for the Miami Dolphins, apparently doesn't like the job, and then goes back to the SEC, but goes back to the SEC West. And the guy who you know got you your title and helped set the foundation for the 2007 title

is now at Alabama. And if you understand the Bama LSU back and forth, I mean, look, LSU hadn't beaten Bama since 2011 until they went to Tuscaloosa and beat them this year. So that was my first experience of it. I'd been to an Auburn game and that was my first SEC game. I've been to Florida. I've mentioned it. I've been to 10 of the 14 SEC schools. And the LSU one was just a little different. You know, I was at a Penn State game a couple years ago and a Penn State kid was like, hey, this is the best place you've ever been, I bet, right? I'm like, eh, it's really good. It's really good up here, but it's not. It's not the best. And then, you know, you always kind of do this thing like, how many places have you been to? He's like, well, I've been to Penn state, Ohio state and Miami of Ohio. And you're like, well, okay, I'm going to get just, I would just suggest you get out a little bit more. And then maybe after a couple of years, you get back to me and let me know where, where everything ranks and Penn state's atmosphere is incredible. So it's not a knock on that. But my point is that for whatever reason, I just kept deciding that I was going to do the LSU

Bama game every year. And I've only missed, I think, one since 2008. And after LSU lost that game, I remember going to my buddy that night. And he's an LSU guy. And I go, that's too bad. I was like, tonight's going to be lame. He's like, what are you talking about? He goes, it's Louisiana. They're not going to let a lost Alabama get in the way of a good night. I was like, oh, wow. Okay. And you would have thought they won the national championship instead of having, you know, obviously one of the most heartbreaking losses they could have had

because of all the saving stuff. So, you know, I was there in 2011 when it was the unbelievable 9-6 game, which is actually, believe it or not, fun because of the stress level.

I was there for the rematch in New Orleans, which didn't go as well for LSU there. And then it just became this kind of complex for LSU where here's then it just became this kind of complex for LSU where here's Les Miles

winning all these games, but feeling like his offense is completely outdated. And, you know, I remember one LSU-Bama game where leading up to the week, Les apparently like bought into the game planning on Monday

and then Tuesday kept getting a little bit more worried. Thursday, he's like, I think we can run it right at Alabama. And then on Friday, everybody's like, great, we're going to run it right up Alabama with Leonard Fournette and it's not going to work. And Fournette got totally shut down in one of those games that I went to.

Then there was the back-to-back LSU home games where they didn't score. So despite LSU being one of the best programs for putting pros in the league, and they are, as far as having consistently the highest level of recruits other than you know Bama Clemson Ohio State and other teams that get up there flirt like they're at five-year averages LSU's right up there but it was it was the thing where it's like is it going to be Tom Herman would Chip Kelly ever come down there and then here's this guy at Ergeron from Lafourche um a place that some would say don't don't speak English. I don't understand any of those Bayou towns either. I'd love to explore it a little bit, but it just doesn't ever seem like it's in play.

Coach O, I had met at USC. He had this USC gig. He won a few games as the interim. It was the second time he'd been at USC. He was retained he was retained off a Hackett staff by Pete Carroll because Pete Carroll's like, I like this guy. And everybody knew when you brought in Coach O, you could recruit. But the Ole Miss thing was all over him. So if you're an LSU fan, you're like, it's great. He's one of us. And I mean this as Louisiana people saying it, not a kid from Massachusetts.

He was somebody that you were like, man, I hope this works. But there was real hesitation because it was really bad at Ole Miss. And then you start to think, hey, there are coordinators. He's not even really a play caller. He's a D-line coach who's a great recruiter. He won National Recruiter of the Year. Bruce Feldman wrote a really good book, Meat Market, all about the recruiting exploits, especially with that Ole Miss team.

So it was even though it was like, he sounds like us, he gets us, he's at his dream job. Is this really going to work? And I remember interviewing him, I think it would be 16. I was down there for the Bama game. And I asked him, how did you feel about like kind of stabilizing that USC thing and then them not even really taking you seriously as a candidate? And he got upset. His answer was really revealing and it made me a little bit emotional because I was like, man, and yet here he is. And it is one of those lessons. I can't tell you this. And I know if you're younger, you don't want to hear it, but how many times I didn't get something and it turned out to be the best thing that could

have ever happened to me. And that can happen in relationships, but I don't really look at it that way. I look at it more as your career. And here's Coach O who wanted nothing more than to be retained as the USC head coach. And now three, four years later, he's winning a national title with LSU. Now I've heard some people say, well,, well, he's never called plays and why does everybody obsess with coordinators? I don't know that the lesson here is, hey, find a good recruiter who's flamed out at another Power 5 program. I don't think that that's what you would want to do if you were an AD recently hired at a big program going, what I'm looking for is guys that have failed dramatically. There is no blueprint to this. And I've read more and more like,

hey, people need to have more of an open mind, not be in love with the coordinator. Maybe you shouldn't be in love with all the coordinator stuff, but he's just different. Because as I thought about, what would you do if, not that I'm ever going to be in AD,

but like you talk about it enough, what would you do if you had to hire somebody? What would be your criteria? And I'd give a great recruiter and guys have to want to play for him. And everywhere he's gone, his players love him. Now, as far as the game's concerned, 17-7, about 10 minutes left to go. I wasn't really worried because LSU was starting in its own three-yard line those first couple possessions.

And the crowd was – there was actually a lot of Clemson people there. But, you know, look, it's a national championship in Louisiana. So, you know, I don't expect anybody to be like, hey, that's an easy game there for Clemson. But here's the deal. Here's what it was. It was a poorly officiated game, but it was poorly officiated both ways. Those Pac-12 officials, like there was all sorts of jokes to be made about, well, at least the Pac-12 did make an appearance in the playoffs at some point. And I'm not a big anti-officials guy,

but I just thought both ways, you couldn't figure out late flags on stuff. We were like, what did you guys see there? But LSU wins this game and they win it convincingly. And it does, and I'm not going to do this thing like, hey, I was right, I was right, I was right, because I was. but it's not even about being right because there's plenty of times where you're just wrong about stuff all the time. So maybe you take the wins and you do the victory lap

and you puff your chest out. But what I never could understand this year is that I would see some voices arguing against LSU despite the resume being what it was, and they had a lower strength of schedule the first half of the season because they had that Northwest Louisiana State game in there. So it messed up their numbers.

I kept telling you guys about the defense all year where, yes, the stats aren't great. They're still a little bit better than you think they are, but a lot of the times they're giving up points is when they're up big. So if you're telling me after watching Clemson do what they did all season that somehow that's a bad defense and holding Clemson to 25, three touchdowns, I don't get it. I just would say stop watching all Ohio State games

because I saw that from people, and I'm talking about guys in the media. And I've said this all year. If you thought Ohio State was better than LSU, I wouldn't argue against it. I would just say I disagree because I think it's really close. But when it's, hey, Ohio State's the best and it's not even close, change the bleeping channel every now and then. Because there's no way you could have watched LSU all year and thought, yeah, there's another team that's way better than those guys. Somehow, because Tua was hurt after the Alabama game, and maybe he was a little gimpy in it. I thought he was terrific in that game. So, you know, I was there. I watched it. I came away loving Tua even more after that game.

But going into Tuscaloosa was met with a collective like, eh. They beat Alabama in Alabama. Nobody does that. They smashed Georgia. They smashed Oklahoma. And after being down 10, they went on like a 35-8 run to close out a national title game against a really good Clemson team who maybe has the better quarterback. And I saw tweets during the game, maybe Burrow's off, maybe Burrow's wrong here. How do you hit center and then he throws like 500 yards? So that's it. They won. It was fun.

You don't have to hear me talk about LSU. We won't be doing a lot of breaking down of the recruiting there. But really cool stuff getting to know Coach O those years ago and interviewing him and seeing him be emotional and having something come full circle when you thought for sure that once you don't get the USC job, it'd have to be an impossibility that one day he'd be coaching LSU and coaching LSU to a national championship. Okay, let's talk Bruce Lee with Matthew Pauly. The book is Bruce Lee, A Life by Matthew Pauly. Matthew Pauly joins us now. I love this book. I knew I was going to love it. I love your story, which I do want to share with our listeners at the end of this because

you're about as unique a guy as it gets. But Bruce was somebody, as I've seen in some of your lectures, who became more famous. This guy's pursuit of fame and fortune, which was clearly a driving factor in his success. Unfortunately, he died before he understood the iconic status that he would reach. Although that was starting to happen certainly back home and then carried over here. So just to set it up for the listeners, Bruce Lee born November 27th, 1940 in San Francisco, which I know will surprise some people. His father was a theater performer, a comedic actor who has his own amazing story where he was singing outside of a restaurant and some traveling theater group saw him and then took him in and he traveled with them. His background isn't 100% Chinese. As you mentioned, he had a Dutch Jewish grandfather

who changed his name. So that was kind of hard to figure out. I know for years, people thought he was of German descent as well. That was not the case. He was actually English. And that led to a bunch of problems that he was not 100% Chinese. But he was a child star, Matthew. And I think that's kind of the foundation of, for those of us that didn't understand it, his father was a performer and Bruce was a performer for a very long time at a very young age, 20 films by the age of 18. How much do you think that kind of set up his own aspirations for himself once he started traveling and going back to the United States? I think that's the key I found in researching

the book because the image of Bruce is this martial arts master who kind of accidentally gets into movies. It's almost as if he's the real person on screen as opposed to an actor playing characters. And when you realize that his first appearance was when he was three months old and his career starts in earnest at six, and you see him play all sorts of roles that have nothing to do with Kung Fu movies, you realize that he was an actor following in his father's footsteps. And in many ways, I think he was driven by that kind of Oedipal conflict to outdo his father, who was quite famous in Hong Kong when he was growing up. Yeah. And it almost was, you know, anyone that's trying to do this kind of stuff to become famous,

hey, I want to be a big movie star. Like you have to be wired a certain way. And him having that kind of success early on, and he was actually like, would you correct me at any point throughout this if I'm off on anything, but he was starting to have some major roles there where he was a star. So I think once he goes to the United States, we're going to get to here. It's almost like, look, I expect to have the same level of success as absurd as that may have sounded at that time. That's right. I think it gave him a real confidence and some would say arrogance that he was somebody who was sort of fawned over from a very young age. He was on set. Everyone thought he was cute. You know, by the time he was 10, he was he starred in a very successful movie. Then his career took a little bit of a dip.

But the last film he was in, The Orphan, was a huge hit and was the first film that ever played in an international film festival. So Bruce Lee thought of himself as an important person. He was a celebrity in Hong Kong. And so when he came to America, he didn't feel like somebody just snuck off the boat and was desperate to just survive. He thought he should be a big deal here too. And I think he needed that because the kind of racial barriers he faced were so high. And if he hadn't had that kind of fundamental confidence, he never would have achieved what he did. So before he leaves for the States, he's in school. He's a terrible student. But and I cannot express this enough.

And you hammer it in the book. And this is something that I kind of like. This was not some fake martial arts guy that maybe we grew up with in the 80s and 90s. Bruce Lee was a legitimate street fighting badass that would fight anybody. He was training with not necessarily different styles. It was more of the traditional styles. Ip Man, who was somebody who becomes famous himself or was famous at the time. People didn't want him training with him. Can you share with us just how real of a guy Bruce was in that

he was much more concerned with fighting almost anyone who wanted to fight him, even if he wasn't winning more than he was trying to be a student, some pretty boy on, on film. That's right. What's interesting is from a very young age, he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. And he was the kid who was always going around saying, you got trouble with me? Like he was starting fights. This wasn't self-defense. This was self-offense. And the only reason he took up martial arts is because he got into so many street fights. He finally found a guy who was better than him. And this guy studied under Ip Man, the style of Wing Chun. And Bruce Lee only took it up

because he wanted to be better than the guy who had beaten him in a fight because he couldn't stand the idea that he wasn't the best street fighter in the neighborhood. And so martial arts to him was simply an extension of street fighting. It wasn't the other way around. He wasn't a bullied kid who got picked on and started studying martial arts, the kind of classic tale that we're all sympathetic to. He was a genuine sort of rough around the edges, tough guy who liked to start things. And martial arts was an extension of his sort of aggression. And in fact, he was so aggressive that the only reason he ended up going to the States was because the police were going to arrest him if his parents didn't do something about his constant street fighting.

Yeah, did he, did you, and I know there was different pieces, and it was kind of great going through stuff and then reading the book, and you're like, man, you know, Polly really cleans it up as much as you possibly could. But did he, was he actually, was there a hit on him from the triads for beating up like the son of a gang member? Was there a hit on him from the triads for beating up the son of a gang member? Yes, I think that's a story that one of his friends from high school tells. Unfortunately, that friend tends to tell tall tales, and he's the only one who says it. So I think what happened was that he beat up somebody who was important, but not a triad member. He beat up somebody who was important, but not a triad member, because in general, triad members settle things themselves.

They don't go to the police for it. So basically, he beat up the kid of a well-to-do family who didn't have access to thugs to settle it themselves, and so they went to the police. Did he pull a knife on a teacher? He did. He had a teacher, the PE teacher used to, when they were running around the track, would take a long weed, essentially a long switch of grass, and switch the kids on the back of the legs if they were going too slowly. And it hurt, and they didn't like it. But Bruce Lee brought a switchblade in his pocket, his shorts. And one day when the PE teacher whipped him, he turned around, flipped the blade open, and charged the PE teacher who immediately ran away. And Bruce Lee was chasing across the field the PE teacher with a knife in his hand.

So this isn't like he was kind of a bad boy. This is, you know, the genuine article. Right. Yeah, absolutely. So 1959, he goes to the States. He graduates, I believe, a technical high school. He enrolls in Washington. He drops out, not immediately from the timeline that I have.

But what was going on with him and kind of his move to the United States, his thoughts? I mean, I know he's working in a restaurant, but now he's practicing martial arts. And he's kind of entering that first, whether or not people thought it was bullshit or not, because I think there's some real truth in the book where it's like, at times, he could have been a little annoying with his philosophical stuff. But he's clearly figuring himself out through these transitional years before we get to kind of the Hollywood chapter and understanding how important he is in martial arts. Yeah. So what's fascinating about his story is when he got to America, he, he, he had that kind of instant, almost instant immigrant turnaround story where he decides I want to be a success here. The way my life was going in Hong Kong was bad and was

leading towards a dark place. How can I change this? So he didn't become a student, but he became a much more dedicated student. He got into the University of Washington. He fell in love with philosophy and took that up as one of his main interests. But I think the more important thing was, because he came from Hong Kong, which at that time was not a major film industry, was basically like the Nigerian film industry. It was popular in the region, but no one else watched their films. He never thought it was possible to be an actor in the States. And so he decided that the way he was going to make a living in America was to teach Kung Fu to everyone and open a sort of chain of

Kung Fu kind of McDojos across the country. He wanted to be the Ray Kroc of Kung Fu. And so it was at the University of Washington where he realized he could get Caucasian students interested in signing up for his classes. And that made him sort of the first Kung Fu instructor to teach a kind of non-Chinese audience. And that's what's interesting is that he mentally gave up the idea of being an actor for about four or five years, but it ended up catching up with him anyway. So for a while, all he thought about was martial arts and martial arts instruction. And then that led him to rejoin his acting career. There's some really revealing stuff about how ahead of his time he was when you think about nutrition, the exercises, working with weights. I mean, this is somebody who was

as wiry, as sinewy as you can imagine as far as his physique, but it wasn't all genetics. He was eating these basically smoothies before they were called smoothies, right? Like peanut butter, bananas, eggs, even raw hamburger meat. And he would just drink these things and he was doing all sorts of exercises, working with dumbbells, concentrating. At this point, it feels like this is when he's deciding that whatever I'm going to be, I'm going to be physically tuned as perfectly. He feels like the first or the closest thing we have to an actual superhero as he's learning his craft and obviously supplementing it with everything that he can get his hands on that he thinks is healthy for him, which again, felt like very, maybe you could

say, Hey, it's the sixties. A lot of people were doing that kind of stuff, but at least reading this stuff, I'm like, I feel like I see these posts from girls doing deadlifts on Instagram all the time. And he was doing it in the sixties. That's right. Well, what it, what's interesting is it was such a niche thing in America, the sort of weightlifting craze and some of the magazines that were the equivalent of, say, muscle and fitness at that time. But Bruce instantly gravitated towards those. And it would have been easy. You know, it took 30 or 40 years before that overtook American culture in general. But at that time, it was just such a small group of people who were into protein shakes and vitamins.

But Bruce immediately gravitated towards it. time it was just such a small group of people who were into protein shakes and vitamins but bruce immediately gravitated towards it i think partly because he grew up he almost died as a baby um during the japanese occupation of hong kong and so he grew up physically more frail than the other boys and this always bothered him and i think he saw this as a way to make up for a childhood deficit. But then clearly he realized something that no other martial artist at the time realized, which is this kind of weightlifting regimen could really enhance your skill level in the same way that athletes of that era didn't lift weights or do any of the things that they do now. And so he was really kind of on the cutting edge of the modern athlete

who went from somebody who simply played the sport to studying scientifically how to physically gain the kind of strength, endurance, et cetera, to increase their skills on the playing field. When did he start to make the transition from all the stuff that he had learned, from more traditional stuff, to what he then called Jeet Kune Do that clearly pissed off the traditionalists. But he was, I mean, this is maybe the most impressive thing that he's done where he just took it all and said, none of this is right. This is what's going to work. And essentially created his own philosophy

and approach to fighting. Yeah. So Jeet Kune Do is interesting because from the very beginning, he had a fairly open attitude towards martial arts and he studied different things, but he never emotionally could break away from the Chinese system until he was older. And what I think about it is the martial arts from the East is fundamentally conservative. You always look back to your master style and say what you were. And no one was really allowed to go out and try to look forward as to how I'm going to change this to make this better or how to make my art a progressive art that always improves a kind of more scientific Western approach. And it wasn't really until he had a fight with a famous fight

in San Francisco with a man by the name of Wong Jack Man, who during that fight, Bruce Lee won, but it was a really ugly win. Can I interrupt you there? Because this is one of my favorite parts of the entire book. And this is the one where I was calling guys being like, you have to. So give me the lead up to the Wong Jack Man thing, because there had been for years, decades, completely opposing views of what happened to lead up what the fight was and what they believed it was afterwards. So do that. And then we'll transition back to the Jeet Kune Do thing. Okay, great. Um, so, uh, you know, the legend of the fight of Bruce Lee and Wong Jack man is that, um, Bruce Lee was open to school in Oakland and he was teaching Caucasians

and this offended the Chinese community of San Francisco who sent Wong Jack Man as an enforcer to stop Bruce from teaching the white man their secret kung fu. This turns out to be totally fictitious. What actually happened was Bruce Lee had been going around giving demonstrations in order to try to get students to come to his school. And during these demonstrations, he was saying, my style of Wing Chun taught by the master at Mon is better than all of your styles. And he went on stage in San Francisco in Chinatown and said, what you guys are doing is bunk, and it's terrible, and mine's better. And because he was so brash and arrogant, he offended the entire audience. And so people were talking about how they had to challenge him,

and Wong Jack Man sort of volunteered to be the one to show this punk what was what. And so the whole fight itself started because Bruce was so brash and arrogant, and that's what led up to the long Jack man, Bruce Lee fight. So I had read like long Jack man said afterwards that he had won and that Bruce gave up because of conditioning. And then there's other people like, no, no, this thing like Bruce was ready to go for the kill immediately. And then he dominated the fight. And then I've also had read, and this is all just part of the lore of this thing that longjack man was like, I thought this was just simply going to be a demonstration and all this different stuff. And then yet they were like, wait a minute, you had this illegal substance, like these cuffs that could cut people open.

So why would you have that on your outfit if you were acting as if there was going to be some peaceful demonstration? So what do you know as far as the closest to the reality of what happened in the fight? So I, you know, for years, the two sides, Bruce Lee's side and Wong Jack Man's side, have been arguing over what happened in this event that only about 11 people were there for. And they locked the doors, right? Like, this is right out of a movie scene. Like, this is real. We're going to fight. The other side came in and they had like six people. And so Bruce's friend locked the door so nobody else could come in. And he actually had a gun there

in case things got out of control. So it was tense. And it was, it was the real thing. Like no one knew what was going to happen. And initially, there was some talk about, like, let's make this light sparring. And Bruce Lee was so angry at this point that he said, you know, there's no rules. This is, you know, we're just going to fight like it's on the street. But I was able to talk to a man by the name of David Chen, who was Wong Jack Man's friend and had helped arrange the fight itself. And he told me basically what he saw happen, which aligned with most of the people that I talked to as well. And what happened was, Bruce Lee, from the very beginning, instead of shaking hands or touching gloves, Instead of shaking hands or touching gloves, he immediately shot out a sort of finger jab at Wong Jack Man's eyes and jabbed him right above the orbital, momentarily stunning Wong Jack Man, who desperately tried to defend a flurry of attacks from Bruce.

And this flurry essentially panicked Wong Jack Man, who ended up turning around and running away. And so for a while, it was like some cartoon where this Wong Jack Mann was running and Bruce was trying to punch him in the back of the head. And eventually, Wong Jack Mann turned back around. And as you mentioned, he had secretly worn metal studded wrist, a weapon. And he swung it around and hit Bruce in the neck, which is an illegal thing to wear a secret weapon in an unarmed combat challenge match. And Bruce was so angry that he charged at Wong Jack Man, and eventually Wong Jack Man toppled over, and Bruce was on top of him swinging punches,

and Wong Jack Man's friends had to pull Bruce Lee off. And that's how the fight ended. So in that situation, it's pretty clear who won the fight. Yeah, because the other one was that it went on for 30 minutes and that Bruce gave up. And I was just like, I don't know. I mean, of all the people to never give up, Bruce is the kind of guy you're going to fight. You're going to have to kill this guy. That's right. You would have to have to kill this guy.

That's right. You would have to shoot Bruce Lee to get him to quit fighting. And also, you know, people tell those stories of never been in a fight. Like most human beings can't fight for longer than five or six minutes before they're completely exhausted. As far as we know, the fight lasted, you know, about three minutes plus. It was a huge flurry of back and forth. And at the end of it, Bruce felt quite exhausted, as one does, because there's a huge adrenaline surge and dump. And this led to his eventual taking up of Jeet Kune Do.

Right. And he even, I think, despite winning the fight, as you point out, like he realized conditioning wise, like that's amazing. He wins the fight. And then his first thing is my conditioning is not where it needs to be. Like I, whatever I'm doing, I need to abandon this and kind of start over. And then Jeet Kune Do happens and nobody really wants to mess with him anymore. So let's, let's get to it. Cause I feel like I could have gone forever on the fighting stuff alone. But this feels very quickly around this time to the next step in his life feels like a rapid pace level of like, okay, I'm this guy. I'm broke all the time. I'm working in this restaurant. I'm fighting with people. I'm opening up these dojos. I'm trying to get people involved. And now I'm on television. How does that transition happen and how does it happen so quickly?

I think what's interesting about Bruce is because he was such an actor at heart, this was really how he started out in the world. When he was trying to recruit students to come to his schools, which weren't doing that well because it's very hard to start a martial arts school, he really developed his own persona on stage. The kind of thing we now can can see in the movies, this Bruce Lee, the martial arts master. And it was almost like I felt like it was a stand up comedian kind of honing his act. And each time he gave a performance, he got better and better at charming the crowd, wowing them, awing them. And eventually he gave a demonstration at a karate tournament outside of Los Angeles. And through that, a TV producer found him and the TV producer ended up casting him as Kato in Kung Fu. So in a weird way, it was sort of like he was doing off-Broadway plays. Somebody saw him and was like,

that's the guy I need to cast. So his big breakthrough came from trying to get students to his martial arts school, but really because he had the charisma and charm of a child actor. Did he think that after Cato, like this, it was on? Because I mean, certainly he spent that way. He would spend money as soon as he got it. At this point, I believe he's had a second child, He would spend money as soon as he got it. At this point, I believe he's had a second child, correct? Or was the second one on the way? He had a second child during Cato.

But he had his first, Brandon had been born. And yes, I think it came sort of so out of the blue that his assumption was that he'd sort of made it. And Bruce Lee inherently had that kind of confidence where he was the kind of person who always believed he would win, things would just come to him. It's one of the reasons he did spend money like water, because he just assumed that good things were going to happen to him, and they didn't have to worry about the future.

So as soon as he was cast as Cato, I think he really did believe that this had launched his career, and he was set. And it gave him great shock to him when it was canceled, and suddenly he was an out-of-work actor. Right, and Kato was the Green Hornet. This is pre-the Kung Fu, really. I don't even know how to, you can't say controversy.

I mean, he thought he was going to be the lead character in Kung Fu, and I just don't want to leave out the kickboxing part of this because the timeline would go from Kato to then this is kind of the kickboxing world. And then him doing some demonstrations and then Chuck Norris. And it feels like this is what kind of put him back on the map after just being a guy who had a really hard time as a man from Hong Kong getting just bit parts in television shows. So, uh, I, I, especially, I want to make sure I'm kind of reminding myself in the interview of, of asking about his, I thought very realistic approach of how hard it was for him to get work, but how did the kickboxing world and those demonstrations, and then some of that stuff, and it's funny because the kickboxer, these kickboxing legends, these world champions never really wanted to admit that they were

training under anyone else, certainly not Bruce Lee, but that's basically exactly what was happening. Yeah. So what's interesting is when he couldn't get work, he became the martial arts instructor to the stars. And so he trained people like Steve McQueen and James Coburn, but he also was really interested in training the top karate point fighters of that era, which the ones we know, Chuck Norris, but also lesser known Mike Stone and Joe Lewis, who were the most famous guys within American martial arts scene. And so Bruce, in many ways, sought to sort of attach their legitimacy to his. And because he was so sort of charismatic, but also innovative and smart about the way he thought about martial arts, much differently than the traditional masters of that time,

each one of those karate point fighting stars became sort of his student. But as you mentioned, they're really proud guys. And so they would just say, you know, we work out together, even though it was Bruce who was doing most of the teaching. So he and Chuck Norris would go to Bruce's backyard and work on stuff for, you know, a three or four hour lesson. And then that was stuff that Chuck would use in the point fighting ring, you know, a three or four hour lesson. Uh, and then that was stuff that Chuck would use in the point fighting ring, you know, and at that time karate was like the new hip thing. It was kind of the MMA of its era. And so you would get crowds of 10 or 20,000 people coming to Madison square garden to see Chuck Norris fight Joe Lewis and a point fighting tournament.

And Bruce Lee would be brought on stage as the guy who played Kato and who was friends with Chuck. So this really kind of established him as a celebrity within the martial arts world in America in the late 1960s. Okay, more from Matt on this book and this amazing story.

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So he's trying to figure out the next move. He obviously been pursuing the TV part of this, and everybody seemed to love him when he actually was on TV, like going through it and being like, Hey, he's actually very charismatic. As you point out him, he had the acting gene in him. The martial arts community is like, you guys don't understand what we're watching on the screen here. remember, and again, this is me as a skinny kid in high school, um, with, with self-confidence

issues, like a lot of kids growing up and going, you know, I saw these dudes doing movie tie and Savat and beating up on each other. And I was like, Hey, can I learn some of this stuff? And they would like, take it easy on me. So it wasn't like I pretended to be some bad-ass. Um, they were just doing me a favor and I would, you know, kick with them. And this was an afterschool routine for a couple of years. And the way they talked about Bruce Lee in those movies, they're like, Hey, well, have you seen energy? Have you seen fist? I'd be like, well, yeah, I've seen it. They're like, go back and watch it. And I was like, these are grown men that are in absolute awe of what they've watched. And, you know, at that point, when I was in high

school, it's still 20 something years removed from the movies coming out that the, the point can not be emphasized enough that despite what you thought of him as, as this big screen actor, it's that he was that revered and he was really considered a guy that almost no one could ever beat. You know, they did. They, uh, you know, the top guys of that era came to him to learn. Um, and they were confident, cocky guys, too. So they would never say, we couldn't beat Bruce Lee. If you ask Chuck Norris, he always dodges that question. But everybody in the martial arts community knew he was somebody special. And that he had talents that others didn't.

One, he was so innovative. But also, he just was incredibly fast. And one of the things you see when you watch him on screen is that just incredible speed that no one else has really been able to match. And he also had a ton of power for somebody that small. You know, he was about 5'7", 130 pounds, soaking wet. But he could hit like a heavyweight. So that combination of speed and power, that's deadly. But he could hit like a heavyweight.

So that combination of speed and power, that's deadly. And he was an inherently aggressive guy because he was a street fighter as a kid. So he had all the combinations of a great martial artist, and he happened to be a really successful and skilled actor. And that's probably what makes Bruce Lee a legend today is that we've never seen anyone who could do both, uh, like he could. And that's what made him so special. I liked his honesty, whether, you know, it was an interview or him telling a story to somebody where he was like, look, it's really hard for me in Hollywood. I don't speak great English. And I think in the book you have moments where their producers have sat down with them and they're like, yeah, we love him. He's really charismatic. We're like, how do I cast this guy as a leading man in the United States in the 60s when his English is

this bad? And even he, despite, hey, this is racist and some of the sensibilities that we applied today to decades ago, which I don't know if it's the right thing to do or if it's a mistake, but he seemed to be one of the most realistic about it going, look, I mean, it's just sort of a challenge despite the fact that he never really let it get in his way. And certainly with the disappointment of thinking he was going to be the lead in Kung Fu and then it ended up being David Carradine and which is all in the movie and everything. So, um, that all happens and jump in at any point, which actually seems to motivate him to go back to Hong Kong and make these movies, which leads to him being the star that he couldn't really reach at that point in the United States. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, even his biggest supporters, there was a man by the name of Sterling Sillifant, who was the equivalent of Aaron Sorkin. He was the best screenwriter of that era. And he was Bruce Lee's biggest fan, one of his students. And he took Bruce aside one day and said, look, you're a Chinese guy in a white man's world. It's never going to happen. And so Bruce, even the people who loved him, you know, were basically explaining it's 1968. Like, there are no Chinese stars. And, you know, I think about it today. There still are no Chinese stars, right, except for maybe Jackie Chan. So even today, if you are an Asian-American male actor, the idea that you could be the biggest star on Earth seems like an incredible stretch. So Bruce was trying to do this, you know, 50 years ago. ago. And it wasn't, you know, year after year, he kept coming up with projects or he would only get bit parts and he could feel his dream dying, I think is what happened. And suddenly an opportunity

came back in his hometown of Hong Kong to star in this really low budget, crappy movie that, you know, no one from the studio that was upstart and had no money, but he left at the chance because he needed a boost. And it turned out to be the biggest box office hit of Hong Kong film history. And it turned him into an overnight sensation. And that's what launched his career is that he went back home after struggling in Hollywood and he made it back home and then Hollywood came to him. And which movie was that? That was, is that the big boss? The big boss. Right. Uh, I love, I watched it again. I went back and watched every movie after I read the book.

Oh, wow. I mean, this is going to be funny, but I was in Cabo by myself, just getting out of town for a little while. And I watched, this is a really wild night in Cabo, but I sat in my hotel room and watched the big boss. Uh, cause I just finished the book. Cause that's the perfect post wild night movie, right? Well, no, I'm telling you that was the night that was actually the night, despite, you know, being fully capable of, of being like, all right, I'm going to, I'm actually going to go out tonight cause we're in Cabo, but it was just, I was hanging out. I'd finished the book and I was like, I want to watch this movie again. And the music holds up.

The music in that movie is so good. And you could, you could hear it being part of something remixed now. I'm serious. Like, I'm like, God, this, this music is, is perfect. And that kind of, it's almost like an Asian James Bond thing that holds up over time. Um, which was one of the first things that jumped out at me after watching it again. All right, I have a couple more things before I let you go here. He goes to Hong Kong. That studio, you think the studio situations

here in the States are challenging. That was incredible. And he's making all of this money, and yet it's like this monopoly system over there. Take us through that just as much as you can with maybe the best details of how defiant Bruce was in a way that really nobody was over there knowing like, I don't care. You guys can say what you want. And these studios that were trying to control him all the time. Yeah. So what's amazing about the Hong Kong film industry at that time was it

was a total monopoly of the Shaw Brothers film studio run by Run Run Shaw. And he had almost complete control and control in a way that we can't conceive of. Like his actors got paid like factory workers and they had to live in dorms in the compound of the studio. And they weren't allowed to go outside. They weren't allowed to fraternize. They were essentially almost like slaves working for Run Run Shaw. And one of Run Run Shaw's lieutenants by the name of Raymond Chow broke away and started his own studio, which made Run Run furious. And he basically filed a bunch of lawsuits in order to sort of burn all the money

that Raymond Chow had raised and crush his studio. Because Run Run Shaw also owned all the theaters. So he made sure that none of Raymond Chow's movies could appear in the best theaters in the area. And so Bruce Lee was trying to decide between the two studios. And he really wanted to go with Shaw Brothers because they were the big studio. And Golden Harvest with Raymond Chow was just this upstart that didn't have any money. But Run Run Shaw essentially told him, you know, you're going to come work for me.

You're going to be one of my slaves. And Bruce was like, fuck that. And so he went with Raymond Chow, the upstart, for less money in order to have his own sort of freedom and artistic integrity. And I think that's one of the sort of signature choices that he made. He didn't go with the safe choice. He was always throughout his career a risk taker. And this turned out to be the great reward because he appeared with Golden Harvest and because it was an upstart studio, they could take chances that Shaw Brothers couldn't. And this really sort of

launched his career in a way that would never have happened if he had chosen the other studio. Way of the Dragon, the Coliseum fight scene with Chuck Norris. There is a legend that they actually may have fought

away from everyone else and that Bruce walked back with a smile on his face and it took Chuck a little bit longer to get back. The final scene is incredible. Some of the comedy beats in there are like totally, I don't know if they were intended, unintended, but they work even when it feels like they don't. Give me the best story that you found from researching this unbelievable scene and Norris coming over as,

as the bad guy. And it's actually a really, you know, Bruce, I know was more involved with that movie and it just kind of shows his ability, like how amazingly talented he was in different ways. But I just want to know what you know about, or what you believe about whether or not they actually fought away from everybody. Um, yeah, so that's what's great about Bruce is he's such a legend that just these stories accrue to him. Um, as far as I know, that never happened. Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris never fought for real. Um, they trained together, they eyed each other, they knew their strengths and weaknesses, but I think out of respect for each other and not wanting to damage the relationship, they never, ever went at it. Um, they in Rome, and one of the funny stories is they just paid somebody off at the Rome airport,

and so when Chuck's plane lands, they actually filmed the real landing of Chuck's plane as he walked off the plane as Colt, the American bad boy. as Colt, the American bad boy. And they did some exterior shots in the Coliseum, which once again, they bribed some people to get in there because you're not allowed to film there. But the majority of that fight scene was all done in Hong Kong on the studios down the stages of Golden Harvest. And they seem to have actually had a pretty fun time filming it.

I think what was important to understand is that Bruce Lee was the star, and Chuck Norris was a nobody except in the martial arts community who had not done any acting before. And so Bruce was the one teaching them the difference between movie martial arts and point fighting or sports martial arts. And he was the one teaching them how to sell a reaction, how to make a close hit seem like a real hit. And so Chuck Norris's career is almost totally entirely due to the fact that Bruce Lee picked him out and made him his co-star in that movie. I'm so glad you brought that up because it was one of my favorite parts of the book

and just anybody that's interested in movies or film or any of that thing that they paid off security people to be able to film those shots inside the Coliseum in Rome. And it's just hilarious. We're like, all right, let's just bring the cameras over there.

I'm like, all right, how are we going to be able to take these shots? They're like, I don't know, just pay somebody because nobody was supposed to be in there filming. So I just want to repeat that and make sure people caught that. Cause it's hilarious. Yeah, no, it's great. It's like when they talk about guerrilla filmmaking, these guys like to brag about how their guerrilla filmmakers, but these guys really were, they show up from Hong Kong and Rome and basically like how much money does it take to get these things done?

And that's how they did it. What's your best Enter the Dragon story? Because I can't do this. I can't finish this interview without asking about that movie because it's still the level, the jump up in level. And it's almost as great as it is, it's disappointing knowing at that point, Bruce wasn't going to be making any movies. He died. And that movie showed another level that he was taking it to,

the resources that were put in there. So I love that movie showed another level that he was taking it to, the resources that were put in there. So I love that movie. I remember how I felt the first time I watched it, the whole robo scene where you're like, oh, my God, like he's doing his philosophy in this too. And for those that haven't watched, that's on you. So you can just catch up and watch and understand what I'm talking about. But give me your best Enter the Dragon story. So my favorite Enter the Dragon story. an international cast or a multiracial cast of the Chinese hero, the white hero, and the African-American hero. So there was three, and they weren't sure who they were going to make the star.

And if you read the script closely, you can see that actually the white character, John Saxon, has the better moral arc to the story, and they could have easily recut the film to make John Saxon the star. And in fact, when they were hiring him, that's what the producers told him, which is like, don't worry about this Bruce Lee guy. You're the real star of this movie. And so we think of this as the Bruce Lee and he's such a big deal, but he was nobody in Hollywood. John Saxon was actually a bigger deal in the West than Bruce Lee was. And so John Saxon comes over fully expecting that he's going to be the star of this film. And Bruce Lee knew this was happening behind his back. He was a very sharp guy. And John's like, nah, not very much, but a little bit. And he says, well, why don't you show me your sidekick?

And he holds up a pad, and John Saxon throws his. And if you've seen the film, you know he doesn't know very much. But he throws out this kind of lame sidekick, and Bruce kind of nods. And he goes, well, why don't I show you mine? And he gives John Saxon the pad, stands him six feet in front of a chair that he places behind John, and then does his hop, skip, jump and hits him with a sidekick that picks Saxon off the ground, flying back eight feet into the chair so powerfully that the chair breaks under Saxon, who collapses on the floor. He's staring up at the ceiling and stunned. And Bruce Lee comes over, leans over him with this concerned look on his face.

And John Saxon says to him, don't worry, I'm not hurt. And Bruce Lee says, I'm not worried about you. You broke my favorite chair. I was speaking to John Saxon and I said, did you think you were going to be the star of the movie? And he said, not after that first day. And so Bruce Lee essentially pulled a stunt from the playground and established total physical dominance in order to take over control of that movie and become the star of Enter the Dragon and the star we know today. The movie came out weeks after his death, correct? That was August 1973. Like almost literally three, three plus weeks. Yeah.

Less than a month, which is the cruelest thing because I mean, it's not just the, the, the most obvious parts of a guy dies, but, um, to die before his peak,

um, to die, to not be around because of how much he would have enjoyed, uh, being an international star. And I know he was a little bit, but as you pointed out, I've watched some of your lectures where it's like most of this fame was not while he was alive. The legend of his death has been all over the place for years.

You do the best job of anyone that I've ever read about really sifting through all of it. It almost feels very Bruce Lee to have it be unknown for decades about what actually happened. What happened the lead up to his death and the mystery after it? So the key to understanding sort of why there's such controversy and all these conspiracy theories about Bruce Lee's death is they were trying to cover up something, but they weren't trying to cover up why he died. They were trying to cover up where he died. And were trying to cover up where he died. And the problem they faced is Enter the Dragon was about to come out and he died in his mistress's bedroom. And they didn't want the public to find out about this. So they lied about where he died, saying that he died at home, walking in his garden with his wife. And when the Hong Kong

press found out that this was a deception, they just went wild. And so suddenly there were all these crazy conspiracy theories. He was killed by the triads. He was killed by ninjas. He overdosed on drugs. All these things that have, you know, today you can still find people who believe these various conspiracy theories. Today, you can still find people who believe these various conspiracy theories. And no one at the time, even the coroner, could figure out any scientific reason why he died.

And they seem to have overlooked what I think is the most plausible explanation, which is that Bruce Lee died from heat stroke. And probably the strongest bit of evidence for that is that six months prior to his death, he had an operation to remove the sweat glands under his armpits in order so he wouldn't sweat on screen. And this made his body less able to dissipate heat. And anybody who's lived in Hong Kong in the summer knows how hot and humid that place is. And so I think it's very likely that, um, he died from a heat stroke, um, from not being able to dissipate the heat from his body. I have one more question for you in the book, Bruce Lee, a life by Matthew Polly, your life. Uh, there's those of us that grew up, live, you know, listening to the Wu-Tang clan and thought, man, the Shaolin thing, this is cool. You actually did it. And you're obviously an academic, Princeton, Oxford.

What the hell motivated you to go study? And I think this would be fair here that you probably resemble Michael Scott a little bit more than Mike Tyson. But what was it about you? What did your family say when you were like, I'm going to go study with the shallot? Like what, what the fuck? You know, I mean, it's unbelievable. Uh, even now I look back and I was like, who is that crazy kid? Um, so a little like you, I was this kind of skinny scrawny kid. Um, and I grew up in Topeka, Kansas, it was kind of rough blue collar town., I was this kind of skinny, scrawny kid. And I grew up in Topeka, Kansas,

this kind of rough blue collar town. And I was always getting knocked around on the playground. And so Bruce Lee, when I saw Enter the Dragon as a 12 or 13 year old, became my role model, my inspiration. And I wanted to be as tough and badass as Bruce Lee. And in Enter the Dragon, he's a Shaolin monk. And so I got to college, and I was really following along Bruce's path. I was studying philosophy, Eastern Taoism, et cetera, and studying Southern Kung Fu. And one day I thought, you know, I want to go to China and learn martial arts. And I talked to a teacher who said, you've got to go to the Shaolin Temple,

which I thought was a made-up place. I didn't think it actually existed. And because I'd been such a childhood fan of Bruce Lee, that just, it seemed like destiny, right? And so I went back home to my father in Kansas and said, I'm going to drop out of college and go to a Buddhist monastery in China and study Kung Fu. And he looked at me like an alien had possessed his son. And, you know, eventually I was so determined, I ended up hopping on a plane and going over there and studying Kung Fu with the Shaolin monks for two plus years. And that ended up sort of completely changing the course of my life. So in a weird way, I felt like writing this book about Bruce Lee, the first sort of authoritative biography was a way to thank him for what he did to change the course of my life. I feel like I could do another 45 minutes on you. What is it like when you get off the plane and show up to the temple with your bags? Well, it's crazy because, um, this is like in 1992, um, before the internet, et cetera.

So I just showed up with a bag and I expected it to be like a scene from Kung Fu where you knock on the door and they don't let you in and you have to sit there for months waiting. So I packed a sleeping bag thinking I was going to have to camp outside the Shaolin Temple until they let me in. But it turned out that by that point, the government had taken the place over and they were running it to make money. And as soon as I showed up with American cash, they were like, yep, you can come right in. So that's how I got to be a disciple of Shaolin temple is I just paid up front. Do you only have the one fight to your record? I don't know. Cause I watched your, the one that's on YouTube where you fought

a guy. Uh, and I don't know if there's MMA in the cage. Was that MMA? And I'm not saying that to be like a jerk. It looked very stand-up. Obviously, neither of you had any interest in going to the ground, which I don't blame you because it sucks down there. So that was MMA. But watching, I was like, I don't know if this is kickboxing, but I was looking at his hands, and his hands were positioned in a different way than yours. So I guess I felt like,

okay, maybe this, this is sort of a, and the gloves were MMA gloves. So I just, I couldn't quite figure it out. And you won, man, you won. He didn't get out of the corner. Um, was that the one, was that the one time or cause I know you wrote in another book about training for that. So I didn't know if those two were connected. Yeah. So the, that was from the second book tapped out when I was significantly older and that was an MMA fight, but we were both, since we were both young and inexperienced, they matched up to stand up guys, um, to face each other. Um, I did a couple of smokers in preparation for that. Um, you know, uh, some boxing ones, et cetera.

But when I was at Shaolin, I ended up fighting in a kickboxing, a Chinese-style kickboxing tournament. It was like an international one with a bunch of countries sending people. So I had done tournaments before, so probably three or four official competitions underneath. But, you know, obviously that's very different from the fighters of today who have hundreds of fights under their belt. Hey, you got in there, man.

You got in there. And over 90% of the people walking around would never even do that. So give yourself some credit for that. And also give yourself credit for a great way to tie in this entire interview by saying you wrote the book as a thank you to him. You did a great job. I know it was years of research and it was really enjoyable and I would urge everybody. There's so many other stories in there. The Steve McQueen stuff, Bruce is a driver, stuff on the set. He definitely liked the ladies. So check it out. Bruce Lee, a life by Matthew Polly. Thanks for this man.

And thanks for this time because I've been wanting to do this for a long time. It was great. Is the best way to follow you? What's the best way for people to kind of get a sense of how to get your information and follow what you're doing? A website, Matt Polly,

M-A-T-T-P-O-L-L-Y.com. Or I'm on Twitter, Matthew E. Polly. And of course the book's available Amazon, Barnes & Noble, everywhere. Thanks man. Really appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on. It was a real pleasure.

Okay, just make sure you rate and review and subscribe to the Rosillo Podcast here on The Ring. We'll have a new one for you coming up on Friday and then doing some NBA stuff coming up here soon with Bill. So looking forward to that as well. Thanks. Thank you.