ESPN’s 30 for 30 ‘Be Water’ revisits the day Bruce Lee changed martial arts forever
- Bruce Lee’s legendary exhibition at the Long Beach International Karate Championships in 1964 began the martial arts movement that is still developing today
- ‘We walked away thinking he was changing things up,’ says legendary Ron Van Clief, who went on to become one of the UFC’s first commissioners
Bruce Lee altered the course of martial arts history when he walked out on to the auditorium floor at the inaugural Long Beach International Karate Championships on August 2, 1964.
It would take the best part of a decade for Lee’s vision to seriously go global but those in the crowd that day knew they’d seen something very special.
Ron Van Clief was there in California among them.
“He was a maverick,” Van Clief said. “All the great fighters were there and it was a spectacular event. You know it really changed martial arts. It started the martial arts movement that you can see still developing today.”
ESPN’s debut of the Bao Nguyen-directed documentary Be Water on Sunday was set to take in Lee’s struggle for recognition – and work – in the United States in the early 1960s. At that time Lee was formulating his own style, eventually known as jeet kune do, but he’d only really just started to share his vision with select students.