The Joe Lewis Interview
Conducted By Paul Bax
Over the years, the controversy about my relationship with Bruce Lee continues. Unfortunately, any writers about this subject have, in their zeal, to perpetuate their own agendas or to sensationalize the facts or to yield to a tacit, outdated martial arts ideology to always appear politically correct have created and perpetuated this nonsense. In my heart, I know, because of the profound strength of Bruce Lee’s legacy, no harm from any fallout of this nonsense could ever fall on his family or possibly tarnish his iconic reputation.
As the importance of the many rivalries between various JKD practitioners die out, a new energy is emerging. Thousands of new up-and-coming JKD enthusiasts around the world are presenting a new challenge. They have absolutely no interest in the many false, outdated rumors or the in fighting that persists among the majority of the JKD hierarchy today. They only want to know about real JKD and about the real Bruce Lee. Therefore, it is in my respect of this new spirit that I have agreed to do this interview – Joe Lewis.
You had met Bruce Lee twice before becoming his student. Finally, after Mike Stone boasted about Lee’s skills, you two finally began to train together. Why did you have so much apprehension with him initially becoming your instructor?
Joe Lewis: In the first place, by the end of 1966, I was a top-rated fighter in the first poll ever published by Black Belt Magazine. I was already an amateur world champion and the United States National Champion. I had a profoundly legitimate chain of command going back to two different tenth-degree grand masters in Okinawa. I had experimented in boxing lessons, judo lessons, and had actually joined a Japanese karate association affiliate school to study Shotokan karate under Master Nishiyama.
Traditionally, martial arts’ code of ethics, inherent in any style, discourages students to engage in lessons anywhere outside of their respective style. Additionally, at that time, I was always looking for sparring partners with whom to work daily, but I was not in the market searching for a new instructor.
In my system, I came from a strong background of fighters. You work with fighters, you are taught by fighters, and you’re discouraged to seek knowledge from those who are not fighters. In those days, Kung Fu practitioners were not known as competent fighters. Most of them indulged in constant practice of their many long forms and in preserving the heritage passed on from each family in China.
Before martial arts, I spent more than five years training as a weightlifter. In the weightlifting world, you only respect the strong, visibly well-conditioned athletes, and being a big man myself, there’s a tendency to glorify the heavyweights over others, as in boxing and football.
From Bruce Lee’s perspective, you must appreciate the fact, in Chinese, he did not traditionally prescribe to the old values of his culture. He was condemned for marrying a Caucasian, he was condemned for posing as a master instructor, the founder of his own style at the young age of 27/28 years of age, and he was condemned for teaching students who were not of Chinese descent. To make matters worse, he was getting public recognition for the fact, which was another breach of the old-fashioned tenets subscribed to by most of his Chinese descendants.
Bruce Lee knew that to gain recognition and visibility, not only in the martial arts’ community but also the film world, if he could lay claim to the fact that he was singularly the instructor of American’s three top fighters (Mike Stone, Chuck Norris, and Joe Lewis), that credibility gap imposed on him by his Chinese peers would evaporate.
This climbing the food chain or climbing the ladder strategy of his had already worked for him in the film industry. He had the hairdresser, Jay Sebring, help him and introduce him to many prominent directors, producers, and top actors in Hollywood. He would now succeed in accomplishing the same feat in the martial arts’ community.
Bruce approached me the first time in late 1966 in the parking lot outside Black Belt Magazine in an attempt to convince me to become his student. He spent about 30 minutes showing me a number of weaknesses in the traditional karate styles and why his system was superior. I very politely listened.
In 1967, Bob Wall, Mike Stone, and myself had created a nightclub act, and one night, after we had finished a show, Mike Stone was able to convince me to seriously consider contacting Bruce Lee for possible instruction.
During my earlier encounters with Bruce, I was not receptive for a couple of reasons. Number one, instead of Bruce establishing a personal rapport with me first and then attempting to show me how he could improve on what I was already doing as a fighter, he unintentionally, arrogantly condemned what I was doing and proceeded with a long discourse as to why his style was superior. In those days, I didn’t respect more than a couple of martial artists. Fortunately, Mike Stone was one of a few whose opinion and athleticism I did respect.
Bruce, in those days, at five feet, seven inches, only weighed about 138 pounds. Coming from my weightlifting background, I had little respect for little guys. I didn’t want any little guy attempting to impress me with his speed, his power, or his strength. I usually always shut them out. All my life, by nature, I prefer people who demonstrate their greatness first, and if I take notice afterwards, fine. I am not inclined to be receptive to anyone’s attempts to tell me about their greatness. I was never fond of talkers, only doers.
The miracle to this whole story is that Mike Stone and I lived in the same town, along with Chuck Norris as well, and that by coincidence, Mike Stone and I were working together every week. This set of circumstances presented a unique opportunity in Bruce Lee’s favor. In retrospect, it just seems like all this happened because it was meant to be.
In the past, you have stated Lee didn’t like tournament fighting, so he never competed. With his speed, power, and intelligence, don’t you feel that if he did enter tournaments, he would have won and won often?
Joe Lewis: Bruce Lee writers and some of the fanatics have historically attempted to endow Mr. Lee with combat attributes outside of his interests and pursuits and beyond the common sense understanding of what it takes to be consistently successful in tournament competition. What need of the wishful thinkers is being fulfilled when they suspend rational thought and capriciously assume that because Bruce Lee was quick or intelligent that these attributes alone would automatically entitle him or arbitrarily assume that great success as a fighter was forthcoming?
Bruce Lee was an artist. If you watched him draw, he was extremely fast and very creative. I know about art because I had won art contests when I was only eight years old. This gift was the thing I most admired about him. Bruce, in his heart, always dreamed of a higher purpose. Being in a tournament, being a successful fighter had little relevance to the significance and the higher values to be attained along the pathway that he sought.
A personal ego pursuit of his was two-fold; one that an Asian actor could become a major film star in the Hollywood establishment, and number two, he wanted to prove that the Chinese people should be recognized as supreme martial artists. The significance of what it means to an individual like Bruce to demonstrate to the world at large the importance and the meaningfulness of personal attainment, inner strength, and appreciation of self to an individual gets himself fully through the pursuit of martial arts than what the end benefits are to that individual. No greater accomplishment equals this supreme challenge. In my opinion, he succeeded with this goal, primarily because it was in his heart.
For him to pursue any involvement in the fight game, he would first have to deprogram whom he was from within. He was not willing to abandon his pursuit of this supremely higher principle, especially at the price of just becoming another mere world karate champion whose fame vanishes in time.
Does anyone know who the first world karate champion was? Does anyone know who the current world karate champion is? Don’t answer. I don’t know the answer myself, but everybody knows the name, Bruce Lee. That’s my point. Bruce Lee introduced the world to martial arts.
What’s important is not what it means for Bruce to have had all the attributes — speed, power, tenacity — to have become a successful fighter. What is important is if anyone believes that Bruce Lee, the person, could have had the willingness to relinquish his inner pursuit of his higher principles to pursue the mundane, insignificant attainment of a karate title.
How can an individual become successful or great at something, which in their heart is far below the standards they hold for themselves? Bruce was content with where he was. He never appreciated a vast amount of contempt he constantly received from the outside world. He was aware of his destiny; you can see that in one of his college papers he wrote when he was only 20 years old, and he knew that he was the only person alive who could ever pull it off.
There are two questions I ask martial artists to search to answer. Number one, who am I? Number two, singularly speaking, what is the most dominant principle that motivates me to pursue training or to seek my goals as a martial artist, such as becoming a top fighter? Most of us never attain the answers. The answers can only come from within. Fortunately, for Bruce, and to begin to truly understand Bruce Lee, the person, you have to realize that Bruce knew the answers.
You have been quoted as saying, “He never really sparred anyone when I was around.” Yet, you did put on gear and mix it up. Does sparring in your eyes have to consist of multiple rounds? In addition, Brenda Venus has stated she witnessed you spar Bruce often. Was her observation merely a lack of understanding on her part of what you were doing?