Bruce Lee vs. any PFC fighter, who would win?

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
There probably wouldn't be an MMA without Lee's enormous influence having paved the way.

[/ QUOTE ]

Bruce Lee was way ahead of his time as far as MMA, but where is the causal link between Bruce Lee and the birth of MMA? I don't see it.

[/ QUOTE ]

The prejudice and isolationism between martial artists was very real. A student studying more than one style was traditionally seen as a challenge that one teacher had to fight the other. The student would be dismissed rather than allowed to study two styles. Crossing between not just styles, but racially was not done. A man taking gung fu, for instance, could not tell his teacher he was also taking karate.

And of course there were huge mental barriers. Back in his day, it was the norm for everyone to say their style was by far the best -- by far. Little or no credit was given to studying any other style. The common attitude was that even thinking that was disloyal and showed a dilletante(sp?) attitude on the part of the student. As the secrets that make a style work are often traditionally withheld from a student for a very long time, if not forever, "disloyalty" was basically death to one's hopes of gaining the most one could out of a system. So thoughts about what martial arts could be tended to be very linear.

Personally, I myself was told I had to leave a style when my instructor found out I was studying another. All that stuff was very real.

Btw, this sort of prejudice is still quite popular, in the new form of MMA fans saying no style but jiu-jitsu is any good, or that it's much better to be a jack of all trades and a master of none than to be highly developed in any one facet -- unless, of course, that facet is jiu-jitsu! Ridiculous prejudice is part and parcel of martial arts still. But at least today, it is much more widely accepted that cross-training is done out of a healthy practicality rather than out of lack of dedication and respect to one's starting style.