Jeet Kune Do Not A Fan Club

Jeet Kune Do Not A Fan Club

- Jason Korol

SO, I WAS HAVING an argument the other day with a dude at the Boxing gym. He said Muhammad Ali wasn’t really a boxer. Real boxers, he informed me, like Joe Louis, didn’t bounce when they moved, didn’t pull straight back from punches, threw body shots, and didn’t lay on the ropes and let people wear themselves out from punching at them.

I countered with my customary and unassailable logic. “Ali,” I said, “was a great Heavyweight Champion in Boxing, for crying out loud. He must, therefore, have been a boxer.” Aristotle would have been impressed.

My opponent, however, was far more astute than I’d ever imagined and countered my argument with this blast of high wisdom: “You don’t know crap about Boxing, dude!” Ouch! That was it. There was nothing I could say to that impeccable reasoning. I was crushed. I limped away from the debate and went home to watch Netflix and eat ice cream.

Okay… okay… this is all made up. However, if we replaced the word Boxing with Jeet Kune Do, we’d end up with something that’s not so funny, yet frighteningly, all too common. It’s true that Ali committed all those fistic “sins.” It’s just that he got away with them because he trained for his own personal application, not Boxing in general. This is something that’s often taken for granted in Boxing but hardly ever in martial arts. Think of it this way. Ali learned the basics, just like everyone else, but he studied how to apply those basics in the best way for himself. The masters, the elite, are out there doing their thing, and they all have their specific styles built on their strengths and weaknesses. Look at Tyson. Look at Mayweather. Great fighters take the principles and tools and make them work for themselves.